Role
Director of Product Design, Discovery Coach
Industry
Tech-enabled automotive manufacturing startup
Context
Kindred Motorworks is in the business of modernizing and electrifying classic cars, or in their words, “Making your formerly irrational desire for a vintage car completely justifiable.” Kindred relies on blueprints, the custom teardown and restoration instructions, to allow the team to navigate precise sequences and complex dependencies and ensure safe, efficient vehicle production. Missed opportunities for parallel work would mean time and money left on the factory floor. Incorrect or incomplete instructions could pose a safety hazard. Making blueprinting a smooth, efficient process is a top priority.
Timeline
7 months
Goals
- Understand the needs, goals, and pains of the Blueprinters
- Collaborate with product and engineering to deliver a tool that reduces blueprint creation and validation time and effort
- Mentor a new hire on our discovery practices
Outcomes
- 400 tasks blueprinted in the first year: The new tool’s speed improvements allowed the Blueprinting team to create custom instructions for 400 tasks in its first year of use.
- Enabled client autonomy: Because Kindred did not have full-time design support, we used the Ant Design System as a base doe our work. Using an established, well-documented design system meant our client would have the resources to continue evolving the application while ensuring usability.
- Increased satisfaction: Blueprinters enthusiastically embraced the tool.
- Enabled new hire autonomy: Our new hire not only mastered our discovery practices but was able to independently take over the day-to-day design activities for the duration of our engagement.
Skills
- Design Leadership
- Discovery, Customer Research
- Coaching & Mentorship
- Product Design
- Journey Mapping
- Design Systems
- Prototyping
- Roadmap & Prioritization
Full case study available below
Challenge
Kindred started with a no-code development tool to validate its initial proof of concept but soon reached the tool’s usability limit. Because this proprietary data was vital to the safety and efficiency of employees, Kindred partnered with Lab Zero to design and build a custom but maintainable application that could grow with the organization’s needs.
Our challenge was to create an intuitive tool that would:
- Reduce the time it took to create a blueprint
- Reduce effort when reviewing a blueprint
- Be easy to maintain and expand on with limited support
Discovery coaching
Sharing our knowledge and setting others up for success are core values at Lab Zero.
We involve our clients in the discovery process, showing them how we make decisions and teaching them how to define learning goals, interview customers, and make sense of what we learned to find customer insights. I brought our stakeholders and engineers into the discovery process to ensure we were all working towards the same goal and addressing customer needs effectively from our unique perspectives.
Our discovery process kept the team focused and aligned, while keeping us open to understanding the needs of the Blueprinters and opportunities to delivery value.
Areas of focus
Our discovery process helped us identify 3 key areas to focus on.
- Ease of data entry and review
- Relationships and hierarchy
- Future maintenance and expansion
Ease of data entry and review
The Blueprinters work collaboratively. When planning a vehicle teardown or assembly, they are on the floor with a technician, talking through the process and strategizing how to do the work efficiently and safely. Because the no-code tool was slow and took considerable focus to follow, the Blueprinter typically took notes, then returned to their workspace to the information into the tool.
Through our Discovery work, we imagined a tool that felt like a natural part of that collaborative conversation. We wanted to allow Blueprinters to draft content smoothly in the moment, and we wanted reviewing the content to feel like reading a story rather than navigating a database.
Relationships and Hierarchy
Automotive manufacturing is highly complex, with numerous dependencies, prerequisites, and requirements. The Blueprinters must carefully plan each task to ensure the team uses the manufacturing floor safely and efficiently. When using the no-code, these relationships were challenging to visualize. Because each page looked the same, Blueprinters were often unsure which phase they were working on. We used color, value, icons, indentation, and connecting lines to help orient the Blueprinter and make relationships clear.
Future maintenance and expansion
Knowing that Kindred may not have design or front-end support after our engagement ended, we chose to build the Blueprint App using Ant Design, an open-source design system framework for React. This would allow Kindred the most flexibility for the future and allow us to design and build the MVP quickly.
We chose Ant because of its extensive documentation and support communities. Having ready-made Figma component libraries was also a plus.
Prototyping and testing
We worked closely with the Blueprinting team, testing concepts early and often. We started with Figma prototypes, testing layout, hierarchy, and animations. Thanks to our our lightning-fast Front End Developer, Jeffrey Faden, and the Ant Design system, we were able to transition to testing in code quickly.
The Blueprinting team was not shy in giving us feedback. If an interaction wasn’t smooth or the workflow was confusing, we heard about it!
The Blueprinter’s enthusiastic engagement allowed us to set up a beta test window where they pushed the MVP to its limits. We rapidly iterated on details and refined the app experience. This extra testing boosted team confidence, resulting in a smooth official launch.
Mentoring a new hire
In addition to our project goals, this project gave me the opportunity to train a new design hire. My goals were:
- To help her build confidence and familiarity with our way of working
- Prepare her to lead the project independently
We started with discovery coaching. Like our client teammates, I brought my new hire into early discovery planning activities so she could see how we made decisions and why. Since we had multiple people learning the discovery process, she got to experience leading and supporting research from various roles.
I structured the project so she would lead concept ideation, exploration, and delivery, with me as a supporting reviewer. We’d pair to ensure the customer’s needs and goals were clear, then check in frequently as she developed concepts, bringing engineering in to ensure the ideas were feasible before reviewing with stakeholders. Initially, I managed the stakeholder communication by setting context, principles, and goals before shifting to her leading the conversation so that she could see how we work to drive clarity and alignment.
She progressed quickly. I structured the workload to allow her to take on more and more responsibility. Within a few months, she was independently researching and designing new features. She led the post-MVP work as the primary designer and is a valuable contributor to the Lab Zero team.
Outcomes and Learning Opportunities
Outcomes: In addition to successfully delivering the MVP scope ahead of schedule, we built several additional features, including search, versioning, and workflow management.
With these features in place and enthusiastic support from the Blueprinting team, Kindred accelerated its adoption of the new platform. Blueprinters documented 400 tasks in the system in the first year. This data enabled the larger organization to complete testing on its Bronco prototype, deliver its first commercial Bronco to customers, and manufacture four more, exceeding the company’s expectations for 2023.
Learning opportunities: During the design and delivery process for the Blueprint App MVP, the Blueprinter’s workflow was rapidly evolving. While this didn’t cause any problems for us or the Blueprinter team, staying closer in sync through a weekly check-in would have helped us develop a more robust roadmap for future product expansion.
From the customer:
“As close to perfect as it gets. This gives our growing team an ideal place to start from.”
Troy, VP of Engineering
Product photos by the Kindred Motorworks team
Additional information:
