RBFCU

Coaching Design Thinking
June 2019 I set a goal of conducting a simple design workshop for a handful of product managers, developers, and product owners. Because development of products moved quick in this work environment, I wanted to create “design champions” across the credit union - starting with some of my peers.

I introduced a few excerpts from Ray Dalio’s book Principles. There is a 5 step process that the book illustrates that I thought would resonate with this specific group; (1) set goals, (2) come across a problem or experience failure, (3) learn from the problem or failure, (4) design and improve, (5) do it better and more of it. I dove into step 4 of the process and reviewed a model of iterative design. The purpose was to convey that there is no finish line for design. The culture of applying a bandaid to a problem and “moving on” had to change. I wanted to encourage non-designers that they were capable of designing and collaborating on solutions as well as anyone.

Exercise The Design Muscle
I wanted to introduce a simple exercise for the team. Something that impacted everyone in the group and that we could have fun with. At the time I was at RBFCU, it was difficult to make a personal phone call without others listening in on the call. There was no privacy because of the configuration and logistics. There were understanding and informal rules where phone calls were not allowed, and that limited our options as to where we could make or accept a phone call. Leadership did acknowledge the problem and brought in a privacy booth as a solution. But now there were new challenges; it was in close proximity to the work areas, you could still hear some of the conversation in the booth, and everyone could see you while you sat and made a personal call. It was awkward and embarrassing for everyone. No one wanted to use it.

So as a team exercise we all brain stormed and assigned one person to draw while others shared ideas. Those ideas spun off other ideas. The goal was not to solve the problem in one sitting, but to surface and understand the problems in making a personal call, then outline potential solutions.

Strategic Application
Not long after this workshop, we came across an opportunity to exercise this methodology and involve stakeholders.

For over a year we would go directly to the local branches to interview members for design feedback or gather customer experiences. We wanted a more systematic way of recruiting participants for testing. In addition, compliance no longer wanted interviews to be conducted at the branches - they wanted these interviews to be conducted at HQ. So this changed all our processes and introduced a host of new challenges.

In short, we designed a strategy to target specific members and filter them out if they didn’t meet our own criteria, as well as those that were not genuinely interested in contributing. The idea of creating a power user group was floated, and rotating members out of the group to replenish the testing pool. We whiteboarded the process and goals. It was important to define the expectations we had for the member, as well as the business unit expectations.