Breaking your 1:1 meeting status quo

Applying design thinking principles for effective and efficient one-on-one meetings

The front line between you and your manager is your weekly one-on-one. It’s the meeting to connect on project work, review updates, and share what you’re focusing on. This meeting will fall into a status quo. Not by desire or intention, it’s human nature to get comfortable doing things the same way. As a manager, my status quo question is, “What’s on your mind?” It’s a decent question, but not always the best use of your time. As an employee, you want to get the most value out of the time with your manager.

I’ll share a simple tool to create effective and efficient one-on-ones. I’ve developed this tool from the methods I use as an experience designer and design thinking facilitator. Design Thinking projects start with organizing (messy) information, taking into consideration all roles, viewpoints, and systems to discover otherwise hidden insights and efficiencies. Before we dive into the details, a little more context is needed. After all, one can use a butter knife as a screwdriver — effective yes, efficient no.

As a manager, some expectations I have are: this meeting is for you to drive, for you to design, and for you to ask for what you need. My job is to provide context, direction, insight, and remove roadblocks. It isn’t for me to tell you exactly what to do or how to do the job at hand. Managing up is a crucial skill — my go-to article for this is HBRs’ on Managing your Boss, it’s worth the read.

Let’s begin with this assertion — Each manager has their own processes, areas of focus, and communication styles. Accept it, and don’t waste your time trying to change them. This tool is about changing how you engage with them. You, on average, get 20-ish minutes a week with your manager. Why not design it to get the most value out of it!

Over the years, I have iterated on my one-on-one to design an effective and efficient tool, and three insights have emerged — Keep it simple, transparent, and flexible.

Simple: Craft it to be a part of your weekly routine, something that doesn’t need more than 5–10 minutes to do.

Transparent: Your manager isn’t any different than you and is also switching contexts and juggling projects. A shared living document will provide a clear focus.

Flexible: Not every meeting needs to cover the same things, and every manager wants different information.

Ready for the tool?

• It’s a shared living document
• Updated and shared prior to each meeting
• With topics divided into three consistent themes — FYI, Input needed, and Decision needed

Yup, it’s as simple as that.

Let’s break it down.

The shared living document. Applying the principle — Recollection over Recall. Studies show us that it’s easier (for humans) to recognize and remember things we have previously experienced (in this case seen) then it is to recall something from memory. The shared document does two things, one it cancels out any recency bias, and two becomes a week-over-week tracking tool painting the full picture of your progress, growth, and outcomes.

Shared prior to the meeting. Context shifting and back-to-back meetings are not a manager’s friend. By sharing what you want to cover in your meeting beforehand (recommended 24 hours before) will allow both of you to zero in on the highest priority items to cover. Personally, this has been crazy valuable to build my managing-up skills as I’m forced each week to stop and reflect on what information I need to share and where more context may be required. After all, a laundry list of completed activities doesn’t paint a picture of how work is progressing or your outcomes.

Consistent themes. This theme has two principles. The first is Consistency, which is a trust builder. Think about it; you trust the door will open because it opens every time (yes, until it doesn’t, and you no longer trust that door). The second is Chunked Information. We know that information grouped into themes is (more) easily understood (and recalled) then a long list of this-and-that. The themes need to be flexible to accommodate your manager’s needs — remember, each manager will want different information. By consistently organizing information into these three themes will lower the number of random fly-by questions. And — bonus, you have an organized place to capture and track topics throughout the week.

Now let’s talk about the FYI, Input needed, and Decision needed themes. These themes have proven to be flexible, effective, and efficient to meet the needs of any manager. And they become supercharged when combined with the user experience principle of Framing, which is the idea that how information is organized and shared can alter our judgment and affect decisions. As an example, if you only talk about the projects that are on fire or conversely completed activities, it will affect how your manager makes decisions. These themes force you to classify information that will focus both of you.

Theme 1 — The FYI. This section is for items you think your manager needs to be aware of as a leader. I have yet to find a manager who loves surprises at work (yes, even good surprises). This section isn’t a laundry list of everything completed since the last meeting; it’s the key things they need to know. The pre-read gives you the ability to share information beforehand, so during the meeting, it’s not the focus, leaving time to discuss higher value items. Trust that your manager will ask if they have questions in the FYI section. As an outcome, you may notice less, “What’s the status of XYZ” questions.

Theme 2 — Input needed. This section is for items you know your manager has opinions about how to progress, stalled items, or you may be unsure what the next step is. This is the art of managing-up, you (as the direct report) are building confidence and trust for your manager that you got this, done collaboratively and transparently. You’ll likely spend most of your time discussing information in this section — dissecting issues, defining the next steps, and aligning on expectations. As an outcome, you may notice that you’re no longer getting asked, “Tell me more about XYZ?”

Theme 3 — Decision needed. This last section is for items that are genuinely blocked. There is no passing go and no $200. Managers (try as we might) aren’t always as clear as we want to be, and if you are stuck, a list of exactly where you are blocked is invaluable. And it also becomes a place you can monitor and self-assess if you are growing your leadership how you want. I’ve often taken items from this section to give them a second think by asking myself, “If I was leading, what would I do?” And sometimes, that item moves up into the input needed section.

It’s as simple as that!

Try it for a month. As with any change, the first meeting could be awesome or not. You’re breaking a status quo, and groundbreaking change won’t happen right out of the gate. You’ll need to use the framework consistently a few times to see changes. Remember, this meeting is the front-line between you and your manager — treat it as such.

To get you started, here is an outline you can use. Or make a copy of my google template

Weekly one-on-one; Name & Name

Table of contents

• Most recent Date: Headline on how things are going or how your feeling
• Date: Headline on how things are going or how your feeling

Most recent Date: Headline on how things are going or how your feeling

Theme 1: FYI

• Items your manager needs to be aware of
• EX: Project X delivered to product partners for PI16

Theme 2: Input needed

• Items you want or need their input on
• EX: Q2 Project planning is next week, are there any changes to be aware of?

