Product Design & Legacy Change with Saumya Bhatt (InPost)

Andrew Welcome to byProduct Live where we unbox everything SaaS and product. We talk with experts and leaders in SaaS and product to understand their approach to leadership and ways of working to share their knowledge and understanding. Andrew Today on byProduct Live, I'm joined by Saumya Bhatt. Saumya is Global Product Design Team Manager at InPost, the global logistics company offering courier and parcel lockers.

InPost has grown phenomenally over the last few years and their lockers are everywhere. I'm sure people listening will have seen them at petrol stations or supermarkets around where they live. Previous to InPost, Saumya was Product Design Manager at Wayfair, the global furniture e-commerce company. and started her earlier career at SunGuard in the financial services sector.

Saumya has worked in the USA and is now based in Berlin. And in her spare time, she loves to travel, cook and read. Today, we're to be talking to Saumya about legacy change from a design perspective, which is a journey Saumya is on with InPost. And this is a little bit of a change in direction for us on the podcast today because we're normally talking to product managers and product leaders.

So it's going to be really interesting to get that design perspective. So welcome to the show today, Saumya. How are you? Saumya Bhatt Doing great, thanks.

How are you? Andrew Yeah, very good, thank you. I think a really good point for us to start would be to just maybe give a bit of an overview of InPost and how product design fits into a logistics and a courier company because it's not always obvious and ordinary that you think of it as a product-based business. Saumya Bhatt Yeah, I think it's really great that you're asking because not a lot of time.

I've never not been asked this before. But yeah, it's really true because and I think it's easy to see logistics as traditional and operational field focused company. And we only think of it about when we talk about it delivering packages from point A to B. But in reality, everywhere there is tech, there is product and logistics companies are not an exception to it.

Andrew haha Yeah. Yeah. Saumya Bhatt And when you think about product design in such places, it's not just about the aesthetics or interfaces as it's traditionally looked at, but it's also about designing our experiences that solve real world problems. And Logistics has a lot of those.

Yeah, yeah. when you think about coming back to InPost, our primary product, which is the Parcel Locker, which as you mentioned, you see them everywhere these days. Andrew Yeah. Okay, a lot of them, yeah.

Yeah. Saumya Bhatt It is about designing a physical as well as a digital service product. So when you think about it, you want your blockers to be intuitive, accessible and seamless for the users and aligned with our brand's vision and identity. And to be honest, we work to design every touch point from our websites, our mobile app, to the notifications, to the locker interfaces, because the journey needs to work.

Andrew Yeah. Saumya Bhatt For our customers, they need to be cohesive and user friendly. Andrew Yeah, of course. And I guess on that user journey, there's lots of touch points and lots of different processes across different interfaces where that can get quite complex, I would imagine.

Saumya Bhatt Yeah, so you don't think of it as just product design, but it would be inclusive of service design. It's not just UX and UI. You're thinking about a lot of use of research. You're thinking of all the other aspects and the physical environment as well, where the product is late, and especially in supply chain, because nobody using the product is sitting at a desktop.

They are in a very physical environment, which is extremely loud, has a lot of things going on, and they're using products and for Andrew Yeah. Saumya Bhatt The easiest thing is sort of like a zebra scanner and they are all around you, they're sorting machines. So it's always about interacting a lot more with the environment. Andrew Yeah, yeah, definitely.

So if we just think about this now from building products from a design perspective, there's obviously lots of different viewpoints that you then have to consider because you're obviously working with your product managers and your product leaders. You've got the business and then you've got the C-suite who often think that they know how things should be designed, much like they think that products and how they should be built. How do you handle that situation? Saumya Bhatt I think it's true of design as it would be in any field, which is when you have so many viewpoints in the room, it's a balancing act.

So you end up constantly navigating between a lot of different, like you said, like the product, the C-suite, the operations. So you're balancing all of these new insights and learning, but that also leads to quite a bit of tension sometimes. And when we do that, we... Andrew Yeah.

Yeah. Hahaha Saumya Bhatt The reason for the tension sometimes is just that we're not aligned on the goals or priorities or really have very different viewpoints to how things need to happen. And when it comes to design, what this affects for design a lot of times is the ability for us to do, to think long-term, to build something that works and lets the product evolve, but for the design to continue to be seamless as the product. evolves.

Andrew Yeah, yeah. Absolutely, and I guess one of the real key things is about thinking what is the problem that we're solving and then keeping all those different people aligned. They might have different viewpoints at the beginning, but then bringing them all together to make sure you all agree as the product evolves. Saumya Bhatt Yes, absolutely.

