Coaching Senior Designers to Design Managers

Overview

ownpath conducted a 3 month program for Gojek’s design team on Design Management. The program was designed to help 11 senior designers at Gojek transition to becoming Design Managers through live masterclasses and coaching sessions.

What’s unique about the program?

The curriculum and learning experience were designed to be relevant and actionable, ensuring that practical skills are immediately applicable by participants. Live, small-group sessions were led by seasoned experts, allowing for interaction and personalised feedback.

Curriculum

Module 1: Introduction to Design Management

In the first module, the team at Gojek was introduced to the differences between individual contribution and management. They were guided through self-assessing their work styles and those of their team members, and were taught were taught how to coordinate and delegate tasks  and design choices at the appropriate level. Additionally, they learned how to express the organisation’s shared sense of purpose.

Module 2: Communication for Managers

In the next module, the participants practiced active listening with team members and learned how to deliver both positive and negative feedback. The framing of communication for different audiences around business objectives and project goals was explored. Methods for running effective meetings, including agenda setting, timing, and staying on track, were also covered. Learners developed the ability to recognise the pitfalls of cross-functional communication.

Module 3: Project Management Fundamentals

In the final module, the team was introduced to the basics of project management. They were taught how to gather and assess project requirements to create a clear scope and brief. They were guided on how to break a project into actionable tasks, identify dependencies and the critical path, and build a timeline with tasks, dependencies, and deadlines. Methods for keeping the project running smoothly were also covered.

Here’s the full curriculum outline we designed for the Design Management Program.

Pedagogy and Live sessions

Live masterclasses

The masterclasses focused on helping the designers get introduced to key concepts, learn from the hard-earned expertise of highly experienced instructors such as Kristin Skinner (co-author of Org Design for Design Orgs), Alysha Naples (ex-Head of Design, Magic Leap), and Meredith Black (co-author of Design Ops Handbook and ex-Head of Design Ops at Pinterest). Here’s a clip that has snippets from all the three masterclasses:

Live coaching

The coaching sessions were designed to help the designers put the concepts into practice with the guidance of highly experienced design managers such as Sameer Bhiwani (UX Leader, Google) and Praneet Koppula (UX Manager, MathWorks). Here’s a clip that has snippets across two different coaching sessions:

Async discussions

In addition to the live sessions, the program also involved the designers in discussions and assignments which were managed through Basecamp.

All the sessions were conducted remotely, as our mentors were spread across India, USA, and Europe and the learners were spread across India and Indonesia.

Feedback from the designers

Comments via our anonymous feedback form:

“I'm a little bit surprised and sad that the course is already over”
‍

“I found the small group classes to be very helpful. Discussing real work-life issues and role playing actually helped a lot for us to understand how to handle situations better.”

“The topic coverage has been really great and everyone in the team you can sense is really passionate about sharing their knowledge and very supportive and encouraging about anyone pursuing a managerial role”

“Thank you so very much for everything that you guys already put to make this course enjoyable and insightful. I really can feel the massive effort for the coaches to make the class interactive, and really appreciate it. I will make sure to have a good use of the materials.”

“Contents is very useful and practical. my fav topics is: Delegating Task, How to become Active Listener, Persuasion vs Negotiation”

“Meredith Black masterclass session is the most enjoyable one, she's very smart, eyes opener for design ops role in pinterest / silicon valley, how to manage the project, very communicative to answer our questions.”

Kind Words for ownpath
‍

Abhinit Tiwari, ex-Head of Design at Gojek          
‍

Fatema Raja, ex-Group Design Head, Gojek

Sameer Bhiwani, UX Leader at Google

‍

‍