How Claap helped Libeo run efficient design reviews to bring everyone on the same page
.jpg)
FIGHTING MISALIGNMENT IN A HYPERGROWTH CONTEXT
In 2021, cloud-based payment solution Libeo almost tripled, growing from 40 employees to 120 employees. That’s the moment when we first met David Penuizic, their head of product design.
David had just onboarded a team of 5 product designers and realized the increased complexity had made the number of meetings skyrocket: “Once you grow beyond this small group of people that were together for a long time, alignment becomes much harder. You need to work with people that are new to the company and the topics you’re working on become more complex and intertwined.”
Building a billing solution across different countries is quite complex and implies having several designers working in parallel on the same product part. David had to spend a lot of time reviewing components to make sure everything remained consistent and didn’t break.
They used to have 30-min weekly design reviews with the whole team but it wasn’t enough to address all topics and make efficient decisions. ”We usually checked new prototypes during the meeting but we often didn’t have time to check all the details. Comments were fusing in all directions. So in the end, we would make decisions without taking into account all interdependencies, or we would need to reschedule a meeting.”
They had tried to send Figma prototypes directly on Slack to get feedback but it was too hard to understand for key stakeholders that didn’t have the full context about a new feature.
It was around that time David started using Claap to streamline their design review process.
SWITCHING TO ASYNC DESIGN REVIEWS
The design team implemented design reviews to both align all key stakeholders, from product managers to business leaders, while maintaining product consistency among the different squads.
David and his team started using Claap to save time aligning key stakeholders and making better decisions. Switching to full asynchronous design reviews can be complex so they decided to do it in 2 steps.
At first, they kept their weekly 30-min design reviews but decided to share their prototype in advance with Claap. Ahead of the meeting, the team can watch the recording on their own time and annotate the video with comments. Then the meeting is here to discuss the most complex topics they identified in advance.
“Before that, it was really hard to check all details. There are tiny details we need to check like which user role could view this component vs. another and that’s really hard to pay attention to that in a meeting. Now we have more time to review all components and fix potential problems before it’s too late. ”
When sharing its recording, David uses annotation to highlight key moments in the video and where he expects validation 👇
.jpg)
Key stakeholders use comments to highlight specific parts of the screen and leave detailed feedback.
.jpg)
A GAME CHANGER FOR ALIGNMENT & DECISION-MAKING
As they progress in their async journey, they also realized their feedback process became an ongoing has changed, from a weekly cadence to an ongoing habit. Instead of waiting a few days for the next design review, the team is now sharing Claap to get feedback.
“When I need to get validation from the co-founders, they can be pretty busy so it’s hard to find a slot. If I need to wait for the next meeting, I’m going to lose 3-4 days. Now I can share a claap, get feedback on it super quickly and move to the next iteration. It’s a true game changer.”
Beyond just saving time in meetings, the most important benefit David and his team saw in Claap was its ability to accelerate decision-making.
“With Claap, we’re able to gain a lot of time between the moment when we identified the need and the moment when we’re all aligned and confident on the solution and the choices we made.”
RESOURCES TO HELP YOU GET STARTED
If you loved reading this article and want now to implement those best practices in your own company, here are a few good playbooks to start: