How to design for impact-driven and mission-based organizations
Episode 006: Designer for All (Roxy Navarro)
For Roxy Navarro, design was something she never thought she’d pursue a career in. Of course, that was until a lot of things — her family, school, and friends — lead her to where she is now. Back in college, Roxy became a part of organizations that celebrated design and art — a good place for young Roxy who wanted to explore design. Despite majoring in Computer Science, the arts always called to her. At the same time, Roxy also had a lot of friends in the development sector, where she learned a lot about their advocacies.
Works of Heart backstory
Works of Heart, her design company, came forth because Roxy put two and two together: this is something she can do. She thought to herself, maybe art and design can be used for the things her friends so fiercely advocate for.
Roxy wasn’t able to focus on Works of Heart completely til a few years after it started. She had a job at P&G, which took up a lot of her time. Three years into her first job, she quit and pursued Works of Heart full-time. It wasn’t difficult for Roxy to look for people to join the team. The company’s values and goals were very apparent that people came flocking when they posted job listings. It’s easy to find like-minded people to join your team, especially when it comes to advocacies.
Over the time that Works of Heart has been operating, Roxy and her team has learned a lot about being a designer in the development sector. Here’s what she shared with us:
1. Explain the value of design to your target audience.
One of the difficulties Roxy and her team faced in the beginning was convincing their clients what design can do for them. A lot of clients can be skeptical to the point where they completely miss the point and think that it’s only about their campaigns looking good. That’s only half true since planning with design in mind can make your campaign look good while help their problems.
2. Be obsessed with giving your clients the value they need.
It’s possible that your client won’t know a thing about design. But that’s no problem because it’s your job to educate them about it. Before that, it’s important that you understand their goals, processes, and even target market. Learn to speak their language first, before bringing in the design aspect.
As the design team, you have to get on the same page as them. That usually entails going through the whole design process — from research, ideation to execution. This also how they can also adapt the design mindset whilst working on the campaign with you.
3. Understand their story better.
Part of the client-agency dynamic is building relationships with them and show that you genuinely care about their advocacies. You have to let them know that your relationship is more than just transactional. You are invested.
Assume nothing. As designers, you are experts with their processes, but not with their fields. This is your chance to establish that you’re helping each other accomplish a certain goal, and not just the design team working on it.
4. Make your passion sustainable.
This goes both ways: for a small design company to remain sustainable, they have to do a lot of cost segmentation. If a certain design will cost more money, charge more. It will depend on the impact and complexity of the design. If the increase in expenses will cause problems for your client, you have to guide them as well and teach them to invest. This will also open new doors for them as they might find people who could support their advocacy.
What’s next for Works of Heart?
For the longest time, Works of Heart has been a design group that create solutions for the client’s problems. Now that the team is a little bit older and more experiences, they can do more with the problems they control. This includes the problems that are close to their hearts. The next step for this boutique design company is to create solutions for the problems they often come across.
“To create our own projects that solve problems mean [something] to us.”
To the designers of today and tomorrow
The advice Roxy gives to designers, in any field and background, is to build your skillset. Make sure that you’re constantly improving and learning new things. Learning doesn’t have to be limited to the classroom or the things that you know. Your growth, in any context, should always be intentional, not just something you come across after accumulating experience along the years.
With regards to starting your own company, it’s important to set a really solid foundation. Don’t do it just because you want to start something. Don’t do it for the wrong reasons either. There is a lot of satisfaction from building a company because you have to have a lot of perseverance and grit. You may be wide-eyed and ecstatic in the beginning but your strength is tested once things get more complicated. At any point in your start-up journey, you reason for doing this must be clear — you have to have a clear ‘why.’
“Starting it is very simple but keeping it alive is much harder.”
This ‘why’ is what will keep you and your team going. It is what you will fall back on when things get tough. Make sure it is also clear enough that it is communicated well to your team and to the people you work with. That’s how you know you have a solid ‘why.’