So I would agree with saying that with like, one of the things that helped, right, is not working directly on the solution. So we have this term at my previous organization at Wayfair, they would say we are solutionizing, which is a really terrible way to say it. Because the aim should be that we focus on the problem, right? We align on what is the problem we are solving, like you said, and Andrew Okay.

Okay. Yeah. Saumya Bhatt focus on what value are we all trying to bring in the end, because if we agree on that, we can work towards building multiple solutions that may be solving and bringing value and from those different viewpoints that we talked about before, because there could be something that product brings that wasn't thought of by operations. There could be something that design brings that wasn't considered by product or business.

So we can work through a lot of different ideas and build a good solution rather than having one dictated and If you're familiar with these ideas I think you may have also experienced this right where if you are dictated so we dictated a solution and you don't talk about the problem you end up Being very constrained in that space and you limit your thinking Andrew Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Saumya Bhatt And so you can have people come to you with, hey, why don't we add a button over here and that will solve the problem.

And that's all I need from you. And then you can have designers who tend to then focus so much on where we place this button and what is the color of this button? What is the interaction of these buttons? But if you instead step back and think about, why are we trying to put this button?

Is it the right thing in the flow? Is it a part of that? Andrew Yeah. Saumya Bhatt flow, when would the customer really need or when would the user really need to click certain buttons, you can come up with and then you go back and talk about what is the problem we are trying to solve.

Yeah. Andrew Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I think with some of these discussions and you can obviously be conflict when you're working with a business.

And I guess in particular, something like cookie banners as an example. I know we were talking about this before we started recording. So, you know, who gets to decide what's best? Is it the design team or is it the business?

Saumya Bhatt cookie banners is, I don't know if you've ever done this, but you can go and try looking at cookie banners at very different websites and interfaces. And I think from that, you can see who really won out at that organization. Who was actually ending, who ended up being able to make the decisions. Cause you can have these beautiful banners, which then just say deny all and it's so easy.

And then you have these, which are like. Andrew Yep. Yeah. Saumya Bhatt reject her, no, sorry, accept all or accept when only necessary or, you know, selections.

And then you go into these really large lists of, I don't know, primary and then legitimate interests, which I don't know what that means to this day. Andrew Accepted. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

some of them are definitely still GDPR traps on some of them without a doubt. Saumya Bhatt Yeah, yeah, yeah. so I think that's, Cookie Banners is a great example where I think business and design can be at odds. Because if you're trying to build something that works for the business, yes, you want to build something that's more complex.

And this is where we also have a lot of dark patterns. Cookie Banners is one, but the other one is like cancelling subscriptions. think a couple of months ago, there was a lot of conversation on how cancelling subscriptions. Andrew Yep.

Saumya Bhatt with Adobe with such a big issue. And so when it comes to those kinds of discussions, though, I think there's no easy answer, to be honest. Like, how do you manage yourself out of those those discussions or who ends up winning? It does.

It's just you present the best viewpoints you can and you hope that, you know, all sides understand. And you also again, coming back to the fact that you discuss the value of the product and what Andrew Yeah. Yeah. Saumya Bhatt what value are you bringing to business?

What is the goals that you're trying to solve? And then you may sometimes agree to disagree and just go ahead with it. Andrew Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Well, that that kind of leads us nicely into our next discussion point. It's going to be a little bit controversial for for this podcast, but there might actually be times when product aren't always right. Saumya Bhatt I think I'll agree and disagree with that in a nice way. I believe that the pitfalls come when we think a lot about, know, I'm a user, I know my use case, you know, I was trying this thing and I think I see it didn't work.

And I think that's a very, that's common pitfall that even designers fall for because you could go use the website and come back with feedback that, this didn't work. Andrew Hehehehehe Saumya Bhatt But I think what we need to end up doing in these kinds of cases is really focusing on who is your end customer. Because while you use the application, that doesn't make you the only user of that application. There are customers who are trying to do a lot of different things on your application.

So you need to lead with data. You need to understand who your customer is and what they need. I'm never saying it's a bad thing to solve for edge cases or edge customers, but it shouldn't be at the cost of other things that you're doing in your application. So, it's important that you optimize your design to work flawlessly for what most customers are trying to do or what's going to bring the most value on your application and not to solve for that.

Andrew Okay. Yeah. Saumya Bhatt You know, that one edge case that may happen 1 % of the time, you shouldn't sacrifice the entire design. And I think this happens a lot in the organization if, you know, there is a high, like a HIPPO person making those opinions, right?

