A year of building UX at Virgin Atlantic
At the end of 2017 I took the role of head of user experience at Virgin Atlantic. What follows is a ‘warts and all’ run down of how I built the UX team from scratch. The steps I’ve taken in my new role as a design leader, the wins I had, mistakes I made, and the lessons I’ve learnt along the way.
Stepping into the role
Preparing for day one
Shortly after accepting the role I started gathering notes on how I wanted my first 90 days to go. I had the opportunity to swap notes with Alison Austin, who was also preparing to start a new role. This coincided with the Leading Design conference, which I used as an opportunity to listen to presentations from design leaders, as well as catch up with Cap Watkins — who generously gave me time to pick his brains.
I created a stack of notes in Dropbox Paper which included my thoughts on cadence, software/hardware costs, tricks for improving UCD culture, various formation of teams and all the job descriptions I had written in the past.
I also made a list of design assets I would expect to find e.g. personas, sitemaps, component libraries, empathy maps, journey maps. This was used as a checklist when I started.
Shut up and listen
I packed my first 10 days in the office with one to ones. I met stakeholders and team members, desperately trying to remember names, but more importantly I started piecing together an understanding of how the team operated. I asked each team member what they thought of the current strategy, what they were anxious about and if there was anything they felt I absolutely shouldn’t change. I treated each meeting like small pre-mortem exercise on my role to draw out any fears about around the group. I felt it was important to get a view of what people feared, before I set foot in the door.
Before I started I bought a set of notepads to capture ideas and feedback.Within the first 3 weeks I had filled an entire pad. There was many years of backstory for me to catchup on as I soon realised the scale of the complexity I had to wrap my head around, before I could fully understand how to design the right org.
Making connections
Once I had met with everyone in the digitial team, I sought out teams that are connected to us. I found my counterparts in the brand team, marketing, customer experience, IT, Delta, procurement and Virgin Holidays. I listened to their perspective on my team and started building a mental map of how the team was perceived around the business. This proved very important in laying the groundwork for changes I wanted to bring in. It felt important to listen to the different business units, before I planned any changes.
Prototyping the team
At the end of month one I took an opportunity to use a project that was kicking off to try some new ways of working. I made it a priority to capture everything we did in this project, so it could be shared internally. I wanted to start telling stories of how effective user-centred design can be. I even seated the project team in a communal space so they couldn’t be ignored. All of this was to lay foundations for normalising UCD practices. At this stage I hadn’t hired any new team members, so I drafted in Clearleft. In effect they became a prototype for the structure I wanted to build.
Moving from ‘listening’ mode to working with designers, researchers and content strategists was refreshing. Things felt like they were moving. I started to feel like a team leader again and my confidence grew.
I’ve since learned that Marty Cagan refers to this as ‘pilot projects’, but around here that means a whole different thing.
Leading a change
By month 3 I had formed a clear direction for the structure of the team and it was time to kick recruitment off. I started with a content strategist, UX writer and a lead product designer as these would give the team the best opportunity to get some quick wins under our belts and they could begin putting a design system in place. We started advertising and I took it upon myself to tell the story of our new team wherever I could and told everyone in my network about the roles.
The new plans lead to some tricky negotiations with the existing team. Adapting to change is often difficult for people and so I spent a great deal of time looking for ways to support those people and where necessary help them move into new roles. I’d expected there might be some people who weren’t prepared to come on the journey with me and there came a point when I had to say ‘the good goodbye’ to a team member. It’s a disruptive and emotionally charged process that took it’s toll on me. Over this time I developed a stress-related back problem. I put a lot of pressure on myself and my body hated me for it. Many times I squirmed and considered how I could get out of it or maybe just pass the responsibility to someone else. But I knew this was my job and to get to the team I wanted to build, it was neccessary.
Mistakes I made
1. Not adopting project ownership
When I joined a number of projects were in-flight (another great airline pun). One project in particular was a getting a lot of attention. In my first few weeks I saw the design work. If I’m honest I wasn’t in love with it and had made a note to investigate more graceful design solutions, once it had gone live. I figured trying to change its direction at this stage would be disastrous. So I disowned it — this was a big mistake.
A pre-launch show and tell got heated and our senior stakeholders quite rightly expressed concerns. To this day I’m not sure if blocking the project would have been right, but I should have taken full ownership and been ready to defend it. I should have acknowledged the shortcoming and prepared the stakeholders with a clear plan for improving the UI that was about to launch.
Lesson 1:
Adopt all projects, as your own.
No matter how ugly or dysfunctional they may be.
2. Deprioritising self preservation
By the end of month 3 I realised my health was suffering. Since I started my new role I hadn’t done any exercise. My sleep patterns were all over the place. I was eating poorly. I worked long days and through my lunch. Generally I wasn’t taking care of myself. Before I knew it the job had taken a toll on me. My partner was very supportive, but even though she listened intently to everyday stories about the minutia of my work I could see on her face I was becoming repetitive and dull.
So I forced myself to start taking lunch breaks. I put them in my calendar and went outside at some point every day. I didn’t bring my work phone into my house and I agreed the days each week that I’d exercise — I did this with my partner, so we started getting healthier together. We made it part of our routine. Things started looking much brighter as a result.
Lesson 2:
Prioritise your health and wellbeing.
Success in your career shouldn’t come at a cost to your body.
3. Shying away from weaknesses
I fear maths. At school I failed maths, twice. As an adult I avoid it. As I started my new role I put off getting in to the details of my budget. Knowing it was a weak area I put it off and sure enough it went wrong. I found myself part way through the year with no idea of what I had and what I spent. It took the patience of our finance team as well as my boss to help me pick my mess apart. Now I have regular check-ins with our finance team who (very slowly) take me through the numbers.
