figmaMar 1, 2020

The Dropbox guide to building creative culture | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

Culture shapes team happiness, belonging, productivity, innovation, and business outcomes. The Dropbox design team argues that creative culture should be built intentionally rather than left to develop by accident. Its Team Values Toolkit turns abstract beliefs into shared values, observable behaviors, reinforcing habits, and an iterative process. ## Culture as Intentional Practice - Culture is how teams act on their beliefs. - It exists at company, organizational, team, and working-group levels. - Although culture forms inevitably, intentional design helps creative teams innovate and deliver stronger work. - Dropbox developed Culture Kits to help teams make culture concrete and actionable. ## Defining Beliefs and Shared Values - Team members share stories about meaningful work experiences to uncover their individual values. - Including everyone’s perspective helps prevent culture from reflecting only dominant viewpoints or top-down directives. - The team then identifies recurring themes and combines related ideas into shared values, such as grouping “teamwork,” “partnership,” and “clear goals” under “collaboration.” - Shared values should support the team’s goals and connect with broader company values where appropriate. ## Turning Values into Behaviors - Values become useful when translated into specific actions. - Teams should discuss how their values guide: - Decision-making - Conflict and tension - Collaboration - Feedback - Day-to-day working relationships - These behaviors make cultural principles visible in actual team practices. ## Establishing Reinforcing Habits - Teams should define communication styles, norms, and processes that encourage desired behaviors. - For collaboration, this might include cross-functional practices and regular feedback. - The relationship between values, behaviors, and reinforcement creates a shared social contract. - Consistent habits determine how culture is experienced and understood by the team. ## Evaluating and Iterating - Cultural change takes time, so teams should preserve practices that work and remove those that do not. - Teams should define ways to assess whether their culture supports both people and outcomes. - Regular events, such as quarterly offsites, provide opportunities to revisit and refine the framework. - Like a product, culture should be continuously tested and improved. A healthy creative culture requires more than choosing inspiring values; teams must practice and reinforce them consistently. The Team Values Toolkit offers a structured way to build that culture collaboratively and keep adapting it over time.

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figmaDec 12, 2018

Deliveroo designs in the open with Figma | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

Deliveroo adopted Figma to replace a fragmented design workflow that had become difficult to manage as the company and its design team grew. Shared files allowed product designers, content designers, researchers, engineers, and product managers to collaborate directly instead of exchanging screenshots, emails, and Slack messages. The result was a more open design culture, faster feedback, easier onboarding, and better alignment across teams. ## Collaboration Problems as Deliveroo Expanded - Deliveroo’s design organization grew to more than 40 people supporting consumers, riders, and restaurants. - Product groups became siloed as the company expanded rapidly. - Tools such as Sketch, Dropbox, Zeplin, and Abstract created disconnected workflows. - Teams struggled with: - File synchronization and version-control issues - Sending files back and forth by email - Maintaining consistency across app designs - Coordinating product and content design - Product and content designers effectively took turns working on the same file, leading to repeated screenshots, Slack messages, and manual checks. ## Moving to a Shared Figma Workflow - Deliveroo initially had concerns about changing tools but became interested in Figma’s collaborative editing. - A pilot demonstrated that multiple people could work in one document simultaneously. - Product and content designers could develop ideas together rather than maintaining separate files. - After adopting Figma, the team no longer needed to continually manage and synchronize disconnected design documents. ## Building a More Open Design Culture - Figma made the design process visible to a wider group of employees. - Product designers, researchers, engineers, and product managers could inspect work and understand the reasoning behind design decisions. - Engineers could identify edge cases earlier and discuss how to represent them in the product. - Non-design stakeholders felt more comfortable contributing because Figma was accessible beyond specialist design teams. - New designers could learn the organization’s work by exploring existing files instead of being trained across many separate tools. ## Faster Feedback and More Efficient Reviews - Comments and discussions remained attached to the relevant work in a single document. - Stakeholders could review projects without requiring a separate walkthrough. - Designers could ask and answer questions more quickly. - Centralized feedback reduced unnecessary back-and-forth and made team members feel more connected to the work. Deliveroo’s experience suggests that a shared, browser-based design workspace can reduce operational friction while encouraging broader participation. For rapidly growing design teams, consolidating files, feedback, and collaboration in one accessible tool can improve both speed and consistency.

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