Building a Design Culture

My workstation.

It has been 2 weeks since I started on the design team at Udemy. Every member of the 4 person team has been at the company for less than a year. Since the team is so new, a lot of the support structures and resources you would expect a design team to have are absent. While this sometimes is a hindrance, it is also an incredibly exciting opportunity to lay out the blueprints of a design culture and then build from the ground up.

First day balloon.

What is in a healthy design culture? 

I've come to see it as 3 critical types of resources:

1. Virtual - Where do we put all our files? How do we structure and label them? How do we keep track of all the design projects? Where can people from other teams find the information they need?

2. Physical - Where does the design team work? Is this space large and flexible enough to accommodate physical artifacts, such as post it walls and sketches? Does the atmosphere encourage collaboration and openness?

3. Community - Do people know what the design team does and who they are? Do people know how to work with designers? When and how do we share our work with a wider audience within the company? What about outside the company?

As I continue my journey at Udemy, I will be working to answer those questions and will share my progress here!

A coworker drew this cartoon of me before we headed out for lunch.