Wading through the Pond
Bringing order to chaos and navigating ambiguity to deliver meaningful and thoughtful design solutions
Overview
Objective // To deliver successful client programs through the facilitation of program design, collaborative team environments, and flow of information to ensure teams are armed to address the task at hand.
Roles // Program management, vanguard of product vision, design & brand strategy, user researcher
Collaborations // Industrial design, engineering, visual design
Outcome
Situation
I joined frog as a Program Manager in October of 2021. The role was a mix of operations, engagement strategy, and design orchestration - with the challenge being to instill a level of thoughtful discipline on a broad spectrum of programs in the highly creative and fast-paced environment that is frog.
Bringing order to chaos is a task I was familiar with from PwC, but frog’s wavelength of chaos was different. This was the most eclectic group of people I’ve had the opportunity to work with, and despite spending a year learning the language of Design, it still felt like, at times, the community spoke a different language. I was now working with some of the best design talent in North America, doing work for clients ranging from innovative start-ups to large institutions, and somehow, I had to manage the work to delivery.
Programs at frog are highly diverse in scope and nature, with the only constant being the process followed to strategically diverge and converge to finalize what we might deliver to a (hopefully) happy client. Typical duration was around 3 months, which meant that it was necessary for the team to hit the ground running. Team composition shifts depending on the ask and budget; each team has a Program Lead and PM, along with a multi-disciplinary team assembled to dive into the task at hand.
Here’s the work that I had the opportunity to help manage and deliver:
Design strategy for a large lending company to formulate near-term solutions they could roll out to help minority communities start the journey towards homeownership
Naming & brand strategy for a large financial institution to spearhead entry into market for an in-car payments platform planned for release
Industrial design & engineering for a medical device start-up looking to bring to market a direct-to-consumer retinal scanning device to inform users if and the extent to which they might have diabetes and other conditions
Brand strategy & visual design for a large financial institution to revamp the graphic design and brand language of their credit card suite
Industrial & visual design for a pharmaceutical company to device an intuitive and friendly form of primary packaging and instructional graphics for a medication meant to be dry-inhaled as a powder
After a while submerged with the tadpoles, I developed my frog legs and life was just a bit sunnier.
I noticed significant differences in how I conducted myself on a daily basis, with less anxiety and more assuredness in the face of uncertainty. I found myself paying attention to the smaller details, empathizing with the team to calibrate our cadence and rituals. I developed a strong appreciation for patient problem solving and the nuances around determining points to diverge and converge. And I found myself thriving in my T-shape, developing deeper program management skills while broadening my expertise in product and creative strategy.
The frog environment and culture is quite unique. There are few places where you can expect to work on a “sizzle reel” for a company to tease the release of their new payments wearable in June and with a start-up in September to design a retinal scanning device for expanding access to quality health care diagnostics. To support the nimble program teams assembled to address each ask, the PM role as frog is constantly flexing and adapting to program, team, and client needs.
Most importantly, with all the change comes a requirement of the PM to ensure the work remains sustainable. This is where I found myself bringing the most value, serving as the critical central hub and glue for my teams to ensure frictionless interactions and collaboration.
My Learnings
The Process
As a PM, one of my core responsibilities was managing our points of divergence and convergence.
We always started off a little fuzzy, with a strong push to be divergent on the information gathered and the directions of ideation. This was followed by strategic moments of converging onto possible directions we might pursue, based on internal and client feedback, and further divergence to explore the breadth of each direction. Sometimes slowly but always surely, the process of going wide and honing in eventually yielded us answers on what to deliver.
Comfort in the ambiguity and trust in our design principles was why the frog process worked. Embracing the chaos, in a sustainable, positive, and collaborative work environment, allowed us to let creativity roam free at the right points in the program timeline. And a strong intuition on where to converge and distill gave us opportunities to build hunches out into provocative solutions.
It was challenging at times to take steps back when an insight fails to yield substance, but we had faith in Design’s tenet of abductive reasoning - that with the right process, you can embrace the unknown and trust that observation and thoughtfulness will yield meaningful answers.
Once the opportunity and ask have been solidified and a team has been assembled, we moved into our Week 0. This is where we situate ourselves with the ask, the timeline, client directives, and, most importantly, each other. Our process of grounding the team in the task ahead was called a Team Leap (cause we’re frog, obviously).
Aside from the work itself, I would say this was one of the most important exercises for establishing a sustainable work culture for the duration of the program. I equated it to an athlete’s deep breath before jumping off the dive board. A moment to pause and assess the situation and objectives before diving in.
Timelines at frog start at 0 instead of 1.
Immersion
With a good sense of who the team is and the ask, we jump into Immersion, kicking off our first point of divergence. To understand the ask, we go wide - evaluating the competition, interviewing key stakeholders, and examining adjacent applications. Most importantly, this phase is where we established most, if not all, of the constraints to adhere to for designing possible solution concepts.
Directions of research and ideation are loose here, with low structure to allow for spontaneous thoughts and builds. I tended to keep meetings, aside from stand-ups, light here to allow some space for the team’s creativity to breathe - as this was the prime opportunity to introduce radical design concepts.
Outputs from this phase were high-level design directions, supported by low fidelity sketches and/or renderings, for our client to react to. Based on the feedback, we’d hone in on the directions resonating as our focus for the next round of ideation.
Co-Design
Here’s where we demonstrated our value as frog. Focused ideation, open-minded collaboration, and unbiased observation were all key to this portion of the work.
