I wrote a post about Shape Up, a development methodology, and you the reader wanted me to dive deeper. So, I did just that and interviewed Process Street’s Product Designer, Ivy.

Ivy answers common questions concerning how Shape Up works in practice, and although I briefly touch on the core phases of Shape Up’s approach, this post should be seen as a follow up to my original post which provides a full low-down of what Shape Up is and how it differs from alternative development methods like Scrum and Kanban.

So, make sure to read my last post on Shape Up so you have all the context you need for this post.

In this post, we’ll be covering:

• What is Shape Up?
• The makings of a Process Street Product Designer
• Shape Up from a Product Designer’s perspective
• Shape Up’s design process: Key takeaways
• The day-to-day Shape Up experience as Process Street’s Product Designer

Let’s kick things off with a brief re-cap of Shape Up’s key phases .
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There’s no better moment than the ‘lightbulb moment’.

The one where you finally figure out a solution to a tricky problem, or just come up with an ahead of the curve plan, scheme, or proposal. The euphoria is intense enough to make you get out there and shout about it from the rooftops. Or, do a song and dance on the street, à la Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins.

OK, perhaps the latter is a little hyperbolic. But the point remains that coming up with a great idea is a wonderful feeling.

The only problem is that, at some point in the relative future, more ideas need to be thought of. And for those working in creative fields such as advertising, design, and software engineering, ingenious ideas need to be generated on a regular basis. We’re talking daily, here.

So how can you and the rest of your team continually think of stellar ideas?

Through ideation.

That’s why, in this Process Street post, I’m going to spell out what ideation is, the benefits of ideation, 7 different ideation techniques to use, and what to do before undergoing ideation for the first time.

Read the following sections to get completely clued-up:

• The definition of ideation
• The team and business benefits of ideation
• The 7 best ideation techniques to use
• Undergoing your team’s first ideation session

Let’s not make this a song and a dance.

It’s time to get straight into it!
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Design is one of those tricky areas of business which some people seem innately good at and others are terrible.

But effective design is crucial to business success.

Here are two key statistics from Adobe which demonstrate how vital design is for your business:

• Design-driven companies have outperformed the S&P Index by 219% over 10 years
• Companies that foster creativity enjoy 1.5x greater market share

In the modern digital arena, customers and users expect excellent design and usability more than ever. Poorly designed websites will put customers off or fail to convert those customers who see past the poor layout. Design thinking is business thinking.

For instance, think of any marketing campaign you’ve run. The choice of the images, the font, the location of your call to action are all defined by thinking in terms of design.

For this reason, in this Process Street article, we give you free access to our top 11 design processes and checklists. Simply click on the links below and be directed to your template of choice.

• Web Design Process
• UX Design Process
• Brand Identity Design
• Header Design
• Engineering Design Process
• Graphic Design Process
• Logo Design Process
• Animation Design Process
• Blog Image Design Process
• Graphic Design Approval Checklist
• Social Media Image Design

Even websites which appear on the surface to be poorly designed, like Craigslist or Reddit, work because the user experience they provide is one that resonates with the user. A solid design creates more than just conversions, it can create brand loyalty too – keeping your customers coming back for more.

Click on the subheader below to navigate to the relevant section in this article. Alternatively, scroll down for a thorough overview of our top 11 design checklists.

• Our top 11 design checklists covering design’s vital areas
• How to create your design processes and checklists using Process Street

Let’s jump to it!

Videos are a powerhouse when it comes to marketing, explaining your product, and much more.

Heck, when users are spending 88% more time on websites that have videos, you can see their power just in terms of retention.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to request or create effective videos if you don’t have experience in the field. Terms can be confusing, and video producers might struggle to act on the feedback you give if you don’t know how to communicate the message effectively.

That’s why it’s vital to know how to perform an effective video review; there’s an art to it.

At Process Street, we’ve gone through the hard work of learning how to review videos and give actionable comments. That’s why I’ll be showing you how to do just that., including:

• Basic video creation process
• Video editing steps
• What is a video review?
• Video review glossary
• The video review process
• Video review best practices
• Run your video review processes with Process Street

Let’s get started.
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The importance of the relationship between product and marketing is something that’s often overlooked.

But when the product and marketing teams aren’t on the same page regarding the product and the problems it aims to solve, chances are the marketing won’t match the product’s value proposition and in turn, will discourage potential users from signing up.

This could be detrimental to the success of a product organization.

So, what can you do to avoid these miscommunications and build a synergistic relationship between the two?

In this article, I’ll share some tips and information that will be critical in strengthening the relationship and performance of the product and marketing teams at your company to achieve success.

We will cover:

• What is product marketing?
• Understanding the product-first marketing approach
• Product marketing synergy
• Benefits of product marketing
• 3 Key elements to product marketing synergy
• How to use Process Street to strengthen product marketing strategy
• Product marketing synergy: The bottom-line

Let’s get started!
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Data shows that creative design is reshaping products, portfolios, and industry standards at more than 70% of companies.

