Team rituals and culture of the GoMerchant Design Team

As the GoMerchant team grew, processes and rituals became very important.

1. Design Critiques

Design Critiques were the first one we instituted. This was a weekly design and research only session where designers could present their work to other designers. These would be weekly and designers were encouraged to show work in progress. To setup this session as a safe space, leaders were expected to be vulnerable and lead by showing their own work in progress.

2. Design Review

With a need to showcase our work and drive alignment with non-design stakeholders, we setup a Design Review. The format of the design review was formal compared to our informal design critique. We invited non-design stakeholders to the review so that the feedback we collect could flow back into the design process. This was done weekly if required but usually as per our product development cycle it was bi-weekly.

3. Design Standup (for lack of a better term)

I used to be the only designer on my team based in India, but until the lockdown I did not think about instituting any daily standups. I used to frequently travel to Indonesia and everyone else was based in the same office. I felt that was enough. But when the pandemic hit and the designers started being isolated in their houses, Maji and I decided to setup a daily cooler talk. We called it Design Standup but we didn’t want it to be a ‘standup’. We encouraged folks to talk about their personal life, what they were going through and what they were doing. We played games, drew murals together on digital whiteboards and went down internet rabbit holes. Attendance was never compulsory, you could join in if you felt like it. We always posted the link and created a thread of what we discussed on our channel so that if you missed out, you could still follow what was discussed. This ritual couldn’t have been achieved without the team members especially Maji, Lauditta and Aryo driving the conversations.

I wonder if this is replicable or was I lucky to have this wonderful team…