Identifying Process Gaps and Implementing Design Systems to Streamline Workflows
Overview
Lunchbox Studio is an in-house agency within Lunchbox Technologies, focused on driving partner growth through tailored product strategies and digital marketing campaigns across various ad platforms. As Design Manager, I lead a cross-functional team of designers, copywriters, and motion designers, overseeing product and marketing materials while ensuring quality assurance and evolving department best practices.
I’m grateful to have been part of this amazing team, and this page highlights a few of our key achievements.
TL;DR
Led design strategy and implementation, ensuring consistency across various client needs.
Collaborated with cross-functional teams, including marketing, client success, sales and engineering, to create efficient processes.
Oversaw a team of designers while directly contributing to asset creation.
Developed and maintained design systems and kits to streamline workflows.
Managed go-to-market (GTM) launch campaigns, producing assets like digital ads, print materials, email marketing and social graphics.
Cross-Departmental Design Operations
Restructuring Studio's Design Process
THE ISSUE
Within the first month of joining Studio, I identified a lack of design process across multiple departments. Each team is built as its own pod, but cross-departmental hand-offs and design processes were lacking, especially for Studio. Since Studio is a newer addition to the Lunchbox ecosystem, the processes that were already in place did not accommodate Studio's needs. Some steps were redundant, overly complicated and simply just not captured.
THE PROCESS
Since this issue requires a solution that works across the majority of the organization, I started conducting interviews with department heads to review their needs and concerns while expressing Studio's needs. From there, I compiled and prioritized areas of improvement from highest to lowest level of impact. After consulting with my direct report, I crafted proposals to start implementing each item.
THE RESULT
With the new process, design needs in Product and Marketing were more unified which also translated to other departments. This also depicted a clearer picture of Studio’s scope of work which resulted in reviewing of client contracts and the SoW process to better represent the creatives.
Implementing Cross-Departmental Design Process
THE ISSUE
Within the first month of joining Studio, I identified a lack of design process across multiple departments. Each team is built as its own pod, but cross-departmental hand-offs and design processes were lacking, especially for Studio. Since Studio is a newer addition to the Lunchbox ecosystem, the processes that were already in place did not accommodate Studio's needs. Some steps were redundant, overly complicated and simply just not captured.
THE PROCESS
Since this issue requires a solution that works across the majority of the organization, I started conducting interviews with department heads to review their needs and concerns while expressing Studio's needs. From there, I compiled and prioritized areas of improvement from highest to lowest level of impact. After consulting with my direct report, I crafted proposals to start implementing each item.
THE RESULT
One of the main achievements was unifying the design system between the Product and Studio teams for a smoother design process in Figma.
Internal Design Operations & Standarization
Establishing Studio Design Kits
THE ISSUE
Every project was being created from scratch and this had 2 main issues: (1) It was too time-consuming (2) It created inconsistency across different projects resulting in an increase in internal review cycles.
THE PROCESS
2 new processes were designed and implemented in Studio’s design cycle. First, I built a design library that can be used across the entire team on multiple projects. This process was prioritized as it had a high-level impact on the entire design team. Following this new process, design kit guidelines were set for the individual projects, making the design process much faster and more effective.
THE RESULT
These new processes created effective and efficient tools for the designers and had a significant impact on the overall turnaround by 50% as well as reduced the internal review cycles by 30%.
Establishing a Studio Design Workflow
THE ISSUE
When I joined Studio, the lifecycle of products was somewhat established but was not organized or implemented in an effective way. Everything was verbally communicated between stakeholders across multiple platforms, making the entire process complicated and redundant. It was challenging to keep track of the progress and consolidate feedback.
THE PROCESS
My focus was to implement a process that considers all internal and external stakeholders while documenting it so it’s accessible to anyone that needs it at any time. I started with master design workflow guidelines that overview the entire lifecycle of the design process from brief creation to client handoff. And from there, I was able to identify the gaps and implement small process changes throughout the entire department.
THE RESULT
This updated Studio workflow created visibility and highlighted the entire design process for all internal stakeholders, giving everyone a clear and more unified picture of the status of each product. It also became a tool for other departments like the Sales team and even the C-Suite to potentially push for services to clients and highlight the offerings to investors.
Product Launch Marketing Campaigns
Overseeing Designs for Go-To-Market (GTM) Strategies and Launches
Developing and utilizing the standardized design kit as a foundation and incorporating custom solutions tailored to client needs, I collaborated with our product marketing team to oversee a group of designers while also contributing to asset production. These assets included digital ads, print materials, landing pages, social graphics, and email marketing, all aimed at ensuring the success of product launch campaigns.
