Mentoring Designers: Finding the Deep End of the Pool
TLDR;
I guided a junior designer through every aspect of designing and launching a brand new program on Staples’ business platform, Staples Business Advantage, which is used by over 1,000,000 users per week.
#1
Seller of K-Cup coffee pods
50,000
Coffee machine placed
Situation
At Staples, we had a program called the Rotational Program, which lasted for two years. This program allowed recent college graduates to rotate between various departments to discover their career interests. One of the graduates I managed showed great potential as a UX designer. When the opportunity arose to launch a new initiative on Staples Business Advantage, I assigned her the task. The program, named Total Coffee, would provide customers with no-cost leased coffee machines, supplies, and maintenance in exchange for a quarterly spending commitment from them.
This image shows me working with a Rotation Program member to conduct UX research with a customer who is enrolled in the Total Coffee program.
Guiding an intern through a user interview
Task
Create tools for customers to sign up and manage their Total Coffee programs. My task was to guide a junior designer with an enormous aptitude for UX through the process of gathering business requirements, working closely with business stakeholders, product managers, and engineers, presenting her work, and showing her some of my strategies and techniques for driving collaboration and forward momentum.
This image is from a pitch deck that we created, which the junior designer presented to stakeholders and cross-functional partners. One of my objectives in assigning her this task was to help her develop her presentation and business skills alongside her design abilities.
A pitch deck the junior designer created for stakehlders
Activities
Distill Business, Product & Engineering Requirements
UX has been involved since the inception of this program. The junior designer and I met with the product management, engineering, and business stakeholders to understand and help define the project's scope. I showed her my method for asking clarifying questions and guided her in doing the same. We met frequently to discuss what we had learned and what we needed to understand more deeply. She also has a degree in computer science, which was helpful as she distilled the engineering requirements underpinning this project. Not only did she have to balance out the design work, but she also needed to account for things like installation services and how the related information connects to our APIs.
Here are some examples of the various requirements we collected, which I assisted the junior designer in analyzing to create design specifications.
A sample of the roadmap
The technical flow
The process used to intake customers
Parse through competitive analysis
During the intake process, I had the designer review materials created by our User Research team to understand the competitive landscape and identify ways we can make ourselves stand out. This example is from one of their slide decks.
Weaving new business requirements into the designs.
Account for evolving business requirements
The more exposure the project had to more stakeholders, the more business requirements started to appear. When the designer would get frustrated by this, I encouraged her to focus on what was within her control—how she responded to the requests and when and how to push back. In this example, she is accounting for integrating our subscription service, AutoRestock
In this image, the designer is considering how to integrate AutoRestock into the Total Coffee workflow. The goal is to encourage customers to utilize subscriptions, making their lives easier while also fulfilling their financial obligations to Staple.
Weaving new business requirements into the designs.
Leading Team Brainstorms
One thing I love about being on a team is the ability to utilize everyone’s strengths. Even though it can feel uncomfortable for designers to bring the things that stump them into design review sessions, I encouraged the junior designer to do so and to utilize the team’s smarts via brainstorming sessions. She eagerly organized several to take advantage of the good work the other designers were doing, as well as their tenure in the field
This image is from a brainstorm related to the next phase of the Total Coffee project within the limits of our technical and business constraints.
Taken from one of the Total Coffee brainstorming sessions
This image ensures the correct person is contacted for setting up Total Coffee properly at a company.
A brainstorm on getting Total Coffee set up appropriately
Review work
I had the designer present her work during our weekly design review sessions, which are peer-led and focused solely on addressing the questions that designers need answered. She also organized regular review sessions with me. I believe that all team members, regardless of their title, should take ownership of their work, and she certainly did just that. Over the many months we worked on this project and its follow-ups, we held numerous sessions.
In this image, the designer is discussing ideas for empty states with me. She is addressing the issue of what users encounter when they are newly enrolled in the program and have no data available. Specifically, this pertains to what they see on their dashboard for managing Total Coffee upon their initial visits.
Reviewing the designer’s approach to empty states
User Acceptance Testing
As the first version was preparing to launch, I helped the designer organize sessions to ensure that the published version of the site matched the team’s intentions.
This screenshot shows some of that work, which was later put into an Excel spreadsheet for easier consumption by the broader team.
The initial user acceptance testing results
Results
Total Coffee launched in the summer of 2024 and has experienced consistent growth since then. More than 50,000 coffee machines have been installed with customers, and Staples recently secured a lucrative deal with a well-known large financial services firm worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I was very pleased with the designer's work. Despite being early in her career, she demonstrated an impressive ability to handle complex projects, learned to navigate shifting requirements, and consistently delivered high-quality work on time. I am glad I had the opportunity to guide her through this process.
These screenshots display the current versions of Total Coffee’s landing page and dashboard. Further phases of the project are currently underway.
Total Coffee’s current landing page and dashboard