Two years as Design Lead and automotive enthusiast at Goodpatch

Matthias started his career as User Interface Designer at Goodpatch Berlin in March 2016. A few months after, he became our Design Lead and manages the entire team of designers.

I had the chance of talking to him during my visit at Goodpatch Berlin’s office. I took this opportunity to learn more about the variety of roles and responsibilities he has, as well as what kind of future he sees in his work.

Role as Design Lead

── It has been exactly two years since you joined Goodpatch as a UI designer. Today you have multiple roles on top of being the team’s Design Lead — can you tell us a little about what you actually do?

I joined Goodpatch Berlin in 2016 as a UI Designer. At that time I was doing 60% UI Design and 40% UX Design and worked with different startups in Berlin for more than six months. In October 2016, we had the opportunity to collaborate with one of the world’s biggest automotive manufacturers — the Renault Nissan Mitsubishi Alliance. The client approached us and we immediately took on this great opportunity to expand our client base and expertise in the field of automotive.

In the meantime I became the studio’s Design Lead, or a guide to the entire design team at Goodpatch. In the beginning, the team was not very big, but I already realized that one day we will expand and responsibilities will need to be distributed even more in our organisation.

And just recently, together with a small internal team we started our own new and exciting business project in the automotive industry. For this project I act as a consultant, or call it expert, giving feedback and ideas to the team. So as you can see, there are three main roles under my responsibility: Design Lead, UX Lead for clients, and a consultant of our new business project.

New management system

── It must be difficult to manage an entire Design team only by you.

You are right. Now we have 3 developers, 15 designers as well as strategic designers and Boris acting as the general manager. 15 designers are just too many for me to properly lead. They deserve more coaching and guidance than just a one hour talk with me. It has also been very difficult for me to manage all of this while also working for the client. Today we are still in the middle of figuring out how we can delegate some of the tasks.

Here is a prototype of a new roles and responsibilities structure we are currently trying out. As you can see in blue, there’s a big pool called Client Lead. It shows that everyone from interns to senior designers or developers can become a lead for a client. Inside that pool, we have a circle called Coaches consisting of Skill Leads and People Leads. In the Skill Lead category, there are UX, UI, strategy and development Skill Leads. The People Leaders do reviews for their respective team, projects and periods. From the Skill or People Leads, everyone can choose a coach for 1on1 sessions and other prefered formats.

This is one way of delegating more responsibility to other colleagues and not so centralised around one Design Lead. Some of our reasons for trying out a floating system like this was to keep a flat hierarchy and to let the members communicate beyond their roles. Right now, like I said we are in the beginning phase of installing that system so we will see how it goes.

──The system looks great. Where does the idea come from?

For us, this is one way of applying Holacracy. Holacracy is a customizable self-management practice for organizations that enhances agile organizational structure and unique decision-making process. Goodpatch Berlin started using it at the beginning of last year, and we follow it in a “light” format however as we don’t strictly follow every rule. For example, we don’t have job descriptions; we have multiple roles. This is how we distribute tasks so everyone can take responsibility and has ownership for the company. For me, the core of Holacracy is about defining my own motivation and goals by contributing to the company’s vision.

We see the trust amongst members as one of the most important aspect in our team. From a Lead’s perspective, you need to be hands-on, you need to know what your designers and engineers are doing, and you need to really empathize with them. For us it’s important to listen and understand what our team members think.

I will explain this to you with an example. You see here is a box, and I will put colored post-its on each of its sides — one side has a yellow and another has a pink post-it. This box with post-its represents a client. Now, I will say “Look, I have the feeling that the client is really “yellow” and I’m not listening to your opinion.” In that case, I can only get one perspective and you, as a member will have no chance to share your perspective. But what if I go into a discussion and say “What’s your opinion?”. I will know that you have very different perspective because you should be seeing a different colour from mine — the pink post-it. Now I can see the client in a broader view.

If you involve more people in a decision, you can get a bigger picture. I never think that I’m right because I’m a Lead. I always try to listen to members who have different perspectives to make a better decision. Of course, there are people with different levels of expertise but not listening to others is not an excuse.

