Yoel Sumitro: How Product Design Team Turns Cultural Values into Innovation and Strong Team

With years of studying and working overseas, one won’t be blamed to think that Yoel Krisnanda Sumitro is one of a kind in his field. He has worked at various international organizations or corporations such as Adidas and Uber. In the middle of this year, though, he left Uber after 2 years of work.

But instead of joining other multinational companies, Yoel decided to pack his bags and go back to his home country. Later on, he joined Indonesian unicorn Bukalapak where he now serves as its VP of Product Design. Under his leadership are 103 strong team members with different roles, including UX Researchers, Product Designers, UX Copywriters, and UX Engineers.

We recently had the opportunity to chat with Yoel and talk about various things, from his decision to join Bukalapak, how he encourages his team to innovate and dearly embrace the values of ownership, assertiveness, and dedication, to what is so unique about his team.


Back to Home Country, Joining an Indonesian Unicorn

Q: You worked for Uber and Adidas previously. Why did you decide to join a local startup like Bukalapak instead of a multinational company with offices in Indonesia?

A: I spent quite some time talking with a few companies in Indonesia before making the decision to join Bukalapak. There are two factors which really stood out to me about Bukalapak.

The first is connection. I talked to around 18 Bukalapak employees during the interview process, from the CEO to the researchers. Through speaking with them I could see that we shared some similar values: a bias for action, belief in meritocracy, a joy of life and work, growth hacking, the importance of ownership and assertiveness, and other values which I hold as paramount and aspire to every day. I believe people always want to work with people they can connect with and be inspired by.

The second factor is contribution. When I talked to some of Bukalapak designers and researchers, I felt that they were very passionate about their work and took it seriously (but not so seriously that they couldn’t enjoy themselves!). Working with these A-level talents, we not only challenge each other and the Bukalapak design team to constantly be better, but also improve Indonesia’s design community for the long run, making a positive local impact.

Bukalapak, as one of the 4 Indonesian unicorns, is also in a very exciting phase of rapid growth in a sector with fierce competition, and I believe design can truly set us apart and provide a one-of-a-kind experience for our customers which will spearhead this growth.

Q: What are the challenges you face when teaming up with locals given that you have spent years overseas and may be “out of touch”? How do you solve it?

A: I actually think that this challenge does not exist within Bukalapak. At Bukalapak we really value meritocracy: the best ideas win regardless of the ideator. There is a great example from one of our designers who does not even have an undergraduate degree, but nonetheless thrives in our environment!

Similarly for me, being overseas has actually introduced me to many new concepts and ideas that I maybe would not have experienced if I had stayed here. This allows me to contribute in a very unique way by asking questions that may not have been asked. In all, it is the large diversity of ideas that is valuable: the larger the pool of ideas, the more good ones filter to the top!


Cultural values that root within the team

Yoel’s Product Design Team has set 3 cultural values: Ownership (where individuals are being empowered to make decisions and take responsibility), Speak Up (being assertive), and Extra Miles (going above and beyond to create great customer experience while supporting each other in the team). How are these cultural values applied in their daily work?

Q: How do you convince your team that their work matters to society and themselves?

A: To put it bluntly, I can’t. While I can inspire, motivate, and lead, a true sense of purpose and conviction must come from within. I also wouldn’t want to try to manipulate my team to “feel” that their works matter, for this actually encourages dependency: then they are dependent on me, and I am human as well.

In the long run this will lead to resentment and a much poorer long-term outcome for both the team and the individual. If they can’t find internal motivation or conviction they need to be able to wake up in the morning and come to work, I understand that they would be looking for another job.

Q: Has your team faced conflicts or arguments? How do you handle these as a leader and how does the team handle them?

A: I expect my team to challenge the norm if they feel that something isn’t working as it should (this reflects the Speak Up cultural value). This of course is about being constructive and offering dissenting opinions, not personally attacking people!

In the professional setting, we actually need to encourage discussions and not being afraid of them. Often not speaking up means that the situation may be better temporarily in the short term, but this often leads to much more serious long term repercussions. If the discussions or conflicts get a little bit too heated or they turn toxic, this is where the leaders need to intervene. But a little conflict is actually very healthy in my opinion. Having people challenge your ideas and offer other solutions leads to better decisions being made.

Q: There are 20 percent of your team who are foreign graduates. For better or worse, there is a perception in the society that some local graduates tend to be hesitant to team up with foreign graduates due to the feeling of inferiority. How do you encourage your local team members to be confident and learn from other world-class talents in Bukalapak? How do you encourage your foreign graduates that they have much to learn from the local ones as well?

