SAAS PRODUCT & SYSTEM DESIGN

In this presentation, I will illustrate how my Team and I designed the internal design system that is used for creating multiple applications, from concepts to execution. I will also attempt to demonstrate my role in the project and highlight some of our achievements, while demonstrating my ability to coach and ensure high-quality design work.

Creating the Team

I joined GetMega in May 2019. For the first six months, I was the only designer. In October 2019, I hired a team of 4 talented product designers from IIT Guwahati. In March 2020, we increased the team size by recruiting five freshers from the National Institute of Design (NID). As the freshly graduated NID students had limited knowledge of our product and softwares we use, I planned a systematic two-week onboarding programme that included:

1. Products Walkthrough

2. Skill Development

3. Assessments

Based on the assignments, assessments, and strengths, I allocated projects to each.

Team Culture

I played the role of a team leader. As a leader, my personal and professional highs and lows had an impact on team members. In a situation like covid, where we worked from home, I had to make special efforts to create team bonding. When we were working from the office, I started playing games after 4 pm every day with the team. We used to Play Poker and Rummy. After the WFH started, I started ‘Design Playdates’ every Friday, where we explored new digital multiplayer games. My team was working on various projects remotely and had no idea of what was happening in different Pods of the design team. Daily stand-ups were too mainstream. Just like a coin at a time in our Gullak (Hindi for Piggy Bank), we started to drop a thought about Design Experiences, dreams and frustrations during the day.

That was my way of Connecting People!

My Role & Responsibility

I assigned 2 UX Designers and 1 UI designer for the project. My role was to set goals, design criteria and then set the designers free to explore the solutions. I helped the team by guiding them on design while also suggesting software hacks and shortcuts, providing resources, improving design quality and getting to the finishing line.

I was also managing the culture and morale of the team. Meanwhile I also worked closely with the product manager on the strategy of the project.

Timeline: September 2020 - till now

Impact

In 6 months, with a team of just 3, we were able to design 10 different applications for internal usage.

  1. For Hr team, we designed application like Pulse and Appraisal.

  2. For Growth team, we designed applications like Deposit offer and Leaderboard.

  3. For the Product team, we designed scheduler, collusion, task and reward, celebrity MTT.

  4. For Customer Support team, we developed player profile, KYC.

For upcoming projects, time taken to design MVP’s have drastically reduced, while ensuring a reliable and consistent design quality.

Each application’s development is a case study by itself. Following are sneak peek of how some of the applications look.

Areas of Improvement

I am still discovering what kind of a leader I want to be. I keep experimenting with various leaderships styles as a mentor, peer or critique.

  1. While onboarding the freshers, I would like to give more time to absorb the company’s process and culture while also observing and learning about the products.

  2. The UI kit that we developed, though was helpful in the speed of execution, it was detrimental to the creative risk-taking capability of the designers. I would want to allow more flexibility here.

  3. The products we developed were functional but fairly undelightful. The overall look and feel of the applications do not reflect accurately on the GetMega culture.