Material+ Global Design at Scale

 

Material+ is an insights and implementation agency that has been developing science-based tools for customer understanding for over 40 years. The company was formed through a Private Equity acquisition of 14 individual small to mid-sized firms; allowing the teams to learn + make in unison.

The product design department was primarily comprised of existing talent from one of the acquisitions, but grew through merging other teams and external recruitment as the business scaled. With designers remotely located across the U.S., Europe and Asia, teams needed to establish unified process, tools, knowledge and strategies to enable collaboration and delivery of their craft.

The Ask

Led the integration of 14+ agencies with five interdisciplinary, globally-distributed design teams. Scale the team to become an industry-shaping, outcome-driven design organization that transforms digital and customer experiences for the world’s greatest brands.

 
 
 

TIMELINE: 2 YEARS

Step

One

Set Up the Scaffolding

Prior to scaling the team, I needed to conduct my own version of a “sprint zero.” I defined a north star vision for the team, and establish frameworks for getting us there.

Department Confluence

My Directors and I developed operational and best practice content to unify our practice and inform new joiners.

Content was broken out into Employee Experience, Departmental Information, Discipline-specific Information, and practice-wide case studies.

Content Included:

  • Job Descriptions + Competencies

  • Interview Tooling

  • Onboarding Materials

  • Departmental Policies

  • Professional Development Model

Step

Two

Find the Right Humans

Once we had initial policies, and tools set up, it was time to scale. I inherited a strong leadership team, so we focused recruitment on “Swiss army knife” I.C.s with cross-functional experience and diverse backgrounds.

Diversifying Resources

When resourcing a team, it is important to compile a group of diverse thinkers across a variety of characteristics. We explored diversity through the lens of the team's professional profiles, specializations, identities and development goals.

  • Role/Title

  • Education

  • Industry focus or experience

  • Area of expertise

  • Legacy agency affiliation

  • Tenure

  • Developmental Goals

  • Team Exposure

Professional Profile Characteristics

Creative Recruitment

My team capitalized on market shifts by mining “open for work” spreadsheets that were publicly shared on LinkedIn for available candidates. I tapped into organizations like BlacksWho.Design to explore their talent pools.

Step

Three

Define the Process

Once we had a good team shape established, I rallied leadership and I.C.s from every function to map an ideal-state service blueprint, documenting the people processes and props we use to deliver best in class work.

Service Blueprint

I convened key stakeholders from every practice and facilitated multi-day workshops to map and refine our agency’s ideal end to end product development lifecycle.

The output contained project phases, a cross-functional RACI, client journey map, and templates for each deliverable.

Tools for Success

  • Experience Evaluations

    Templates and criteria were developed for Heuristics, Content Audits, Accessibility Assessments, Competitive Landscapes and other critical evaluation outputs.

  • White Label Design System

    An atomic design language system inclusive of file maintenance guidlines, accessibility requirements, and annotation best practices was rolled out company-wide to increase the velocity of our foundational design work.

  • Digital Team Room

    To unify and align global teams across various practices, I developed a “Team Room” where project members could interact, review historical project progress, and develop team norms to empathize with one another.

  • Team Health Measurement

    I launched a quantitative approach to gather team feedback on the progress and wellbeing of our internal teams. We merged the survey into our retro ceremonies and use the output to hold team members and leadership accountable for improvements.

  • Team Design Principles

    Building off best practices of my predecessors, I facilitated a team-wide workshop where we co-created Design Principles to carry with us across every client and engagement

  • Workshop Toolkit

    We developed a toolkit for facilitating in-person, remote, and hybrid workshops that were unique to our own teams approach, but accessible to any and all participants.

  • Business Development Toolkit

    We codified our ways of working and capabilities into a business development toolkit that enabled sales teams to grow our reach in partnership with leadership from across the company

  • Agile Design Ways of Working

    I collaborated with our product management team to define, document, and socialize the manner in which we infuse agile methodologies into our craft and scale our ways of working across engagements

Proof Points

After two years under my leadership, the Material+ design team increased its reach and impact across the organization. The team weathered difficult economic headwinds while adding new clients to their portfolio and successfully retaining existing relationships. Together, we became a unified organization that could flex across a variety of problem sets, adding value for our users.

RECORD-SETTING
NET PROMOTER SCORE

Our team recorded the highest NPS from any department across the company. Team members cited the leadership team as a primary factor in their satisfaction.

STRONG TEAM-WIDE UTILIZATION

Our team stayed booked and busy in a tough business climate. Collectively, we added value to both client work and internal initiatives.

IMPACTFUL COLLABORATION

67% of the team list our culture of fostering impactful team work as a primary reason they feel energized within their roles.

GLOBAL TALENT
EXPANSION

Using the hiring and professional development tools I’ve developed, we are in process of expanding our international teams.