Meet The Team: Q&A Session With Huddle Product Designer, Ana Klasnic

Welcome to this week's edition of the Meet The Team blog! Today, we are thrilled to introduce you to one of the creative minds behind Huddle's innovative product designs. In this Q&A session, we had the opportunity to sit down with our product designer Ana Klasnić, who shared insights into her background, passion for design, and the exciting challenges and accomplishments she's experienced at Huddle.

Ana is dedicated to making our products not only functional but also delightful to use. Let's dive into the conversation and discover what drives her design philosophy and what advice she has for aspiring product designers.

Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you got into product design? What drew you to Huddle and this particular role?

I went to college which provided me a wide range of knowledge in the digital field, such as the basics of web development, 3D modeling and animation, photography, and video production. Even though I have enjoyed everything mentioned,I realized I wanted to be a product designer because I often found myself frustrated with many of the interfaces I interacted with, constantly questioning, "Why did they design it like this?" This curiosity and desire to improve user experiences inspired me to pursue a career where I could have a meaningful impact on future interfaces and digital products.

I was drawn to Huddle because we have just started building the product when I joined and I knew I would be able to grow and learn along the way. From the beginning, I was deeply involved in product development. The sports betting industry, in particular, presents unique challenges in designing user-friendly interfaces due to the need to display a large amount of information simultaneously. Loving a good challenge, I recognized this as a perfect opportunity to kickstart my career and make a significant impact.

Can you tell us a bit about your role in Huddle and which part of your role you find most rewarding?

As a generalist at Huddle, I wear many hats. I'm responsible for user research, defining product specifications, creating wireframes, and designing fully functional products along with cohesive design systems. Additionally, I support our marketing team by creating visuals and merchandise when needed. The most rewarding aspect of my role is knowing that our product significantly enhances clients' efficiency and productivity. Receiving positive feedback on the simple usability and clean look of our interfaces is particularly gratifying.

What’s a typical process for a product designer in collaborating with cross-functional teams? How do you ensure that the product designs you create are user-friendly and meet the needs of Huddle product users?

Designers work closely with developers making sure our goals are aligned through constant knowledge sharing, transparent processes, and collective ownership. The collaboration from the designer’s perspective includes actively participating in sprint planning, clearly communicating design decisions, conducting thorough design reviews to ensure alignment and consistency, and providing comprehensive design assets and guidelines.

The process of designing a user-friendly interface begins by understanding project requirements through stakeholder meetings and conducting user research. My responsibility is to make a research plan and execute it, along with the analysis at the end. After data has been collected and the problem clearly detected, together we step into a feature prioritization to define what is most needed for the minimum viable product.

Prioritization is based on the consideration of user needs, business goals and technical feasibility. After that, it is time to ideate and develop concepts by brainstorming and sketching. Workshops are always a great option when it comes to ideation since a lot of ideas can be generated quickly by different roles, allowing different areas of expertise to work alongside each other. After everyone agrees with the concept selected, testing with users comes next. It helps us confirm whether we missed anything and if we are on the right track. After confirmation, the prototype design becomes the main focus, and usability gets tested. Based on the feedback gathered and behavioral metrics tracked (such as time on task, task success rate/error rate), needed iterations are made. After we are sure we covered everything, once again we schedule a meeting with our developers to update them about recent findings and design documentation is getting prepared for a handoff. After that, we act as a support. As soon as new issues are spotted the process continues.

What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced in your role, and how did you overcome it?

I would say the biggest challenge is the complexity of the product along with biased users who got really used to current solutions available on the market. Those solutions are a pure definition of a cognitive load and a lot of manual work, but over the years they got used to doing it the hard way.

During our discovery interviews, users admitted they had become used to doing things the hard way, even though they found these solutions error-prone and unsatisfactory. To overcome this, we focused on creating an intuitive, user-friendly interface that reduces cognitive load and minimizes errors, thereby providing a more efficient and satisfying user experience.

Can you share a project or accomplishment you’re particularly proud of and what is the Huddle design team currently working on?

It's hard to choose just one project, as I've enjoyed every task I've undertaken. However, one particularly special project was designing the Trading screen, which led to the initiation of the Multiview project. This feature allows users to monitor multiple events simultaneously. Seeing the excitement and new business opportunities that arose after clients experienced this functionality is something I'm especially proud of.

Currently, the Huddle design team is working on the Customer Management Dashboard. We are dedicated to delivering the best experience for customer segmentation by conducting thorough research sessions.

What advice would you give to someone aspiring to be a product designer?

The most crucial thing is to have a solid understanding of the problem you are trying to solve. If you do not understand the problem, you will not be able to provide any improvement for the user group you are targeting. Start small and build from there, let the data shape the future iterations. Also, it is very important to listen to other people’s opinions and concerns, it is always better to work in a team rather than working alone - teamwork does indeed make the dream work.