Company: Google
Role: UX Design, User Research and Product mentor in Google’s program “Google for Startups”
Dates: Since 2016 - current
Making Startup founder happier for sharing all my design and user research knowledge to help them building better products/ services.
Situation
Google for Startups is a mission to support thriving, diverse, and inclusive startup communities around the world. Google connects startups with the right people, products, and best practices to help your startup grow.
Task
How to prepare startups during a one week pre-incubation program focusing on areas like product strategy, UX, technology, marketing and business development.
Actions
Research: Asking the startup about current research processes, objectives and how success is measured.
Design: How does the startup scale design? What are the experiences with design systems? Internal or external designers? What is the size of the design team and how is the design process? How do they work with product and tech teams?
Mentorship: During the short time of the mentoring sessions (average 40 minutes) most important is understanding the current state of the startup. Usually I get a fast idea by asking questions and listening carefully. If an expert design review is needed or appreciated I try to spend the least time on the review during the mentoring session. I’d rather prefer to get prepared into the session by reviewing the product/service prior to the mention session.
Processes: Depending on the startups maturity and size design and research processes are limited or of complexity which requires a design ops expert. Startups participating at the Google for startups accelerator program could have any size from “seed” to “Serious B”.
Organization: During the mentoring sessions it is very important to understand the stakeholder’s expectations on design. What are the design team’s liberties and what are the responsibilities. How are design’s OKRs defined? How is design’s success measured?
Key take aways
There is no “magic formula” to explain to a startup how to research or how to design successfully. But during the years I established a catalogue of questions which helps the mentor as the startup to validate the current state of design. This is the most crucial part.