AMA Session on Being a first designer and developing design culture with Sara Menefee

The Figma Africa design community had another AMA Session (our 8th Edition) with Sara Menefee, who happens to be the principal designer at Sora an HR tools automation platform that helps automate and personalize employee onboarding, offboarding and management.

Just for context, The Figma Africa “AMA Session” is a 60-minutes Q&A session similar to a fireside chat except this is virtual because it happens on the Figma Africa Slack group and it gets interesting as there’s usually so much to learn in such a short time.

We had a great time during the session discussing what it means to be a first/early designer and what does it take/imply to develop “design culture” in our work environment.

Below is a recap of our session with Sara and questions asked from different members of the community:

SARA — Hello Figma Africa Community!

My name is Sara Menefee. I’m a San Francisco-based product designer who started her humble beginnings at Zendesk in 2012. I was the fourth product design hire; with no traditional design background. Fast forward two years later, the company made its initial public offering at the NYSE and we were a globally-distributed design team of 40. I went on to focus on more mission-driven work at Change.org and later Checkr.

Today, I am working with an early-stage company called Sora. Where we are building an HR tools automation platform. Our goal is to serve people operations teams at companies big and small, so they can focus on what they care most about — employee experience. I am so excited and honoured to connect with you all 😄. But also to answer questions and discuss the topic of being a first designer as well as developing design culture from within companies.

QUESTION — When we first put out the topic for today’s session we had a lot of questions on “What does it mean to be a First/Early Designer?’

SARA — Being a First/Early Designer often means being a first or early hire in design. You are what represents design within your organization. Which often comes with a lot of responsibilities you don’t normally realize when you’re part of a larger design organization that has already been established. 😃

QUESTION — So in a practical sense, what is “design culture” for those still new to the term?

SARA — Design culture is often misconstrued as something that primarily exists within a design team. In my experience, it is how design influences an organization at large. As most of you know design is not simply pretty pixels. We influence a lot of areas within a company.

QUESTION — Design culture is kind of a myth in any growing ecosystem as company owners are more focused on results than processes so how can one go about building one especially if you are joining as the one with the least experience.

SARA — I think this is true for a lot of companies. But I think, as designers, we are uniquely positioned to manifest something more tangible within companies where it may seem impossible to find. It just has to be applied in such a way that promotes the higher-level company objectives. Requires a lot of selling and demonstrating value.

QUESTION — Is there a practical example of this?

SARA — A practical example is when a company makes purely data-driven decisions. A designer comes in and asks the question, “What have we done in terms of qualitative research and analysis?”. A lot of data-driven teams will say, that the data speaks for itself. But often data is short-sighted and can lead to a general lack of awareness of long-term effects for a product. Especially its users.

So…a designer often comes in with a wild idea. Let’s conduct user research. Let’s build a more qualitative measure for our products. The stakeholders believe they’ve already done this, they’ve done their ‘discovery’. But when you dig into it, it was mostly just conversations to collect pain points rather than listening to everything else the user was saying and designing a better solution. Qualitative uncovers the why part, a designer’s job is to ask “Why”. To develop research plans themselves or their research counterparts to understand the root of the problem, not just the problem itself.

It’s amazing when you lead projects with this. It’s a direct application during the design process, that is often missed by product teams without a designer.

QUESTION — Hello Sara…for new designers how would you suggest they prove themselves to companies that do not have experience working with designers or don’t agree that design should be something they should/need to invest in? 😏

SARA — This is a tough question. 😅 I think it ultimately comes down to whether or not leadership is willing to listen. I find that the best leaders are ones that are willing to listen to ideas and give designers a chance to demonstrate the value of their work.

Unfortunately, leadership that sees absolutely no value in design can often be an uphill battle. That isn’t to say it is impossible to prove yourself to stakeholders like this…but it is often a question of, do you want to fight that fight? Especially early in your career, it often requires you to navigate organizational politics that you may or may not be prepared to.

QUESTION — But for you as a designer, would you be willing to?

SARA — Personally, yes. But I’m a fighter. It depends on what you are psychologically willing to go through and be okay if it doesn’t end up working out in the end.

QUESTION — So are there any special skills (technical or soft) a designer needs to have to create/develop a “Design Culture” in one’s place of work?