Theme 3: Decision needed

• Items where you are blocked
• EX: Waiting on approval for the research study. Project is set to start next month

Breaking the 1:1 meeting status quo was originally published in One Design Community on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Content-first design is one way that I influence strategy and create results. There’s some confusion around exactly what a content strategist or UX writer does. I can’t tell you how it’s supposed to be done, but I can tell you how I work as a UX writer. Designing content first is one of the most valuable tools I use as a content strategist and UX writer.

What is content-first design?

Truly, the phrase is a bit self-explanatory. Content-first design is, wait for it… designing the content first. Content, in this case, means the words. There’s no template with boxes filled with lorem ipsum. No placeholder text. There’s no design without the content.

Why design content first?

Because getting the words right makes it easier to get the design right. “But figuring out the words is hard. We can always fill in the right words later.” You can fill in the words later, but should you? Getting the words right is the most important part of any design.

A content-first approach to design:

1. Focuses on answering questions and satisfying the concerns of the most important audience
2. Strategically informs the design

It’s not uncommon for designers to wireframe a page before having a clear sense of the content. I worked on a project where designers had mocked up one page but needed to convey at least 3 unique ideas. We worked together to answer the most important questions for the intended audience. And after seeing the content, it was clear that 2 of the main points needed to live on a separate page leaving the main page focused around one idea. Starting with the content influenced the design turning one complicated page of content into 2 easier-to-understand pages. Though the senior manager was hesitant to propose an additional page, the executives saw how it connected the rest of the experience and they applauded the redesign.

How to design content first

You’ll never get the right answers if you’re asking the wrong questions. To know what content to write, you have to know who you’re designing for and what they’re trying to do. Understanding the audience is the first step to content-first design. Use research and any data you have to understand why they came, what questions they have, and where they want to go. Knowing that is critical to writing the words that will help them achieve their goal.

When I was designing content for Capital One’s intelligent assistant, Eno, we had to brainstorm 100+ different ways that a customer would ask essentially the same question. This was required to train the machine learning model, but I also found it extremely helpful to understand the audience we were designing for. I’d set up a meeting with the developers, product manager, and operations folks that were on our team. We’d open up a Google spreadsheet and just start typing different ways to say the same thing.

1. I lost my debit card
2. how do I replace my debit card?
3. what should I do if I lost my check card
4. can I get a new debit card? mine was stolen
5. replace card
6. (…imagine 95 more!)

Writing these out really helps you put yourself in the customer’s shoes. It’s a simple path toward stronger empathy. How does the customer likely feel if they lost their debit card? It’s pretty easy to imagine that they feel worried, anxious, possibly frustrated or scared (if they think it was stolen or may be in the wrong hands). They may be wondering if they’re responsible for any fraudulent charges, how long it will take to get a new, if it costs money, and a ton of other questions. It’s our job to understand them in this context, answer the most pressing questions, and design the experience in such a way to calm their anxiety, build their trust, and get them back to living life and not worrying about their lost debit card.

Armed with our understanding of the audience, it’s time to write some content. Open up a Google doc (doc.new in your browser) or your text editor of choice. Then ask yourself, “what’s the most important information I need to convey?” Every word, every phrase, and each piece of the design should be thoughtfully constructed to help the visitor achieve whatever it is that they came to do. Help your visitors get what they want by answering whatever questions they may have with the right words. Then, build the design around the content.

How content-first design influences strategy

I’ve previously shared the story of how designing with data influenced the conversion rate at Capital One. Due to the success of that redesign, we were given more freedom to “iterate” on that success to further increase conversion through thoughtful design. We didn’t iterate–we started fresh with a content-first approach.

Instead of simply digitizing the paper application form (that you’d fill out inside of a bank), we completely rethought the online application process from a content-first perspective. What would it sound like as a conversation? Opening up a text editor, the product designer, myself, and another content strategist started with the words. We typed all the questions that we’d need to ask someone opening a new bank account.

The typical online bank application has fields like First name, Last name, Address, Phone number, etc. We reframed these form fields as questions: What’s your name?, Where do you live?, What’s your phone number?, etc.

With the content written down first, the application evolved from a long form with many input fields, to a modular, conversational account opening experience that we dubbed Flashcard Account Opening (AO). The engineering and product team did a fantastic job building out the experience and A/B testing it against our (already improved) design.

The results were overwhelmingly clear: we had improved the conversion rate again, with the highest gains in our most valuable segment. Designing the content first influenced the strategy and led to a better experience for our customers and even greater gains for our business.

Embrace content-first design

Whether you’re a UX designer, product manager, engineer, or content strategist, try a content-first design approach for your next project. Open a text editor and ask yourself, “what’s the most important thing to say here?” Write out the obvious answer. Then rewrite it. Iterate on the words until you’ve got the right content. By starting with the right content, you’ll end up with a better design. And a better design equals higher conversions. At least, that’s been my experience.

Share your experience designing content first in the comments below 👇 . And if you found this article helpful, give it a clap 👏 and share it with others.

I’m Shawn Roe, and I’m a content strategist and UX writer at Capital One. I simplify user experiences. You can connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. You should also check out jobs at Capital One, and join the team.

How I use content-first design to influence strategy was originally published in One Design Community on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Communication is imperfect — it’s messy and complex. And it’s beautifully human. Situated at the heart of our lives and everyday experiences, the language we use and the interactions we create are key to promoting people’s ability to freely connect and participate in authentic relationships across our differences.

Why Inclusive Content?

Earth has 7.5 billion people — with 7.5 billion diverse and shifting identities, abilities and contexts. We’re influenced by beliefs, personal experiences, social norms and cultural values — and we often express them through one or more of today’s 7,097 living languages.

As humans evolve and diverge in our changing world, designers must adapt to new and unique circumstances to offer usable products. This starts with content — and an understanding that what we say and how we say it has the ability to influence or determine outcomes in people’s lives.

Inclusive content acknowledges the power language has in providing access, shaping knowledge and triggering our emotions — for the greater good. And with it, we endorse the liberatory power of speech and accept responsibility to protect and promote the well-being and dignity of others.

