Building Design Teams That Scale with Anjali Deswandikar
Episode 55 - A business can only grow as much as its people. That is why it is important to build teams with the knowledge that each of them is a key member who will eventually become a senior as you grow. In this episode, Leigh Allen-Arredondo interviews Anjali Deswandikar, the Design Director at Terralogic, Inc. and Design Team Lead at Lollypop Design, about building design teams that scale. Anjali talks about the process it took to build her teams across the globe, seeing as they grew from a handful to over 250. She takes us through the structures in place as well as how she ensures that teams are both values-driven and function with high performance. As design leaders, you don't have to bear all the weight alone. You have your team with you who can help, so build them well through this conversation.
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Transcript: Episode 55, Building Design Teams That Scale with Anjali Deswandikar
Leigh: Welcome to UX Cake. In this episode, we're talking about building design teams that scale and especially how do you build a design team that is both values-driven and high-performance. My guest, Anjali Deswandikar is the Design Director at Lollypop Design and she has an immense amount of experience in setting up design teams and practices as well as nurturing and developing designers who are producing world-class designs and keeping them motivated to learn and improve and contribute to the team.
Anjali built a 250-plus-person team from the ground up for Lollypop Design in Mumbai and she's doing it again, this time in San Jose, California. Let's find out how Anjali approaches building a design team that scales and the important elements she's learned to put in place as a team grows from a handful to over 250. Be sure to check out the resource links from this episode in the show description and let's get started.
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Leigh: Anjali, it is so great to have you here on UX Cake. Thank you so much for joining me.
Anjali: Thank you so much. It's great to be here and discuss with you such an important topic.
Leigh: Are you joining me from your office in San Jose?
Anjali: Yes, this is my office in San Jose. We are at Lollypop San Jose office now.
Leigh: I am very excited to speak with you. We're going to be talking about building and scaling UX design teams and there is a lot in that. I know that there's a lot to cover, so hopefully, we'll hit the high points, but before we dive into that, I would love it if you could take us back a little to what it was like for you to become a design manager for the first time.
Anjali: It's an interesting thing to start off. It takes me back to what I felt like to become a design manager. Honestly speaking, when I think of that time when I first stepped into the leadership or management of a design team. I never felt myself that I had climbed up the ladder as a designer because I wanted to keep myself as a designer for as long as I can.
I'm still a designer, but if you disconnect yourself and keep yourself, position yourself on a higher scale as a design manager or leader, sometimes people lose or get disconnected with the actual designers. I never wanted to do that. I kept telling myself that, “It's okay. I'm a part of the team as much as everyone else is and let's see how it goes.” That was my feeling, but I did know that there is a lot of responsibility. There are going to be a team who will be looking up to me. There'll be my seniors who will be questioning me. It's a position in that you need to carry the weight very well, understanding your responsibilities. Those were my thoughts.
Leigh: As for most people, the first time you do it, many of us feel like we're almost like thrown into it, but you learn as you go and I'm very curious. Now you have been building teams and scaling teams and you're doing it again now in San Jose for Lollypop Design. I would love to dive before we jump into building and scaling the foundational things that maybe some of the skills you had to develop have proven foundational for you.
Anjali: If I have to talk about the skills that you need to be part of the leadership team into design, I can say that sometimes it's in you that you have that driving force to come forward and lead a bunch of teams or a bunch of designers. That's there in you but as a part of something important that you must remember or develop. Skill is, I can say empathy. As designers, it's very evident that the emotions are always on a high. You need to be very careful and understanding, very empathetic to know that you are among bunch of a group who are emotionally driven folks.
When there is a high in emotion, there comes the greatest creative things or we can build beautiful products. Emotions are important, but for developing skills, I would say having that empathetic view, understanding that everyone is emotionally driven because when giving and taking feedback, what happens is we tend to upset someone. If someone goes down emotionally, that affects the quality.
There is always a give and take in any design teams. You need to constantly keep improving because everyone comes from their own perspective, but when you're working as a team, when you have a design team leader, you need to be making sure that the quality is maintained. There are design directions that are intended to be. In the give and take of the feedback, sometimes what happens is the other person or a member of your team may not understand your perspective. They may feel that it's a personal remark on their output.
There is always a give and take in any design team. You need to constantly keep improving because everyone comes from their own perspective.
