How to Activate a Product Designer

🧠 How to Activate a Product Designer

This guide outlines the process of activating a Product Designer for your feature, initiative, or UX enhancement. Design works in weekly design sprints and follows a structured process to ensure clarity, focus, and timely delivery. Please review the following steps to engage design support effectively.

✅ Step 1: Fill Out the Design Intake Form

Before any work can begin, all design requests must start with a completed Product Design Intake Form. This form ensures alignment on goals, value, timeline, and collaborators. Once filled out, the form will be submitted to our {insert button}

📝 Note: Intake forms must be fully completed before being triaged. The form link will be provided {insert Button}

🎯 Step 2: Choose the Type of Design Activation

Designers work across varying levels of fidelity, depth, and effort. Choosing the right Design Activation Type helps scope the work accordingly.

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Each activation will help the designer determine:

The estimated time required

The expected deliverables

The collaborators needed during the sprint

🧪 Step 3: Understand the Typical Design Process

Here’s what to expect once a designer has been activated:

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Each step involves collaboration with stakeholders, engineering, and product management. Your responsiveness to reviews and feedback requests ensures on-time delivery.

📅 Step 4: Design Review Facilitation

Design reviews occur at key checkpoints in the sprint to gather feedback and align with product and engineering goals. These reviews are typically:

Weekly or bi-weekly

Conducted live or async, depending on team availability

Facilitated by the designer, who will walk through the current work and request specific feedback

All feedback should be delivered within the review window to keep timelines on track.

⏱ Step 5: Receive a Time Estimation

Once the request is reviewed, the designer will provide an effort estimation in weeks, based on:

Type of design activation

Complexity of the request

Dependencies or technical constraints

Typical turnaround times:

1 week = Small updates, polish, or flows

2–3 weeks = Net-new features, multiple states

4+ weeks = Cross-feature flows, concept exploration, or research-heavy work

📊 Step 6: Track Design Progress

You can track your design request directly through JIRA. Once your intake form is submitted:

A JIRA ticket will be created and updated throughout the sprint

Statuses include: Backlog, In Progress, Review, Blocked, Ready for Handoff, Done

Comment directly in JIRA or Slack for async check-ins

🔍 You’ll also be tagged in weekly sprint updates and notified of upcoming design reviews.