How We’re Approaching It

I’m fortunate to work with a purpose-driven team in HR Design — and more largely with 50,000+ Capital One associates — who strive to act compassionately, practice empathy and use the growth mindset to create a culture of belonging at work and in our industry. We’re at the beginning of this journey and have a long way to go.

To help bring this work to life, I’m excited to share our first release of inclusive content guidelines. It’s for the writer, storyteller and anyone who dares to act on shared principles — like OneDesign’s deliver what’s meaningful, invite people in and connect the dots.

Writing More Inclusively

Find out what brings people together — and weave it throughout your narrative.

People have a basic human need for inclusion and belonging to feel loved, safe and understood. Human to human, get to know the people in your audience and customers using your products and services. Bring who you are into these conversations — as a designer and a person — to establish connections. And be patient — people with unmet needs may find it difficult to express them.

Help your subjects shine through your writing.

Narratives are a means to reflect others in a way they want to be represented and portrayed to the world. Treat each space and pause in your sentences as a chance for readers to absorb the essence of the person, community or idea you’re bringing to life.

Consider if identity-specific language such as using pronouns, is even needed. If it is, don’t make assumptions. Reach out and ask that group or individual how they prefer to be addressed.

You’ll know you’re successful when your writing delivers understanding by celebrating someone’s differences and care by making specific connections to build trust with your products from a positive light in their life.

Make copy clear, consistent and accessible.

Content that’s digestible, legible, scannable and delivered in plain language — free of jargon — helps more people comprehend content’s purpose and meaning. Getting your product’s voice and tone right by using natural language will help further connect and represent the subjects and objects of your story.

Use web and mobile accessibility guidelines for support as you design for assistive technologies like screen readers and search crawlers for digital experiences.

Provide diverse options with equal experiences.

Inclusive content doesn’t mean one size fits all. If a person needs to take a next step, offer multiple ways to accomplish a task if possible. That gives people control and a choice to suit them under any circumstances.

Identify biases, exclusive language or situational challenges, and update designs to remove them.

As an inclusive writer, you’ll strive to always learn about the powerful role language plays in shaping attitudes, influencing behavior and driving action for others.

To carry this mindset into practice, make time to reflect on your own identities, influences and intentions. It’ll help you surface the strengths and limitations of your design abilities.

Work closely with people in diverse communities with abilities not like your own to yield stronger results. These partners show up as stakeholders, co-designers or users of your content. By creating space and welcoming more people to the whiteboard, you can both hold each other accountable and celebrate in the successes of cooperative design.

In conclusion, take responsibility, stay curious and practice writing inclusively.

A huge thanks to associates and advocates who’ve contributed to this work by sharing their stories and personal experiences. Many thanks for the support and encouragement from Design, Diversity & Inclusion, Talent and Accessibility partners — including Dan Singer, Lori Schwabenhausen, Christina Chang, Mishel Horta, Dorothy Levin, Casey Smith, Traci Ford, Michael Domina, Sarah Dengel, Charity Zerull, Jo Ernst, Anne Kave, Joel Shaw, Melissa Flynn, Schuyler Atkins, Alexis Shannon, Sean Adams, and Sara Walsh for their expert opinions and contributions to start (and keep) this conversation going.

Heather Myers is a Content Design Manager for HR Design at Capital One. She’s a connector, systems thinker and language practitioner who loves helping to make work work for people and businesses. She also loves gardening and cozying up with a good book or documentary.

Check out available jobs in Design at Capital One.

Designing for Care: Inclusive Content was originally published in One Design Community on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Oh no. I did it again. I brought up money in mixed company. I thought we were getting real! A minute ago the conversation was politics. Then someone brought up religion. But man, I had to go ahead and bring up money.

What was I thinking! Money is so personal, polarizing. It rules our decisions, experiences, and our opportunities. It’s the root of greed, envy, the human struggle. It gives power. It also puts food on our tables. Money helps us build families and honor friends. We receive money as a symbol of our value.

And yet, I feel my face get hot, the room goes silent, someone coughs…all because I dared to broach the topic.

Capital One knows money is a lot more than just the numbers that show up on statements. Money is complicated, messy, emotional, and multi-faceted.

That’s why we started People and Money, which I get the privilege of hosting at SXSW on Saturday, March 9 at 8:00 AM (I know it’s early, but there are free breakfast tacos — have I mentioned I love Texas?).

Quick conversations about taboo topics

At SXSW, we’re bringing People and Money to you. You’ll see a bit of how Capital One talks about money internally.

We’ll have three talks from Capital One employees Paul Zolandz (Director of Experience Design), Kim Allman (Senior Director, Community Development Banking), and Scotty Leach (Cafe Ambassador).

We’ve found that these lightning talk events remind us that the scary, weird, wild, and empowering experiences with money are ones we all share.

This is an opportunity to check out the Capital One House without a conference badge, while finding a safe space to discuss the experience of being a money-using human.

My (obvious) pride here

I’ve definitely had my moments of pretending money wasn’t a thing…“That’s not my debt. Why would I need a retirement plan? Bills?!”

I started my career in non-profit documentaries. When I got tired of not-profiting, I moved on to advertising. And now I work at a bank. I hear in my head that I’ve sold out. I get weird around my indie film friends, and yet, they reassure me that I haven’t changed.

Working at a bank means I’m within an institution where the business is money. Money can motivate corporations to do a lot of different things, like make impacts in environmental sustainability, support our local communities, teach financial literacy to families, and partner with organizations that could change the norms of societal and situational injustices. And every person I work with has a desire to do something to make the world a better place (join the team!).

Working on the Design team and seeing the ways Capital One brings human-centered practices throughout the organization is a treat. People and Money is just one of these initiatives.

The research share-out that went company-wide

The event kicked off in late 2014 when the Design team at Capital One quickly doubled in size and began stretching across the nation. In an effort to get new designers up to speed, our leaders thought, let’s do a research share out!

