A clash of visions

My favourite arc at Copilot was the introduction of a new PM.

Before that, Marlon and I would hash out the requirements and validity of a design between ourselves. With two, coming to a shared vision was not too difficult. Even in its extreme, it was far less of a challenge than unifying the visions of three stakeholders.

What to do in the face of that challenge?

Similar to before, we'd set up a meeting and do a preliminary hashing out of what we agree on, what we agree to disagree on, and what we will die on our molehills for. Then I would dive into Figma and make wireframes, except now I would make multiple variants accounting for everyone's vision. A few iterations and we'd arrive, all in favor, having condensed those variants to one beautiful solution none of us alone could have conjured.

A lot of time in meetings can get fairly spent in simply getting on the same page of what others mean, but to then go and get on the same page of the consequences and downstream effects of those ideas... it is a time sink and also where clashes occur the most. This should be mitigated if at all possible and such was one of the benefits of designing those multiple variants of a flow. Doing so allowed us all to see our visions manifest and made clear where we might've been wrong or which parts were better than the others.

This way of tackling multiple visions is arguably not very scalable. It is amazing for the health of the product and of the people working on it. When all parties are intent on finding truth, an effort towards unifying many thoughts into a single truth bears a solid product all the while cradling the hearts of those who labored for it.