Guri Sichinava: The Challenges and Self-Development of a Product Designer

"Discipline is the most important tool that a person who wants to be a professional digital product designer should possess."

Guri Sichinava has been managing digital products for many years and has worked for both large corporations and startups. He currently works at a London-based startup founded by Kevin Hartz, where he creates e-commerce tools for digital entrepreneurs.

Guri, digital product design is quite a young field for the Georgian reality. Can you tell us about the challenges you faced at the beginning of your career?

Since the concept of a digital product existed during that period but the part of product ownership was less understood, there was accordingly less demand for digital product designers. There were separate directions where everything was done except for fully managing the product. The development of the agile culture facilitated the evolution of product design. The main challenge is how convincing you are, meaning how well you possess advocacy skills to gain trust within the team first, explain why specific decisions should be made, and then present all of this outside the team. You need to have a good understanding of the planning part and be involved in the subsequent stages of product development, not feeling that any issue doesn’t concern you personally and participating in all directions. In the old reality, the responsibilities of a product manager were so confused that it was difficult to explain to someone how equally important your decisions were alongside others.

Every designer has a unique design philosophy that guides them in their work. Can you share your approach from sketch to prototype?

Of course, like everyone, my approaches change quite often and adapt to the specific environment and time. Currently, I work with the following principles: there is an idea that has value and requires experimentation. Initially, I try to be specific and able to explain the value both at the beginning and during the development stages, seeing the final value as well.

The value part, the so-called value proposition, is the most important part of everything—if the idea is not viable enough, it’s better to forget it altogether. If the idea is initiated by someone else and not me, I try to understand exactly where we are heading and strive for the best collaboration to do exactly what they wanted and believed in. The value part includes research, where we observe how much this specific thing shapes new behaviors in people and try to see how it will work in our reality if there are examples.

In this phase, we often meet and have discussion sessions, listening to different perspectives. If the value is correct, we then start making sketches as quickly as possible and outlining the initial versions of functions, also trying to understand all potential versions of the user journey and if we can identify edge cases, then we have thought very well, but initially, this is quite difficult.

Regarding sketches, I make about 50 versions of one specific function to have a choice, sometimes even 100 versions to try the best version. Choosing a sketch is also a kind of pitching session where I need to show and explain exactly what I envisioned, but usually, when choosing the right sketch, it is already clear.

After the sketch, we create the ready version for the first release to start working on, and in parallel, we help to get the result as close to ideal as possible. After releasing, we try to inform through various channels that the release was successful and our users can use the function and definitely provide us with feedback. The main value of over 90% of the feedback is "easy to use," which for me is one of the metrics, and I realize that we started doing something right.

In your opinion, what is the most important aspect of the design process and why?

The discovery process, when you need to understand why you are doing this idea at all and how much it will change people’s daily lives. Also, work on as many versions as possible and exhaust all potential options that might exist, and also, properly receive inspiration and be able to see the big picture, using as much experience as possible to have a kind of library in your mind of how things work. Knowing the tools is also important for effectively managing time, but probably secondary compared to what I mentioned.

Product design often involves close collaboration with multifunctional teams. How do you manage collaboration with other departments, and what should be considered in this process?

Having a common value is the most important, and then a common communication language, earning respect for others and their work. If these two are not there, it’s better to focus on finding them first and then start working on specifics.

Feedback and user opinion research are important tools to consider when designing a digital product. What happens when the results of user feedback contradict your vision or perspectives?

There have been cases when we know better than the user. The perspective is usually justified and changes the user’s behavior in the right direction, but also using user opinion research has been an inspiration to return with an improved version, not copying 1:1, and increase satisfaction in both aspects—considering their opinion and offering an excellent experience.

When we talk about user experience in digital products, it’s hard to avoid the boundaries between creativity and the needs arising from user demand. Where is the balance between creativity and usability, accessibility of the product?

The balance is very individual in products—you might work on products that value accessibility more than creativity and vice versa, for which creativity is more important than anything else.

How can one ensure that they do not miss out on innovative tools and trends offered by the digital world in a constantly changing environment?

You need to create a daily routine, a kind of priority schedule, where you definitely consider at least 45 minutes to 1 hour for receiving new information, whether it’s an article or familiarizing with new tools, functions, or general directions. 20 hours per month is completely enough to adapt and master.

You are the founder of the largest UX/UI “community” and often share industry news, recommendations with your group members. How important is sharing others' experiences, mentoring, and networking within your profession’s community?

Sharing experiences is the main value of the community; otherwise, neither my nor any other community can function. Subjectively, I believe that sharing experiences is part of development, and I think if I do not share my experience, I cannot validate how important my decisions have been.

As we mentioned, technologies are developing at the speed of light, and it is actively discussed that this pace will eliminate some professions. How do you see the role of artificial intelligence in the development of product design? What do you think are the challenges that digital product designers will face?

The profession is not threatened with disappearance; on the contrary, it will become more mature and firmly establish itself. Here, only the environment and approaches are changing. I don’t think that any form of development aimed at progress poses any kind of threat to us. All of this is individually evaluative—if you don’t adapt, you won’t be able to develop either and will feel that your profession has been replaced by artificial intelligence or some similar innovation.

By Mate Baghashvili