But they didn’t want to simply sit in a room and report research metrics. They thought storytelling might bring deeper insights and leave lasting impressions. They were right.

Listening to these stories, an obvious theme emerged that money isn’t simple — it’s a lot more than just banking and credit. People’s relationships with money are multifaceted and complex. As a result, the team was able to approach work differently, knowing the outcomes of their labor are about human values and experiences.

This desire to understand people’s relationships with money spread across the organization. Under the guidance of Steph Hay (VP of Integrated Experiences) and Sydney Ledger (Design Brand Storytelling & Engagement), People and Money became an annual live storytelling event, featuring associates from all across the company — from business analysts to call center employees and cafe ambassadors. Everyone who attended was able to see the line of impact they can have while working here.

People and Money wasn’t just helpful for highlighting the ways we were becoming a people-centered organization. It also gave associates an opportunity to talk about the human experience of working with our products — even if it meant challenging the status quo of the entire financial industry.

Ally Cahill gave a talk at one of these events, and her call to action influenced the creation of a new service. She had been working on research for our Card line of business, and spoke with a lot of people who couldn’t make payments. The reality is that many people are unable to pay a bill at some point or another in their lives, for many different reasons. She shared a few vignettes, including a personal story about her own family. Her request? We should help people build a plan to work with us instead of just charging them more and more fees. It’s eventually good for our bottom line and shows we care.

Soon after, we started testing programs for working with our customers to get back on track when they fall behind.

Check it out for yourself

People and Money has inspired so much within our office walls. Sure, the product and service insights have been great, but the biggest value has been that individuals have the opportunity to see themselves in each other’s stories. We can find comfort, release, inspiration, and camaraderie around this taboo topic.

By sharing this with the world at SXSW, we hope to give people a safe space to talk about money experiences. It gives us an opportunity to teach and be taught in a constructive environment.

Please join us at SXSW for this free event and stories about People and Money at Antone’s 305 E 5th Street on March 9 at 8:00 AM.

Dorothy Levin is a Communications Manager for Design Operations at Capital One. She loves mixing her passion for finding human stories with the Design team’s passion for human experiences. She’s excited to host People and Money at SXSW. She’s equally excited to eat all the tacos.

Join her team as a Visual Designer, or check out available jobs in Design at Capital One.

People and Money at SXSW was originally published in One Design Community on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By: Jess Kessin

One day last summer, I was chatting with Anel Muller, the lead of the Capital One Design Pro Bono program. While my team was working on some great projects, I was feeling the need for an infusion of passion, and I wanted to do something to inspire myself and my team.

Anel had just met up with a group from UCSF Children’s Hospital (the new premiere SF hospital), Stantec Architecture (the team that designed the hospital) and a few others. They had been talking about the amazing design and the details that went into this magnificent hospital, but the playground on the fifth floor was a bit of an afterthought. I could see the gears turning in Anel’s head as she told me about this encounter.

We had no idea where this would go, so naturally, we jumped right in. This could have been one design thinking workshop we did with the UCSF team, but it turned into something much bigger.

Passion became contagious as we included more diverse players in the design process.

I have never taken the standard path. I have always created my own realities and found the magic in connecting people and opportunities in ways that others wouldn’t. I have done so throughout my career many times and in many iterations.

I’ve worked in design thinking and with extreme users for most of my career. I teach Design Thinking at the Stanford D.School and I have used the methodologies as long as I can remember. I started a toy company for kids of all needs and abilities. I am fluent in American Sign Language and have worked in the Deaf community. I have worked on countless projects and advocated heavily for Universal Design. I believe that good design breaks down barriers. Accessibility is a design problem—not a medical problem—and as designers, it is our responsibility to enable access to all people that use a product, space, or service.

Bringing in the team

At Capital One, I have become known for doing internal startups of new or emerging practices. I originally came here to start a Design Thinking practice for one of our lines of business. I went on to Data Visualization and Physical Experience Design (PXD).

The PXD team is a group of physical designers and engineers with backgrounds ranging from sculpture, to architecture, to mechanical engineering and industrial design. It’s a surprisingly diverse group of backgrounds — in a bank, of all places. BUT we make amazing physical experiences that connect to people in ways previously unseen in our industry…and we have a ton of fun doing it.

I went back to my team and told them about my conversation. “This isn’t part of your job. You don’t need to do this. I know you have deadlines, projects etc. all happening.” They all looked at each other and then looked back at me. “There is NO way you are doing this without us. We are in.”

The passion was instantly contagious and the unknowns of the project made it even more enticing.

Human-centered design is about understanding the underlying emotional needs of users. It goes beyond surface needs. Hospitals, especially great ones like UCSF, are experts at the medical practice. What we needed to do was to find the emotional needs that weren’t being met and fill in the gaps.

Bringing in the community

This was an exercise in Inclusive Design. The only way to do that well is to co-design. Designing with users, not for users is paramount. We needed to get to know the space and more importantly, the people using the space. We decided to host two workshops. The first was for patients, their parents and siblings. The second was for the staff.

We met an amazing group of people throughout our process. We thought we had passion, but I will tell you we had nothing on this incredible group of people that we were fortunate enough to meet.

We met two brothers who were 7 and 8 years old respectively. They were animated, goofy, and rarely stopped moving. They were perfectly healthy, but like the patients at the hospital, they used this playground everyday. They had a baby brother in the NICU and basically lived at UCSF going on 8 months with their mom, while their dad did the 4-hour drive up from their home on weekends. This space wasn’t just for sick kids, it also had to serve their siblings.

We met a teenager who was thankfully healthy enough to now be home living a normal life. Like many teenage boys he liked playing basketball and hanging out with his friends. But he was telling us about the months he spent at UCSF the previous year where he didn’t have the energy to go more than a few feet without getting exhausted. He needed a quiet space to be outside and get some air. This needed to be a space for teens.

We talked to a mom who was too terrified to leave the premises just in case something were to happen to her son. She had been there everyday for months, even sleeping in his room at night. She needed a space to take a walk, get some air, exercise and clear her head…but while still remaining close by. This was a space for parents.

