We’re curious about organizational culture in general, and the culture of culture makers in specific.
What are their habits for creating truly great teams?
How do they empower individual and organizational ingenuity?
What are their practices for cultivating communication and collaboration both internally and with their clients?
To this end, Brazenworks is talking to some of the best and brightest in the business as part of our series on Designing Culture.
I was recently up in Portland, OR, and visited with my former graduate school compatriot, Matthew Baranauskas, Senior Interaction Designer at Ziba. Matthew was nice enough to tour me around Ziba’s beautiful HQ and talk through some of the practices that make Ziba’s work culture unique. Many thanks to Matthew for his time!
Similar to Continuum, Ziba began as an industrial design company over 30 years ago and has since expanded into a variety of design related disciplines, including interaction, service, and environments.
Also similar to Continuum, Ziba people don’t typically work at their desks; they tend to orient, congregate and work in various ‘war rooms’. Throughout the common work areas, you’ll find inspiration images and trend boards hanging off the walls.
Part of the in-house culture is to utilize cross-discipline brainstorms to shed light on projects and potential solutions. In particular, I liked the Breakfast Club experiment, which was born out of the fact that people in the studio wanted a forecasting outlet. Once a month, a self-selecting group meets around a topic (such as ‘simplicity in design’) at 7:30am. They meet for roughly 2.5 hours. At the end of the meeting, two things are decided – (1) who is going to write up a report of the discussion (you can only write one report per year; and yes, it will be shared with the entire company); and (2) what next month’s topic will be. Over the next month, participants collect fodder for the next discussion.
I like that this process requires new employees to step up to the communications plate and stretch their writing, synthesis and presentation skills. An unintended consequence is that the reports become an interesting way for seasoned employees to connect with the work of new hires. The result is that everyone in the company benefits from this deep thinking, and a rich database of content knowledge for potential new business opportunities is generated.
Now, let’s talk about food, one of my favorite topics. There is only one kitchen space at Ziba that is somewhat removed from people’s desks and the project rooms. In practice, the kitchen is a fairly quiet space. Matthew said that folks tend to eat in the neighborhood, not at work. Perhaps this is because there is such a vibrant street food culture in Portland, or because people want an excuse to get out of the building. Whatever the reason, people more often come to the kitchen to get work done than to whip up a Nicoise salad.
Ziba has an incredible auditorium space with Ziba-designed, patent-pending, space-saving, theater seats. This space is used to host events (such as a wearable tech talk), as well as the occasional World Cup viewing, or in-house video game competition. Every two weeks or so there is a Game Night where people from other agencies (or former contractors) come by to play the game-du-jour (apparently ping pong is so 2011).
As we continued the tour, I noticed that there were $2 bills tacked to people’s work spaces. Matthew said that on Persian New Year, the founder (who is Perisian), walks around and hands out $2 bills to everyone for good luck. The bills become a badge of honor and represent the number of years that you’ve been with company. More bills, more prestige. This is a great example of a small gesture that communicates volumes. Personally, $2 bills have always seemed magical to me -I’ve been collecting them ever since I was a kid- so this practice really struck a chord.
An interesting client-facing experiment is Design Fridays. This is a lean design process that Ziba uses on select projects as a way streamline the design/development/milestone process. In essence, it’s a way to have weekly gut checks to insure that the designs are working for ‘real people’, and that there is time built into the development phase to integrate this user-research into the final deliverable.
It works like this, over a 5 week period:
Monday morning: Plan out the week.
Monday afternoon – Wednesday: Design and rapid prototype.
Thursday: Assess the work. If there are outstanding questions or assumptions to be tested, these are prepped for Friday.
Friday: Two user groups are invited into Ziba. Each group gets 45 minutes to test the prototype(s). While these groups are at work, the client and design lead are in another room, observing the user-group. This transparency not only allows the client to see how design directions are ‘discovered’, but builds trust among Ziba and it’s clients.
I like that this real-time, multilayered feedback system allows new information to be efficiently integrated into the next round of design, development and testing. Matthew said that as a result of participating in this process, he’s now more likely to solicit other people’s opinions as he is developing an idea; and that the idea usually benefits from this input.
Ziba moved into this building about 4 years ago. The interior space is impressive, almost museum-like. I was duly impressed by the 2-story tall styrofoam transformer in the lobby. Because of the clean white walls, this is one of the few agencies where you won’t find any Sharpies. Instead, water-based pens rule the day. There is also a great workshop space where projects are prototyped. One perk is that staff has access to this space to work on personal projects.
Of course, there is a Monday Morning Meetup over breakfast, where people share what is going on in the office for the week.
Like other successful agencies, Ziba seems to be a culture of self-driven thinkers and makers. People are given a good bit of autonomy to pursue their interests as they relate to the agency’s design directive. In this way, it’s an environment where more is better and individuals matter.
How do these practices land with you?
In what ways does your work culture empower individual autonomy and interests?
How are you rewarded for your service?