You need to be very careful have you open your feedback towards them and that is why it's very important to understand and always keep reminding yourself of your own journey as a designer. When you give feedback, there is an impact, but a very important skill is to channel that impact into something that's productive for you. That's going to turn out as an improvement for you. You need to come down to a designer's level and always speak their language in a way that you respect them, in a way that you are able to explain it to them.
When you give feedback, there is an impact. A very important skill is to channel that impact into something productive for you.
Why and how and what is the reason you are telling them this? How is this going to give them a lead into something? It's always best to give them examples from your own journey, from your own experiences with working with clients. It's like working with a bunch of kids, like if you are going to tell a kid. He's not going to understand because there is a gap in perspective. Once you give an example, they tend to understand. That's how you can be empathetic with them.
Leigh: I want to get to some of the more soft skills. I want to circle back around to that maybe before we dive in a little bit more. You have been building teams and like I said, you're doing it again for Lollypop Design and that's what you're doing in San Jose. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about the teams that you have built. What's the function? There are a lot of different ways to describe design or UX. Maybe what functionality in the whole product life cycle is your team involved in?
Anjali: I have been part of Lollypop Design for years now and that's my major term where I have been building team teams, and design teams and I'm still scaling them at different locations now. Even previously, I was part of other bunch of companies where I have built design teams and managed them, but Lollypop being the recent and the present, I would like to talk about it the most.
When I started off the task that was given to me back in 2018 was Lollypop wanted to start off with another center in Mumbai. Mumbai in India is the FinTech center, so we wanted to tap into the clients from FinTech and EdTech. We wanted to explore there, so they wanted to open a center in Mumbai. I was pretty new to that though I have been a design manager but I thought, unless you take a new challenge, you won't grow yourself. It's always good to take up new things.
I took it up and we literally started from scratch where at that center I had no one. We started hiring teams. My primary focus has always been UX. I have more experience in user experience, design and user research but my role over here was as an overall design manager to build the entire design team. Now, the structure we have here is we have UX designers and UI designers. We have artists and illustrators but when you are a design leader then you are building and scaling the entire design team.
You need to have an understanding of how each and every team fit together, what their roles are and how they function collaboratively good enough to be able to deliver your end product. Now, speaking of UX designers. I would say the UX is the front engine of any work that we begin. Having said that, we need to understand if we are building any product. Let's take an example: if we are building a digital product, then this team steps in first is why we can say that we get the balls rolling.
We need to understand the overall business intent. We need to be able to paint that vision of how this product is going to be. We, I'm talking we as in the UX team, being the front engine of any design journey. We need to make sure that there is a lot of weight on the shoulders where we need to make sure that whatever we are painting as a picture that's being rendered as intended.
It's never your job done when you hand it off to the next team. You have to take that responsibility of making sure that it is being developed as you have envisioned because it's the UX team who envisions it, who paints that picture to the business that, “This is how your product is going to look like.” Over here, thankfully, the team that we have built, the platform that we have, the processes, we'll talk about that more, but the processes that we have laid out, we are able to make sure that we are 100% delivering what we paid. That is where we fit in as a UX team.
We start off by starting with the vision, goals and everything, then we have a blueprint of the entire design, then we hand it off to the next who or add in more magic to it by putting colors and fonts, etc., which is the UI team. Comes in the development side, where we have to make sure that all of these teams are with us from day one.
For example, we can suggest ten features for any product, but what if the development team is not able to deliver that? We have to understand the tech feasibility as well. We make sure that every team in the entire design journey is involved with us, along with us then we hand hold them of what we have designed. That's where fit and that's where my aim was in terms of building the UX journey.
Leigh: I'm curious. Are you working in a, it sounds like a more of an agency type where your clients are the ones who are responsible for coming up with the idea for the product, then they hire your company to build that? Where do you have an opportunity to affect the overall strategy of the product? Very often UX designers and researchers are able to identify maybe some misses and gaps in what the business thinks their users want and what their users want or need. I'm curious how you and your teams work or work with them.
Anjali: That's a very important aspect because I believe and that's what even I give it back and try to have such values into my team. We should not be taking the entire responsibility of building the product. I like to call UX designers or designers overall as the facilitators. We are a very essential factor in the design journey where we need to step in and show the direction. We need to step in and show this is how it's done and why it's done. That is where we plug and play because when you said that businesses give us the idea, but they don't know how to execute it. They don't know how and if it'll be effective or not. Whether it'll be successful or not.