Automotive design

── Now, could you tell me a bit more about your roles other than the Design Lead?

As I mentioned, I work as UX Lead for an automotive manufacturer and also as a consultant in our new business project also about automotive (to be more precise, about autonomous driving). I am very lucky to work on those projects, because this field is really personal to me. Since I was a kid, I was interested in cars. Not brands in particular, but cars in general. Before I was in school, I could tell every single car model when I walked on the streets. On the other hand I also loved to express my creativity by drawing. So I kind of combined those two fields and studied communication and marketing and did a training at an aftermarket car company as a Graphic Designer.

During this time, I found out that I’m really into Design and less so into marketing. I was fascinated by the fact that Design is about finding an answer to complex problems so that everyone can understand more easily. When the final interface or product is intuitive and the user is not recognizing the Design, the Designer did a good job.

In 2010, I finally moved to Berlin to study Design as my second degree. After 5 years of working as a Freelance Designer for agencies, I met and talked to Boris (General Manager at Goodpatch Berlin). After I joined Goodpatch, I finally got the chance to work as a Designer for the automotive industry. This is a big dream come true for me, combining my fields of interest — Design and Automotive. I am now finally able to bring my perspective as a Designer to Automotive companies. At Goodpatch, I can prove the power of Design by providing great experiences for the user in the automotive environment. Working directly with the manufacturers as a Designer and providing different perspectives to move the industry forward is my biggest mission.

But, moving into the automotive field in general and to leave our footprint in the industry is actually a big challenge. The processes are very long and OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) are moving slowly but seriously. Today everything turns into a digital service or software. For example, Uber is successful within producing a software without manufacturing any vehicles. We want to prove that we can join the OEM teams in building cars with user-centered-design and software. Which also means that we are aiming to become a software supplier for the automotive field, and that maybe one day you will step into a car and find some digital products build by Goodpatch. When I think that this will actually happen, it makes me proud of the team. Our long efforts produced during the process will eventually pay off.

With our automotive knowledge and client collaborations, we saw a blind spot and started to build a new in house product at Goodpatch. More than four years ago, we designed and developed a prototyping tool “Prott” for screens. It’s time to build a new generation of Prott, a prototyping tool which shape better experiences for next generation of cars. It’s a logical step for us to move from a 2D tool to a future VR prototyping tool. With this new product, we can test and iterate for future services in autonomous vehicles — an existing shift which we will all experience in the next four to six years.

── Can you tell me about the possible future of autonomous driving?

Today it’s very much about voice interaction around the driver. The industry tries to improve voice interaction and gesture recognition so that drivers can keep on focusing on driving. But soon we all will shift to a passenger economy. There are five levels for automotive driving. It’s a scale from one to five, where level five is fully autonomous. At the moment, the market provides level three.

At level five there’s nothing that a user should do to drive a vehicle. The car just operated by itself and the user gains a massive amount of freetime. We can’t estimate completely what the fully autonomous product will feel like, but we can start to prototype the experience for the user. In good ways like entertainment, or critical ways like emergency cases.

We try to build this scenario in a simple and quick way with the new VR prototyping tool we are creating at Goodpatch. It’s a perfect tool for fast iteration and for helping manufacturers find a solid solution without building physical prototypes at an early stage. We want to enable the manufacturer and design and develop software products which everybody can fall in love with.

── Where do you see yourself in the next five years?

That’s a hard question — hopefully in a self-driving car. We need to see how fast our upcoming chapter in Pairs can grow. Right now we are on-side at the office of our automotive client and shaping their future services is one long-term goal. So first, we should make this situation stable, and then I can think about my next goal at Goodpatch.

I joined Goodpatch because I had the feeling that I can help grow the team with my knowledge. This had happened over the last two years and I feel very honored. My Goodpatch colleagues are trusting me and giving me the opportunity of building the team and culture. Hopefully this continues so we can shape Goodpatch together and see how far we can push our vision.

Originally published at Goodpatch Blog.