The nature of program scope determined who was involved with co-design. For highly strategic asks, co-design sometimes involved conducting workshops with users to understand pain points and where we might enter with a solution. For more design-oriented asks (I.e. digital or physical products), co-design would be with key client team members.
From a PM perspective, structure was key here.
Team members still needed dedicated time to push their portions of work, but equally key were points of convergence between workstreams to sync on findings and build on in-progress work.
External perspectives were often helpful, either from 3rd party vendors or the larger frog discipline team, to validate and push hunches - which required coordination.
Client touchpoints had to be timed according to the flow of ideation, so that work shown was at the caliber expected of frog.
Care was required to ensure program cadence remained conducive to the creativity required to deliver, and observation was necessary to determine if outside perspectives could lend a hand.
Best practice was to time client touchpoints with points of convergence. Depending on the nature of the program and client, this varied quite a bit. Programs oriented around physical product design tended to have less, whereas visual design and brand strategy programs benefited from more frequent touchpoints for client perspective on often subjective design decisions.
The path of this phase differed greatly from program to program, with some oscillating between divergence and convergence more than others, but the objective remained consistent - landing on a subset of design concepts to be tested.
Testing & Refinement
Obviously, at this deep into a design program, prototyping and informal user testing were nothing new to our activities week to week. The formal testing phase was typically sequenced after a major downselection to a subset of concept candidates for use as evidence to back our final recommendation and deliverable.
This was also one of my favorite parts of a program. Almost like a TV show you might binge on a Saturday, watching the insights unfold is magnetic. If we had interviews, there would be some “drama” around the participant with the black-sheep opinions, a memorable character somewhere that we remember fondly, and a feeling we left with of satisfaction and anticipation for what’s next.
We’d use Miro here, and house all sticky notes on separate frames duplicating our notes template. As a PM, I would typically own the real-time organization + rough synthesis of takeaways as we progressed through research, for use in group discussions as we planned out our final revs.
Delivery
"Success in consulting lies not only in the brilliance of ideas but also in the art of delivery, for it is through effective communication that knowledge transforms into impactful action," said ChatGPT.
It is quite true though, and it’s on the PM for any frog program to stick the landing. From understanding expectations around final deliverables to figuring out the best way to transfer our blueprint files over, delivery required some nuance to ensure what we land on is meaningful and sufficiently provocative to snowball into positive impact for our client.
A fun part of the role here was the exercise of engineering frog’s skillset towards what might be next, with respect to our relationship with this client. A medication packaging program could unfold into multiple phases working through manufacturing & materials, visual branding, and marketing strategies. A luxury credit card program could extend into a physical prototyping phase to explore materiality options for differentiation in a crowded market. The task was very strategic, and sometimes wild, but it was key to ending the program in frog fashion.
Reflect
The pace of the program usually picks up towards delivery, and despite the sprint, we always run a victory lap. A post-program retrospective helps in reflecting on the wins, and there are usually questions from ecstatic clients processing the depth of what we sent across.
Key Takeaways
Value of Prototyping
Rapid prototyping is table-stakes for anything in the design realm, and one of our most valuable tools for honing in on the content for deliverables. As a PM in the same frog-sphere, I also found it immensely helpful for establishing sustainable program cadences and work environments.
When operating in an environment as dynamic and fluid as frog, a PM has to take care in balancing structure with flexibility. But this structure heavily depends on the nature of the ask and composition of the team - meaning that this balance has to be customized for each program.
I found a prototyping approach invaluable in crafting program artifacts to orchestrate creativity and allow frog teams to do what they do best. Collaboration, frequent + open communication, and thoughtful observation were all key to informing the structures I put together for us to orient ourselves in the tumult of design.
Space to Breathe
One of the biggest differences in the nature of work between PwC and frog (from my experiences) was the level of subjectivity in the work - it’s usually tougher to discuss qualitative, unbiased feedback for a credit art visual design than it is on a potential feature extension on a desktop application.
I realized soon in that the work for creative endeavors can’t be rushed. Of course the team can set deadlines and work towards milestones, but the quantification of work in doesn’t always translate to work out.
Allowing the team space to breathe, through a thoughtful program cadence and structure, ensures that all facets are considered and that the final work product is as close to a designer’s standard of perfection.
The Art of Empathy
There’s a magic in the air when a team starts tuning into the same frequency. Sometimes it appears as expected, and other times as a surprise, but provided that the input variables are met, it’ll appear.
Tuning into the pulse of a program is another core responsibility of a PM in the pond. This was a gauge of a variety of intangible things - the flow of creativity, how inspired the team is, whether they feel comfortable throwing out wild ideas, if our client touchpoints are at a sustainable frequency.
Tuning into the pulse was a design exercise, requiring patience, understanding, and empathy. A program’s operational model is never perfect the first time, and it requires intuition and observation to refine over time.
Embrace the Chaos
Change is the only constant in life.
Working in Design taught me thoughtfulness and patience in not only a professional setting, but also in the context of life. And this was a big life lesson instilled from my time at frog - if change is bound to arise unexpectedly, why not embrace it?
Flexibility, communication, patience, and trust all equip a team to handle the chaos bound to arise on a frog program. A friendly and sustainable work environment helps greatly to build a culture where these four thrive - which can’t be prescribed. It’s critical for a Design PM to not only observe, empathize, and collaborate to define the rigor for program delivery - but also remain humble and flexible to surf unexpected waves.