Unlocking Creativity: The Power of a Diverse and Talented Design Team

Leading and creating a Design team: A Step-by-Step Guide

As designers, we can learn much about each other's culture, break barriers, and build more enjoyable professional relationships within the team and more functional user experiences. It helps us to understand and communicate outside our frontiers.

I'm an Indo, 50% Dutch and 50% Indonesian. If I like it or not, that roots set my personality; patient, creative and often harmonious with a good taste for spicy food. At BUX (and other companies), I worked with designers and developers from all over the world, and yes, we are different individuals, but always with the same love for creating good products for everyone; it's almost like soccer; you only need a ball to have fun without speaking to the same language. And that mix of various individuals makes a powerful combo. Add a mixed set of skills, and you have your winning team. So building a diverse design team to me is a no-brainer. Spanish, German, Austrian, Portuguese, Brazilian, Armenian, Dutch, Chinese, Italian and Romanian designers worked together in my last team. Our main Principle was "Fun and Fair." Imagine all that talent sharing ideas and experiences. It was fantastic. Feeling included, no matter where you are raised, comes naturally. Ultimately, we are all explorers and help each other get around.  

On-screen all BUX Designers that did a fantastic job building the Brand and Products. 

A diverse team also thrives because of these various perspectives. Feedback is shared and given in design reviews, where decisions are made collectively, which makes us feel included and want to help each other. My team existed out of 2 types; creative and product designers, and the beautiful thing was that career switches were made within the team. Roles changed with ease because we learned from each other's projects. So, to me, diversity is more than only characteristics, such as ability, age, gender identity, race, language spoken, or sexual orientation. It's the cultural background that is rooted in your DNA.

Another fact that makes me happy is the shift each designer makes in the time we spend together. I have my principles for mentoring, which might differ from one to another because – I am a designer, and I know what it takes. "been there done that kinda" point. Many design managers don't have that ground experience, usually a head of Product or Marketing Manager, which doesn't come with the experience a designer expects to grow. I stick to the pixels, design details, communication, large projects or quick and dirty features. Knowledge and experience in colours, Typography and design systems are necessary to find common ground, maybe even respect for feedback. I invest in their careers as they invest in our products; My strategy is learning to pinpoint how they currently see themselves in their expertise and where they want to be. Show them a mirror and pave a path for discussion to set goals, reinforce their strengths, and share points to work on to mature in their careers. Many people think there's only one type of designer; often, a designer doesn't even know what kind of designer they would like to be. But there's no one size fits all type. It needs steering. And all that investment, when everything succeeds, is priceless.

Building a design team from the ground up

The design team at BUX has decentralist and centralist designers, where the decentralist designers work in the scum teams on the iOS, Android and web apps. The centralist designers work for performance marketing and brand marketing. As you can expect, all teams have their own goals, which has the risk of brand inconsistency.

Another design risk is silos and solo designers, which is a recipe for distinctive design (without a brand book or design system). Moreover, you might lose your talented designer because they feel outnumbered in the scrum team with engineers and product owners. Communication is key, but how do you prevent unproductive meetings that kills the mojo? 

The differences between coaching, micromanaging, and not managing

🍏 Bi-weekly catchup on strategy and goals,
🍐 Bi-weekly design reviews; all designers (everyone in the company is welcome to listen and watch).
🍋 Bi-weekly user research reviews,
🍉 LOOM recordings for instant design feedback from team members (Review in your own time, no meetings needed).
🥝 Monthly design-system review,
🍊 Quarterly brand design audit.

Personal development and Design careers

My door is always open for a chat, but from experience, I know that some people find connecting while working from home challenging. That's why I believe working hybrid can create bridges and improve communication. However, we should respect everyone's time, and I have the following setup for that; coaching and 1:1's. If you are a Senior designer, I expect you to be a good communicator, so you'll connect if there's an issue. Therefore, I have bi-weekly one-on-ones for leads monthly, and everyone else short 30-minute weekly one-on-ones.