Rush Hour Digital: Working on work, I made impactful transformations through strategies and processes from within
Service Design, Strategy, Process Improvement, Implementation and Leadership
My decision to join a small firm was greatly driven by my interest in business development and service design - studying currently implemented systems, coming up with solutions, testing them out, watching its impact and seeing them through.
How it started
I had a Senior Designer, a Junior Designer and a whole lot of missing systems and processes. A week in and another Senior Designer joined my team.
I observed the dynamics between the tenured designers. I wasn’t too worried about the new guy, he needed to get his feet wet. I had some time.
To gain external perspective, I called for a casual chat with our Operations Manager out in the balcony to understand current issues, what was going right, what can no longer happen and what he needed.
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Key Results
1. Evolving process and guidelines that has everyone’s input
I involved the team in coming up with and implementing an evolving design process and guidelines to protect it that went through a series of tests and improvements.
2. Creativity through and through
Instead of creating a team of full-stack designers, I played through the team members’ different strengths and weaknesses. While all designers can carry out a project, each specialty was encouraged to join a project and provide their expertise.
3. Unifying goal + design awards
The team needed direction and goals to work towards. We came up with individual, team and company goals for the current fiscal year. This exercise opened other opportunities such as applying for and winning design awards for our work.
4. Streamlined process by auditing and offloading paid subscriptions
We canceled subscriptions to a number of apps and extended the use of high-usage apps. We elevated our design tool to Figma from Sketch + InDesign + Zeplin to support collaboration among many reasons.
5. Weekly catch-ups across the board
There was no proper line of communication within teams. Team members hesitated to seek help for minor and major issues. I established a weekly catch-up for my team for task updates, road blocks and team sharing. Seeing its success, Development and Clients team adopted the practice and now hold weekly catch-ups.
6. Design systems and component-based designs
One of my key findings was that project timelines balloon at development stage. I scheduled meetings with the Technical Director to see how the design team can help. We came up with component-based designs and design systems - item on his wishlist that the previous Design Leads refused.
7. OKRs for everyone
As part of the design team transformation, I introduced my team members to OKRs. I helped define their goals and do check-ups during my one-on-ones.
I presented this in my catch-up with our Founder. That same day, he asked me to present it to the entire team. We implemented it across the board.