How to keep a healthy relationships on long term design projects
How working with close friends can impact projects: discussing the social side of projects we tend to not write about
Context
Earlier this year, I was assigned a project to redesign one of our in-house clients’ online services — let’s call it Project Unicorn. It was decent sized project, and low and behold, my partner for the project was my best friend during work hours. Not just similar thinkers, but both passionate foodies, we have been in the same department for a fifth of a century (centuries are much longer than years), but this was our first project together. As one of my closest professional friends in the creative business here in Berlin, I had a deep trust in his process and ways of thinking.
Before the Fall
Before commencing the project, I was about as wary having Foodie on the project as I have been in the past months to try the Moon Cup — which is quite some. Like friends’ experience with the Moon Cup that they recount to me over Afterwork Cocktails, it seems that this Device’s benefits are too good to be true. Of course there are several differences between a women’s sanitary item and good friends, yet I approached both situations with the same intrepid curiosity.
I’ve had time to build up a solid, trusting rapport with Foodie, and grown to know him as a person learns to know their colleagues at work in this day and age - plus a little more. So the last thing I wanted to do was throw it away due to a small on-project discrepancy.
I’ve heard past stories of colleagues concerning pies and too much time together between colleagues, and let’s just say the outcome was quite dim, slippery and earned one too many hospital appointments.
Moving forward to the present, right now I have a pile of post-it notes scattered on my table from our last retro together, and I am not sure how we managed to arrive at this point.
That Gamechanging Coffee
Right at the beginning of the project, as we sat down to our first coffee together as a new duo, Foodie and I put our heads together sipping our Caps (full fat milk, double shot) to discuss how we planned to run the project as team Unicorn. We had two main goals for the upcoming project.
- To create an outstanding, usable digital product. Yet for the long-term of the department we were working with, we wanted to
- supply our clients with the knowledge; process, skills etc. possible to develop digital projects in the future. We wanted to curate a workflow that allowed the team to work agile, lean and no bullsh##.
In this sense, Mooncups have quite similar goals to team Unicorn. As Mooncups are gamechangers for Women around the world during their time of need, Team Unicorn wanted to be the gamechanger. Yet instead of helping independent, modern women, we were there to assist large corporations ultimately trying to change their organization’s culture from the inside (So cliché, right?).
The project would involve more than 50 co-workers working alongside us in the project (mostly IT). However there were going to be 6 people within the within the core driving team. We were both assigned fundamental roles within the project as design lead and PM.
Like with many projects, the first weeks of Project Unicorn was about Inception/Scoping; discovering the clients and stakeholders, creating an understanding of how the clients ran their day to day activities and getting a feel for the project.
The Alice in Wonderland War room
Included in this inception period was being assigned a War room which cozily fit two adjustable standing tables which afforded us to both stand and sit despite their name. The size of the war room allowed for discussion rounds for 4–6 people and bare white walls which ran the length of the room. The room was topped off with a single glass wall facing the outside — all in all, a very comfortable environment to start a project. Yet the beauty of the surrounds would be wiped away within the month and as it was to be replaced with project material.
The Cheese is gifted
As the weeks ticked on and the walls began to fill with inspiration, personas, syntheses and the like, the room itself began to feel smaller and smaller. It was quite similar to the initial scenes from Alice in Wonderland when Alice falls into the rabbit hole into a pit and she feels seemingly large. To give some perspective — the long working hours in that office means that I have spent more hours breathing in Foodie’s CO2 than any other one person on this planet.
In the beginning of the project, evenings after work were quite cheerful. Working on-site for our client meant that we lived in a hotel most nights, but also meant we survived on takeaway dinners and hotel breakfasts. If anyone reading this has also been an on-site consultant you are probably unknowingly convulsing together parts of your face together as you know this life all too well.
Yet much like Harvey and Louis from Suits, work and leisure time began to blur together similar to lemonade-swirl Play-doh. Once you mix them together, there is no turning back. If you didn’t get the gist, Play-Doh colours should never be mixed. At first, we were able to separate our private lives from the office, however as the project moved forward and the hours in the office began to extend ever-so-gradually, our professional selves overtook our personal selves somewhat like the transition from Sméagol to Gollum, and all of a sudden we had lost ourselves in Project Unicorn.
Project Unicorn was us, and we were project Unicorn. Foodie and I began to see each other more and more as colleagues than as friends. Our down time together had come down to discussing user stories and design reviews like there was no tomorrow and snacking on those free bikkies you receive in conference rooms accompanied by the novelty-sized gaseuse water to wash it down.
(inserts non-existant photo of our office interior)
The Blue Cheese
Four weeks in, we had an argument about a… matter — perhaps fairly insignificant depending on how much you like Blue Cheese. We were gifted a roll of Blue cheese and popped it away in the cupboard for safe keeping, you know, for one of those ‘we-will-open-it-when-we-pass-our-next-big-hurdle’ moments. Be that as it may, we were still working on our main feature weeks later, and the stench from the cupboard was so overpowering it took over every crevice in the room. I’ll admit we had forgotten about it. Perhaps it was from the Blue-cheese high, but it was at this point as we sat in a co-creation session with our clients that we realized we had completely blurred the lines between colleagues and friends. This literal analogy of a bad smell in the room was a wakeup call to the importance of our relationship outside the project, and we decided that we needed to develop a sort-of Code for work and play. I didn’t want our memory of the project to end up with a Cream Pie. May I remind you of the developer pair at this point.
