Three Dimensions for Improving a Business Designer's Abilities

Speaking of business design, most designers would think of designing for console, data charts and forms, bored and exhausted. Or they may think that business products do not worth of considering user experience, " Designers have little influence on this kind of products..” Many designers afraid of entering the field of business design.

In September 2019, I had the honor to participate in the exploration process of business payment products in Tencent Financial Technology.
While, "Business" and "Payment" are the two fresh new areas with extremely high professional thresholds. Designers need to fill up the basic knowledge of the industry as soon as possible. Meanwhile, we need to realiza here was a "gap", between the exploration of the product direction and the implementation of the demand, when the demand is not yet clear. If designer's focus was still on execution, not only will it fail to help the business succeed, but it will also fail to find its own sense of achievement.

In order to get rid of the ideological confinement of "designers, our design team began to overthrow the original role cognition and go further, which is one more step toward application research, one more step toward products, and even one more step toward business. The meaning of 'one step' is not to replace the work of other roles, but to promote business success in all aspects by giving full rights to other designers, let them to show their advantages of subtlety, empathy and more.

In the process of project exploration, our team is deeply involved in market analysis, customer research, user demand mining, digging product ideas, product proposals, and business negotiations. We jumped out of the established scope for traditional designers. I also transformed from an Interaction Designer" to a "Product-Experience Designer", expanding the boundaries of my capabilities.

We have also gradually established a product design system in the process of business exploration, creating a design system called 'Tencent Business Financial Design Language'.
I have summarized relevant thinkings and working methods, which will be shared in the workshop.

The content of this workshop includes:
1. Talking about the role positioning of business designers
1.1 The experience innovation of business products is not limited to page details, but to focus more on the understanding of the overall complexity of the business and the entire process of service innovation. For designers, the value has not been reduced, but been transformed.
1.2 The status of Business designers in Tencent has been updated and ability has been changed in current state.

2. The way for business designers to improve their influence is to take one step forward to the core value of the business.
2.1 The biggest difficulty in the initial stage is to find the right customer group and create a differentiated ability advantages, design should help the product to run in small steps around business goal and verify the direction as soon as possible.
2.2 The development tree for Business designer's development: understanding and insight into customers and their industries, ability to deliver product value proposals, and gain the ability to standardize and streamline methods of doing things.
2.3 Give full play to the designer's advantages such as meticulousness, empathy, and image language output to help business success in all aspects and demonstrate its own unique value.

3. Three dimensions of ToB designer's exceptional ability
3.1 The dimension of product research, do in-depth industry analysis and user research to see clearly, understand, and have insights
3.1.1 Difficulties of ToB research
*Obtaining information: It is difficult to experience competing products like toC products, and no practitioners can be found to conduct interviews;
*In-depth understanding: Lack of professional experience and knowledge, problems are on the surface, and deeper information is not understood;
* Obtaining deep information: Lack of trust from the respondents will impede obtain deep information.
3.1.2 The way to break the game through research:
*Improve industry knowledge: only by paying attention to industry trends and studying industry research reports can you ask accurately and in-depth;
*Enrich your channels: cross-validation through multiple latitudes such as service providers, industry experts, and practitioners;
*Expanding research forms: flexibly use research forms such as in-depth interviews, random block defenses, focus groups, etc., so that it is not like research, but better than research;
* Establish a relationship of trust: sort out professional images, use altruistic thinking, and research should also benefit both parties.
Case study: research on business-enterprise payment B2B e-commerce platform

3.2 Product proposal dimensions: delivery of product value in clear and efficient way.
3.2.1 Use multi-role swim lane maps and user experience maps to sort out userrequirements.
Group exercises: Division of work and define pain points of corporate financial staff.
3.2.2 Use the pyramid proposal framework to deliver design value efficiently.

3.3 Design system dimensions: introduce the methods and techniques of constructing design system through the 'Business-Enterprise Payment' design system construction process.
* Cognitive Level: Global thinking is to fully understand the business and participate in each stage of the product, in order to promote the produce development.
* Insight Level: Value-Driven is to analyze objectively existing pain points, and gain insight into design opportunities, then tap the core value of the product.
* Creation Level: Point to surface, then surface to volume is to quickly build functions, meet the demands of the scene, summarize and form a preliminary design system idea.
* Verification Level: Continuous evolution is a process of verification-review-adjustment-updated, which will build a more complete design system, and evolve continuously.

1、Warm-up: Self-introduction, trainees start to know each other.

2、Topic introduction: The environment changes of ToB product design and the challenges faced by designers.
3、Method explanation: How ToB designers can improve their influence.
4、Case sharing: The way that designer influences business development from three dimensions in Tencent Corporate Payment Products
5、 Practical exercises: Devided into different groups and do exercises
6、Summary and Review

1、 ToB Interaction Designer and Product Experience Designer

2、Practitioners related to ToB user research

3、Designers who interested in ToB business 

1、The Understanding of the development trend, which will help to reposition the direction of personal development and make the career development path clearer
2、Grasp thesystematical methods of how to deeply involved in the core value of business.
3、 Explore the designer's ability and advantage, create unique value in workplace, and become a designer with high sense of value