Brand Burnout (and other myths, rumors, and discoveries about moving in-house)
Introductions
Devin Murphy and Mark Austin are product designers at Root Insurance Co., an app-based car insurance company in Columbus, Ohio. Each of them left web design positions at agencies to work in-house at Root (despite facing criticisms from their peers).
Now, Devin and Mark have begun to notice a trend among those same peers: they’re flocking to tech start-ups. Devin and Mark decided to interview each other to learn more about what each of their in-house transitions was like and hope to empower other designers mulling over a similar decision. This is a transcript of their conversation.
The Rumors
“Is the pay really better?”
M:
Okay, let’s just knock out some of the low-hanging fruit here right off the bat. I think these things are pretty well-known outside the world of in-house design. Yes, the pay is better. I think it’s because of how expensive agencies are for clients, right? Hiring those talents in-house is money saved for most businesses.
“What about work-life balance?”
D:
One of my biggest changes since starting at Root has been my work-life balance. I think one of the biggest appeals, when you work at an agency, is how the great culture is. Especially working where I was, where the headcount is super low, it’s really easy to quickly become involved with everyone on a personal level. You’re with these people 5 days a week. It’s super easy for the lines between bosses and coworkers to blend into friendships. Eventually, you start to justify working weekends, staying late, or coming in early without additional compensation. But after extended periods of time, those things start to wear you down.
Since coming to Root I have time now to go home and still feel like I have the energy to work on my passion projects. I’m not too burned out creatively to do those things. And our team is flexible enough to adjust project timelines when we need to. Sometimes things change and we need to start over, but we can scope out a little bit more time to get it right. I think it’s a much more natural and healthy way to work.
“You won’t get the support or the growth that you want in-house.”
M:
I think this rumor comes from the perception that design isn’t going to be valued in-house the way that it is at a creative agency. At an agency, you’re often put into a “us vs. them” mentality. Your team is the best, the smartest, the most creative, and the client’s team don’t know what they’re doing.
“At an agency, you’re often put into a “us vs. them” mentality. Your team is the best, the smartest, the most creative, and the client’s team don’t know what they’re doing.”
For me personally, this hasn’t been the case at all at Root. Working with a lot of clients you could see that you were selling your design work to them, and at times it took a lot of effort. In-house, you’re able to get feedback early from people whose opinions really matter. You don’t have to polish every idea that you have in order to communicate it. People are pretty sharp here, and they’re used to working with low-fidelity prototypes and wireframes. You can get real feedback on design decisions before having to overly invest. I think that creates a process that’s much more accelerated.
I feel like Root does a really good job of emphasizing the value of design. We’re treated like a partner to the other aspects of the business. That’s really really cool, and it’s nice to feel like my voice is heard.
D:
Everything we do here is so informed by the data that we’re collecting that I have support to be able to conduct interviews and dig deeper into my research. It’s just a common part of my job here. Whereas when I was at an agency there’s a tendency to use research as a way to justify the designs you’ve already created or as a talking point when you’re working with your client. It’s cool to actually feel like you’re using data meaningfully to create better work.
“We get their feedback and hear what’s working or not working for them, and our team’s able to quickly make changes to accommodate for that.”
And we see how design is impacting our users in real time. We get their feedback and hear what’s working or not working for them, and our team has the ability to quickly make changes to accommodate for that. It’s great to see that a small change that you spent a day or two on is actually saving people a ton of time and making their lives easier.
The Big One: Brand Burnout
“You’ll get burnt out working on the same brand all the time.”
M:
I think being a part of every aspect of design makes you feel more connected to it and more invested in it. You’re so entrenched in what you’re doing and you understand it so fully since you’ve been a part of it all along the way. That was one of the reasons why I came here in the first place. When I was at an agency, I felt like I was just selling things most of the time. I couldn’t affect the product, right? I was helping clients sell fast food, automotive parts or whatever, and I was really a marketer. I respect that industry a lot. That’s where I cut my teeth. You can create a lot of super cool things and change perceptions through marketing, but I always felt like I could only do so much as a creative at a hired agency. You’re so separated from whatever core industry you are contracted by. You can’t affect the company or the values or its interactions with its users. Being a designer at an in-house company where you’re able to say, “That’s a poor user experience,” or “That has these negative implications,” and then make actual changes, is super cool.