We met a dad who spent so much time at UCSF with his baby daughter, that he was now a parent volunteer to help other families going through the stress of chronic childhood illnesses. He did this despite living a 3-hour drive away. This was a space to build communities.

We heard about the kids on the sixth floor who were in isolation for things like bone marrow transplants, but could look down on the playground from their rooms even if they couldn’t physically come to experience it. What could this space mean to them?

And then we heard from staff. We heard about the needs like IV pole issues, textured ground for physical therapy, and the need for infection control. But we also heard about their personal needs—needing a mental break from their really intense work day or a place to sit for a moment and eat a few bites of lunch between patients. This space was a mental break and recharge spot for the people that worked in the hospital.

At this point we realized this was not just a playground. It needed to be a community space that served all of the extreme needs of this unique and diverse community. A playground is a jungle gym where young kids go play…I have a three year old, and I frequent them quite often. That wasn’t going to cut it. This needed to be a town square, a community garden, a teenager hangout and a playground all in one. We needed to redefine how people saw the space and reframe people’s expectations. This is the point when we stopped calling it a playground and started calling it a playscape.

What we learned

In both the kids and family workshops, and then again in the staff workshop, we were wowed by the intensity of the ideas and the free spirit in which they were created. While their ideas were fun, we were not viewing them literally, but searching for the spirit of the ideas. What do I mean by this? Well, we heard a lot about building rocket ships, or desert islands or fantasy lands…..what we distilled out of that was the need for escape.

When you’re in a hospital, you really don’t have any control over what’s happening to you. You are poked, prodded and have very little say about any of it, especially as a child. Family members are held hostage in a space that is designed for function, not for living. We realized that what this community needed was to be transported out of the hospital to someplace where they had a sense of control, a sense of magic, a sense of possibility. That’s what this space really needed to be…an escape.

We all worked together to create something much bigger than us, and it’s something we’re all immensely proud of. I can’t go into too much detail while approvals are underway, but I will say that it’s inclusive, and that the spirit of the community is present in every detail. It serves the needs of the users and imparts a sense of being transported to a magical, whimsical and hopeful place where you can embrace autonomy, control, and peace.

We are currently working with the amazing crew in the Child Life department of UCSF and Stantec architecture to finalize details and then the team will start fundraising. Hopefully this will all be more than just a concept soon, and the community of UCSF will have the welcomed escape they need.

Jess Kessin is a Senior Director of Physical Experience Design & Data Visualization. Check out the open jobs in One Design, and join the Capital One team.

When a Playground Is More Than a Playground was originally published in One Design Community on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hi. My name is Shawn, and I’m a content strategist and UX writer at Capital One. I simplify user experiences.

UX Writer seems to be a pretty hot role in tech companies these days, yet even my mom isn’t sure exactly what I do. Mom, I write the words you see in your mobile app, when you open a new bank account, and more recently, when you ask our intelligent assistant a question. I guide you to achieve your task in the simplest, most intuitive way.

I save you time and money by making your life easier!

That’s it? You just write words? You’re the words guy?

Yeah, I’m the words guy. (And the suit guy.) And I’ve been described as “the glue that keeps everything together.”

So, how do you do it, words guy?

I’ll give you my 6 principles.

1. Start with relationships

When she first hired me, my mentor said, “Build relationships with all your partners and meet as many people as you can.” So, that’s what I did. I had one-on-ones with all the designers in my lane, the product managers, the business analysts, the marketing team, the research team, legal, compliance, the interns, and the directors.

If you’re going to help anybody, you need the people you work with to know that you care about the same things they care about.

I care about good design. I care about pixel-perfection, color palettes, fonts and easy-to-read content (like designers). I also care about the business goals— the conversion rate, and the average fund rate (like product managers).

There’s nothing more important than the data. How can I access the data? Oh, that’s how you sign up for Google Analytics, make custom reports, and create a dashboard? Perfect, thanks (business analysts).

Oh, so that’s the marketing language we’re using to talk about that product? I’ll make sure to refer to that when we talk about that product in the app (marketing partners).

The interns teach me what else we’re working on, and I get to teach them about the importance of content-first design. The directors help me understand the larger vision, and later get to see how I’ve aligned my work with that vision. And on and on.

If you want to get anything done, build relationships. So, that’s where I started. And it was fun. Maybe I’m lucky to work with super smart (and fun) people who are happy to share what they’re working on and are open to collaboration. But, I imagine working with less awesome colleagues, that breaking down walls, building relationships, and developing trust would be even more important to your success. This advice my mentor gave me influenced how I work, and ultimately how I can better impact millions of people.

2. Give ’em what they want

After you’ve gotten to know your partners, you can start to have an idea of their motivation. What do they want? What is their success measured by? If you understand people’s motivations, you can align yourself with them and help them get what they want.

Good designers care about quality. As a UX writer, if I can make designs better simply by writing clearer, more concise content, then I’ve helped them get what they want. Product managers care about the KPI’s. If I can rewrite complicated language in a more understandable way, that could reduce drop-off rate and increase conversions.

When I first joined the team, I traveled to Wilmington to meet our engineers. They were unusually thrilled to finally have a dedicated content strategist. One of them half-interrupted the product manager introducing me by excitedly asking “can he look at all of our error messages and re-write them?” The product manager said there were other, more-pressing projects I’d be focusing on to start, but I didn’t forget that engineers request. It was clear to me that the engineering team cared about the experience and having an ex-English professor rewrite the error messages was important to them. I put it on my backlog and made sure to get around to it eventually.

There’s no better way to build trust than to give people what they want. Find out what it is, and do what you can to help them achieve their goals. It builds trust and will help you accomplish your goals later. As a UX writer, it can be as simple as rewriting a few error messages.

3. Bring the customer’s perspective

As a UX writer, everything you write should be with the customer in mind. Understand the audience you’re writing for, and never, ever, forget them. When somebody asks me how to write a better experience, I start with questions. How did the customer get here? What are they trying to do? The truth is, the people I work with often have a better understanding of the customer than I do. It’s my job to remind them of the customer’s perspective.

