Case Study | Optimizing Operations
(1) Lean, low-cost operations are crucial for a startup’s survival, but still necessary even after companies become well-established.
As a startup, it is crucial to allocate funds appropriately, only to initiatives that are really necessary for operations, and building or selling a successful product or service. There are so many examples of startups that have received vast amounts of funding and then spend it on all the wrong things too fast (e.g., unnecessary marketing campaigns, additional product features that are useless to users). Instead, they should have been saving most of that money, touching it only when absolutely necessary. It’s crucial to develop seamless processes between different team members or specialists within a startup to achieve maximum productivity, while still creating a work culture that is friendly, informal, laid back in its mannerisms and yet driven to create and build fast.
It took me a couple of weeks of working with DIEMlife’s developers to get into a routine of seamless, week-long design sprints, working very closely with them to implement my designs across platforms (desktop HD, desktop, tablet, mobile) and for the native mobile app. After feeling out different ways to work, we agreed upon the following process that worked well for everyone. I started the platform re-design process by interviewing users in my first few weeks on the job and then broke down all of DIEMlife’s existing functionality into one-week or two-week long design sprint sessions, depending on the complexity of that functionality and it’s importance to the value proposition that the platform. I tried to divide up the redesign in a way that the redesign of one feature set or functionality would not derail other features and functionality within the platform.
Week 1: Competitive Heuristic
Week 2: Concept Generation & Ideation
Week 3: User testing sprint (12 sessions with users)
Week 4: Product Roadmap development (functionality breakdown into sprints)
Week 5: Landing page redesign (all screen sizes)
Week 6: Explore page (all screen sizes)
Week 7: Quest page redesign, Edit Quest redesign (all screen sizes, mobile app)
Week 8: Quest page redesign, Edit Quest redesign (all screen sizes, mobile app)
Inter-disciplinary collaboration process: Every Monday I would get on a 7 am call with the developers based in Europe and DIEMlife’s founder. We would go through the redesigns from last week and I would take note of all developer requests that will help them with the redesign. I spend Monday and Tuesday providing the developers with any additional context or assets they would need to completely implement the designs. I then spent the rest of the week sticking to the product roadmap I created at the beginning of the project and redesigning one aspect of the platform for that week. I created responsive and adaptive designs that look good on the Desktop HD screen, Desktop screen, tablet, mobile 360 px screen, and mobile 320 px screen. In addition to this, I showcased how these features would look within the mobile app as well. I would hop on a call on Friday at 7 am to present my redesigns to the team, giving them just enough time to think through their feedback for those Monday morning calls. This was how we got things done fast as a team.
(2) To outsource or not to outsource — that’s the question.
A startup can choose to orchestrate services from outside entities and coordinate efforts across different entities (e.g., using a design agency to design an app and then developing it with another agency and coordinating the efforts between the two agencies, while marketing the app through another third party agency). The e-commerce platform I used to work for started out with an orchestrator model before gradually bringing different production capabilities in-house as the company grew and expanded. For startups, it’s often best to manufacture a product using third party resources because this is a cheaper method of production. It takes money investment, time and effort to develop robust manufacturing capabilities in-house.
A startup must decide on what to outsource and what to keep in-house from the very beginning. While writing up the operations plan for AchievEEG (neurological monitoring to improve athletic performance), our Engineering Entrepreneurship team proposed keeping research and development of the product in-house, as well as all design and software development efforts. This was so that the company could protect the proprietary algorithms or hardware created during the product development process. We proposed manufacturing and distributing our product using third parties, yet signing NDAs with key manufacturers and suppliers to protect any proprietary aspects of the product.
(3) Transparency and trust are the building blocks for smooth operations processes.
I worked at both a bakery and a sandwich shop for 6 months after graduating from Carnegie Mellon to support myself while I figured out what I wanted to do as a career. I was sure that I didn’t want to be a mechanical engineer, but I didn’t yet know that I wanted to be a product designer yet. These two day jobs, along with a part-time startup internship, earned me just enough money to get by and pay the rent, as well as go out with friends. It was easy to get into a routine at both my bakery and sandwich shop jobs. I learned to manage rush hours at the sandwich shop, with our assembly line process for deli sandwiches, making 2-3 of the same type of sandwiches as 5-10 slip orders would come in at one once. We would serve between 50 to 100 customers during that two-hour lunch rush between 12 pm and 2 pm each weekday — I would count the numbers on my slip to keep track of it.
