Establishing Design Operations for a new in-house team
Establishing processes and frameworks within the design organization
In 2016, I was hired to build the first in-house Marketing Visual Design team for Bold, a SAAS company providing resume creation services under the brands LiveCareer, Resume Now, and My Perfect Resume. This was a multilayered and evolving challenge as processes, agreements, standards, goals, and tools, among others, needed to be established. As milestones were reached, new needs and improvements emerged. This is a synthesis of some of the continuous fine-tuning that occurred.
OPERATIONS
CONTEXT
There was a lack of design governance, models of engagement, tools, and resources, resulting in a lack of clarity, realistic workflows, and trusting partnerships.
The quality of design deliverables was poor.
Brand standards were rudimentary and not followed.
There was an ad-hoc culture of requests.
There were no initial design-related goals or OKRs. The corporate strategy did not integrate the value of design and research.
The design team was short-staffed and began managing the workflow for 3 products and multiple channels while simultaneously establishing the operations engagement process.
Bandwidth visualization was not in place to reflect workload in relation to business goals, capacity, and due dates.
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How to create and grow an in-house visual design team that works across various competing company brands and departments, while establishing design standards, quality, and value within the company?
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Held interviews with stakeholders to understand their needs, metrics and projects.
Assessed tools and software to optimize design operations.
Established a weekly prioritization meeting to enable visibility of incoming requests from multiple stakeholders and determine the course of action.
Created Jira projects to centralize requests and communication, assign resources, and document deliverables throughout the engagement.
Established parameters in Jira to measure efforts and resources.
Advocated for hiring by creating workflow and capacity visualizations for resourcing.
Created job descriptions, interviewing process and onboarding for new members.
With the marketing team at large, developed design led metrics.
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The Design Marketing team was able to establish processes within 3 months of being founded.
Processes were revised on a mid year / year basis for improvements.
Within 2 years, the team grew from a 2 to a 12 members, including design, copy, front-end, video production and a project manager.
Standardized online brand guidelines were developed, leading a complete branding and designs system approach. These included voice and tone, audience, keywords, and downloadable assets for full company use.
Established design led OKRs to project the value of design within the company.
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Design team manager, systems thinking, process and workflow creation, art direction, design.
Design Governance
Developed intake models for requests, a “brief” gathering data, goals, deliverables, references, and deadlines.
Established weekly review for prioritization.
Created engagement models with the UX team for clarity of responsibilities.
Established a review cadence for design quality, presenting to stakeholders afterward formally.
Created the Brand Hub for full digital brand messaging and visual reference across the company.
Created Process Flows and SLA between design and other company teams.
Corporate Strategy and Impact
Established goals and KPIS for the team to be used as a tool to add value to the business
Began establishing a design culture, both in the PR office and in relation to the SF office.
Held open reviews and whiteboard exercises to get to know each other.
Design Growth
Created a feedback platform with bi-weekly 1:1’s with each team member.
Established designer-to-product partnership, fostering trust and building relationships.
Instituted continuing education by allocating the budget to yearly conference participation.
Developed career paths within the company, looking to grow knowledge and capacity.
Created job descriptions, interviews, and hiring.
Onboarded new team members.
Design Optimization
Established design tool sets, including paid subscription services of photography and stock illustration resources to facilitate designer’s workload.
Created a template based approach to design areas that used repeatable assets.