How a Design Team Plans Birthdays
The little things we do to make d.studio a great team.
I am a graduate student at the University of Washington in Seattle. I joined d.studio five months ago as our User Experience Research Intern. In this piece I reflect on my time at SAP.
8:52am, July 28, 2016: While scrolling through Facebook, Jono Heath, a visual designer at SAP’s d.studio, noticed that it was my birthday. At 8:55 Jono sounded the alarm by sending an email to the rest of the team.
By 9:00, twirling his mustache and weaving in and out of traffic, Very Senior UX Researcher Amir was on the phone with his partner in crime Michelle, negotiating gag gifts and pastry. At 9:30 I stood at my desk in front of a cake blazing with candles, silly hat on my head, blushing like crazy and grinning my face off while my whole team sang me happy birthday.
❤
I wanted to tell the story of my birthday because it perfectly encompasses what I love so much about working with d.studio — our team dynamics. I’ve learned a lot about user research and the design process during my time here, but what I’ll most take away from this experience is the team culture.
It’s not just that we’re all nice people — it’s that we take fun and affection and each other seriously. We work as hard to build a positive experience for each other as we do to create a quality product for our customers.
Baking the cake
Before I get too sappy, I want to point out that this doesn’t happen magically. Good team culture takes a lot more than some ping pong tables and free snacks (though we take snacks seriously, too). We devote time each week to improving how we work and to keeping things fun and engaging. As a researcher, I can’t help analyzing how this works. Here are a few ways we make our good intentions happen.
Choosing what we work on
In my first week at d.studio, the research team — Amir, Michelle and I — met to discuss which topics we wanted to work on. We each took ownership over a number of projects. As an intern, I was surprised at being given that level of freedom, and excited about what I got to tackle.
Responsibility
Since my first week with the d.studio I’ve led design validations, usability testing, and a longer exploratory research project. I’ve worked with UX designers, visual designers, product managers, Go-to-Market professionals, and higher-level decision-makers on issues ranging from evaluating copy to establishing product strategy. I’ve helped recruit participants, planned and conducted sessions, analyzed results, run research synthesis workshops, and presented my findings.
I own my projects and it’s up to me to make them successful. It’s satisfying and motivating to hold this level of responsibility.
Brainstorming and workshops
Often when a team member faces a big question or challenge, that person calls everyone into a short brainstorming session. We plan these meetings carefully to respect everyone’s time and to encourage even the shyest among us to contribute — for example, holding quiet thinking time before sharing thoughts, and switching papers to anonymize ideas.
I enjoy these meetings because they’re both fun and productive and have taught me about how to lead effective sessions myself.
Team Week and committees
In July we were lucky enough to spend a week together as a team, conducting work reviews, reflecting on our processes, and getting to know each other. After identifying ways to improve our workflows, we established committees in charge of topics such as finding better tools to enable collaboration, and formalizing the design review process. We meet every week to report on our progress and to keep each other accountable. And our team week proved so helpful that we now plan to hold one twice a year.
Skill shares
One of my favorite parts of Team Week was hearing more from my colleagues about what they do. Learning about iconography from Olga and video magic from Mike gave me a whole new level of appreciation for the talented people I work with.
The icing
Fun Fridays
We intentionally build fun into our work life. Every Friday we schedule a few hours to do something enjoyable together. We’ve gone on hikes, watched movies, learned how to cook the perfect steak, played around with JavaScript, and visited SAP’s Makerspace. This isn’t just a tradition — it goes on our calendars and we’ve elected a committee in charge of planning activities.
Fun Fridays help us bond as a team, expand our horizons, and allow us to take a step back from our work to refresh our perspectives.
Celebrations
As my birthday shows, we celebrate occasions with style.
Sugar rush
You can see the result of these initiatives in how we interact as a team. Whether we’re immersed in work at our desks or reviewing designs together, it’s clear that we all want to be here and that we care about what we create together. We get a lot done as a team and continuously maintain a high standard of work. And we have a good time in the process. As with any group of humans, we’re not perfect, but at least we’re always improving.
I worked with several organizations before starting my Master’s degree and ending up at SAP. I learned a lot from each of these experiences. What has set the last five months apart has been the thoughtfulness and intention that drives d.studio.
Maybe this post has been a little sugary — I’ve certainly experienced some downs as well as ups over my time here. But every day my coworkers at d.studio surprise me with their playfulness and their consideration for others. It will be hard to leave, but I’ll do my best to take the d.studio spirit with me to my next adventure.
