Design Spotlight — Connect distributed team members and create a great design culture
It has been two years since working from home is the norm for many technology companies. While there were a lot of benefits, working from home has posed some new challenges for employees, especially in building strong connections and trust among team members.
In VMware Design, we have implemented a Design Spotlight program to help the whole team define the Design culture, welcome new team hires, connect existing team members, and deepen product knowledge for the organization.
Are you interested in knowing how we do this? Please read on.
At the beginning of last year, I took on a design manager role and joined a new team — The Tanzu Product Design Team Design within the Modern Applications and Management Business Group. Our organizational goal was to create the cohesive Tanzu ecosystem with a consistent experience and seamless integration across multiple products.
With this vision, we needed to build a strong culture of collaboration where designers could understand each others’ products well and support each others’ progress in their respective product lines.
The challenges
Creating a design culture sounded like a common task for a design team of this size. But the timing and team settings made this challenge more interesting.
The Tanzu Product Design Team consists of people from different backgrounds: There were Pivotal and Heptio designers got acquired from the merger into VMware. There were also VMware Designers from other product teams who transitioned into this group. Of course, some new members had joined us from other companies as well. Additionally, this group of fifty members is spread across nine different time zones supporting various ecosystem pieces. With all these parties coming together, we needed to create a new shared identity and culture for this new group.
My design director Sudeep Dasgupta inspired us to create a culture of happiness for the team. He challenged the management team to create fun and playful avenues to increase engagements with the teams. He also wanted to empower team members to get to know each other and share their works. Being the team health person in the group, I volunteered for this effort.
What we have created
We created a monthly online gathering that focused on helping members get information about the people, product, and process.
The program mainly consisted of the following sections
- Product talk
- Pair introduction
- Guest speaker
- Recognition
Product talk
In the product talk sessions, we tasked our designers to introduce their product experience to other designers in the group. There were twenty-three product lines. Most designers would dedicate themselves to supporting mainly one product line. To create an end-to-end story across the whole Tanzu landscape, we needed to understand what was going on with our fellow designers and their products.
This section aimed to educate and increase awareness, not to show off or to persuade. At the end of each talk, we would collect feedback on whether the presenters had clearly communicated the concepts and topics. We now have an inventory of eleven topics of product talks that members can look through and learn.
Pair introduction
Pair introduction was the favorite part of Spotlight for most members. We would arrange two to three pairs of members beforehand, and they would meet virtually and get to know each other. We paired people up with the principle of getting long-timers to mix with newcomers. During the spotlight session, they would have 2 minutes to introduce their partners with the creation of some Figma cards. (See example above) The members found the arrangement helped them know at least one person in depth. And the audience always enjoyed learning so much about other members through the introduction. Mostly they were amazed at the incredible things people were doing outside of work.
Guest speakers
We also got different speakers outside the design team to come into the Spotlight program to share their wisdom and stories.
- We have invited our Tanzu Product Lines Vice President Craig McLuckie to share his thought on the vision of Tanzu and the trend of Kubernetes
- We have gotten our Customer Outbound team to share their process and findings around collecting customers insights
- We have design leaders in the industry to come in and share their perspectives on enterprise design
Helping the team expand their horizon beyond their day-to-day operations was an excellent investment for their growth.
Recognition
Last but not least, we had also included the recognition section. We wanted to create a culture where good deeds were recognized and celebrated. Designers could give a shoutout to different team members who had done extra work to empower design, assist customers, or improve the product results. The shoutouts would be announced live in the Spotlight program.
Some principles and lessons
It was fun and fruitful to drive this team initiative. It took good planning to ensure we had an excellent agenda for each Spotlight session. There are some principles or lessons learned from our previous sessions that I want to share with you.
Make it inclusive
There were almost fifty members across nine time zones for the Tanzu Product Design Team. We had presences across the whole US time zones and time zones in Europe, India, and China. We found Thursday early morning (in Pacific Time) the best time to run this program. It was still challenging for some folks to attend. But at least we were not asking people to stay up late on a Friday evening. We also recorded each session for folks who weren’t able to attend.
Make it relevant
The content in Spotlight was well-curated each time. There were five different product domains in Tanzu Product Design Team. We had been rotating the focus on various domains so members could get something different every time. We also wanted to make sure we serve the managers who need better visibility in other domains for strategy, as well as designers who collaborate with other domains for delivery.
Managed time well
The Spotlight was a big gathering/meeting. While it was optional for people to attend, we still needed to consider using members’ time effectively. If your overall schedule length is over one hour, make sure you have breaks built in there. And make each presenter accountable for their allocated time. After some feedback gathering, we moved our monthly gathering to a bi-monthly event. The designers all had other works and meetings that they were responsible for. So we were trying to find a good balance there.
Make it fun
While Spotlight already showed that much value for the team, we still needed to make it fun so people wouldn’t feel a burden of attending it, but instead, a time to be inspired and connected. Over the year, we have created different fun elements in the Spotlight program. We had a quiz game to see who in the team knew most of the trivia knowledge in the domains; we had a costume and virtual background contest for Halloween. Work has up and down. And Spotlight should always make people feel better.
Going forward
As we advance, we will keep listening to our audience for feedback about content and cadence. For example, we will introduce different segments into the program, such as design skill talks and success case studies. We have started to rotate Spotlight hosts to create different flavors of Spotlight. The Spotlight program will continue to be the Tanzu Product Design Team culture hub where we can come together to support each other, share stories, and celebrate wins.
We’re hiring!
Interested in helping us define the user experience for next-generation enterprise solutions? We’re hiring talented UX researchers, designers, and more.
Thank you Stela Stamenkova-Din for creating the wonderful cover illustration. And thank you Morgan McClelland and Richard Cooper for editing.
