How I Design at Granola

By Sneak Peek Design

Categories: Design, Product

Summary

Granola's design team conducts 4-6 user research calls weekly to prioritize features, using a hybrid workflow that moves from Whimsical → HTML capture → Figma → code to avoid premature design lock-in. The team balances intense shipping culture with unique perks like shared holiday homes in Margate and Morca, maintaining a 5-day office presence while prioritizing team cohesion.

Key Takeaways

  1. Conduct 4-6 user research calls per week to inform feature prioritization. This systematic cadence prevents building features based on assumptions rather than direct user feedback.
  2. Use multi-stage design workflow (Whimsical → HTML capture → Figma → Conductor) to avoid premature direction lock-in. Moving through tools prevents narrowing focus too early in ideation.
  3. Hire hybrid 'design engineers' who combine product intuition with coding ability. This role reduces handoff friction and enables faster iteration on interaction patterns.
  4. Build team retention through experiential benefits beyond salary. Holiday homes in strategic locations (UK coast, Spain) for team offsites and personal use create cultural investment.
  5. Use AI recording tools like Granola to enable designers to be present in user calls rather than frantically note-taking. This improves meeting quality and research accuracy.

Related topics

Transcript Excerpt

How do you figure out what features to work on? I speak to users every other day. Basically, I'll try and do four to six user research call tools in a week. Show me all the different tools you're using. I use a tool called Whimsical, which is like a lowfi design tool. I use this tool called HTML to design. I hit capture current page and it will grab a copy of the page and send it to Figma. So now if I open up Figma and then all of these are like editable Figma layers. I'll just put it in here, mess around with it in Figma because I'm quick at using Figma and so I can paste it in here and say build this out and then the reason I move to conductor is because of work trees. Did you directly jump into VIP coding? One of the big problems with with using claw design or just using prototypes that…

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