DELIVERING DESIGN THINKING METHODS TO THE ORGANIZATION

mapping the north star

KeyBank’s leadership gave the design team the go-ahead to invest in people, projects and processes that would enable KeyBank to become a more user-centric, design-first organization.

The CHALLENGE

KeyBank’s product team was scaling rapidly, creating products and services across commercial, retail and wealth segments and designing experiences across mobile, tablet and desktop. Thanks to a successful integration of our agile practice with an aggressive strategy, there were countless projects. Even more importantly, there was a need to use fewer resources to meet more goals.

Research

My primary goal was to create a Design Thinking framework, methods and techniques for all of the teams, so I focused on research around two major areas:

  • The current process that designers use to impact and enable their squads (the design team had recently adopted Figma as a tool for centralized design management)

  • Design team aptitude and comfort with Design Thinking and research methods

We interviewed each designer on the team about the research and design methods we hoped to consistently use about their level of comfort and fluency in each.

I also analyzed competitive and market trends and descriptions to develop the job roles for leads for the KeyBank design system, the KeyBank design thinking practice, KeyBank research and analytics and KeyBank digital team tools, processes and management. Each of these team leads would run a “guild,” made up of designers that were responsible for socializing their methods and tracking and trumpeting their outcomes.

DESIGN & DEFINITION

After gathering all of the information required and installing team members into the foundational roles, the next step was orchestrating the work needed to arrive at the desired end state:

  • A design thinking playbook (excerpts below) for the organization that would give designers, business and technology people tools and methods to keep the design and development user focused

  • Methods and tools for user research (we implemented tools such as UserZoom, Scout, and Figma)

  • A functional design system in Figma, with an active guild to address design and development of UX patterns, reusable design elements and code snippets

  • OKRs to measure the success of design-led initiatives

  • Case Studies to promote success stories

  • Processes and methodologies for product design and delivery, including guidelines for branding, design philosophy and practices, building reusable components, crafting accessible experiences, and prototyping

IMPACT

The goal of the foundational approach was to not just state that KeyBank would build human-centered products and services, but to actually provide a framework for success for the teams to work within. As these items have become available to the teams, I’ve seen the following markers of success:

  • In a survey, 86% of KeyBank digital team members said they have a strong understanding of design thinking methodology and its benefits

  • Teams have increased their time to market, moving from 3-week sprints to 2 on many products based on rapid prototyping and testing

  • Developers have joined the KeyBank design system guild, and have communicated implementation goals around design system components

  • KeyBank has reached a higher level of design maturity, with 30% more stakeholders requesting design resources earlier in their project life cycles

  • The Key Design Studio manages all operational work and priorities for digital services and products, and have also launched:

In accordance with my non-disclosure agreement with KeyBank, I have omitted confidential information from this case study. All information in this case study is expressed by me, and does not necessarily reflect the views of KeyBank or any of its employees.