Lesson 3:
Take the items you fear the most and put them at the top of your to-do list.
4. Not speaking up
I’ve been told that I am a ‘reflector’ by nature. Which means I tend to listen and take information away to mull over a conclusion. I hadn’t realised that this came across to some people that I didn’t have an opinion. I got feedback from other leaders that I didn’t seem comfortable stating a view in meetings and when you’re a design leader that is fundamentally why you’re there. If a designer of any kind can’t make a decision, then they’re not providing value. So I had to adjust my behaviour to make it clear that I still forming a position. I’m still working on this one.
Lesson 4:
Look for feedback on how your behaviours are perceived by others.
Consider that your mental process can be translated negatively.
Things that worked
1. Learning to speak business
As I was meeting so many people I was not only introducing myself but also my role. At first I found it a little tricky to define and sometimes I didn’t sound very convincing to myself. After a while I could see that certain phrases and a certain language held more weight inside the organisation than others. So I leaned into it and sculpted the definition of my role around it.
I wrote a note about how to introduce my role and keep it on my desktop to this day. This little device has become vital in establishing myself in the business. Not only does it bring consistency to my message, but it also frames my role in terms of value to the business.
2. Creating an outlet
In my new role I have moved away from ‘hands on’ design work and as I aclimatised to this change I felt a need to keep my brain exploring creative ideas, so I created a file for visual experimentation, that I dip into each week. This digital sketchpad kept my mind thinking creatively and also helps me develop a sense of transition to a pure leadership role.
3. Setting a laser focus
Being responsible for an ‘experience’ is a broad undertaking. For a company the size of an airline, it’s a huge estate to cover. I soon realised I couldn’t do everything at once and I was limited on how much I could achieve before I’d hired a new team. So I had to be very selective about what I spent my time on. At first letting some things drift past me really hurt. But as soon as I started saying ‘no’ to meetings I started getting more done. In the first 6 months I focussed all my efforts on just four key items:
- Recruiting new team members
- Building an optimisation roadmap
- Writing our playbook
- Supporting projects that were about to deliver
The following 6 months I did the same-I reviewed all the challenges on the horizon and selected a handful of key iniatives to spend all my energy on.
4. Sharing good news stories
As projects started landing and our optimisation efforts ramped up I sought out methods to tell stories (internally and publicly) about the work, but more importantly how it had a positive impact. I made comparisons with previous projects (e.g. time spent, people involved and costs), I projected revenue uplifts and calculated cost savings from our work. Through this process I made a list of Keynote templates that I used to frame problems, demonstrate our solutions and the benefits.
As well as the commercial good news stories I also developed presentations and info to tell the story of how my team was coming together. I used a lot of references from my agency days, when we would introduce the team to a new client, but it was peppered with references to the challenges team had shared with me, in my first few months.
5. Talking to the community
The design/product/ux community is a wonderful thing and in 2018 I learnt how amazing it can be. Whilst Virgin Atlantic has a very strong brand, it hasn’t been associated with great digital experiences. This had an impact on my ability to recruit, so I began accepting invites to talk at events. I wanted to start associating Virgin Atlantic with UXD in peoples’ mind. I wanted them to consider us and ultimately build our reputation in the UX community.
Having started getting ‘out there’ and presenting at community events I was now able to flip the recruitment process around. It was no longer a case of me chasing people down and trying to coax them in. I was now getting approached by talented designers, writers and researchers.
I’m not in love with public speaking and I’m aware that offers I get are primarily down to the Virgin brand, rather than my presentation skills. But I do it for the team. To lay groundwork for the our reputation.
On a more one to one basis I also reached out to other design leaders who had been (or were on) a similar journey to mine. It’s so heartwarming when busy people give up their time to talk. In particular James Nation from Beano Studios who was kind enough to share his experiences of building a new team.
6. New starter onboarding
In my previous job I spent some time trying to redesign how I onboarded team members and I wanted to take those learnings to the next level. The company-wide ‘welcoming’ process at Virgin Atlantic is well refined, so I created a process that was specific to my UX team. Once a new recruit has a start date confirmed my process is as follows:
- Book hardware/software/email set up with IT
- Block out my diary for first two days of new starter
- Send a ‘what to expect’ email one week prior to start date
- Put together welcome pack (Branded bag, VA branded notepad, upper-class cabin socks, a copy of the company’s annual report, model plane, org chart, acronym dictionary and maybe some sweets)
- Day one set-up
(e.g. Payroll number, carpark access, security pass, printer set up, phone
laptop adaptors, Timetastic setup, Jira set up, Slack login etc) - Day two meetups
1 hour sessions with each of department heads, team leads and our VP - Day three meetups
Brand team, CX team, tech team introductions - Set up weekly check-ins
These last for the first two months, then become monthly one to ones
What’s next
As I look back over my first twelve months there is way more than I could fit in to one article. It has felt like a huge undertaking and on more than one occasion I’ve had some hardcore imposter syndrome. None the less I’m very proud of what I’ve built so far.
Today we have a full team of design, content, research, product and our roadmap is stacked full of big juicy challenges. We will be covering every aspect of the digital experience from web to kiosks, app to inflight entertainment and a great deal more.
I have no doubt that as we move from the ‘forming’ phase we will enter a ‘storming’ phase and I’ll deal with brand new team dynamics. But I’m sure that this is the most exciting opportunity of my career to date and there is lots more for me to learn.
