What do we mean when we say “design”?
Having an identity crisis while communicating the impact of design towards 8.000 non-designer colleagues.
Hi all, I am Filip. I work at ING as a Lead UX/UI, CX, Product designer and strategist, IC, Service designer, Visual Designer of apps, websites, and web apps, and sometimes UX Researcher (I'm a junior at that).
I should pick just one title and stick with it, I know. For that reason, I just go with — Designer. But after I simplified my title, the downside is that some -especially non-designer- people think I am the new Gianni Versace.
Let’s take aside the introductions I give towards designers (since that’s easy) and towards people I randomly meet (since that’s hard)… How should I introduce myself to my non-designer colleagues so they don’t think I design cashmere garments or just pick colors of buttons (for apps or for shirts) the entire day?
Another, more complicated question: How should I introduce my ~60 designer colleagues, most of which have different design skills? How do we want to be known within our company? Can we settle the misconceptions that are there at the moment?
All valid identity -and sometimes existential- questions that I stumbled on while working on our Design Center of Expertise Newsletter…
…Damn. I didn’t expect that many challenging questions when I volunteered to work on our Design newsletter. But bring it on!
How we are known vs. how we want to be known
Who can blame people when they don’t understand what User Experience design is? Even we have problems with knowing and agreeing on what exactly it means. Just have a look into all of the titles we use (and abuse, like me at the top of this article).
So, together with my team, as a first step, we started by analyzing the gap between how we are known and how we want to be known. For example, in general, the ~60 of us in ING lean more towards the UX / strategic side of the spectrum but some of our colleagues still think we lean more on the UI / visual side of the spectrum. We wanted to fix that misconception.
I’ll cut this part short but if you want more reflections on this topic, you can check one of my other articles: https://uxdesign.cc/another-day-another-article-about-the-roi-of-ux-design-c68e24491d16
Our next step was to bridge the gap and (re)introduce ourselves.
Let’s (re) introduce ourselves
As good as we have it within ING, we felt like not everybody within the organization understands what exactly we do and what is the value and impact we bring to the company. For example, we have some cases where people approach us late in the process. No hard feelings, of course, it is our responsibility to be clear on what we bring to the table and when it’s best to include us.
With just ~60 designers working for a big bank in Netherlands 🇳🇱 and Belgium 🇧🇪, it’s safe to say that we cover a lot of ground. And it’s somewhat safe to say that we do great work — our app ratings are high, designs are appreciated and the bank is considered an innovator! What we don’t do a good job with is to #makesomenoise and promote our accomplishments inside and outside our company. If you don’t brag about it, it didn’t happen right?
As one of our communication tools to bridge the identity gap and brag a bit, we decided to fire up an old and trusted friend — the good ol’ newsletter. We present to you…
The Design Impact Newsletter
Conception
Shortly after deciding on our communication goals we fired up our design tools and went looking for our design identity and our tone of voice.
After some experimentation, we set up a base template and style and decided to take it for a spin.
We imagined few editions: introduction of our reorganization into a Design Center of Expertise, a case study of a project we did recently, an explanation of the design process, the outcome of a recent usability study we did…
Soon enough The Design Impact Newsletter was born!
The main ingredients
All of us
This is our place and moment to shine so we decided to take it and not shy away from it. Besides us, we put the spotlight on all our (non-designer) colleagues who worked with us towards making the design happen. We always give credit when credit is due.
GIF’s
No explanation is needed about the almighty power of the GIF. We decided to always open with a catchy title and a GIF. Warning — Our colleagues keep on asking how to make a GIF now which may not be the intended consequence 😜
A tone of voice that’s witty, professional, and down to earth
We want to be remembered as colleagues and friends, somebody who you think of as fun but always sharp. We wanted to stay as far away as possible from strict teachers or somebody who complains that is misunderstood. So all in all — good vibes only.
Case studies
Design without the actual designs is just Design Talking. Joke aside, showing our work was central to our goals. We wanted the work — the final result along with an explanation of the intention behind it to take center stage. Sharing the process was a big part of this of course. All in all, we decided to provide a full picture of the designs. And we limited us to only showing designs that went live since you can best measure the impact in that case.
Tiny details
We sweat the small stuff. Whether in the copy of the visuals, we wanted the newsletter to be perfectly executed. We wanted to come across as a creative superpower — an award-winning design agency within the company. We don’t intend to rush it or cut corners to make that impression happen. It might mean that we breach a deadline or two because we’re sure it will be worth it.
That’s all, designers!
I hope this can help and inspire you on your quest to explain what you do to your friends and colleagues.
Remember, don’t lose your cool, it’s our responsibility to explain who we are and what we do — mostly through our impact.
Example?
For the ones who stayed till the end: bonus material — the latest edition of The Design Impact that was just sent to ~8.000 people inside ING! Big kudos to my colleague Suzanne Hartman who co-wrote this piece of design prose with me.
“Q: Design this, design that… But what do you guys and girls actually do around here?”
- Fictional question from a fictional colleague
A: We solve problems with design. To achieve that awesome design that makes our customers happy, we use different means and apply many skills and tools. Check them out below:
What’s common for all designers is that we are advocates for our customers.
Some of our designer colleagues work across all the skills and tools from the diagram, some are quite specialized in 1 or 2 of the 3 circles. We work together to make sure that what we deliver is the best experience for our boss — the customer.
We are not alone in this world of course. We collaborate on all of this with our business and IT colleagues. In order for the magic to happen, we need to do this together!
“Q: How do you work, do you just open your art canvases and start painting when inspiration strikes?”
- Our dear curious fictional colleague
A: Short answer — No. We follow a design process that has a lot in common with Design Thinking.
We are not capricious artist geniuses working in isolation. We work with others to first understand the problem of the customer, then explore multiple design solutions, test with customers, and at the end converge on the best solution (a.k.a “final design”). After this is done, we work on iteratively improving our designs based on data and feedback (meaning design is never “final” 😉 ).
“Q: All clear but can you please give an example?”
- Our beloved colleague who we miss seeing in real life and drinking a beer with
A: Sure thing. We have 3 examples for you coming in the next editions of this newsletter.
These examples include different projects that were worked on by different designers with different expertise, using different skills and tools!. That’s a… uhh… very different sentence.
Stay tuned!
More articles? Keep an open eye!
Me and my ING colleagues have few articles in the pipeline:
Major reorganization in the Design department at ING
Last year our “design department” in ING went through a major re-organization. We went from decentralized into a stand-alone and centralized “Center of Expertise”. And while we were happy before, we are thrilled after. Following is a short capture of the last two years, how we made it happen, and what the outcome looks like til now.
20% work
Part of the new re-org was our dedication towards our craft and being a step ahead. You will see and read more about what we do in our free business time. Spoiler alert: it’s 100% EPIC.
What are you interested in?
Anything else that you would like to hear our thoughts on as designers working in Finance?
