You Need a Design Council

Another one of the insights I gleaned from my and Mar's illuminating conversation with the amazing female founders of The Landing (the first of many insights posted here) was how they accelerated product development by creating a design council. Ellie and Miri cleverly brought a small group of super-users into their team's Slack group for early concept feedback, co-creation, and need finding. A handful of insights related to establishing a user design council: 

• Put thought into who the right folks are. They're right in your sweet spot target user demographic, and they're likely already giving you lots of feedback. Formalize the relationship.

•  Be transparent about life in a start-up. Not only are these super-users interested in your product, they're likely interested in having a behind-the-scenes view of how life in a start-up works. Be transparent.

• Be careful about the balance of give v take. Ellie and Miri started off super structured in their requests, but have since learned to lean on lightweight, super quick interactions instead.

• Find the right moment to engage folks. The key to getting good feedback is knowing when the user is primed to be receptive. Ellie and Miri found that for their council, right after a user made a mood board, they were primed by being proud of their work, and were stoked to interact about the product.

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