The highest paid person's opinion when that comes into play. And it can, you can end up building a lot of bad designs because you focused so much on the wrong use cases or so focused so much on, you know, making everything easy to do that now your customer. Andrew Yeah. Yeah.

okay. Yeah. Saumya Bhatt comes to the application and doesn't know what to do, because you did not help like the cold start problem, or you didn't help for the customer who's new to your application and needs to adopt your product versus you were focusing on the mature customer who may be 5 % of your user base. And so it becomes a difficult thing because of some of those conversations where it's not that product is not always right.

It's just, I think, product design business, whoever comes with Andrew Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Saumya Bhatt this is what we need to do, should really, or I have this problem, should really focus back on like, which customer base do you fall into?

Is it the 5 % customer base or the 85 % customer base? Andrew Yeah, of course. 85%, yeah, Yeah, Yeah, no, that makes sense. And I really like that acronym of HIPPO.

I've not heard that before. No. Yeah. But maybe the product community are just keeping it secret.

So I guess from developing this in InPost, when you join the organization, Saumya Bhatt Really, I feel like it's a very common action, I've heard it so many times. Andrew You obviously couldn't do all this by yourself. So one of the things that you then had to do was build a design team, right? So I guess how has that team fitted into that traditional business?

And I guess looking at it from an adding value and being an important part of the business and being recognized from the wider business as well. Saumya Bhatt Yeah, so InPost was a little different where it wasn't that we didn't have designers, it's just we didn't have a design team. So there were designers who were working very much in silos all over the different products, the different teams, but they weren't talking to each other. It wasn't a design community.

And so the first part of coming in was just to understand that we need one team. And the reason for building that also is it helps us then focus on building Andrew Yep. Okay. Yeah.

Saumya Bhatt more consistency in our applications. Like when I started, I talked about all the different touch points that you design. If different designers are working on different journeys, but never talking to each other, you will have completely different experiences trying to achieve the same result. And so that's the journey we are on more than anything else.

So one, it was to build one team, and then it was to start by hiring strong designers. Andrew Yep. I, Yeah. Okay.

Saumya Bhatt members, you know, individuals were extremely motivated and would love the challenge because the organization was going through a huge change. And change is never easy. And when an organization, large organization is changing, it's not that the change, like there's one reorg and it's perfect. That's not the case.

You have continuous change. Andrew No, no, definitely. Yeah, and it's not just the tech change, right? It's the personnel change, it's the personalities, it's the overall rounded impact on those people and maintaining that they not only are doing their jobs but they're developing, they're growing and they feel part of that, right?

Saumya Bhatt Yes. Yes, yes, exactly. So when you're hiring, was also a huge, like one of the key factors that I was looking for also are designers who are motivated by the fact that they would be coming into an organization where design isn't a discipline, design isn't a part of the culture, but it's something that they would have to come here and work to establish, to be part of a rapidly changing organization and should be willing to drive that transformation that change from their side.

And it's still a huge journey that we are on. I will say that when I started, I thought, six months, right? How long can it take? And that's not true.

Not at all. It's one of the biggest learnings is it takes really long to change these kind of organizations. Because like you said, there's a lot of personnel change. There are other teams that are changing as well.

Andrew Yeah. Yeah. Saumya Bhatt We continued to start, we started hiring design, started understanding where the need for design would be in such an organization. And then once we did that, it was a lot about like changing the viewpoint of design because design was looked at very much from an aesthetic perspective.

So it was always viewed as just, you come, you build these interfaces, you come build, you make things pretty. Andrew Yeah. Yeah, yeah, the classic viewpoint, right? Saumya Bhatt Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And you came in and I've had people say this to me in the first year. I will say that it has decreased exponentially in the last year. So I would say that is a measure of success that I'm not really it's not a metric, but it is definitely a measure of success that nobody anymore says that we needed this design to come make things pretty. Like nobody says that.

mean, it's very less now. So Andrew Yeah. Yeah. Saumya Bhatt But yeah, it's no longer just viewed as UI design or just interface, but to shift perception with the new team that's coming in that design has a much larger part to play.

We're doing a lot of user research. We're working to understand our customer and the business and maturing with the product as it is maturing in different markets versus building products that are just getting started in new markets as well. Andrew Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Saumya Bhatt and then one of the other big things that the team has really been focusing on, and we've been focusing on is also building relationships with all of these other business teams that in the past used to have a lot more control. wasn't, they weren't part of the technology team, but it worked very traditionally in the sense where business came up with an idea and then it was given to an external contractor, like to an external agency to build the designs. Then the designs would come back.

