My second UX meet-up within the team
Dear friends! Let me tell you about one of the most exciting moments of my time as a trainee with Societe Generale CIB; the bi-annual meet-up that brings the whole team together twice a year. The last meet-up was held in London, which gave me a chance to travel to leave the Paris office and visit the UK capital for the first time. With three days of meetings and activities planned, I was entrusted with the task of photographing the event. I have a long-standing interest in and love of photography, and was thrilled to bring my DSLR camera along, to capture the meet-up’s most memorable moments. So much was packed into such a short time, but keep this down to a manageable size. With that in mind, here’s a potted account of my experience…
Day 1
Woke up, got my myself ready and prepared my photography gear. Quickly grabbed a coffee at the hotel, before meeting the rest of the team in the lobby. We walked to the meet-up location; an old apartment in the trendy Shoreditch area of town, which had been turned into an event space. The team from the London office was already there, ready to welcome us. It was great to meet face to face colleagues that I’d mostly got to know remotely.
To put everyone in a good, sharing frame of mind, our boss Morgane Peng gathered us in a circle for a warm-up exercise called Five Minutes of Fame. Each of us took the floor to introduce themself, and to share a story from their lives when they had experienced a brief moment of fame. Damien’s sticks in my mind. “I made a website about the cow’s digestive system when I was 11,” he confided in us, which gave us all a pretty good laugh. My moment of fame was helping around 30 travelers on Couchsurfing by hosting them for free. It proved a great starting point to share crazy anecdotes about our times as hosts and travelers later in the day.
It was a good way to get a peek at everybody’s life from a different angle and it brought us closer.
After sharing a few funny stories, we sat down to the first two strategy presentations of the day which were about the UX team vision. I’ll make it simple for you:
“Our mission is to grow to empower the bank to offer meaningful digital product, be the design practitioner that lead the B2B finance and promote the next generation team model.”
Since we’re a growing team, this was a great opportunity for a photoshoot and some official group pictures. For these shots, I deferred to a professional. To find the right setting, we left the meeting space and walked towards Liverpool street where the London office is located. We wanted something refreshing. Not too “corporate”, as we don’t think we really fit the image of typical bankers. The photographer directed us so the picture was visually balanced. It was particularly interesting for me to watch them work. For a touch of cool, we wore the pixel sunglasses that we made for the Flupa UX Days that were held in Paris last June. The end result was great. Everyone looked colorful and beautiful.
Back at the meeting space, we talked about the Societe Generale Design System, which was first created in 2015. Louis-Laurent and Lucas, who are in charge of our design system visually, explained its evolution and talked about the new rules coming up. We went through some dos and don’ts, drawing on different use cases. The various molecules and new components which were emphasized gave us a good idea of how to use them.
Time to practice… I teamed up with Marion and Samy to redesign an old interface, accounting for the evolution of our design system. We challenged the application to enhance the user experience. Louis-Laurent kept a benevolent eye on us and helped out when needed. After 30 minutes, we then shared our ideas with the team, and gathered feedback. I really appreciated how collaboration brought out our best ideas. We usually work in pairs to design, but working in groups during this workshop was a novel and useful experience.
After a long day of team collaboration, we headed to Stratford — site of the 2012 Olympic Games — to relax and have some fun with a game of laser tag. We divided into three teams to play two games each with a small tournament structure. I teamed up with Louis Laurent, Julien, Samy and Damien. I thought things were looking pretty good for us, but we ended up at the bottom of the rankings *sigh* Too bad :( Despite that, it was a nice experience, and I had a lot of fun in there.
Day 2
8 AM. Time to wake up for my second day in London. After a satisfying breakfast at the hotel with the Paris team, I walked to the working space. Camille, who works on the SG Markets platform experience, took to the floor to talk about her area of expertise. SG Markets is Societe Generale’s marketplace of BtoB services, gathering together the solutions of Global Markets, Financing, Global Transaction Banking and Securities Services. I found this presentation very thoughtful as Camille explained thoroughly how the user experience has evolved so that end-users can find easily the appropriate service. You can have look at our services for yourself on our website: info.sgmarkets.com.
