Designing Culture
Design culture is crucial to the success of any organization that requires design. It is about delivering quality work and creating an environment that enables designers to thrive.
According to a survey conducted by InVision, 66% of design leaders believe that culture is essential to their team's success, but more than great craft is needed. The conversation around the work is crucial for success, and a lack of trust and understanding can prevent even the best work from launching. As a design leader, I have directed high-impact design teams at agency, startup, and corporate levels. Based on my experience, the winning recipe for designing culture contains three parts:
I. Celebrating craft with open conversation (IQ)
II. Promoting deeper listening and collaboration (EQ)
III. Driving the work with a clear and agreed-upon charter (Culture)
This framework can lead to happier, higher-impact designers and help your team foster stronger relationships with their partners.
77 Things book designed by the Uber Brand Experience team.
I. Craft (IQ)
Design is something to be discussed. The less discussion you have, the poorer your solution will be. Even if it's personal work, input from a friend will make it better or reaffirm your decisions.
In my agency days, we always had open crit sessions with work plastered all over the walls. It allowed us to "live" with the work, which often led to serendipitous conversations beyond that initial design review.
Taking this approach to Uber, one of the first things I did when I started was install a metallic whiteboard wall. This got our work off the computer and out in the open. Even product work can benefit from hanging it up.
Global Design Review at Uber HQ 2018.
Every Wednesday we'd gather around the wall for Global Design Review. We'd invite teams from all over the world to share their work in person or virtually. We'd discuss the challenges as well as the unlocks. Sometimes these revelations would help other designers on entirely different projects. A brand concept could lead to a product solution. A UI share could inform a product marketing campaign. It was a magical thing. Anyone who walked through the 10th floor at Uber was also welcome to sit in. It was something everyone looked forward to.
Most of the time, I didn't say much in these sessions. Instead, the team helped each other find their way through the work. The act of sharing design is incredibly clarifying.
Onscreen desk critiques are also great, especially when things are moving fast. They allow a director to see what their designer isn't bringing to review. But, unfortunately, sometimes the answer is hidden under the debris of what the designer thinks isn't working. In fact, I often invite my designers to simply hide (instead of deleting) work on a hidden layer for this reason.
Today, many of us work remotely, which poses several handicaps for designers:
In-person collaboration allows for emotional connections and serendipitous discussion, which is challenging to replicate remotely.
Remote work confines discussions to scheduled meetings and limits the ability to live with the work.
Serendipitous conversations that lead to innovation are more challenging to facilitate remotely.
Designers often lack immediate feedback from peers and leaders, which can hinder their progress.
I must credit Figma and Slack for the tools they've built, as a remote Figjam session does start to get closer, but we still need to catch up on the human element.
I'd absolutely love to hear how you handle this in your organization!
II. Collaboration (EQ)
If there was one thing the world could use more of right now, it would be deeper listening to each other. Unfortunately, we often listen to reply instead of listening to provide value. Deeper listening is crucial for successful collaboration. It helps keep politics and ego from getting in the way of good work. But the presence of mind to really listen to a colleague can be hard to summon at work. It's even more complicated when reduced to squares in a video call.
Emotional intelligence is a woefully under-appreciated skill in the workplace, particularly when we consider the value a great collaborator can bring to an organization. Companies have many ways to measure performance but few to emotional intelligence (EQ). In my next article with the Academy's Adam Perlis, we plan to unpack how to measure EQ from a performance and recruiting standpoint. But in terms of how to foster better collaboration, I've found the following principles to be helpful:
Be more curious.
Ask better questions.
Care about the answers.
Let's unpack them:
Be more curious
There are many ways to bring this principle to life, but learning more about your colleague's expertise and the problem they are trying to solve goes a long way toward building trust. It's vital to know more about them personally as well. Asking someone how they are doing is a question we should use more often. When someone shares information with you, reflect on what you are hearing and find opportunities to dive deeper. If you are genuinely more curious, you will ask better questions.
Ask better questions
Are you asking questions your colleague would like to answer? Are you asking questions that require more than a "yes" or "no?" Is the spirit of your question driving toward union, or is it political? Asking better questions leads to learning, but you must consider the answers and apply what you have learned.
Care about the answers.
There are many ways to show how you care about what you've learned, but for designers, the best way is to reflect the best inputs in the work. This is where the judgment and experience of the designer play a critical role. Not all feedback is helpful, but the best designers can find the diamonds. The joy of seeing a stakeholder's reaction when their idea helped create something great is one of the best feelings a designer experiences. We can express things in ways non-designers can't; helping your colleagues bring their ideas to life can create deep trust.
The above principles move us into a state of listening that provides value to the conversation. We listen to learn instead of merely replying and protecting our beliefs. The goal should be to exit a meeting with new ideas. This is the germ of an innovative company.
III. Culture (Vision)
All the designers I've met are empathetic individuals who often believe that design can change the world. They want to solve today's problems and make life better for their customers and communities. Creating a design culture that genuinely believes it is delivering meaningful work has multiple benefits, but how does a company's mission apply to a design team's work?
A slide from Uber’s, “Design to Include” charter.
A design charter outlines the team's purpose, goals, and guidelines. It defines the problem the design is trying to solve, its target audience, and the team's design principles. It hardwires the company's mission into the teams' design process if done right. If so, a charter should help define roadmaps, hiring strategies, and OKRs. They are philosophical and practical, but most importantly, design charters bring meaning to design.
Meaning helps guide the design creation. It makes the less exciting tasks more palatable and provides an optimistic goal to help focus the team during challenging times. It drives the innovation of the design system based on more objective criteria (i.e., customer needs, brand, and business goals) so that the design system becomes an expression of strategy instead of style. Of course, taste and style are still important, but when grounded as an expression of strategy, it takes the guesswork out of the equation.
Design charters are also the building blocks for collaboration with your design team. In fact, they will only succeed if they are aligned with the rest of the company. Cross-functionally, charters can become an interface for how other groups interact with your team.
In conclusion, celebrating craft with open conversation (IQ), promoting deeper listening and collaboration (EQ), and driving the work with a clear and agreed-upon charter (Culture) are the three parts of a winning recipe for designing culture. By following these guidelines, designers can foster stronger relationships with their cross-functional partners, lead happier, higher-impact lives, and create great work.
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Would love to hear what you do to lead your design org, and if you need help don’t hesitate to connect.
