Where it all started
How we laid the foundations for our design team
As I joined Wunder in mid-July 2018, there wasn’t one united design team. Quite surprising though, as Wunder is already four years old and is running successful products, serving millions of users worldwide.
I started working on Wunder’s new shuttle product as the only product designer and collaborated closely with product owners and engineers — all of them gave super valid and helpful input. But I missed the unique feedback and critique of a fellow designer, someone who maybe already faced some of the issues I ran into.
Avoid the trap of “fooling yourself into thinking that all the best ideas are yours.” Jeffrey Kalmikoff
Of course, there were already several amazing and talented designers working for Wunder at that time, but a team structure, regular meetings or gatherings were missing. At that time Wunder was constantly growing super fast across-the-board. 🚀
I asked myself how can our, growing design team catch up with the challenges in a fast-paced startup environment like ours at Wunder. The answer was simple:
We designers need to grow too. As a team.
But to do so, first everyone had to come to the table.
2018: A quick recap of a tremendous year for Wunder
The year has flown by — and it has been some crazy successful 12 months at Wunder Mobility. Check out some of the fantastic things that happened:
- We grew from around 50 people to more than 100 by the end of the year
- We now offer three products to provide sustainable mobility solutions for every use case
- We obtained a $30M Series B funding — which allows us to accelerate our mission to enable communities globally to deploy sustainable mobility solutions faster
- We had our most successful launch yet with our Carpool product in Brazil
- The excellent team of Fleetbird joined Wunder
- Our design team grew from 2 to 8 designers
The whole mobility industry is moving crazy fast — Wunder is not just a part of that movement but a driving force.
We have to scale — our work and our personalities
Without a doubt, all designers working at Wunder are great in what they do, whether it is brand, visual or product design. But as our whole company grew so fast, some things got left behind, like:
- Communication — Feedback and discussions are one key ingredient for high-quality design. Of course, we did talk to each other, but constant feedback sessions (like Weekly Visual Standups) just were not there yet.
- Structure — Our designers are decentralized embedded in their teams or squads — working independently. Which is the right approach in a tech company, but also a reason for mentioned lacking communication? To grow and develop yourself it is critical to chat with other designers regularly.
- Vision — A global (long-term) vision for what design at Wunder should look like in the future was missing, just like a (mid-term) mission for what design at Wunder should achieve as a team in 2019.
To find answers on the above (and other) challenges, we decided that we need to gather as designers. Outside of project needs or daily business boundaries.
First things first — getting to know each other
We had a first informal DESIGN@WUNDER meeting in October this year, during our Wunder Mobility Summit.
This was also the first time all of us met face-to-face.
As an outcome, we agreed that it would be priceless to profit from each others knowledge and experience. Every designer has their superpower and feels most comfortable in different parts of the design process.
Ok — let’s do a workshop then?
We decided to facilitate a workshop in early December to lay out the foundations for our chapter.
The aim of our first DESIGN@WUNDER workshop was to join forces, share knowledge and eventually shape a strong design chapter inside Wunder.
Yeah, but please with a goal!
You want to work in a healthy and productive environment? You do not want to waste your colleagues time? You do not want your colleagues to hate you?
Whenever you call a meeting, start with a stated goal. Come up with an agenda. Push for timeboxes and vigorously avoid off topic conversations.
As I started wrapping my head around an agenda for that workshop I asked myself what our goal is and how can we achieve it — we only had one day and 8 hours is not that much time. So before drafting an agenda, I came up with two goals:
- We want to identify as a team
- We have to decide on a roadmap and commit to it
First DESIGN@WUNDER Workshop
Setting the stage
Yes, it is a workshop — of course, you need some preparation, supplies, and rules:
- Timebox. A tight schedule builds confidence in the sprint process. I used a Time Timer to create focus and urgency.
- Supplies. I cleaned the whiteboards, got some markers, post-its, Sharpies and sticky dots.
- No distractions. No laptops, phones, or iPads allowed. If you need your device, leave the room or wait for a break.
We started in an easy manner with some breakfast and relaxed talks. But at 10 AM we jumped right into our first part of the workshop, which was all about understanding — where is Wunder right now, where is the company heading to? What are our current roles, obstacles, and ideas?
10.00 — Lightning Talks w/ Peers
⏰ 50 minutes
⚡️ So what’s going on at Wunder? Let’s get some insights from Leadership, Product, Engineering and Marketing into recent & upcoming developments.
✍ ️After every talk, we reserved 10 minutes to pin Post-its on our whiteboard quickly.
Imagine your team as a ship which has a propelling sail and a decelerating anchor. We separated our Post-its in things that are pushing us forward ⛵ and stuff that is holding us back (in doing great design or growing as a team) ⚓️. Thank you AJ&Smart for that super helpful metaphor.
11.00 — Lightning Talks w/ Designers
⏰ 50 minutes
⚡️ What did we work on the last weeks? Briefly present our most recent work and talk about obstacles we faced.
12.00 — Structure & refine our notes and ideas
⏰ 30 minutes
🗣 Discuss, gather, enrich and structure what we have noticed so far.
We used our Post-its from previous sessions to restructure and categorize ideas & obstacles so we can rephrase them to How Might We’s later.
12.30 — Lunch 🍔 🙃
The second part was about rephrasing & discussing what we talked about and eventually trying to find first solutions. At the end of the day, we should have been able to conclude on a first rough draft roadmap for DESIGN@WUNDER 2019.
13.45 — How Might We?
⏰ 30 minutes
📝 Narrow and diverge notes to converge towards questions which can be answered.
Nice, we managed the first half of our workshop. Now let us rephrase our findings & learnings of previous sessions. We should rewrite them to How Might We’s, so we can conclude on actual questions and find practical answers.
14.15 — Action up! Discuss and vote
⏰ 105 minutes
🗣 Collect and structure what we have so far.
We used some sticky dots to vote for which challenges to tackle first. That was the starting point of our roadmap.
16.30 — Conclude on DESIGN@WUNDER Roadmap 2019
⏰ 45 minutes
🗣 Collect and structure what we have so far.
Awesome, almost at the finish line. 🏁 Let’s wrap it up by coming up with a first draft of a chapter roadmap for 2019.
So yeah, eventually we agreed on a chapter roadmap for 2019. I eventually used the OKR framework to rephrase all of the topics to a meaningful timeline.
But way more important — we really shaped as a team, together we discovered what is needed to form a supportive open and curious design team.
To be honest, I was really touched about all the positive energy and curiosity. All the discussions and talks laid a very fertile foundation on which we, the whole team, but also every individual can develop.
I am proud working with these super talented guys. I guess everyone else felt the same at the end of the day. We grew together, also inside the Wunder family.
You want to know what is going on at Wunder? You want to work in a super diverse, innovative and friendly environment? You want take ownership for something that has a global impact?
Drop me a line on LinkedIn, send me an e-mail or check out our careers page.
Besides by Google’s Design Sprints, I got heavily inspired by the awesome guys from AJ&Smart — some of the techniques we used were inspired by their concept of Lightning Decision Jam. Cheers guys! ✌️
