The Shape of UI Engineering
Notes on what UI Engineering might look like from my time leading the Bet Tribe UI Engineering team at Sky Bet
As part of the evolution of the Bet Tribe, I was asked by our senior leadership to document what success looked like for integration of UI engineering as a function. Now, several years later, it’s interesting to see how this thinking holds up against the reality of UI engineering across the industry. Some of it seems pretty accurate, other parts… less so.
A successful UI team will be leading the implementation and optimisation of customer experience across all Bet Tribe properties. They will understand and own the Information Architecture and On-Site Experience, with empowered members being able to autonomously correct issues and deploy tests to continually improve KPIs across squads. Overall, they will champion build, measure, learn to effect positive change across products and the business as a whole.
They will ensure brand design standards are held high, but firstly focus on how something works rather than how it looks. They will challenge product managers, senior stakeholders and design colleagues to push their ideas further, always looking to deliver the best experience for customers. They will understand that the words used in an application are as important as any image or interaction design.
Work briefs will be born of customer desires, goals, business outcomes and problems to solve rather than prescriptive, solutionised tickets that have not been exposed to prototyping and customer testing. They will ensure that features are planned in a collaborative manner, engaging with their team to map the User Story and create common understanding across business areas. This will allow them to explore creative solutions to problems, but is not an invitation to stall on delivery. 60% of a £1m idea is better than 100% of a £100k one.
New features will be developed on paper and in functional wireframes using data and technologies that are representative of the final delivery environment, static images with ‘best case’ design are to be avoided at all costs. Problems and failures will be found early to avoid expensive problems further down the line and help shape a successful release.
Design will be signed-off on actions rather than images, favouring ‘that feels great’ over ‘that looks great’ (aesthetic appeal is a core factor of how good an app feels to engage with anyway). Decisions will be underpinned with data.
UI engineers will engage with functional testing, both automated, remote and in-person and will proactively add actions to the work backlog to ensure continuous delivery of improvements. Front-end performance will be front of mind for all team members, who will be experts in the tools required to report required metrics.
They will participate in ‘listen ins’ with the Contact Centre so they can see how their decisions and technical implementations directly impact customers and will use the language of the customer to better understand the underlying motivations and behaviours that drive their experiences with our business.
Technically, the team will be design authorities on client-side technologies and will be focused on how the device and browser landscape is changing and the opportunities this provides. They will understand the impact of device usage has on the bottom-line of the business and will make decisions about technical implementations based on securing the best balance of customer experience and overall value. We will not forget that people using older devices and poorer browsers can be some of our best customers.
UI Engineers will believe that responsive design involves more than just screen size and will look to capitalise on all the features and constraints inherent in modern devices. They will look to ways to extend the customer experience beyond the website/app and use all available channels to keep customers engaged and entertained.
Team members will have the technical skills to be able to directly contribute to the live product without waiting for Software Engineering resource to become available. They will own the build pipeline and influence platform operations that deliver the static assets that form the basis of all on-site experiences.
Sites will be built using re-usable components that allow the team to easily maintain and update dependencies across the platform. They will ‘build it right’ to avoid miring the products in technical debt and make new features available to as many customers on as many devices as possible.
Above all, they will share their expertise and passion for experience design with colleagues of all disciplines and encourage the development of a strong culture within the business.