D:
I, a hundred percent, agree with that. At an agency, it was easy to have all of these crazy ideas on how to elevate a brand and do all this cool stuff. But now that I work at Root, at the end of the day, somehow, I feel passionate about insurance? It’s kind of silly to say that out loud. Even though I’m working for an insurance company, it feels way more like a tech start-up than just insurance. Yes, we’re working with a seemingly mundane thing that everybody has to have, but we’re doing it in a way that’s actually helping people. We’re trying to reinvent something that’s been unchanged for too long. When you’re in it every day, it’s really easy to feel passionate about what we’re doing at Root.
M:
I feel like with a lot of in-house gigs, it’s insurance, it’s medical, it’s banking or whatever, like mattresses or something that seems super boring. But I think that’s an old-school way of thinking. It’s just going to continue to move in this direction in the future. The future is direct-to-consumer. You don’t go to an office in order to buy insurance. Your insurance company is working directly with you. Those things don’t have to be boring. They’re boring because of what’s happened in the past. The fact is that our biggest competitive edge is that we understand the customer. We’re building something that is a truly great experience when every other insurance company is putting their customers through a rut that’s already been dug so deep. I think it’s really cool to be able to use your skills to improve people’s lives and improve the things that they have to participate in.
D:
It’s interesting to see how design can carry so much weight. I feel like I’ve always been hesitant about working in-house because it just feels like you’re just trying to make the company money. That’s the exact opposite of Root’s mentality. We’re trying to make somebody’s life easier and, I don’t know, just remove the middleman for them. We make it so that they don’t have to call somebody if they’re confused — we give them all the information they could need up front. We’re taking something that everyone needs but not everyone understands and giving them the ability to have the information in their hands. We aren’t trying to hide any of it.
“One of my biggest goals has always been to make our users feel empowered and confident so that we don’t have to sell them on Root.”
M:
One of my biggest goals has always been to make our users feel empowered and confident so that we don’t have to sell them on Root. Instead, we just explain to them how to make these purchasing decisions themselves, so that they can feel like they’re doing the right thing for themselves. And I believe that when we do that we become a natural option because we’ve been transparent about it. We made them feel confident. I think a lot of other companies in auto insurance or insurance in general — or fintech or anything — are pulling the wool over people’s eyes at times. There’s a misconception that “easy” means telling users, “We’ve done it all for you — trust us. This is what you want because we’re the best.” I do think that we need to make it easy and accommodating for the user, but that doesn’t mean we have to treat them like they’re stupid. They should feel like they’re making decisions for themselves. That doesn’t have to be difficult.
The Surprises
“What things have really surprised you about coming in-house?”
M:
I’ve learned to put my energy in the places that need it the most and to work iteratively to get the biggest benefit out of the time that I’m investing. As an agency designer, I was compelled to over-invest my effort into every project, because you want to make the very best thing from the start. Every aspect of the entire experience of the entire product has to be perfect before you start marketing it. In a world where you need to be competitive against people that have a lot more money and a lot more resources than you, you can get so much farther more quickly by carefully investing your energy in only the most effective places.
D:
For me, I wasn’t feeling challenged at my old job toward the end of my time there. I didn’t feel like I had the flexibility to make decisions or figure out what I wanted to do on my own. One of the things that drew me to Root was the different types of tools that we work with. Root’s internal platforms and apps were things I wasn’t familiar with previously. These new platforms really intrigued me creatively, and that’s something I had felt that I was missing from my job for a while.
It’s been really good since I came here. I’ve had so much more freedom to make my own decisions. I have input on what I want to work on or whether design work is viable for the team within a given timeframe. At my agency, it was more just based off of, you know, what the project manager or the creative director told you needed to be done. But at Root, I’m starting to learn more about the business side of things, and I feel more challenged. I don’t feel bored in my role anymore. It’s definitely been a lot to take in, especially in a complex industry like insurance. But it’s good to know that as designers we’re trusted to make big decisions that are right for the company.
Thanks to Dan Gualtieri for helping us cut out most of our “likes” and “um’s”.
