Strong Foundations, Thoughtfully Built

Ivana McConnell
Nov 1 · 7 min read

HashiCorp Product Design 2019 Offsite Recap

“You’re taller than I thought you would be from Zoom.”

In true remote fashion, this is how our offsite began. At the beginning of October, the HashiCorp Product Design team held its offsite in Denver. Our focus? How to do our best work as individuals while supporting each other in making cohesive a complex set of products. This is critical given that we’ve nearly tripled in the past year, and will double again.

Offsites, however, can be jarring. Normally, all we see of our co-workers is a talking, occasionally-muted face in Zoom. An offsite demands change in routine, but in that difference is strength; we collect our spoons, share photos of our pets, and everything does work out.

Day 1

Emotional culture

Our emotional state forms a foundation for our day-to-day: simply put, when we feel good, we do good work. In an Emotional Culture Deck workshop led by Roz Duffy, UX Researcher, our goal was to look inside ourselves and understand two things: how we need to feel at work to be successful and how don’t want to feel (but might from time to time). This was a progressive exercise in identifying, contextualising, and sharing emotions.

Of course, articulating emotions can be far more difficult than articulating design problems, especially to people we’ve only just met in person. Slowly, we narrowed down all of our “how I want to feel” emotions to a set of five for the entire team:

  1. Trusted — we want our colleagues to trust us to do good work
  2. Safe — in expressing ourselves, our emotions, and our opinions
  3. Connected — both to our work and to each other
  4. Confident — that we’re asking good questions, solving problems in a purposeful way
  5. Curious — about our users, our products, and the challenges they present

On the flip side, the emotions we don’t want to feel, but may feel sometimes:

  1. Uncertain — adrift and unsure, either about our work or the devops space
  2. Powerless — feeling like our work won’t have an impact
  3. Reactive — not thinking ahead or taking our time, just trying to put out a fire
  4. Overwhelmed — being snowed under by our work and everything there is to learn
  5. Insecure — everyone is so, so talented; impostor syndrome at its finest!

We continued , identifying behaviours that both create and undermine each feeling; it was like a retro, shining light on what does work and what doesn’t, and what to stop, start, and continue.

The Emotional Culture Deck in action!

Emotional reflection builds trust, but is difficult to do asynchronously for many reasons, chief of which is attention. It’s easier to divert attention to the immediate tasks we have rather than to how we feel about those tasks. An offsite workshop makes it easier to engage and impossible to escape. Physically moving cards around, the sound of shuffling in the room, watching teammates process — this was invaluable. What’s more, sharing these in a closed room fostered a space in which it was safe to do so; when we left, those conversations could stay behind¹.

¹ One conversation that didn’t stay behind: Todd taught me that my fears of the full stop at the end of a Slack sentence are very much founded.

Looking ahead

Foundation duly built, our afternoon presented a change of course from present to future. Todd Moy, lead Terraform designer, began with a brainstorming exercise: “what does HashiCorp design look like in 2021?” Jonathan (JT) Thomas, Director of Product Design, presented his vision of our team a year from now. We were then let loose with a wall and many post-its. Four themes resulted:

  1. Design culture: How might design culture permeate HashiCorp?
  2. Future thinking: How can we define industry standards with our work?
  3. Visibility: How might we share our work with the design community?
  4. Progression: How do we move forward in our careers and help others progress in theirs?

To each of these, we attached specific actions, such as:

  • Product design will share more work in all-hands meetings
  • Continued education will be an expectation of our work, not an addition
  • A Medium post schedule as well as Slack prompts to post something on Dribbble
  • Creating specific groups whose remit it is to build out new ideas

We were always attaching specific actions to big ideas; for me, as someone new to HashiCorp, this was extremely grounding.

Then we ate. It was excellent².

² There’s a restaurant in Denver will give you an ice cream that’s bigger than three entrees combined. This was an error in judgment because had I known, I would’ve gone straight for the ice cream.

Day 2

Timelines and ideation

The second day was about the connections between where we are and where we want to be. We split off into teams and created timelines for the lofty goals we’d identified on day one. Some folks definitely did a more #aesthetic job than others (Team 2: Todd, Joshua, Josh, Hannah), but it was satisfying to think backwards from goals to incremental steps, and surprising just how much we could do in half an hour.

Left: Josh Klekamp and Hannah Oppenheimer creating one of the timelines; Right: Todd Moy making sure every line is as straight as can be.

From these, we’ve already got some documents out and processes started; we had a proposal out for a design pairing process sent out by Hannah almost right away.

We also spent some time on the quintessential design exercise: sketching. Josh Klekamp, product designer on Nomad, led us in producing as many sketches as we could for three themes: advanced visualization and monitoring, learning and onboarding, and unified product experience.

The sketching exercises! Roz Duffy (L), Eric Weidner (R) and Jasmine Wright (R).

Woodworking

By lunchtime, we were ready to move around a little bit and, like the designers we are, make stuff! So we spent the afternoon at the I Made It Workshop, making cutting boards.

Ash Adamson (L), Jonathan (JT) Thomas (Centre, R) and Joshua Ogle (R) hard at work on their cutting boards.
My finished cutting board, right before the oil was applied.

Sure, it’s a cliche, the designer/woodworker/single-speed-bicycle-rider/hiker, but we embraced it. There’s a reason it exists, after all. We work on screens and pixels all the time, and there’s always satisfaction in making something tangible, all the more so if there’s a sense of danger in the form of planers and giant sanders. Instead of talking about gradients on the web, we could talk about them in wood, and critique the rounded corners of a cutting board rather than a button. We got to make something fun and continue to get to know each other outside of the conference room setting. Case in point: after warning a couple of people the previous day that I’m prone to falling over, I proceeded to do exactly this, wiping out on the sidewalk on the way out of the woodworking shop.

The offsite was all the better this more easygoing day. The entire event was planned and executed brilliantly by Jen Hanussak, Program Manager, and Roz, whose dedication to making us safe and included was admired and appreciated. I was largely unaware of the outside world for the three days of the offsite: a solid indicator of success.


In remote companies, offsites are a great opportunity to get to know each other where we otherwise may not make the time, to create the incidental conversations on the edges of activities: in the morning, walking to a coffee; trying to open the conference room door; over lunch, connecting over a childhood TV show³.

However, the best part of this offsite for me was that we also spent time getting to know ourselves. This self-examination is a collaborative exercise, one especially true for our work selves, in part defined by the company we work for and those we work with. In the company of those we trust (or want to trust) in a space made safe, we can talk through ourselves and our quirks and share them, and make connections in the process. It makes everything that follows that much easier — big ideas for timelines suddenly feel a lot less risky, sketching feels more free, complex concepts a little more approachable, and difficult conversations a little easier to start. It makes us all better designers.

Thanks, Denver, for hosting us!

³ (Wishbone is great, and you should know about that).


P.S. If you like the sound of this offsite and what we’ve got planned, we’ve got an open Product Design Manager role, so come talk to us!

HashiCorp Design

Design for Devops

Ivana McConnell

Written by

Product Design @HashiCorp. Enjoys rock climbing, typewriters, and caffeinated beverages.

HashiCorp Design

Design for Devops

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