A fun way to bring the customer’s perspective is to imagine you’re explaining the experience to your grandma, aunt, uncle, or friend. If you were describing this experience to them, or explaining what they need to do, what would you tell them? I have my partners say it out loud. Then, I just write down what they say. The final content often isn’t far from the words they say aloud.

It’s not the job of the UX writer to know all the right words. It’s the UX writer’s job to bring the customer’s perspective.

4. Ask simple questions

There usually aren’t enough UX writers to write all the words for all of the experiences. Writing is everybody’s job. A great UX writer can help educate the team by asking simple questions.

Here’s an illustrative example of an engineer asking for help with an error message: Okay, what do you have so far? The message is “the data you input does not match our system records.” Okay, so what’s the customer trying to do? Well, she’s trying to log in? Okay, and what happened? Well, the data she input doesn’t match our system record. Okay, what’s the data she input? Her password. Okay, is it definitely her password, or could it be her username? It could be her username or password.

Cool. So, how would you tell your grandma? I’d tell her she entered the wrong username or password and to try again. (Me taking notes.) How about “Looks like you entered the wrong username or password. Please, try again.”

Sometimes, asking simple questions to uncover the simple solutions can be the most valuable thing needed from a UX writer. Engineers have a difficult job that involves solving complicated problems in technical languages. Having deep thinkers solving the intricacies of the experience is critical. Balancing the complicated with the simple is what separates the good solutions from the great. Help your team create great solutions by asking simple questions like, “How would you explain this to your grandma?” Nobody loves a simple solution more than Grandma!

5. Ask tough questions

Bringing the customer’s perspective and always advocating for a simpler, more intuitive experience sometimes means you’ll have to ask the tough questions. Should we be doing this at all? Why are we asking for that information if we don’t need it? Are we just trying to make more money here, or is this good for the customer, too?

If you’re not asking the tough questions, who is? And if asking the tough questions isn’t your responsibility, what is? UX writers don’t just write words — they save you time and money by making your life easier!

Asking the tough questions is… tough. It’s not easy. But it’s important. Even if your partners don’t change direction, it’s important you ask. Once you gain enough influence (see points 1–4 above), more people will listen.

I was in the user labs after a full-day of testing with the whole team. We were synthesizing what we learned from the participants. The designer and I had worked on the project for months and after testing our designs in the lab, the engineers were gearing up to build the experience. But, there was a burning question on my mind… why were we building this experience here? Didn’t it make more sense in a different place?

Thankfully, I had built a relationship with the lead on the project, had helped him get what he wanted previously and thus, had built enough trust to ask this tough question. Why are we building this here instead of another team building it somewhere else? No less than 3 other people in the room chimed in that they were wondering the same thing. The product manager explained how our team had the opportunity to influence the design to be best for our customers if we built it here. It was a relief to speak up, and to be assured that we were on the right path.

Ask the tough questions, in the spirit of doing what’s best for the customer and the business.

6. Design with data

Design differs from art in that design solves problems. It’s hard to know what problem to solve if you don’t have data. And you’ll only know if you’re solving the problem better by having data that proves so.

The first major project I was assigned to was a redesign of our account opening (AO) process. The product designer had already gotten a head start and was excited to have a “professional writer” help with the words. I was eager to jump in too, and wanted to exceed whatever expectations people had. Thankfully, the designer I was working with was young, idealistic, and talented as hell. We got together and didn’t just make the account opening experience prettier — we re-designed it.

We rearranged the order of the questions based on conversational design principles and research our colleagues had done. We were proud of the work we did and shared it with the product manager. “This looks great, but why are the questions out of order? We can’t reorder the questions, I just want to tweak the visual design,” said the product manager.

Just the visual design?! But we could make the current order of questions flow more like a natural conversation, and we had the data to prove how that would make the application easier to understand for customers (and impact our business goals).

Data doesn’t lie, so design with data. We presented the research we had and ultimately convinced him to run an A/B/Z test where A was simply the aesthetic changes, B was aesthetic plus reordering a few of the questions, and Z was the current experience. Best case scenario would be that our design (B) would be better than just visual changes (A), and that both would be better than what was live now (Z).

The data came back, and the visual design (A) actually performed worse than the current (Z)! Uh-oh! The aesthetic changes had actually hurt our conversion rate by more than 20%!

But… our redesign with a few data-based conversational design changes (B) actually increased conversions more than 20%. This was not just a win for conversational design; this was a win for designing with data.

Go forth and conquer

Now you know how I work as a UX writer. And if you’ve been paying attention — it’s no different from how anybody should work. The principles that guide how I work apply to almost every job. No matter what your role, you’d do well to:

1. Start with relationships
2. Give ’em what they want
3. Bring the customer’s perspective
4. Ask simple questions
5. Ask tough questions
6. Design with data

Now, go forth and conquer!

I’m Shawn Roe, and I’m a content strategist and UX writer at Capital One. I simplify user experiences. You can connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. You should also check out jobs at Capital One, and join the team.

How I work as a UX writer was originally published in One Design Community on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Face it. While you might have a vision, you really don’t have a clue of all the things that are required to bring it about. But your team does.

As a design leader your team will come at you asking for clarity, for permission, for a plan — they want you to make amazing decisions all day long.

This is not a formula for success. Instead, you need to give them the context for decisions and have them do the thinking. So remember these simple four words: “What would you recommend?”

You most often aren’t best positioned to make decisions. Your team has more information and has been thinking about it longer than you have.

Your job is to coach them to find the right answer, lead them to criteria they may not see yet, and help them practice making consistently good decisions on their own.

There was a time when I would walk out of a meeting and everyone on my team would yell my name to ask for a decision. That made my ego feel really important for a few days, but then it became tiring, a bottleneck, a terrible way to run things.

