The Tiny Internal Agency
How multidisciplinary designers can maximise impact at early-stage startups
This article is adapted from my recent talk at Product Tank Singapore: Product Design.
Reflecting on my (not so long) career experience, I’ve been zigzagging through computer science, design, and now onto product management. Depending on the stage of growth, culture, and organisational structure of the company, design teams functions vastly differently in different contexts.
Almost two years ago, I joined StashAway as the first employee and led the product and design functions through a successful initial product launch and now post-launch growth optimisation phases. When asked to gave a talk at a recent Product Tank meetup, I looked back at my work since joining StashAway and summarised a few insights on how designers can maximise their impact in these organisations.
Early-stage startups
Designers at early stage startups often find themselves working on problems across disciplines — from branding, product management, to UI/UX design. And more often than not, they are required to operate under extremely tight time and budget constraints. These factors make the experience of working at an early-stage startup so different from working in a well-established corporate company. However, these constraints doesn’t mean that designers in early-stage startups can’t reach their full potentials and create major impact through their work — quite the opposite — light processes and the messy, “get stuff done” makers culture of such teams are usually the ideal environment for designers to cultivate and establish “design-driven organisations”, which are proven to be able to deliver better business results on the long run.
The unique characteristics of early-stage startups require designers who can thrive in such environments. Taking a look at designer titles in the current job market with a quick Google search:
…one can see that the majority of titles are suggesting specialised roles, such as information architect, or motion designer; or certain rank levels, such as junior or senior designers. In early-stage startups, however, such titles are usually not as relevant as in bigger, more well-established companies. What early-stage startups need, or will be most benefited from, are designers working as tiny internal agencies.
The tiny internal agency
“Design everything” — Designer Fund
The tiny internal agency model doesn’t mean designers should work in silos or not collaborating with other stakeholders. It is simply a way to think of your role as a full-service design agency. Specifically, this means:
The tiny internal agency is guided by a set of values and principles.
Instead of just doing what’s been told, designers work under the tiny internal agency understand the essential values and principles that make the job meaningful and effective, and use these values and principles to guide their work.
The tiny internal agency should not be treated as a resource, but as a partner.
Design has the unique power to drive business innovation, therefore designers should be regarded as business partners, instead of just resources. This means they are involved in key decision-making processes and “have a seat at the table”.
The tiny internal agency should strive to provide holistic, interdisciplinary services.
Since resources are constraints and the type of jobs to be done are so diverse at early-stage startups, designers need to understand what kind of work may reach the biggest impact at different stages of company growth, and provide holistic, interdisciplinary design services that help achieve these results. In a way, designers at early-stage startups should aim to “design everything”.
How could that be possible? How could we design everything when we have so little time and so much to deliver?
A look at culture, process and self
The framework I see how designers can work as tiny internal agencies at early-stage startups — and at the same time remain centred and fulfilled— is by focusing on three separate layers of change: culture, process and self.
A collaborative, experiment-driven culture where everyone has ownership
Startup founders or early stage employees are uniquely positioned to set the culture of the organisation. As designers in these teams, advocating a collaborative, experiment-driven culture is an important component of the job on top of day-to-day design work. In addition, designers should also own the entire customer experience end-to-end, understand how touch points are integrated and impacting each other, and design the customer journey from a holistic point of view.
An iterative product development process where constant learning is facilitated through discovery cycles
Just depending on culture itself is not enough to work efficiently as a team. To help everyone gain a shared understanding of the work and expected outcomes, an iterative product discovery cycle should be implemented to integrate seamlessly with engineering sprints. Discovery cycle utilises a variety of research and design activities to surface customer pain points and inform new feature development, design improvements, as well as product prioritisation. At StashAway, discovery cycles are independent of dev sprints where the two processes run in parallel to minimise dependencies.
An open, growth-oriented mindset where personal improvements and career development are prioritised
The ever-changing nature of early-stage startups means that a growth mindset is required for designers working in these environments. After all, rapid personal growth and career development are one major factor in attracting designers to join early-stage startups. Besides, it is also important to stay centred and mindful, and actively find mentorship out of your own organisation if you ever find yourself working as the user experience team of one.
We are constantly on the lookout for great talents to join our team. Visit our careers page to learn more and feel free to reach out to us!