SARA — Honestly, it’s like 80% soft skills, 20% technical skills. The soft skills are mostly learning how to drive vision and alignment within a team. The technical skills mostly pertain to learning to speak the language of technical stakeholders in a way they understand. This also builds trust that you know what you’re talking about.

It depends on who your stakeholders are. But I would say…in product design, most of my job is understanding the implications of my work through business metrics.

QUESTION — People aren’t always open to new experiences as I’ve come to understand, so what’s the best way of introducing new processes and workflow to a team or company?

SARA — Great question. The way I’ve often approached this is by gaining some alignment on the team as to what we think is not working as well as it should, this levies team support. You may often find yourself feeling like you’re the only one experiencing the problem. But more often than not your entire team is feeling it. This not only helps you ground your reasoning for developing process but also levies the support of your team.

You will have to absolutely own this. But often when you’re solving a problem for the team, you get a lot more support along the way in developing that process. If it’s something the team is not experiencing. It’s a good idea to ask the question, “Who is this helping? Me as an individual or the team?”.

QUESTION — Also should one come with his design process or just change totally to that’s of the company where he/she works?

SARA — You should always have principles as a designer for how you work. If you don’t, you should do some self-reflection. I generally use these principles when interviewing with teams and have generally found if there is a lot of misalignment, it’s not going to be a long-term relationship with the company.

But, you can always use these opportunities to learn something new about your working style because you will adapt from company to company to quirks and unique aspects of how the company is run. It’s stakeholders and leadership, etc.

QUESTION — We are in an ecosystem where a lot of companies think building design culture is all about hiring more designers. Where does one start from in a place like that as the only designer?

SARA — I suppose this starts from understanding, very clearly, how leadership views the role of design within the company. If this isn’t clear, I highly suggest getting time on calendars of leadership and ask the question.

I’m not familiar with this issue within companies but…my hunch is they may believe design culture is defined by the number of designers you have in your design org. That by having strength in numbers they are dominating in that respect. But I think this stems from a general misunderstanding of what design culture is…design culture can exist outside of design teams. You can find practices in applying the design process to external teams. Because the design process is a methodology for problem solving and EVERY business unit can benefit from this. They just have to be shown how.

We did this a lot at Zendesk. We were very inclusive in bringing other impacted business partners into our design brainstorms. They get to witness a real application of the process that they would then take into their respective teams and facilitate on their own.

QUESTION — After looking up the full definition of culture, it shows it’s something that cannot be controlled, making it even harder to build in teams and companies, is there a psychological approach to achieving this?

SARA — It starts with understanding. Understanding the issues a growing organization will go through and finding unique opportunities where design can help. I don’t believe that design culture is something that influences a company with a strong opinion contrary to the beliefs and needs of an existing culture.

QUESTION — Hi Sara, seems I have a lot of questions 😅. Often the answer to a functional design culture is “Communication” but based on your personal experience, what else will you say forms the foundation of design culture.

SARA — Deep understanding and empathy. Inclusivity. Transparency. Trust building. All of which I guess bubble up to effective communication. 😆

QUESTION — Something is still not clear to me. What does it mean to develop a design culture and how can that be achieved?

SARA — Great question. Developing a design culture is creating an ecosystem where people can easily communicate ideas, collaborate, and solve bigger problems in the organization and whatever market your company serves. How it can be achieved differs from company to company.

QUESTION — Lastly, I know it is more of the process but are there metrics to measuring the success of healthy design culture in a company

SARA — A healthy design culture within in a company usually means good things for company-level KPIs. Though it is often hard to pinpoint the exact correlation.

When I think about healthy design culture and business metrics…I think we’re looking after the long-term and sustainability side of things. Whereas business can often be laser-focused on short-term goals. Design falls into these traps too…but you often know when you’re doing this.

QUESTION — Also on communication, what are the ways one can communicate the value of design to other team members (especially developers)?

SARA — Always be inclusive in your process. Bring developers in on user research calls. Bounce ideas off of them and whiteboard together. Leverage their expertise to think about technical nuances that may impact your design decisions.

Show that you see the value in their work and then share with them the work you’re thinking about. It can do wonders in helping grease the wheels of collaboration and share a common understanding of what you’re building. They will see the value.

Thank you so much for having me. This was truly a great experience to connect with you all. ❤️ Also, love seeing all the great work coming out of this community! It’s great to see other design communities crushing it. So much great design talent here. 😄

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