What we do is we do have different methods. We do conduct workshops where there are such interactive and collaborative workshops. For example, we do discovery workshops where we discuss, and brainstorm with businesses. These are the times when they realize through the methods and techniques that we use during the workshop that they understand, “We are thinking of this route, but that may not be possible at this point in time because of the perspective we bring in with our own experience with other projects and other products.”
Such workshops are, I would say, eye-opening workshops even for businesses. Our job over there is like a facilitator to drive them, to show them the entire ecosystem, to tell them what is possible, what is not possible, what can hit the mark in the market and what can make you unsuccessful. For example, we come in and drink in perspective from all three sides. The businesses have their own perspective but we brought in the market perspective, user perspective and usability aspect to it. Which is the, how it can be done?
Design Teams: Our job over there is like a facilitator to drive businesses, to show them the entire ecosystem, to tell them what is possible and what is not, what can hit the mark in the market, and what can make you unsuccessful.
With all of that, we play a role of a facilitator who helps them understand their own vision in a much better way. We were set to do ten things, but it makes sense to cut short and do the four things first, get a feedback from the users and move on to the next thing. This is, I would say, an important process, which happens at the initial stage of any engagement, along with us being involved. We are that agent who makes that change or we drive them to such decisions.
Leigh: Thank you for that. I can paint the picture of how your teams are working. Let's talk a little bit about building a team that can do all of what you are describing, which is discovery through execution and integrating with researchers, with product managers, with your clients and with developers. That's a monumental task. I would love to maybe break it down a little as far as fundamentally, what has to be in place first? What are the most important things to have in place when you are identifying, how am I going to build this team?
Anjali: Fundamentally, if we have to think about what things we need to take care of is when you are a very small team or we are starting off to build a team. When I started my first team building here in Mumbai, four years back, I brought in my experience from the industry and from other past experiences. It is a great chance to include or have those values set for your team. It is very important when you are a very small team like, say, 7 to 8-member team, to work very cohesively, respect each other, and make sure that each member is a very key member now, which will turn into seniors as we grow.
It's very important fundamentally at that point in time to work very cohesively. Making sure that you meet quite often. You rerate your values as a team or you reiterate your vision, where you want to go, how far, how big you want to grow it and what is the path that you have in vision? That's very crucial because this core team is going to build further down. That’s on a softer side or soft skills you can say.
Apart from that, in terms of structure, in terms of processes, the moment you hit the mark of, say 15-20 or start growing further than that. There are more designers, obviously. There are more dynamics within the team and that's when you have to make sure that you have a proper structure in place, a hierarchy in place but that's on the papers.
Leigh: On the career level, is what you're talking?
Anjali: Yes, I would say the structure of the team, where you have juniors and you have associate seniors and then seniors, then associate leads and leads. That structure in place, so you need to have a structure on paper so that you know how your team is going to expand. Whether you are not making your team bottom heavy or top-heavy, you need to strike that right balance because the way team is going to expand, it's going to have an effect on your business or on your financials also.
You need to have a very strong structure in place and build on top of that. When I say it should be only on paper as in it should be very subtle. It should be very flat structured when it comes to working on the ground. The very crucial thing is you need to respect each and every team member and should not consider their levels or what role they present whether they're juniors or seniors because when it comes to ideas, any pressure or junior can give as equal of an idea as any lead or any senior that can give you. It's a very fine balance that you need to have, even though you have a set structure as a team that everyone in the team is respected. Everyone in the team is valued.
Leigh: It seems like you maybe even earlier on developed a structure so that you can have more experienced people mentoring the less experienced people.
Anjali: That's the importance of us having a structure. You did mention about a career ladder, so that's also another part that we had defined in the early stages. I had set for the career parts of every person because any person who joins your company or your team, it's a win-win for both of us. The company is gaining that talent and that designer is joining such a great team. It's vice versa. The designer looks up to you for having a great time here and having a great career here.
It's very important as a designer lead to making sure that everyone's career path is stitched well. It's been communicated to them and their aspirations, goals, and objectives have been considered and been laid out. It's a very transparent discussion you need to have with them on a frequent basis that they know that this is where they stand, where they want to go and what delta they want to cover for going to the next step. That, for every person, needs to be done. Every designer has to be done within the team.
