Product triad transformer: New metaphors for staffing product development teams

How many designers does it take to keep engineers humming along with their code while creating quality products that consumers love?

Often founders or executives underestimate because they misunderstand the role of user experience design, thinking a surface coat of UI gloss should be fast and easy to spray on. When underrepresented, designers — who work end-to-end from product definition through development — can’t keep up with either Product Management or Engineering.

Facing this frustration, designers need talking points. This evocative 2-part metaphor illustrates some basic truths about product design — and can be easily sketched on a whiteboard, napkin or sticky note.

The back story

At a recent meetup, a business founder (non-designer, MBA type) asked me how many designers vs. engineers he should hire. I said it depends. I gave him a rough ratio of designers to developers and said “Hire the designer first.”

Of course, that was too simplistic.

What I meant was…

• From day one, make sure someone is looking at the business (viability), someone is taking care of design (desirability) and someone is architecting the technology (feasibility). Spoiler: That’s the tripod.
• As you scale, add engineers. A staffing ratio weighted toward technology will be necessary later. That’s the cannon.

This idea itself is not new.

The antique stool

Eighteen years ago Donald Norman visualized “the three legs of human-centered product development”: technology, marketing and user experience.

From The Invisible Computer, The MIT Press, 1998.

These equal legs form a stable basis for a mature product — and for the customer experience of the person using it.

Three is the magic number

Norman’s stool does not stand alone today. The triangulation of product development has become standard. The wording varies a little, but the idea is always the same.

Building a great product requires these key roles:

• User experience (UX) researchers and designers take care of identifying user needs, observing behaviors, ideating solutions and designing interfaces.
• Product managers ensure that business goals, timelines and numbers are met.
• Developers architect the technical platform and program the code.

I’ve been drawing these roles as a triad for years while hiring designers into tech companies and strengthening UX impact. I always drew the triad in 2 dimensions:

Until I heard Raphael Grignani of Pinterest talk at Interaction16. He stated that Pinterest works with a “tripod” arrangement, where each designer is paired with one corresponding developer and product manager. Hearing the word “tripod” shifted my mindset.

Raising the metaphor to the tripod

Simply re-arranging the 3 lines of the triad makes a world of difference.

The metaphorical meanings are manifold:

• A tripod helps a surveyor get a lay of the land.
• A tripod helps a photographer get a clear image.
• A tripod keeps the frame constant for time-lapse measurements (visual benchmarking).

An equilateral triangle implies a certain balance, but a tripod demands balance. The tripod makes clear that if one leg is longer or shorter, instability sets in. This was Grignani’s point. At Pinterest they create 1:1:1 relationships between Product Designers, Product Managers and Developers. (See minute 16:34 of Grignani’s talk at Interaction16: Designing for Velocity at Scale.)

But this is also where the tripod metaphor hits a snag. Real-life companies don’t have true balance. A mature organization always has more engineers than PMs or UX professionals. This is true even at Pinterest. Grignani told me (in March 2016) that Pinterest had 30 Product Managers, 28 Product Designers and ca. 300 Developers. And although one cannot really say that there is a standard, this 1:1:10 ratio is similar to numbers I’ve experienced or heard from other companies.

Roll out the cannon

I puzzled over this paradox. How can you draw a tripod with one leg thicker than the others? A quick sketch gave the answer:

It’s clearly a cannon!

This revelation was provocative because a cannon also has rich metaphorical potential:

• A cannon is powerful.
• A cannon is aimed, focused.
• A cannon makes impact.

What’s nice about this visualization is that the squat, low-to-the-ground legs of PM and UX are key to directing all that firepower. If PM or UX moves a little to the left or right — if we fine-tune our aim — we can make the difference between hitting the target and wasting firepower (or even inflicting collateral damage).

So should we ditch the tripod metaphor?

Time vs. money

To answer, let’s take a step back.

Should the startup founder who asked me for advice hire a designer first? Or a designer plus a cadre of coders?

Let’s talk about time and money:

• Time to market is trumped every time by the right product meeting a real need. The iPhone succeeded as a late-entry smartphone and Newton failed as an early personal assistant.
• Ten developers might cost up to 1200% more than one designer.

Designers can create convincing clickable prototypes in high-fidelity to show investors. More importantly, they can build low-fidelity clickable prototypes to test with users. With design power, you can iterate fast to the right product idea before you commit anything to code. Although code is — technically speaking — not set in stone, it has a lot more inertia than an Axure or InVision prototype.

Programming takes longer and requires more people. So now that we’re iterating designs in a dance between designer and user, let’s revisit the question of time to market. Developed efficiently, the right product can be delivered even faster than a product rushed into development. (See Alan Cooper’s Keynote at Agile 2008 for deeper insights about this dynamic.)

So designers are faster. Designers are cheaper. Designers are better (at arriving at the right solution for the actual user).

Does that mean we scrap the cannon?

Each tool in time

You will in fact need that cadre of coders once you have a promising product premise. You will need to test it live in the market and keep iterating. You will need to build, measure and learn.

So that start-up is going to ramp up the developer firepower soon. (Maybe from day 90 instead of day one.)

Mature organizations follow this principle of different staffing ratios at different times, too.

Agnostic of development models (lean vs. agile vs. waterfall), regardless of discipline (design vs. engineering vs. product), tech people talk about development in stages. These phases tend to have characteristics of ideation / exploration / definition or characteristics of execution / development / delivery.

Peter Merholz, for example, sketches out the product development process as a “double diamond” of Definition and Execution.

When we define products, we need to get the lay of the land. We need to survey user needs. We need to take a 360° view. We need to benchmark our progress and pinpoint opportunities.

We need the tripod.

When we build products, we need to move fast, we need to make concrete impact, we need to be aligned and low-to-the-ground.

We need the cannon.

The transformer

The metaphors combine. The product powers activate. The result: an organizational transformer.

Take aim with a balanced tripod before rolling out the big guns. Spread this wisdom into your organization with this 2-part tripod-cannon transformation talking point:

• Get PM, UX and Development on equal footing during product exploration and definition. Set up the tripod!
• Ensure both appropriate developer firepower and stable UX/PM guidance during execution. Roll out the cannon!

And keep the transformation dynamic. Transform your tripod into a cannon when you execute. Transform your cannon back into a tripod when you assess and take aim for the next iteration. Repeatedly make sure that you’re using the right tool at the right time.

Do you have stories to tell about triads, tripods or cannons? I’m curious to collect case studies and dive deeper into discussions around staffing product design teams. Make a comment or get in touch!

/ Double diamond by Peter Merholz / Surveyor photo by srv007 / Stool by Don Norman /