5 lessons I’ve learned in 5 years of running a UX design studio
Like most people who start their first company, I learned how to build a business while building the business. This month we are celebrating 5 years of Studio Flolab. Flolab is a Product and UX Design Studio based in Jakarta, Indonesia. Our vision is to help companies innovate business solutions with high quality and personalized design.
As a first-time manager and business owner, there are many lessons that I’ve learned along the way, but these are my top 5 lessons that I’m sure many of you will be able to relate to if you’ve been managing design teams yourself.
1. Employees come first
This is a lesson I’ve learned the hard way. In the first 6 months of running Flolab, I didn’t know I should be prioritizing employees, I wasn’t aware of the importance of team culture, and lost 3 designers in that time frame.
Fortunately, in the same year, I found a core team that trusted in me and my vision to bring good design to the new and booming startup industry of Indonesia. This team was willing to grow along with the company, learn new skills, and grow themselves as designers.
The talent at Flolab is our most important asset. Our clients come to us because they’re looking for quality design, and it’s only fair that we hire the best designers in order to deliver the best work. Many talented designers have decided to work with us and some have even stayed with us for over 4 years! Why? Why are the designers not leaving Flolab for better offers that land in their LinkedIn inbox every other month?
I believe that many of them are looking for a place to belong and for a place to grow their skillsets. To be surrounded by other designers allows you to push yourself to get better at your design skills. If you join a company where you’re the only designer, you don’t end up learning as much (about design) from your peers.
It’s also the sense of belonging, especially during the pandemic. We have each other's backs, and support each other through these tough times. Whether it’s dealing with a sick family member, death in the family, a financial crisis, or having to juggle between a full-time and an additional part-time job or completing university. Because we’re a small and close-knit team, we’re able to empathize with each other and help each other out.
2. Long-term partnerships go a long way
I decided early on, that Flolab wasn’t going to be a design shop where we work on projects like website redesigns, landing pages, UI reskins, and similar such 4–6 week projects. Running after new clients every few weeks was not where I wanted to dedicate my time. I came with a background in design and technology and wanted to provide quality digital product design to companies that didn’t have the right design team in order to build their product.
Flolab focused on the complete end-to-end iterative design process and from the very beginning, we worked with clients who were looking for design partners, not design vendors. We came in and collaborated closely with these clients as their UX experts. We worked closely with their product and engineering teams to build high-quality apps and websites. 80% of the clients we have worked with so far have all been long-term partnerships spanning at least a year or more, where we’ve helped evolve their products from basic MVPs to a full functioning product used by thousands and even millions of users.
3. Business should value Design & Design should value Business
At Flolab, our main goal is to be a problem solver for our clients — increase conversions, eliminate pain points, and reduce friction. The client has hired us not just for the beauty we provide in our design solutions, but also for the value we provide and for our problem-solving skills. When the client goes through our website, they know we can provide beautiful design solutions. When the client decides to get on a call with us and listen to how we follow a design process, they’re looking for whether we have the problem-solving skills it takes to be their go-to UX team. If they’re able to see that and are comfortable with the price we put on it, we know that they value design.
Now that we know that the Business values Design, it’s our turn to value the Business, understand our client’s needs and business goals, look at the broader picture rather than just focus on the aesthetics of design. We try to understand how the business works from the basic standpoint — the pain that the business is facing. In order to provide solutions that work, we need to understand the problems first. And to get to the bottom of these problems, we need to ask a lot of questions. The next step then is to line up a design process that’s set for success. We now walk clients through a tried-and-tested design process that they can understand and which makes them feel that a similar process will help them add value to their product/company.
4. Project management, budgets, timelines, and planning is as important as the design process
Project Planning
Project planning and timelines are so important, that we can’t start a project until we’ve got the timeline nailed down and have the client’s buy-in on it as well. It helps us stay on track and be consistent with our process. It also brings in transparency and accountability for the client where they can clearly see what we’re working on currently, what deliverables they can expect, when they can expect them and what we’ll be taking up next.
When things go as expected, we spend less time answering questions like ‘When can I expect to see these designs delivered to our team?’. This way of working also makes sure we’re avoiding common mistakes, like failing to add in the time for multiple rounds of design iterations.
Time and Task Management
All team members at Flolab are personally responsible for managing their own time. Project managers and design managers can help with high-level coordination and project planning, but what a designer works on every day, is something that they have the freedom and flexibility to plan, which also gives them a sense of responsibility.
Every morning, we have a quick standup (write-up only, no calls) where everyone updates the team on what they’re working on today and the amount of time they would be spending on each task. We find this method to be super transparent to help us understand how full each team member’s plate is. And if they have some wiggle room on their plate, we know we can get their help on a project or a team member whose plate is overflowing.
5. Getting into the Business of Design means you have to be even more passionate about design than you ever were
As a business owner of a small company, it’s easy for me to get lost in all the other roles I need to be filling in for in order to run a business smoothly — Accounting, Sales, Marketing, HR, Recruitment, Business Growth, and Scaling Strategies. Which makes it even more important for me to slot my time to really keep in touch with design itself. Since a lot of the day-to-day work is looked into by the Design Leads and the Product Manager, I hardly ever get a chance or feel the need to jump in and add my inputs on the day-to-day progress of a design project, except for some high-level design strategies when we kick-off a new partnership or project.
However, if I don’t make sure that I’m staying in touch with Design, I’m going to fail as the business owner of a design studio. This is why I take mentorship very seriously. I love mentoring my team of designers and helping them grow their hard skills as well as their soft skills. At Flolab, we have weekly sharing sessions, where each team member shares with the rest of the team what they’ve been working on and what were some of the learnings from the projects they’ve been handling.
I have also recently taken up a role as an Instructor for the UXPM program at SkillsUnion, where I teach and mentor learners looking to change careers and step into the field of User Experience and/or Product Management.
Being open to learning is the only way to grow and move forward and I love being curious about design, new trends, tools, and the needs of growing design and tech teams. Through these mentorships, sharing sessions, and learning-by-teaching, there’s a great deal that I get to learn from my own team.
Closing Thoughts
There are entrepreneurs and there are accidental entrepreneurs. I belong to the latter. It has taken time to get my bearings, get over countless ego checks, refine our process and build ourselves a safety net. But I’ve enjoyed the ride to get to where we are today. At every milestone, I have been looking over to the next one, so here I am, taking a breath to celebrate the small wins that have all added up to something good.
Firstly, I would like to thank the entire team at Flolab that helped us get to where we are today. You’ve made this entire journey totally worth it. Flolab wouldn’t be Flolab without this hard-working and dedicated team that I feel blessed to call my work family!
And most importantly, a big thanks to all our partners and clients for having trusted us with delivering quality design for your product. Thank you for choosing us, you are the main reason we are celebrating our 5 year anniversary today!
Thank you for taking the time to read through our journey.
If you’d like to reach out to me for a chat, email me at ritika@flolab.co
Stay safe, and stay healthy!
Flolab is a Product & UX design studio based in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Find out more about us on www.flolab.co
Interested in partnering with us? Reach out at info@flolab.co
