Mentoring Designers: Finding the Deep End of the Pool
The Total Coffee dashboard
TLDR;
I mentored a junior designer in all facets of designing and launching a brand new program on Staples’ business platform, Staples Business Advantage, which serves over 1,000,000 users each week. Together, we simplified a complex concept into an accessible program for Staples’ customers.
#1
Seller of Coffee Pods
50,000
Machines Placed
Situation
At Staples, we had a two-year program called the Rotational Program that helped recent college graduates explore various departments. One graduate I managed showed great promise as a UX designer, and I assigned and guided her through leading a new initiative for Staples Business Advantage called Total Coffee. This program offered customers free leased coffee machines and supplies in exchange for a quarterly spending commitment
The image below shows me guiding a member of the Rotational Program through a user interview with a Total Coffee customer.
Guiding an intern through a user interview
Task
The goal was to develop tools that allow customers to sign up for and manage their Total Coffee programs. My task involved guiding a junior designer with a strong UX aptitude through the entire design process. This included:
Gathering business and technical requirements,
Transforming requirements into designs
Validating the work using both qualitative and quantitative data
Presenting the results to various internal stakeholders.
Throughout the process, I shared some of my strategies for maintaining project momentum, such as knowing when to compromise and how to align others with her UX vision collaboratively.
This image below is taken from a pitch deck that we created. The junior designer presented it to stakeholders and cross-functional partners. One of my goals in assigning her this task was to help her enhance her presentation and business skills in addition to her design abilities.
From the pitch deck created for Total Coffee's stakeholders
Activities
Distill Business, Product & Engineering Requirements
UX has been involved since the beginning of this program. The junior designer and I met with product management, engineering, and business stakeholders to understand and define the project's scope. I demonstrated my method for asking clarifying questions and guided her in applying the same approach. We frequently met to discuss our insights and identify areas where we needed a deeper understanding.
The designer also holds a degree in computer science, which proved valuable as she clarified the engineering requirements for this project. In addition to her design responsibilities, she had to consider factors such as installation services and how the related information is connected to our APIs.
What follows 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
Some of the engineering requirements
The sales process 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.
A sample of our competitive analysis used to inform the desgins
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.
Here, 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 Staples.
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
And this image ensures the correct person is contacted for setting up Total Coffee properly at a company.
From a brainstorm focused on getting Total Coffee set up appropriately
Reviewing 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 the following image, the designer was examining ideas for empty states with me. She addressed 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.
Product Design leader and Player Coach specializing in managing high-performing teams that drive results.
© 2025 William Bernhard