Product Design UnZipped: The work we do, and the way we grow

This is the third part of our Product Design and Research blog. See our first and second posts where we shared more about our strategy, and introduced you to some of our amazing Designers.

In this piece, we'd love to give you a sneak preview of our Design System, how we approach end-to-end design, more about some of our passion projects, and the ways our team are choosing to hone their craft and grow their careers.

Design system

We are continuously evolving our design system and work in a federated model.

Australian mobile app North Star

We have a North Star vision design vision for our app, based on our Product Strategy. This brings to life where we’re going with our experience. This was a huge project and it guides all the work that we do.

End-to-end design, including a big focus on discovery

Our end-to-end design process starts with understanding and discussing the business objectives with Product Managers and how our work will create a positive impact on both business and customers.

We involve our Customer Services team to gather customer feedback and insights on what our customers are saying, and through in-depth desk research, competitor analysis, research, and audits of our current experience, we’re able to draft opportunities using opportunity solution trees.

Our New Zealand app

We collaborate closely in a Product Trio, from problem statements, discovery, writing hypotheses, testing, all the way through to shipping and measuring the impact.

UX Research

We do a combination of generative and evaluative research and invite people to watch. We do coaching on running research and notetaking to scale out our practice.

How we grow

What we’re reading - our Design library

When someone’s ready a book, the reader will do a shareback of lessons for the rest of the team. These are our most recent books.

‘Empathy is the compass that guides effective discovery.’ - Continuous Discovery Habits

External events

We go to lots of events externally to grow, and do a shareback. Some recent ones we’ve been to:

• Figma Design Leaders meetup
• World Interaction Design Day
• AGI open
• Friends of Figma
• usertesting.com AI session
• Sydney Design Thinking meetup
• Melbourne Design Research meetup
• Sydney UXR Meetup

Shlearn

We dedicate some time monthly for our 'Shlearn' sessions (Sharing + Learning).

It’s an opportunity where our team can learn about a topic of interest, from AI to imposter syndrome – nothing is out of bounds! These sessions can feature a team member or an external guest speaker. It’s a chance to relax, unwind, and learn.

Mentoring sessions

In addition to weekly 1:1s, we have a dedicated Zip Mentoring Program as part of our commitment to inspire our Zipsters to develop and excel in their careers.

In the 8 month long program, we match emerging leaders with experienced leaders and undergo structured program of two workshops co-created and facilitated by our partner Serendis, and monthly modules. For mentees this is an opportunity to develop leadership skills, and for mentors to enhance their mentoring and coaching skills.

Passion projects / Volunteering

Snowy Brumbies

See this blog post from our Designer Laure Salou.

YCA Mentoring

At Zip, you are in control of your future career paths from early on. At Zip, we were given the opportunity to volunteer as mentors to primary school students (and future-entrepreneurs) to amplify their startup ideas.

Several juniors and interns put their hand up to offer their expertise and knowledge in order to practice coaching skills so they can carve their own path to leadership positions.

Hackathon swag

At Zip, we encourage creativity beyond our day-to-day tasks. Our product designer, Sieny jumped at the opportunity to show off her hidden illustration talents by designing the swag for our last Zip-wide Hackathon. See more about our hackathon on LinkedIn at #ZipsterHackathon22.

Want to learn more?

Hear from Mel, our Design Director: ‘Talking Product Design’ on Tiktok and YouTube, or read her Medium.

Well, that’s a wrap on our three-part blog series. We love our Product Design & Research team, and working at Zip.

Thanks for stopping by, and we look forward to hearing from you!