Exit Strategies and Unhappy Paths with Anne Dhir

Nobody wants to talk about it. Nobody even wants to think about it.
But here you are. The environment changes, the law changes, the business model changes, the user needs change and no one is prepared for it.

Enters chaos.

Like it or not, the services and products we design today will, sooner or later, encounter the need for change. Sometimes it's drastic and an entire service will need to be killed due to an unforeseen suite of events. Sometimes, it's a minor change like replacing old functionality with newer due to a user behavior change or new technology. We need to pivot and change the design, flow, and metrics.

But sometimes it's just a lack of planning and unwillingness to look at the potential break-off points in a user journey. We are so obsessed with chasing the next big thing and the ultimate perfect experience/happy path, we completely ignore the potential that users won't click the link, users may not receive the confirmation email, users may not want to submit their social security number. Our beautiful experience collapses on the spot and we need to come up with a solution within a day. Hastily, awkwardly...un-Double-Diamond-like.

Anne Dhir discusses all the potential scenarios your experience could face and how to prepare for it:

How do you bring up/talk/plan for unhappy paths and break-off points in user journeys?
How do designers talk to/prepare business and stakeholders about potential exit strategies for functionalities or whole services?
How do designers work/plan on "retiring/sunsetting" some functionalities of an MVP without jeopardizing the entire product/service?

A little bit about Anne Dhir:
Anne is a Service Designer and Creative Strategist at SPARCK, in Glasgow, Scotland. Anne is passionate about achieving sustainable growth by tackling complex systems, while carefully balancing the interests of organizations, customers, staff, and the planet. Anne helps organizations find the path from intention to delivery and learn to design for themselves.

We also had a moderated live Q&A session for all attendees who wished to ask specific questions to Anne about sunsetting, retiring, and killing entire services and functionalities from their products.