We’re moving quickly to adopt new tools, workflows, and ways of thinking about work.
But…
One thing is not changing, and actually becoming even more valuable; likely because it’s closely tied to our humanity. That thing is storytelling.
Signal Generator
A recent example of this on our team is collaboration on feature iteration at the speed of AI. Our tool needed tweaks, and we were sharing (and documenting!) feedback. @ben can gotten very good and developing patterns to execute on large amounts of feedback.
You can see some examples below, where we audited the tool and added some broad, but concrete feedback for how to shape the tool. Removing some modules and features, adding some new ones.
The Updates
We landed in a place we didn’t intend. What seemed like a destination that seemed logical based on the implications of the audit did not materialize.
Our Primary action on the page became even less prominent, our filters were reshaped and prioritized, and we lost key information about our Test listings.
We Lost the Story
We had a heart to heart as a team, and realized that the issue was not our process for addressing feedback, or gathering feedback. The real problem was the way we were expressing what our desired outcome was.
We were defining what we wanted to change, but not what was working and why. After this conversation, we sketched a direction that showed the hierarchy and rationale behind our structure of the page. You can see those results below.
The Point
We’re moving faster than ever. We might not need a high fidelity prototype before passing over to engineering. Engineering might not need to be completely hands on and deep in the code to accomplish outcomes.
What we DO continue to need is the story behind what we’re doing and why it matters.
.