TL;DR: During my tenures at Eppendorf and Diconium, I thrived in team-oriented environments, contributing significantly to team dynamics and processes. At Eppendorf, I led the restructuring of our meetings and onboarding processes, enhancing communication and engagement within our 10-member design team. At Diconium, I navigated the challenges of a growing team by establishing effective collaborative methods and leading as the concept lead, ensuring alignment and consistency in our UX/UI projects. My efforts included developing a FigJam board for better meeting management and actively seeking personal growth through leadership courses, which enhanced my ability to guide and advocate for my team effectively.
For me, working as part of a team, is essential. During my team both at eppendorf and at diconium, I had the privilege to be working as part of a team and with other designers. Being able to learn from each other, make use of experiences others had and improve your own work and approach, is something that I value highly.
Design team at eppendorf
At eppendorf I was part of a team ten people strong. While we were collaborating very well, in our Monday Morning meetings, we were missing structure and wanted to improve. I took the task upon myself, to come up with a new setup and how we wanted to work together. During this process, I crafted a new meeting template, established a “MoC” (Master of Ceremony), and changed how we exchanged our information as well as time boxing to ensure, we were able to cover all topics. With this change, we found an improved information exchange as well as being more knowledgable as well as engaged during the meetings.
For the weekly UX meeting I also created a small “how to” to enable all other members of the team. In addition, we reviewed and adjusted the meeting, template and the structure to continuously work for us, as a team.
In addition, I crafted an onboarding template for new colleagues. This included links to important resources, names of contact people, to do’s placed on a timeline (increasing complexity the longer the colleague was at eppendorf) as well as establishing a “meet and greet” for topics and topic owners.
Project team at diconium digital solutions
In one of my recent projects, I was part of a growing team. The team started out relatively small (4 UX and 4 UI designers). In this setup, we had to establish a way of working and align our different point of views and needs to be able to collaborate together. At the beginning, we had to overcome some technical difficulties before we were able to tackle other collaborative issues. As we are working on a joint product, we needed to ensure that our concepts and designs were consistent and aligned with each other. To do so, we had regular meetings but we were not satisfied with the way, we conducted them. To improve this, I created a FigJam board in a LEAN coffee style. I acted as the moderator for the first couple of months to establish the method and provide guidance and structure. With regular feedback, we were able to improve this meeting even further and include other methods to foster a smooth information exchange (such as silent feedback).
For the project colleagues from diconium, I acted as concept lead. As part of this role, I provided guidance in design decisions, offered support in case of uncertainty or issues within our team or outside of our team and was “the voice” of the team toward the client. To be able to fulfil this role, I participated in courses, that strengthened my leadership skills. The courses “Lateral Leadership”, the DISG model and confidence in conflict added skills to my toolbox, which I was able to effectively use. Since I was new, at fulfilling this role as lead, I regularly asked for feedback and ways I could improve myself.