Marine — who manages regularly to share her experience with design school students, as well as being a jobbing designer like the rest of us — is obviously one of life’s truly organized people. She gave a presentation about how to handle four projects at the same time. Working days can be busy with meetings, crunch times and deadlines to deal with, and I’m looking forward to trying her tips for productivity and organization. I’m particularly interested in the idea that giving over two mornings per week to deep-thinking can improve overall productivity.
And now the fun part for me: a creativity challenge!
I’ve always been a “hands-on” person, so the next activity on our schedule really grabbed me. This year, we’ve been involved a lot in our team’s communication, with the aim of presenting ourselves as we really are. We collectively chose our team’s motto — Rethink complexity — and, as more of a visual thinker, I threw myself into the sticker creating session.
We had 15 minutes to ideate and sketch as many stickers as we wanted. The end-goal was to put them on our computers, distribute them to people we work with and basically to show our true colors through our designs. This challenge was a blast, turning my ideas into bright designs with a pack of Sharpies. The Best ones (if I say so myself) used humor.
Finally, we ended the day with an overview of all the interfaces that we’ve created this year. The rules were simple: in one minute — and one minute only — each interface was described by its designer. It was a very interesting exercise since we got to learn a lot from our peers, and everybody had an opportunity to question the designers and make insightful comments about our interfaces.
Day 3
At our regular morning coffee appointment, everybody was talking about the previous evening’s field-trip to a local rooftop bar. We still had lots of subjects to go through but the everyone was bright-eyed — surprisingly — and we were all ready to get at it.
We started the day with a brainstorming session on the subject of rethinking snapshots and project flow. I teamed up with Michael, Damien and louilo to analyse the pain points and the needs of project flows that we spend most time with at work, keeping notes of all the events related to a project. The goal in our session was to provide new ideas about how we might improve our project management. For example, we use excel tools to keep track of all the tasks for a project, but this format isn’t necessarily the best one. In front of the team, we suggested the move to JIRA for project management, and the implementation of a ticket system. Many disagreed, arguing that JIRA would be too complex for our needs. But, after a long discussion, we came up with a solution: leverage on the recommendations of a coach that can help us collectively and individually, by observing how we work.
Spoiler alert: we did hire a coach shortly after the meet-up, and everyone seems to have implemented at least one tip or best practice suggestion that he gave us.
After that brainstorming session, Morgane shared a talk from Erin Meyer, discussing the cultural differences that can exist in business environments. In the video she showed us, a Dutch person and a British person were depicted with their different ways of thinking, and we saw how differences can impact both positively and negatively. The observations about French culture, and our habit of giving less positive feedback than negative feedback, rang true to my ears. As we routinely deal with British, Chinese and Indian collaborators through our projects at the bank, we should always try to be aware of the different strengths and ways of thinking that our international partners bring to the table.
Time to go back
Even though I needed to go back to Paris, as I had a busy weekend ahead of me, I still took some time to think about this intense but much-needed three-day meet-up. Much has changed since the first meet-up that I attended just last February. The team has grown considerably, and I’ve found myself a permanent spot in it. I feel like I fully understood our problematics this time around, and even contributed — when I could — to the debates. I’ve found it fulfilling to master complex subjects and to get to the point where I can comfortably play around with them in my head.
This meet-up went fast but it certainly crammed in a lot of learning. The design system workshop, the creativity challenge and the brainstorm about rethinking our snapshots were my favorite activities. I was pleased to meet and collaborate with all of my colleagues in such a relaxed but productive way. Each and every one of us contributed to share their knowledge, and that, ultimately, is what makes us our team powerful. A special thanks to Morgane and Camille for organizing a truly memorable trip. And a huge one to Damien, who helped me to write this article.
