Team Growth
JP Morgan Chase
There was an existing book of work for the old experience, and what would soon be the proposed next steps to renew ALL of consumers product, there were a total of three designer, only part of a development team and the sorting of financial alignment to separate products and commitments was on the table, this next step was for rapid growth in members and in commitment.
Obstacles
Demand was immediate and expectation was high
There was not nearly enough minds and hands to execute the work
Designers are people and none of them come in knowing everything, training time, culture fit and socializing that design is not a “plug and play model”
This was an opportunity to educate the importance of data, design thinking and how sometimes taking a moment means saving tech time
< eye chart on the complexity of products we built experiences for
Role and process
Design lead, to manager and partner to mentor and decision maker. With this growth both in people, but also in scope it was an opportunity to look at the way we interacted with each other. This was a pivotal moment that design went from a service to a partner at the table of decisions and problem solving. There a lot of “A-HA” moments, but a true turning point was recognizing the importance of decisioning based on what the customer is doing vs what one or two people think.
Results
The team grew first to 4, then to 8 to 16 to 40+, added dedicated content, researchers and the amazing layer of project managers. In product the team went from 1 to 4. To 32 when i left chase after 8 years the product group was almost 80 people. Engineering was in the 800s. And our book of work was our own $110,000,000 platform
For 7 years running (all the years running the team, i had the highest employee satisfaction score and the lowest attrition rate In DCE which was the original name for the design group at chase)
It wasn’t too long before the “repeat” of certain areas of the experience kept being teased forward. We started to frame out our own design library, there was a larger system in the works, but we were moving faster. ( which made adaptation a little easier when we connected to the larger system). I could see that we could get a pretty good amount of time back to focus on research and innovation, by providing a library of already approved and ready to go “blocks”. This way the designer and team could focus on the uniques needs of the specific products.
The reduction in redundancy and stray parts would lend it self to better cohesion, smoother and more sound experience for the user and encouraged stronger communication between teams.
Keywords
UX design, Design Director, Design Leader, project management, agile, jira is a tool mentoring has its rewards, Product is my partner, design systems are your friend. Culture carrier ,Team growth, Accountability. Collaboration, efficient time to market. Smiling designers Our proof is in our data.