Below is the key to keeping that friendship alive at work. It probably isn’t as useful as say, an infinite knowledge base of Framer, but taking on some of this advice from someone that was about to lose a friend over a roll of stinky cheese isn’t a trivial thing. Not in my eyes. We sat down and discussed what we wanted to stop and start doing for the remainder of our time on the project. As I look down at the post-it notes scattered on my desk, I am of how far we have come both professionally and within our friendship. Let’s just say looking back I don’t know if I could have survived the months without Foodie as PM on the project.
9 tips for Keeping friendship alive at work when you’re work-travelling
1. Start Listening like no tomorrow
It can be tiring to always ‘be on’ during work hours — yet Foodie seems to do this quite well. At times we are more motivated to be switched on for clients rather than within the team. Yet you work as one team — in our case Team Unicorn! This means that your partner should be one of the first people you listen to. Learn to listen both inside and outside the war room you create!
2. Start to throw each others ideas out
“Love the problem, not the solution” Embrace the problem. Yet when it comes down to giving constructive feedback it can be the difficult providing tough critique to those you know best. In general, it’s simple to tell someone that their design is great, and leave it there. Yet we aren’t in the business of agreeing, we are in the business of making great products. If you don’t think you’re great at giving constructive feedback, it takes time to learn — but persist. Don’t tell your partner you don’t like their design, but dedicate time telling them why you believe the design doesn’t suit the user. When you’re catching this ball, make sure you take the feedback as a designer. We’re not hired to tell people what they want to hear, otherwise they could do that themselves (See more under treating the War Room like the sauna). Learn to love throwing out each others’ current solutions by building on them to make them better — especially if they’re a good friend.
3. Start Batting for the same team
Sometimes when I was young and wanted something, I would ask my mum, and if she said no, I would proceed to go and ask my dad, but depending on their relationship at the time and how much they were communicating would alter the result of their decision. The more communicative they were, the less likely I would be to convince one of them. Some days they already knew I had asked the other already, and their answer would already be a clear ‘no’. Remember that you’re on the same team, and if you don’t know the answer, or are hesitant, go to your other and discuss with them, don’t make any rash decisions on your own.
4. Don’t treat the War Room as you do the Sauna
Spending 24/7 with a colleague and friend, you have to set aside times for work and play. As I have mentioned that professional you may not be the same as outside-of-work you, the way you approach a colleague during work hours may not be the same as after hours. At work, treat them like a colleague, and don’t take what they say as a personal insult to the heart. Professional-PM-Foodie isn’t the same as out-of-the-office-Foodie, and the same goes does Professional-Designer-Kathryn, not being the same person as after-five-out-of-the-office-Kat. Stop taking feedback that they address to the project personally. Heck, that is an all-round suggestion.
Tip: Release all the stress by going somewhere and talking about something that isn’t work related. Remind each other that you’re more than design reviews and story writing. In my case being in Germany, our go-to relax is the Sauna and nothing exposes and your sketch-fatigued body than stripping down naked and sitting with a friend in somewhat damp, heated room.
5. Start Playing Ping Pong
As friends and colleagues, build each other up as you are there to motivate the rest of the team. Start throwing ideas off each other as your partner is your main start, and when there is tension between the creative team and the client, step out and have a chat, discuss it thoroughly.
6. Stop leading each other down the wrong path
There were times within in the first months where we both felt as though we were on the same page, yet it was difficult to move other people within our team. It can be easy to get into the trap of complaining, and it is easy to bring each other down without finding positives to thrive on within a project. Put a positive spin on all aspects of your project — including blue cheese incidents. Remember, you’re building to launch for your users, not for yourself.
7. Stop building Walls
There may be times when you just don’t want to communicate, Spending 24/7 with each other, both at work, and then back at the hotel, but don’t build up a wall of silence if you don’t feel like communicating. Tell your partner you need some alone time. Foodie can read the signs when I am tired and grumpy and can usually gauge when to give me some space, but in some situations you might need to tell your partner to give you some time to work through something. However in most situations, the best remedy is to pull them along for the journey and get them to pair on some work with you. Two heads are always better than one!
8. go to the Olympics.
Take breaks, and when you do, play some short games with your colleagues, get the blood flowing in your heads again!
9. Stop letting the way they chew disturb the office, hack it.
Spending so much time around someone might get allow some of their smaller, peculiar habits get the better of you. It might be the way they chew their food, or the way you’re late, but let them know that it frustrates you early before it blows out of control. After all they’re your best friend. Make changes early, or learn to appreciate their qwerks and don’t let that be the reason you’re no longer hanging out after work.
Today
Reorganising these post it notes one final time as I finish writing up this post-project note makes it seem that the project ended quite well. There were some rocky periods, but moving through our troughs and peaks the last six months, we fought through have had our contract extended and are moving into part two of the project all the wiser, knowing that after this, we will come out the other end better friends than before. After so many ups and downs, hesitations and wariness throughout the beginning steps of this project, the product development went quite well. It is at this time of the project, where I look forward and thinking to myself perhaps this is the month I really will try the Moon cup.
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Kathryn is works at the Volkswagen Group Services focusing on Digital Product Development based out of Berlin. The department develops user-centred products and redesigns existing product & service lines adopting Lean and Agile co-creation methods. VWGS creates products through user-centred research methods and dthe transfer of necessary knowledge to clients. It also dedicates themselves to changing clients perspective on culture within digital development projects working closely alongside clients throughout the development process.