A: I don’t feel that this challenge exists systemically in the company. Both foreign and local graduates can learn a lot from each other!

However, there is similar challenge whereby junior designers or researchers sometimes feel reluctant to speak up to or defend their opinions with more senior designers or researchers, or even me. To help emphasize the importance of equality amongst company members and highlight that this action won’t be condemned (unless it is merely used for ad hominem attacks or something of this sort), we have added “Speak Up” as one of our team’s culture development initiatives.


This is how we work….

User interviews, prototype product tests, design reviews, and endless sessions of brainstorming might lead one to think that life as a product design person is tough and too serious. In fact, Product Design Team also have some times to learn from others and, of course, to share laughter.

What I love the most about my team is that they are fun to hang out with, cool to spend time with, and willing to go the extra mile most of the time” Yoel said.

So, how is a typical day in Product Design Team? How do they collaborate across the organization? And what are game-changing innovations they have achieved?

Q: What is a typical day like as a member of the team?

A: A typical day includes meeting our users to understand their needs via interviews and other UX research methods, brainstorming product ideas and opportunities in workshops, making design solutions, reviewing and providing feedback on each other’s designs, testing our products with users with prototypes, writing compelling stories about our products through copywriting and visual design. And we make time to have some fun too!

Q: What is the team’s mission?

A: The team has 2 important missions. First, we strive to make the product design team an equal thought partner within the company. In many companies, designers are often seen as pixel pushers or researchers who only conduct repetitious usability testing. This leads to designers and researchers being treated as second class citizens compared to product managers, engineers, or business development people.

Second, we aim to make sure that the Product Design team is at the forefront of product and feature innovation within the company. This requires that designers and researchers get out of their comfort zones and take a step back to think more from a strategic level.

Q: How does your team make the product more humane/ empathetic towards your customers? Are there any innovations you use?

A: The first and most important step is to really know our customers (users). When I joined Bukalapak, the research team had only done a couple foundational research studies. Thus, we didn’t have a holistic understanding about our customer. After 4 months, we have made some progress! Our researchers went to Makassar, Medan, Yogyakarta, and many other cities and small towns in Indonesia to meet our users and try to understand their needs and pain points.

The second step is to advocate for those users by being the voice of their needs, wants, and pain points within the company. We do this via different channels, including publishing stories about our users and their experiences to our internal social media network and inviting our engineers and product managers to join our research team to see for themselves!

And the last step is the actual execution. We need to implement our designs, which take into account the needs of the user, in a way that is user friendly and provides a good experience.

Q: How do your team members collaborate within the team and across the organization to make innovation happen? Can you please tell me more about the collaboration?

A: As a famous proverbs proclaims: “Iron sharpens Iron” We make sure to challenge each other on our team to constantly improve. We conduct design critique/reviews quite often between our team members. Design leads often need to review and give feedback on design works.

Between researchers, they challenge each others’ research plans and findings by asking probing questions and digging deeper to ensure that key findings were revealed and bias wasn’t inadvertently added.

Q: As a leader, how do you spur your team on to explore their talents?

A: We do plan various learning and development opportunities for the team. For example, this year we have sent (and will be sending) our team to attend conferences and workshops in London, Scotland, Singapore, India, China, Sydney, and more! Within the team, we have weekly sharing sessions for spreading knowledge and lessons learned from the field.

Additionally, monthly all-hands workshops occur where we share updates and learnings with the team about recent design trends or new technologies within the industry. Furthermore, I invite colleagues from other companies to share their knowledge with my team. We have had people from companies such as Instagram, Airbnb, and Uber share their knowledge and learnings with us, and vice versa!

Q: What do you want to improve in your team with your talents and experiences?

A: One of the core skills we are looking to develop is our research and design competency. For this we are looking to both provide more training to the team, as well as take on more projects so we can get first-hand experience and learnings.

Furthermore, as our team develops to be a thought-leader, we need to gain more confidence and assertiveness in our message and deliverables. This means improving our ability to influence stakeholders, improve our storytelling ability, and in general become a team that is confident in our position within the company!

Finally, and possibly most difficult, is the desire to culture change. As highlighted in an earlier answer to one of the questions, we have defined three cultural values/ pillars. We are still working on making the slow but steady changes necessary to achieve this goal.


Inside Bukalapak

Stories and insights from the people inside Bukalapak

Bening Karilla Kinasih

Written by

Inside Bukalapak

Stories and insights from the people inside Bukalapak

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