Then I told my team that I’d be asking them, “What do you recommend?” when they asked me a question. Suddenly things changed. My reports showed up with answers—better answers than I would ever have!—to their own questions. My job became to help them think their ideas through, how to make them better, and how to make them happen.

Through this change I’ve realized that the place where I want to work pushes decision-making away from the leader to the people who know best, have the best information and relationships. Instead of having decisions made for them, people are coached to quickly bring about a beautiful new future better than any one leader could have ever imagined.

Brandon Schauer is the Head of Enterprise Design at Capital One. Work with him!

Design leadership tricks: WWYR? was originally published in One Design Community on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I recently had the pleasure of being the emcee for Capital One’s Design Pro Bono event, Social Table, which was brought to Richmond, Virginia for the first time and held at Capital One’s 1717 Innovation Center, which also houses Startup Virginia.

If you’re not familiar with Social Table, here’s a quick rundown: it’s an event that has been occurring for quite some time in the San Francisco Bay area, focused on 6 minute long lightning talks by people who use the power of design to make a positive impact on their communities and the world. One of my favorite parts of it is best captured In the words of our fearless leader, Anel Muller, the brains behind Social Table:

‘It’s always really exciting to hear from other people who wouldn’t call themselves designers, doing that work, every day, and not even thinking about it.

Richmond, Virginia, while considered a smaller-scale city, has enough community, creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, and heart to match most large cities, so finding people to share their stories with us for Social Table was not a difficult task. We were able to narrow our pool down to six diverse speakers, all with various backgrounds, interests, and experiences, that are strong influences in our community.

Our first speaker, Ryan Rinn, the Executive Director of Storefront for Community Design, told us his story of creating a space that is welcoming and that provides the ability for non-profits to get together to work intentionally since they could be better suited if resources, such as rent, utilities, space, etc. are shared, which was how Storefront and 6PIC / City Builders were born. These projects allow young Richmonders between the ages of 13 and 24 to work together to create changes in Richmond, such as housing and transit policy solutions that directly affect them. They create plans for real, tangible solutions of what improvement looks like for Richmond.

Reggie Gordon, who is the director of Richmond’s Office of Community Wealth Building, taught us how we can become community wealth builders. I’ve heard Reggie speak about this subject in the past, and it always hits really hard to realize how hard of a dividing line there is between those who are born and die poor in Richmond and everyone else. He’s driving change by bubbling up the awareness that there are more ways than donating your time and money at the holidays — that there are every day needs that make a huge difference in the lives of people. These are things that could make or break someone’s life — something as simple as if a person is able to stay employed by donating a pair of required work boots they may not be able to afford otherwise. Reggie’s goal is to have strategic conversations and create opportunities for real changes to be made in people’s lives, to help them break the poverty cycle.

Listening and intellectual insecurity was the topic of our next talk from Becky Crump, founder of Mindful Mornings. She made it very clear that this talk was NOT about Mindful Mornings, but instead, focusing on her experience with listening, both to intuition and to others. In her words: “Listen to the people you serve: That’s where you find opportunities, issues, innovation.” That statement is so very important and really resonated with me — both personally and professionally. It’s something that I’ve used every day since when guiding my daily life. Her suggestion is to listen to others, but not too much. Listen to your body and your instincts, and not your ego. Her tip for this is to realize that your instincts are unwavering, unflappable, and connected to purpose, where as your ego is wild, unruly, seeks attention from others. Try and move your mind from attention (look at that what that person is wearing) to curiosity (wonder what they do) to wonderment (who are they?). It’ll give you a new perspective to do this simple exercise. I promise.

Ali Greenberg took a very unique route to getting to point — starting out by talking about the thermal comfort equation and ending with the point of making sure that you’re always thinking through who you’re creating for, why, and who your audience is. Ali is the creator of The Broad, which is the only space in Richmond, that is making space for women, a space that does not have a binary view of womanhood. The reason she took us through the thermal comfort equation, hits home the reason why she created The Broad — buildings are built around this equation, which is based on an average male’s metabolic rate, from the 1960’s. It hasn’t changed since then. She purposely designed The Broad with constant input on what allows women to thrive — what women want and need.

Richard Wintsch is the Executive Director of Startup Virginia and told us a bit about how they came to be and the partnership with Capital One. Startup Virginia is a multitude of things — an incubator for startups, a space providing opportunities for mentorship and learning, and overall, a product of design thinking to focus on early stage, and new businesses to help them grow faster and smarter than they could have on their own. They also provide free educational programming to the Richmond community, and are proud to have a minority representation of 41%! Most importantly, any non-profit is welcome to come in and present a problem for review to potentially receive training and resources to find solutions.

Our last speaker was Meghan Rosatelli, an experience designer from Capital One by day, and self described art nerd by night. She’s also a professor at University of Richmond who taught us a bit about humans and computers and the bridge (or lack there of) between the two. In her words, “Our bodies are not computers or digital networks. Computers can’t feel the loss of a child and they don’t ban together to help others during a flood, so are we numbing a symptom instead of solving a problem?”.

It was a wonderfully enlightening night, that finished with a lot of discussion among the attendees — people connected, and the energy level was buzzing with chatter around all of the speaker topics.

I’ll leave you with one last statement, also courtesy of Anel Muller:

“One person can transform someone, something, maybe even the entire world.”

Courtney Allison Brown is a Manager, Design Operations Lead at Capital One. Come work with her!

Social Table RVA: The Official Recap was originally published in One Design Community on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Managing a customer’s journey across time and touchpoint is a labor of love. Attempting to manage different journeys for different customer types can be, well, a labor of lunacy. The baseline journey is a means for making a service for many types of customers a manageable feat for you and much more lovely for them.

Let’s start with why they even care

People don’t start a journey because they’re looking forward to the tedious or boring. They engage because you’re promising to increase happiness or remove some form of pain. It’s the value proposition — the reason to even care about getting started.

A differentiated value proposition stands out from the crowd. It’s different from what’s out there. It zags when others zig. But what stands out and speaks to one type of customer might not be what rings the bell of another.