Design Teams: It's very important as a design lead to ensure everyone's career path is stitched well and communicated to them, and their aspirations, goals, and objectives have been considered and laid out.
Leigh: Those are important steps that sometimes can linger on. They get pushed out beyond the day-to-day work. Speaking of day-to-day work, I am curious. I'd love to know how you went about it the first time building in your processes and maybe we can get to what you do differently now or what you realized you would do differently.
What were the processes that you were putting into place to make sure things were being able to run smoothly? There are so many things. There's resourcing that has to be done. There are the actual tools that everybody's going to be using and there are design systems. When you're in an agency, you're working with a whole lot of different clients. You've also got things to consider, like change management and bug management. There are so many things that the design operations piece. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about what was most important to have in place early on? What was able to grow more organically.
Anjali: Starting off first, it was very important to have a team structure, as I mentioned, to have it in place, to have everyone's career path drawn and a method to do so when anyone joins you. Once that is when individually everyone is taken care of, the next thing that was very much important was onboarding piece. The way you operate with different apps or websites, you feel the onboarding is something that welcome piece, which is very important to you.
If you don't feel welcomed, then there is a disconnect or you feel that you haven't got a good experience. We figured out that that onboarding piece has to be done well. For anyone who joins them, they join us with a lot of dreams with a lot of aspirations. They need to be reciprocated in the same way. That needs to be taken care of. Onboarding is a very important piece. As you mentioned, there are different things in the design ops. There is client handling. There is recruiting, which is the hiring piece. There is the other soft skill development piece. There is a technical skills development piece and many more like that.
There are other initiatives which keep the team active and alive. Those things also need to go on. The moment we started hitting the mark of 50 and 100 and now we are 250 plus designers team overall, globally but the moment you start growing, you need to start defining each of these pockets, which are important for design ops. What we felt, me, alongside a few other leads, figured out is it is best to find out everyone's interest. Some people are great in terms of conducting team activities. Some people are great. I'm talking about art designers.
Some designers are great at client handling. They're great in talking to them. They're great in convincing. Some are great in understanding about hiring. They have that knack for knowing this will be a great fit for our team. Our first thing was to identify who has what interest then we made a platform where we had these different groups. We call it Squads. We made those groups and made those designers responsible for those tasks. We told them, “That's your unit. That's your squad. You build it and you grow it.” Anyone who is given the responsibility of something that they like take it to the next level.
That's what we try to do and we make sure that apart from the routine work we do as a designer, being a UX designer or a UI designer. If we are associated with some a task and we've been given some responsibility towards our design agency, then they will put 100% and everyone has been successful in doing so. That's how we divided and gave the responsibilities and control of individual operations within the design op to these units. They started driving it on their own. It became a self-running engine where things were moving.
Leigh: I'm curious about the integrated processes and how you were able to if you've got different squads managing things. The things that come to mind are everybody needs to agree on file structure, for some reason, that's always a problem. Everybody needs to agree on or not everyone needs to agree on, but there has to be a common language for the processes you're using, the tools you're using. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about it before you had the squads.
I imagine like at some point, you weren't big enough to have squads yet, but maybe you had individuals and you were able to put one person in charge of figuring out what tools we should be using in the process for that and for how are we going to interact with developers? What tools are we going to use so that they can see our work, they know where to go, what tools are we going to use so that we can track the bugs? On the front end, what tools are we going to use so that we can more efficiently create functional specs if you do that or prototyping and things like that?
Anjali: In terms of processes, as you said, the squads are something that has been running in parallel but has a quality output. Something that keeps our standards or we grow in terms of delivery standards. That was the main function that we had to focus on. Collaboration was the key over there and setting up the right processes was a key. What we tried to do over there was every unit, we need to understand how it fits well in the entire design journey.
As I had mentioned earlier, as a role of a UX designer in terms of the entire design journey, we have set processes in terms of making sure that, for example, when we hand it over to a developer. There is a tracking sheet where we put screens designed versus what is being developed. We compare one on one and we come up with the changes. For that, we schedule calls frequently on a daily basis to make sure that it is being developed the way we have designed it.
