Hey hey! 👋🏼

Today, our guest is the Product Owner and former UX Designer Stas Semin. He will answer the questions of users of the design community Meerkad.

I hope you enjoy and this AMA interview will be the first, but not the last.

Thank you, Stas, for taking some time off from your busy schedule to answer a few questions about your design product work process.

I give the floor to️ ✍ Stas.

Ars

Stas Semin, Product Owner at Raiffeisen Bank Russia and former UX Designer at Alfa-bank

✍️ Hi everyone! Thanks, Arsen for the invitation and introduction. I’m Stas Semin, Product Owner at Raiffeisen Bank in Russia and former UX Designer at Alfa-bank. I’m here to answer any questions you have about design, digital bank apps, mindset, frameworks, design process, and other stuff. Ask me anything!

What is the difference between working in a Bank and other places?

question by 👨🏼Andrew Grant, Product Designer

✍️ The main difference is security. Our clients' data & money are the most important thing we take care of. Banks always have strong compliance, security & DevOps requirements. That’s why it takes 2x time to create and put the product to market when working in a bank.

What are the main skills of a designer for you?

question by 👨🏻 Elvin Thomas, UX Designer

✍️ For me the most important skills for product designer are:

Communication skill; Empathy; Customer development; Asking 5x “Why?” question skill; Logic; Instruments (Figma, sketch, HTML/CSS, js, Customer Journey Map, SQL, after effects, prototyping tools); Testing skills.

What is the main language or platform used for web-design?

question by 👨‍💻Victor Bishop, Web Designer

✍️ In my team, we create a design in Figma and use React JS for developing web apps. Some time before we used Sketch (design) + Marvel (prototyping) + png (lol) for sending design to developers (yes, no Zeplin:) ). One more thing is that Figma is free for little teams like ours, so we have no need to buy Sketch. React JS is standard for frontend-developing in our bank + we have a cozy design-system that offers incredible speed for creating web-applications!

Where do you look for industry knowledge?

question by 🙍Stefania Backer, Graphic Designer

✍️ Telegram channels, youtube, books. They are most in Russian, so they won’t be useful for you :)

What metrics do you use to track your design’s success?

question by 🙍‍♂️Norman Young, Product Designer

✍️ Happy clients 🤗 When I used to be a designer we had product metrics the same for all team (number of deposits that was opened weekly /revenue/time for processing 1 operation / NPS)

You are hired by a client to design a new website. What’s your first step?

question by 👨🏼‍🎓Ashly Finch, UX Designer

✍️ 1. 5x “Why?” questions with a client to know what they really want to reach.

2. Creating CJM with customers. One of my clients after 5x “Why?” questions understood that he has no need to create a new app. We made some changes on website & e-mail messaging and he achieved his goals. Try to be partners with your clients.

What’s the project you’re most proud of?

question by 👴🏼 Sabir Rathod, UX&UI Designer

✍️ I’m proud of the electronic candidate form for security check instead of paper one. That was my first product like PO.

12000-15000 candidates every year had to fill in paper-form with ~40 questions on it. There were 5 real problems:

Candidates made mistakes. Lot’s mistakes. HR & after it security employees had to put the info from that form to 2 different systems. Employees waisted time to call a candidate for help with understanding handwriting. A candidate had to: find printer, print form, fill in with blue pen and then bring it to company :( And the worst thing was that time for security check for one candidate was: 3–5 days (too long).

When we created the electronic form for security check we solved all 5 problems and received super-positive emotional feed-back from candidates like: “You are true IT company, I dream of working for you!”.

Time for security-check decreased twice to 1–2 days!

Describe your creative process. What are the major steps?

question by 👸Mina Porembski, UX&UI Designer

✍️ Feeling context (be like a client, think like a client, make decisions like a client). Speaking with clients. Finding a problem.

Creative ideas on paper. Then I use 3 room technic (https://hatrabbits.com/en/disney-method/). Prototyping. Testing (guerrilla research, A/B testing, UX testing, selling interview, …). Then goto a new cycle until your clients & solve their problems.

What books should I read for leveling up my product and design skills?

question by 🙋‍♂️Dmitriy Miroshnikov, Curator of Meerkad

✍️ I’ll recommend books for product owner skills:

Lean Startup (Eric Ries) Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers (Alexander Osterwalder) The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement (Eliyahu M. Goldratt) The mom test (Rob Fitzpatrick) Crossing the Chasm (Geoffrey Moore) Scaling Lean (Ash Maurya)

Thanks a lot for your questions! If you have further questions feel free to connect. I’m on Facebook www.facebook.com/semin.stanislav