The lunch rush hour always ran smoothly. There were typically 2-3 people manning the hot sandwiches station, usually involved with cooking the meat for the burgers. There were typically 2-3 people working in the deli assembly line and 1 cashier. I was typically the cashier or part of the deli assembly line on any given day. During these two hours, there were typically 10-20 customers lining up or deciding on their order. As the cashier, it was important to remember how to input orders into the system in less than 30 seconds, without error, and keep the line moving. The menu was well organized within the system so that it was always easy to access sandwiches, deserts, soups, cold drinks and hot drinks while putting together an order. If the order involved a latte of any kind (time consuming to make during a rush hour), I would get the drink started and somebody from the deli assembly line would take over mid-way. Everything I needed as a cashier or as part of the deli assembly was always an arm’s reach away. We were careful to re-stock all items prior to rush hour.
During training or the rush hours, the owners of the shop would help out with everything. They were always patient and calm, no matter how crazy the rush hour, and despite any unplanned mishaps. They also trusted each and every one of their employees. As most of us were students, we were allowed free meals during shifts and were even allowed to take home one free meal each day. Since they were so generous with us, everyone who worked there was friendly, hardworking and sincere. Nobody ever abused the system or the inherent trust between everyone who worked together.
With trust comes transparency. When I first started working at the sandwich shop, I would always asked for help if I didn’t know how to complete a task (e.g., frothing milk for a latte). Sometimes, I had to repeat the process multiple times before I succeeded and would have to have someone walk me through the same process multiple times. Everyone was always patient and very willing to help, which made me feel comfortable with asking questions, trusting that I wouldn’t be reprimanded for a stupid question. As a result, we had very few wrong orders or unsatisfactory orders. All staff members double checked their work or even re-did the work if they didn’t feel that the result was up to the standards set down by the owners, who took the time to explain and show each and every one of us how to make quality food, fast.
(4) Scaling operations processes requires establishing specialized teams, hiring team managers, and defining core processes.
My job as a user experience manager at Yellowdig involved understanding customer pain points and often translating these into Jira tickets for the developers on our team, whenever we had to troubleshoot a complicated bug in the system. The job also involved giving sales demos to administrators, professors, and deans of colleges and universities that our ed-tech platform was trying to target. During my time with the startup, I developed and documented rigorous on boarding and engagement processes that everyone on the team could use to set up prospective customers for success, converting users to paid customers after their free trial. These processes were crucial to helping interns and new hires learn about how to engage with our customers, while also standardizing the quality of work across the team.
My work as a program coordinator for the University of Pennsylvania’s Executive Program for Social Innovation Design (XSD) involved converting vague interest in the program from our social media marketing campaigns into actionable interest, prospective students that actually complete their applications by the early decision and regular decision deadlines. The job also involved setting up courses for students within our online portal and ensuring that they have a great learning experience throughout the program. I adapted established processes from previous online executive programs run at Penn to guide my daily tasks and to-dos in an attempt to standardize the operations for this new program.
(5) Team feedback is crucial for learning about what works and what doesn’t within an established process so that the company can course-correct.
My work as a UX consultant involved simplifying a large consumer brand’s existing global labeling process, which required a lot of coordination between the global teams and regional teams to design a label and the produce the label for that product for multiple languages and across multiple manufacturing sites all over the world. We conducted workshops and interviewed global and regional managers to understand pain points and bottlenecks within the process. We compared each team’s processes with other teams to see what was standardized and what was more customized to a specific region or locale.
While the labeling process required more local and regional process customizations due to the nature of creating a label (translations, cultural elements, regulatory requirements within that country), the other supply chain project I worked on for the company required standardizing data collection and processing to track performance globally across manufacturing sites. Here the real challenge involved understanding what metrics or perspectives into the data mattered most to global managers versus regional and local managers. For both project, our team prototyped concepts multiple times and sought feedback from a variety of stakeholders in order to improve upon the final deliverable.
Featured Projects
01. Executive Program for Social Innovation Design
Program Coordination
02. Supply Chain Dashboard
KPI Dashboard
03. Global Consumer Platform
Global Labeling Process
04. Yellowdig
Customer Engagement
05. Operations Portfolio
View Optimizing Operations Portfolio