When we start off, there is always a detailed plan in place, which is offered a design plan. There is a development plan. It works in parallel, so we don't have to wait for a design to get over. We start with the development. Everything over here, we make sure that it works in parallel. All the teams are talking to each other. At every point in time, they're collaborating with each other and handing off the stuff which is being signed off to the next team and there is a file structure.
There is a documentation in place where we have finalized a few things, where there is a platform where we hand over the stuff because what we do is the client needs to know what's going on where we stand. We have a team which is a very crucial team. We call it as project managers. They bind every one of us together. They make sure that everything is being ideal as for the standards. Everything is sticking to the plan.
The next team gets a heads up if there is a challenge for the previous team or the next team gets everything that is dependable for them. That’s how all of our teams are tied up together. We take help of tools like Trello. We use Drive to share the data. We use Hangouts. We use Miro boards. We use Figma for designing and transferring the design elements to the next team. That's how we collaborate and we make sure that we are following the processes, so that it gets passed on in a way it needs to be.
Leigh: I'm curious if, in building teams, you have found some. It's more about like where are the big shifts? Your primary focus before your team is ten people, maybe. What's that look like? Going from 10 to 15 or 20, what are the challenges there?
Anjali: I would say while building from a smaller number to a bigger number, the main challenge is while we say that we include all the best values and keep the culture growing. We have all the team motivated towards growth. The key factor is we are not just doing that. We are also working on the live projects at that moment. We've been busy all of the time, but then we also have to make sure that the other aspects have been taken care of.
We are under pressure at all times because we are an agency. We have to keep our standards high in terms of what we deliver, but at the same time, every designer, all our team needs to be motivated enough. This is the greatest challenge that I've always faced. If we have been working for days together on a very busy schedule, on a very challenging project, we need to, again, circle back as a team. We need to again, come back and have some fun activities. We need to again get involved in some other aspects of the other squads that we have defined.
That becomes challenging when we are rurally crunched with time in terms of delivering something. It becomes very challenging there and some designers feel that they want to give up. They don't want to continue. That there is too much of a pressure. As design leaders, we need to tell them that it's a phase they want to go through and how best learnings they can take out of this time. Sometimes there are clients and businesses who are tough. They make your job so tough that you want to give up, like, “I'm done with so many iterations.”
You sometimes feel limited to telling them the importance of what you are bringing the value, but at such times, you are improving your communication skills. You are improving your patients by working with them. Such things, as a design leader, you need to go back and tell your team that it's not just for the work that you are here.
It's also for building yourself as an overall holistic designer in terms of communication, building other soft skills. These are the tough times which you need to back your team. You need to tell them what are the good things that you can take away from such tough times. Those are the challenges that you face where you need to have a very stable head and keep backing your team up at all times.
Leigh: I'm curious that if there are any things that you put into place earlier on that you found didn't scale, maybe as you got bigger and you had to find new ways to do it. Something that comes to mind for me is with a smaller team. There's a certain approach you could take for everyone reviewing each other's work, doing regular reviews of each other's work. If you don't have something to replace that, I've seen that fall by the wayside and nobody's reviewing each other's work and everyone's in a silo. That's one example, but I'm curious if anything like that comes to mind for you.
Anjali: That did happen. It's never like everything is running smoothly ever. Everyone gets distracted. Everyone gets busier in terms of doing their own things. We did have these moments that we faced that, “Everyone is busy, so what happens to all the other things that we have said or planned for the team?” It has happened with us where there have been some skips in terms of reviews but we, as a leadership team that we have built, we are always in a close connection.
We keep communicating. We look at the gaps that we have missed or what happened then we build or make sure that we have an action plan for that thing not to be repeated. There are some misses in terms of some wrong hires that we do. There are sometimes misses in terms of someone having some personal issue. They're misreviewing some files and the file went off, but the very important part is, as a design leader, how do you step in and solve that problem?
Are you responsible enough to go back to that, understand what happened and come up with an action plan for that? It's a very crucial thing for any design leader to understand that everything has a way. Everything can be solved. If you go with that vision, there is no problem. Even if we have such roadblocks, there is a way out. You need to be very observant, I would say, on those and be connected as a leadership team together to be able to step in and solve and come up an action plan.
It's a very crucial thing for any design leader to understand that everything has a way; everything can be solved.
