Joining Octopus in July 2019, I was hired to lead on our Design System (DeepSea) and to oversee the UX & Design of a multi-site re-platform project.
After 6 months and successfully delivering the Design System and first two website projects I was given the opportunity to manage the whole team. During this time myself and the team faced many challenges, the most notable being the covid-19 pandemic.
However, during the last year the team have continued to deliver quality work time and time again. I believe this is down to a blend of consistent processes, visibility, transparency and members of the team being given the opportunity to drive projects.
My role at Octopus has taken many different directions, from leading a multiple disciplinary team of Product Designers, Researchers and UX content writers to UX and Design strategy across Octopus Group; Investments, Real Estate, Renewables and Ventures.
I’ve also embedded DesignOps processes to enable efficiencies within UX and Design and given my time and energy to developing individual members of the team. This combined with bringing departmental understanding of UX and building bridges of trust and collaboration with other teams has led to my time at Octopus being a real time of growth for the business in it’s digital offering and overall customer experience.
Octopus Group - Head of Design
What we achieved…
DeepSea Design System
Joining Octopus in July 2019, I was hired to lead on our Design System (DeepSea) and to oversee the UX & Design of a multi-site re-platform project. This involved designing an atomic design system capable of catering for each of our business lines that provides a great responsive experience.
I Lead the project and was supported by two fantastic designers in Ben Shelford and Kyle Bowman. Together, we designed, tested and launched the design system (from scratch) in 6months. This was a tremendous victory, for myself, the team and the business.
Initially the Design System was in Sketch but later we moved it to Figma. The source code is built in Gutenberg on Wordpress.
Multi-site replatforming project
At the same time as creating the design system, we also had to work on a number of high profile websites for the business.
After a super busy 14 months but I’m absolutely delighted we were able to create the design system and publish 8 websites with considerations for; experience, content and compliance in such a short time.
Key websites in the multi-site re-platform project;
octopusgroup.com
octopusinvestments.com
octopusventures.com
octopusrenewables.com
octopus-realestate.com
Business critical Lean UX during Covid-19
During a super challenging time back at the beginning of Lockdown in the UK we were able to use Lean UX methods to create business critical experiences to support our users.
In the face of everything going on with COVID-19 the UX & Design team, Marketing and Dev team at Octopus managed to get a product update centre live in 24 hours to provide key information to alleviate stress and tension for users.
Outstanding cross-functional collaboration, see it here
Processes
When I joined the Product Design team at Octopus it was clear that the team had great potential but more could be done to set them the team for success. We had some processes in place like Discovery and Team Retros but nothing everything was catered for.
After being offered the role of Head of Design I seized the opportunity to create transparent, visible and repeatable processes for the team and other departments to use. This made it easier for the rest of the design team to further intergrate into the business.
The additional processes included; Weekly Design Priority, Weekly Design Review, Lean UX, Content & Design sync workshop and UX & Design briefing.
Furthermore, other members of the team began to create repeatable and scalable processes such as Ellen Hart and Ben Shelford embedded Googles Design Sprints into our methods.
Changing team culture and behaviours
The biggest parts of my management role at Octopus were; creating an environment where UX & Design could thrive and educating other departments, teams and the business on UX and why it has tremendous value.
After 18months, it’s been a very busy journey but many teams and departments we work with on a day to day basis now understand the fundamentals of UX, Design, Research and UX content and this is down to the hard work not only of myself but of the whole team.
The thing that pleases me most about my time at Octopus is how much team members have improved. Midweights have moved on to Senior roles, and some Seniors to Lead roles within the team.
My overall reflection is that I was able to create an environment for individual and collective progression and this has benefitted, people, the team and the business hugely.
