Recap: Lab 2 — Breakfast with Goodpatch
Since this lab was called “Breakfast with Goodpatch”, the sehen und ernten team hosted a little breakfast that contained all you need to have a good start to the day — after everything was finished, we were only 10 minutes late, so that the talk could start almost on time.
A quick reminder: We are sehen und ernten, a Berlin-based office for design students. Our goal is to extend the mostly theoretical design education of Berlin’s University for Applied Science to real jobs. We also provide workshops, talks and events that are more creative and progressive than what you can find at the university. As we reached our fourth year, we decided to stage a free design conference called /suelabweeks. Over a period of six weeks, we are trying out new formats. Last week, Alex gave an insight to the first lab and here you can have a look at it. Now, I am going to give my impression about the second lab that was held on Thursday, when Jan Bisson and Matthias Flucke, designers at Goodpatch Berlin (and former HTW Berlin students as well!), came over and told us a little bit about the ongoing workflows at their Berlin office.
Goodpatch, founded 2011 in Tokyo, is a company for UI design with already 70 members of seven nationalities and in two locations, but still working very close as one united team. To obtain a close connection and as much transparency as possible between the subsidiaries, they hold monthly hangouts that they call Pizzapatches. In addition, colleagues write daily reports and do morning stand ups, in order to create an overlook on the upcoming tasks.
Besides their UI designing and developing work for customers, Goodpatch also creates software pieces for themselves that fit quite well with their own transparent attitude. For example, Updraft is a feedback tool that helps optimizeing inhouse feedback workflows. You can have a closer look at it here.
As mentioned earlier, Goodpatch values communication and transparency as essential. Their design process is mainly based on those virtues, hence they offer “Product hours” in which customers may come and brainstorm about their product with the designers before the final design kick-off. Although Goodpatch designers spend a lot of time with their clients to provide attention to detail, they stated that at least two days a week need to be kept for internal agency and educational stuff including meetups or talks.
So after the final kick-off, work can get started — always in partnership with the clients, as mentioned before. Each single step such as ideation, implementation and so on is followed by constant reviews to check with everybody involved. Overall, the final launch is just the start since great digital products are never finished.
Lastly, Matthias and Jan were so kind as to give some insights on their careers paths from university onwards until they finally joined Goodpatch, which was very helpful and encouraging as it showed that some struggle inyour path as a designer maybe a part of your personal development and can help you to grow until you finally find a place you feel thoroughly comfortable with.
Goodpatch considers themselves to be a very young team still, with a strong desire to learn combined with much potential and great ambition. Flat hierarchies and high responsibility taken byor everyone involved contribute to get great stuff done here.
Props and thanks a lot to Jan and Matthias for joining us for the morning and sharing their experience with us. Goodpatch Berlin is always looking for good people. Stop by at their website for more information.
For those of you who were not able to participate in our last lab, it is highly recommended to drop by at our recap meetup at re:publica 10 next Wednesday or one of our upcoming lab events in our sehen und ernten office.
You can follow sehen und ernten on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. And you can find me on Twitter.
