Overview
"If you want to align from the top down, you need to get buy-in from the top down."
Background
This initiative was a personal project born from my desire to anchor not just my designs but all our efforts in tangible, real-world data and feedback. It was a proactive attempt to embed a more empirical approach into our everyday operations, driven by my obsession with modern ideas of product lead development.
My Role
As the sole designer within the company, I was responsible for designing, building and maintaining the repository. I championed its use across the organisation, actively engaging with various teams to demonstrate its potential and educate them on how to leverage the system effectively.
Product
The Discovery Vault was an repository structured into three main databases: Initiatives, Opportunities, and Evidence. Designed using Notion, it centralised and aligned company and product strategies with ongoing work, incorporating evidence and feedback collected across the organisation to enhance decision-making and project relevance.
Outcome
The repository significantly enhanced my ability to organise and rationalise the design process, making it simpler to navigate and substantiate design decisions with solid evidence. While customer-facing teams, especially learning designers, found value in this new tool, there remained a pervasive sense of scepticism born from past experiences where feedback seemed disregarded. The repository was intended as a remedy, offering a structured way to ensure their voices and insights directly influenced product development.
Reflection
If you’re familiar with X-Men, you'll understand the chaos that ensues when Cyclops (Scott Summers) loses control of his powers without his visor. I sometimes see a parallel in my own work; without direction, my creativity can run wild.
Initially, the repository was my "visor"—a means to channel and direct my efforts effectively. However, all departments had their own feedback repositories which I believed was best placed in one centralised place, after reviewing these repositiories with the heads of departments I started to build a new one.
In my previous role as a media specialist, I worked closely with the learning design team, whcih made working with the whole department very easy to get buy in and adoption. Yet, for other departments such as marketing and customer engagment I worked only with the deparment heads, possibly curtailing broader adoption of the repository.
While the repository gained good traction initially, I felt its impact was dampened by the lack of full endorsement from department heads. Its true value depended on consistent input of evidence and its linkage to work being actively considered for the backlog.
The key takeaway for me was the importance of active and visible support from top leadership. The lack of support conveyed an impression of indifference to the importance of linking evidence with work and aligning work with strategic goals.