Vendia Design Organization

Background

I was enlisted at Vendia with a crucial mission: to assemble a proficient design team and establish a robust design infrastructure poised to propel the company to new heights.

Task

My role at Vendia involved a wide array of tasks: defining guiding principles and tenets, establishing a streamlined design process, creating comprehensive documentation, making design artifacts accessible to the entire company, managing contractors, and actively recruiting and onboarding in-house design talent.

Establishing a Centralized Design Team Structure

Creating a centralized design team structure was crucial for several reasons:

• Facilitating Collaboration: It enabled designers to easily exchange feedback and work together across different design pillars.
• Ensuring Cohesion: Aligning the team with a shared vision, resources, and leadership ensured a cohesive design system and user experience.
• Minimizing Redundancy: Designers stayed informed about teammates’ projects, reducing redundant efforts and enhancing collaboration on overlapping use cases.
• Providing Learning Opportunities: This structure allowed team members to share expertise and explore broader topics like accessibility and customer needs collectively.

Scaling Through Comprehensive Design Documentation

Developing and maintaining comprehensive design documentation was key to scaling our design team and removing obstacles related to design assets for the entire company. These documents were essential for quickly onboarding new team members and employees across various departments.

Frequently consulted company-wide, our documentation expanded beyond design guidelines through collaboration with multiple teams. This broader scope included additional insights and information relevant to different aspects of the company’s operations, enhancing cross-functional collaboration and alignment.

Balancing In-House and Contract Design Teams

Effectively collaborating with in-house designers and diverse contractors requires careful balance and proactive planning to achieve desired outcomes on time.

I developed and refined a set of design principles to guide designers and ensure alignment with organizational goals. These principles provide clear guidance and visibility to leadership and other departments. During pre-milestone meetings, my team reviews these principles to keep designs aligned with our objectives.

By adhering to these principles, we navigate challenges like scope creep and subjective requests, focusing on data-driven, customer-focused outcomes to drive impactful results.

Collaborating to Expand the Design Team

To facilitate the design team’s growth, I worked closely with leadership to understand their priorities and expectations. From these discussions, I developed a set of guiding principles, which I validated with the leadership team. These tenets provided a framework to guide the expansion and development of our design organization, ensuring alignment with the company’s broader strategic objectives.

Standardizing Project Initiation with Templates

By meticulously crafting project templates for both Notion and Asana, I established a standardized framework enabling designers to start projects swiftly and reliably. These templates streamlined the initiation process and served as educational tools for stakeholders, providing deeper insights into the design process. This fostered a culture of trust and confidence in our methods, aligning expectations for project outcomes and enhancing collaboration and efficiency throughout the company.

Documenting the Iterative Design Process

Empowering User Research with Comprehensive Guidelines

Implementing an Efficient Design Request System

I spearheaded the implementation of an efficient design request system using Asana, allowing seamless filing of design requests by employees company-wide. These requests are automatically cataloged into our design backlog for review. Weekly, before sprint conclusion, our team prioritizes and sizes each project for the upcoming sprint. This systematic approach provides leadership with clear visibility into the design backlog and offers employees a streamlined way to request mission-critical artifacts. As a result, we delivered multiple product diagrams and motion graphics that showcased our company at events and enhanced sales efforts, amplifying our brand presence and supporting business growth initiatives.

Implementing Week-Long Design Sprints

To address the challenges of ad-hoc ‘high priority’ requests via Slack, which led to designer burnout and project mismanagement, I introduced week-long design sprints. These sprints provided organizational visibility into our backlog and output, fostering transparency and collaboration. By centralizing all requests, employees could collectively prioritize tasks, distinguishing between critical and less urgent ones.

This approach alleviated the burden on designers, enabling them to manage their workload more effectively. Proactive planning allowed additional work to be pulled into sprints when ahead on tasks, improving morale and productivity, and enhancing team satisfaction.

Fostering Collaboration with Milestone Meetings

To prevent designers from working in isolation and only presenting work at the project’s due date, I established milestone meetings within our design process. These meetings are structured to define participants, presentation expectations, and desired outcomes. Coupled with pre-milestone meetings within the design team, these milestones provide clarity and facilitate early feedback and progress assessment.

These reviews enhance visibility with leadership, giving them insights into design progress and upcoming checkpoints. By fostering collaboration and transparency through milestone meetings, we ensure designs evolve iteratively, meeting stakeholder expectations and driving project success.

Fostering Unity and Collaboration in Design Teams

To foster unity and collaboration among designers, I implemented initiatives for creative interaction and ideation. Organizing design offsites allowed designers to engage in blue-sky thinking, sparking innovative ideas and strengthening team cohesion.

I also promoted co-designing and peer-designing sessions, where designers tackle challenges together, encouraging shared learning and mutual support. This approach fosters a sense of belonging, boosts confidence in outcomes, and leverages collective strengths.

These initiatives encourage designers to share knowledge and drive project success, creating a vibrant and cohesive design community.

Promoting Career Development with Leveling Guidelines

Recognizing the importance of career development for employee satisfaction and retention, I created leveling guidelines for product designers, visual designers, motion designers, and design managers. These guidelines aligned with individual career aspirations and organizational needs, and were shared transparently with leadership and the design team.

I used these guidelines during regular 1:1 meetings and quarterly reviews to facilitate career discussions, ensuring clear roadmaps for advancement. They also helped assess candidates’ skills during hiring, fostering fairness and transparency, and setting clear expectations for new hires. This approach nurtured a culture of continuous learning, growth, and mutual respect, driving both individual and organizational success.