We want to go to work in a place that we actually enjoy, right? A lot of organizations are realizing it’s not just about checking the boxes for necessary features, but instead focusing on culture when making IT decisions.
During Build IT Together in May of 2015, we spoke with Zach DeYoung of Maestro, Elanor Riley of Bell’s Brewing, and Bobby Hopewell of Medical Health Resources, to get 3 different perspectives on how IT can impact company culture (and visa-versa). Zach DeYoung is the Vice President of Creative at Maestro, where he communicates with organizations to design their productivity tools, and he gave some great insights on how their creative process is influenced by culture. In this first installment of a 3 part series, here’s a recap of Zach’s talk from the event.
Focusing on the end-user
“For Maestro it starts with strategy. Planning and strategy always set you up for success, and it’s not about checking the boxes for features you need. You need an understanding of what you expect the tool to do for you. What do you want it to do for IT, for your end-users? Do they need to be more productive, do they need to enjoy using it? There are a million and one factors to consider. Then you’ve got budget constraints, a culture to align with—all those things that impact me as a visual designer.
We think holistically at Maestro, starting with research, design, and planning. My focus is making sure we’re solving problems visually—whether that’s through a great user experience, or making sure that features that you think you need are actually features you do need, and from there it blossoms out into other things. ”
Aligning the tools with the culture
“One specific example of process comes from a large medical device company we worked with—they asked us to build an interface for them to communicate with their distributing companies. So we begin working with corporate, who has all these great ideas—really, validated great ideas—and we start the design phase, working on wireframes, designing a UI, setting the tone visually, and then we pause to connect with the end users (the distributors) to validate our assumptions before we keep moving down that path.
As soon as we’d had an hour of conversation with the distributors, they said they never used their tools that way, and suggested a simpler, alternate approach, and it immediately changed the entire product for the better. We came out with something effective. If you’re not targeting your actual personas and making too many assumptions, you can very quickly go down the wrong path. It’s really important to understand who’s using the tool.”
Does your company’s IT work to satisfy the end-user, or are they just stuck doing line-item IT? We also think human capital is one of the most valuable assets an organization has at their disposal, and a better equipped team is a more engaged one! Want to learn more about culture and IT? Check out our recap of Elanor Riley’s talk next week!