One traveler might love amenities and roomy seats on board. Another might appreciate timeliness and reasonable prices. Different value propositions appeal to them. And so it all starts to sound like different journeys through different services for different customers. Managing these service differences can be complex. Delivering on these service differences can be costly.

A tasty nuclear approach

Illogically, we’ll turn to an edible atomic model to simplify things. Start by considering a core nucleus, a central value proposition that can somewhat appeal to each customer type. Around that core you can layer more. To mix metaphors, that core is like the cake of your cupcake. But not your icing.

The icing is that one extra thing that sweetens the value proposition to a specific customer type. Different types of customer might find different types of icing appealing. But each group’s icing is the one extra thing in the atomic model that takes the journey from being somewhat appealing to downright scrumptious.

The core is your baseline

What makes this approach more manageable is that a core value proposition also speaks to a baseline journey–a common backbone to a service that you can more easily deliver at scale across all the customer types.

On top of this baseline, you can then find one thing that you can offer to each customer type to deliver on the icing in their value proposition. This might mean embellishing and maximizing a peak moment in the experience, eliminating a negative trough moment, or ending stronger than normal. Just check out the playbook for improving customer journeys for ideas.

Let’s count the ways

First, this approach is obviously cognitively easier to manage. You have a single baseline journey with a few variations, instead of attempting multiple different journeys, each evolving on its own.

Second, it’s easier to strike a coherent message across the customer types, both in whatever marketing you might have to initiate the journey and in the conversation you have with the customer throughout their journey.

Third, the back-of-house operations are simplified as they’re orchestrated around delivering a single baseline journey, not asked to dance in dozens of different ways.

A moving case

Okay, I can’t say that Uber used a baseline journey as their guiding light, but I can say it’s a pretty useful example of a baseline journey in action.

While Uber overall promises you confidence in easily getting around town, there are different attractions for different customer types. The more economically-minded customer may like the low cost of the UberPool service, which take a little longer but have a much lower cost by using carpooling. But a customer seeking comfort, speed, or exclusivity may prefer the UberBLACK service, a town car just for you with water, a mobile charger, and a well-dressed driver.

But the baseline service? It’s the same. Start with the app to order a car, track your driver as s/he arrives, take the trip, and then you can see your charge and rate the driver anytime after you exit. Uber delivers differences to the baseline service based on a little swipe you make before you order the car.

That selection serves up different peaks or valleys, depending on what type of customer you are, or what type of customer you were at that moment. Yes, baseline experiences even help solve for that complex problem: what happens when the same customer fits into two different types all in the same day.

Originally published on the Adaptive Path blog

Brandon Schauer is the Head of Enterprise Design at Capital One, and the former Adaptive Path CEO. Work with him!

The Baseline Journey was originally published in One Design Community on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

You’re brilliant, you really are. Smile real big. Because you know what the future should look like, and people are bought in. But before the parades launch and the confetti flies, you have to answer “How?” And fast. And right.

How do you make it to your envisioned future state? The shovel, log, and axe is a simple metaphor to make your decisions about how to proceed more clear, conscious, and more likely correct.

Because even with the right destination, choosing the wrong path can mean you end up… well, you end up Pit Creek without a shaddle.

Okay, here comes the metaphor…

Let’s say you do come to a river. That destination you’re leading to is on the other side. You’ve got to cross the river. You can go over it, can’t go under it, so yes, you have to go through it. And with you is — you guessed it! — a shovel, a log, and an axe.

The Shovel

The shovel is the work you could do to dig up a boat that you know lays under the ground. This quite literally represents sunk costs. You might have built this boat, and maybe it’s a very lovely boat in your mind, but to get it to cross the river you have to put in a lot of work to dig it out and who knows if it’s still fit to cross the river.

The adage says “sunk costs are sunk costs.” You shouldn’t make decisions about the future based on past investments, because a dollar spent on making that sunk cost work for you might go farther and yield more if put into a brand new solution.

But then comes human nature. You loved that boat you built! And we all suffer from loss avoidance and the desire to be seen as committed to what we said was right in the past (aka, commitment theory).

Using the shovel may be the right answer, but you first have to admit that’s what you’re doing. Then you need to make a conscious and unemotional decision from the future-back, not the past-forward.

The Log

The log is a simple tool. It. floats and, with some hard kicking, you can make your way across the river. Oh, and you’ll get wet doing it.

The log is a process more than a system. If you need to cross the river again, you’ll be getting wet again and your efficiency will not improve all that much. The log is a slog.

The log could be just the ticket to get to your destination. You may not need to cross the river twice, it could be once and done. Who needs a pretty boat when good enough is good enough? You just need to admit this is the approach you’re taking, so you avoid investing in a permanent team or capital investments that just don’t match your get ‘er done approach.

The Axe

And finally, you could build something new. Chop up that log with your axe. Maybe fell a few trees in a nearby forest. Then build yourself a bridge.

The axe represents building something new, and building a system. You and others could cross the river as much as you needed. It’ll take work, but oh man, won’t it be perfect for this river!

But be honest, because it might not become the bridge you have in your mind; while you could keep working on it, once it’s ready for crossing, the likelihood of continued improvement lessens, that is unless you can charge a tool on your bridge — does your bridge make money on its own?

Metaphor, schmetaphor

Okay, that’s clever and the tools reminds me a bit of that Minecraft game, but who cares? Well, I’ve started to use the shovel, log, and axe to label the kinds of decision we seem to be making and make sure we consider the alternatives. And once a decision is made, the metaphor can make sure we stay true to the type of decision made and don’t try, say, swimming with that log while digging.

User beware

As with all metaphors, you can extend this one and break it. I’m sure they’re are other types of decisions too. The value isn’t the perfect metaphor. The value is raising the consciousness about the decisions and investments we make to get to an envisioned destination. Because without it, you may never arrive and instead just end up in the drink.

Brandon Schauer uses these metaphors at Capital One as the Head of Enterprise Design. Join the team!

How now? Chose a shovel, log, or axe was originally published in One Design Community on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.