So it was waterfall, but waterfall with external agencies. And then a different agency may sometimes do the design and then a different agency would do the engineering and the design and the engineering team never spoke to each other. And we're trying to change that. We're trying to be more agile.

are integrating design into these product teams in the way that most tech teams do in this day and age. Andrew nightmare. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And I guess what this leads to then is that the design team are valued by the business. So they want to work with the design team more. And then that creates a positive cycle where you are delivering results, you're delivering value, and the business feel actually, yeah, we can see where this is impacting us.

Saumya Bhatt Yes, I think again, it can, there's never an easy way to define the value of design. So it's a lot about building that trust with the organization. It's a lot about building that trust and relationship and it's slowly by them observing the changes that you're making. I know there is a lot of conversation in the design community about how you can measure the ROI of design.

And I've also attended, will say like a couple of Andrew Now of course. Yeah. Saumya Bhatt different trainings and seminars and a lot of conference conversations that speak about, you can measure this, you can measure that. But to be honest, at the end of the day, the value comes when they trust that the value comes from design.

Unfortunately, that's the truth sometimes. Andrew Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's the case in some disciplines without a doubt. Saumya Bhatt Yeah. Yeah.

And but there were some easy wins for us in the start, right? Like I said, like we could quickly do the consistency factor. So we started working very closely and building relationships more with our immediate stakeholders, like marketing, if it was customer facing, the sales, if it was like merchant and retailer facing and working with them much more closely to start bringing small wins of consistency. you know, listening to them, pushing back a little bit, increasing the speed and efficiency with which we do things.

We started establishing the design system again to help with that same consistency issue. And what we started to do is started partnering with these teams that like, like I mentioned before, they have a lot of insights and valuable experience to bring. And we're new to the team. are new to the organization.

Some, lot of designers are new, completely new to supply chain in general, right? Andrew Yeah. Saumya Bhatt You don't know supply chain till you don't work in supply chain. And so you take your time and build those relationships, bring the small wins you can and start building that trust with them.

And that's helped to slowly, slowly bring a different viewpoint to design. I will say we are very much in the early phases of the journey. There is a lot, lot more work for us to be done for sure. Andrew Yeah.

Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, cool. Well, that brings us nicely to the end of our conversation today, Sohmi. So, as always, we like to give our listeners three key takeaways that they can take away from our conversation today.

So what would you say those three things are? Saumya Bhatt All right. So I think the first thing would always be, you know, when you have a lot of different viewpoints, figure out how you can balance those different viewpoints. It's always important to focus on the core problems and allow for exploring solutions rather than focusing directly on what is the solution and how can we optimize or how can we build it in the timelines we need to.

The second thing I would say is that Andrew Yeah. Yeah. Saumya Bhatt It's good to think long term always. you know, focus on how we think scale.

How will we do, build something that works longer term for our scale of product because it is continuously changing. So how do we make something that's more adaptable to it? And the last one I think will be, this is a very common phrase that design uses, which is you are not the user. Andrew Yeah.

Yeah. Saumya Bhatt We remember that, you know, it is important to genuinely understand who your user is, right? Leverage your data to inform your choices and build design that resonate and deliver value for your customers and keeping both the regular workflow and the edge cases in mind and design in a way that you don't sacrifice the usability of the product in order to just build for one. or build for the few.

Andrew Yeah, yeah, yeah. think in all the podcasts we've done so far, I think the you are not your user is probably the most common thing that's come up. But obviously people still do that. And I guess it's also then convincing your hippos that they're not the users as well.

Saumya Bhatt Yeah, yeah, I think that that's the tough one for sure is convincing your your a lot of the older I think it works a lot right when you start the company and it's a small startup where you focus a lot on I knew the problem which is why I started building the product so I understand the problem space to when well the product is being used by more than what your original vision or whatever original ideas are and we kind of then forget that you know we are no longer the Andrew Yeah.

Yes. Saumya Bhatt primary focus or we no longer understand the market because the market has evolved with using the product now. Andrew Yeah. Yes, yeah, definitely, definitely cool.

Well, let's wrap things up for today. Thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us. It's been really interesting and it's been great to see things from a design perspective. Thank you very much and we'll talk to you soon.

Saumya Bhatt Thanks, Andrew. I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks. Andrew Alright.

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