If creative design is so important, doesn’t it also make sense to invest time and money on writing a good creative brief?

Before the actual work of designing an infographic, launching a PPC campaign, or even beginning to pull ideas together in the early stages, you need to be sure that you have a solid creative brief.

The creative brief is the foundation upon which the work of any creative project will be done, but all too often projects fall short because of poorly written, bloated, non-actionable, ambiguous creative briefs.

And what’s arguably a bigger problem than a poorly written creative brief? The process (or lack thereof) that led to its creation.

In this Process Street article, I’ll try to address the elements that make up a good creative brief, but perhaps more importantly, I’ll look at how to build a process for creative brief writing; one that’s consistent, reliable, and gets the job done.

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Finding effective ways to engage your employees in decision-making processes has become a priority for most organizations in recent years.

Why?

Because numerous research studies clearly indicate that involving your employees in how things get done improves morale, which in turn positively impacts productivity, loyalty, and pretty much everything else that enables a business to grow and stay competitive.

Really it’s just common sense. Treat your employees well, give them opportunities to contribute, and they will be more motivated to consistently produce their best work.

According to Salesforce research, employees who feel their voice is heard are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work, while another study indicates that organizations with high employee engagement outperform those with low employee engagement by 202%.

It’s hard not to perk up your ears and think carefully about how much you involve your employees when such significant numbers are flying around.

In this post, I’m going to be going through 5 ways for you to involve your employees in decision-making when it comes to process design.

In other words, I’ll be looking to offer you some practical, tried and tested ideas for encouraging your employees to contribute to the design of internal business processes. This will not only offer them a channel for empowerment, but will also improve process adoption as they will be built through collaboration and teamwork. It’s a win-win situation.

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Web design is more than how something looks. It dictates everything from your audience’s initial impressions to how easily they can navigate your site, and can be easily messed up entirely if you don’t have the right processes to prevent mistakes and remember key tasks.

That’s why we’ve collected this pack of web design process templates.

“… a well-designed user interface could raise your website’s conversion rate by up to a 200%, and a better UX design could yield conversion rates up to 400%.” – Goran Paunovic, covering this Forrester report in The Bottom Line: Why Good UX Design Means Better Business

Over the course of these 13 templates we’ve provided documented processes to make the most common web design processes, tasks, and actions run smoothly every time. These include:

• Animation Design Process
• Social Media Image Design
• Usability Test Plan
• Usability Testing Template
• Blog Image Design Process
• Web Design Process
• Website Design Client Onboarding Template
• UX Design Process
• Brand Identity Design
• Header Design
• Graphic Design Process
• Logo Design Process
• Website Launch Checklist

Better still, all of these are free, ready to use, and can be edited to suit your needs should you want to customize your processes. Let’s get right to it!

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As we build businesses, we strive to make them successful in what they do and efficient in the way they carry that out.

Six Sigma is framework with dual American and Japanese origins which helps companies achieve both of these aims.

We want to take company processes and make them better, smoother, faster, easier – it’s what Process Street does. But having a complex process optimized to the highest degree, as Six Sigma advocates, is tough.

That’s why we’re going to look at Design for Six Sigma.

This will take the Six Sigma lessons and apply them to creating new processes or products. Importantly, it will help us set up these processes or products in a way which makes them ready from the start for further Six Sigma-inspired analysis.

According to Quality-One:

…[U]tilizing Design for Six Sigma methodologies, companies have reduced their time to market by 25 to 40 percent while providing a high quality product that meets the customer’s requirements.

In this article, we’ll look at:

• What is Six Sigma?
• What is Design for Six Sigma?
• What is DMADV?
• What is the difference between DMAIC and DFSS

We’ll run through the best practices of creating new products and processes in a way that they can be improved and optimized from the very beginning.

Don’t waste your time with poor processes. Start right and continue properly.

Read on to see how it works!

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In 2016, Process Street went from using a basic Bootstrap theme to a custom-branded website, complete with a logo change and full aesthetic overhaul. We did it to avoid looking dated, and to make the site consistent with our app.

Like many startups, we focused on building a great product first, and rightfully overlooked the importance of a brand until the time was right.

A brand is the often low on the list of startup priorities. Startups develop in a fast-paced, cutthroat environment and are concerned primarily with attracting early users as beta testers, building disruptive products, and iterating based on feedback. Tech is a mercurial industry; many companies start out with a solution to a problem that could be adopted by everyone from individuals to large corporations.

Over time, by stabbing in the dark and following growth over all, a tech startup could find itself with a brand that doesn’t match its product. That’s something we grappled with in 2016, and it’s something even big tech companies come up against every couple of years.

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