Leigh: There’s something that you said that made me think because I have seen a lot of leaders who are building a team for the first time. Depends on personality, but some people can be incredibly afraid of making mistakes and that's human. First of all, you can tell them all you want, “You're going to make mistakes and it's going to happen. Don't let it stop you from moving forward.” Something you said made me think about an important part, which is that you don't have to do it alone as much as possible. You said you established early on a design leadership team with you, so that you've got other people who are able to help you keep check some balances maybe.
Anjali: That's important to establish at first.
Leigh: What you're talking about is finding ways that you're not the only person responsible for the way things are running. I'd love to get your thoughts, maybe someone's advice for someone who's in that position. How can someone else go about doing that?
Anjali: I would say it's very tricky to say, but you are alone, but at the same time, you're not alone. I know it's a very different paradox I'm talking about. What I mean is you, as a design leader, should take the entire responsibility. That way, you're alone. You don't have to build the entire weight on your shoulders. You be responsible, but to lift those weights, you build a team around you who you feel can do along with you.
It's simple as if you're going to need some tools, you are going to need some tools. You cannot do that alone. You need to be able to see that vision. You need to be able to see what are your strengths, your own weaknesses and your limitations. That way, you can make the team which supports you in a way to fill your gaps and in a way makes you stronger as a leadership team. That's very important. That's why I can say that it's been a great learning for me as well. You need to train your mind to be adaptive for changes as well. It's very crucial that you need to understand that every step it's not the end, but you're going to learn further as well.
Leigh: It's even better if you can teach your team to do the same.
Anjali: That's why like at Lollypop, this is another important aspect. We give a lot of importance for learning and sharing because being in this design field, being the designer, you need to be at top of the game. Now we are in the US and alongside the other top agencies. We need to understand the maturity of the market, which we do from the work we've been doing here in the Us and the feedback we get.
Another aspect is keeping that learning and sharing alive within your team where everyone feels that they're growing. They're not doing some work, which is being given to them, but they're learning, given responsibilities, and are in the game as per the latest trends. They are producing some great work, which is top-notch as per the latest standards. That's, again, a responsibility of a leadership team to make sure that you are passing on those practices, knowledge and whatever it takes for everyone to learn.
Leigh: That's a great way to segue into the end of our conversation, which has been fantastic. Before we go, I'm wondering if you have any resources you would suggest for others who are building teams or doing something you have done.
Anjali: Honestly, the practicality of the thing is I can say that I have a few resources, but I get much less time to go through them. I rely on talking and learning from, I would say my seniors from other design leaders by conversing with them, by knowing their experiences. When I talk to my team, I tell them my own experiences and knowledge about it and how I have gone about it or discuss it with them.
That's the primary thing I would say you should want to rely on. Apart from that, I follow Jared Spool. There is a great platform that Jared has built on Leaders of Awesomeness. If there are great topics that are discussed there, I like to listen to those. It's a very practical way of telling the solutions to some problems. A design leader can anytime go to such platforms. There are Design Better design ops handbooks. From Design Better, there is a design leadership handbook.
There are a bunch of these things which are like, again, team topologies. There are three or four things which I can say people can go through whenever they have time. I think it is best to be very much alive in the design community, to keep meeting the other design leaders, to share their knowledge and experiences and analyze from that to be able to guide that you’ll do.
Design Teams: It is best to be very much alive in the design community, to keep meeting other design leaders, to share their knowledge and experiences, and to analyze from that to be able to guide.
Leigh: The Leaders of Awesomeness platform is large and it's free. A good one to mention to folks. I have very much enjoyed our conversation, Anjali. Thank you so much for joining me on UX Cake.
Anjali: Thank you so much. I enjoyed talking to you as well. Thank you, Leigh.
Leigh: Thank you so much for your time.
Important Links
Jared Spool – LinkedIn
Design Ops handbook, Design Engineering handbook, & Design Leadership handbook: Designbetter.co
About Anjali Deswandikar
Anjali Deswandikar is Design Director, USA, for Lollypop.design, a global design agency, and oversees the End-to-End delivery of User Centric Digital Solution (across channels) with a focus on enhancing Customer Experience. Anjali has 20 years of experience in design and research, and has immense experience in building and scaling design teams and practices, delivering world-class products and experiences for international customers.