When I joined in October 2022, Student Beans were seen as a  reliable student discount platform, with a 17-year presence in the student scene. They weren’t known for their design excellence, but pioneered verification software to be one of the biggest discount providers in Europe.

The CEO, Mike Eder, challenged me to inject delight into everything we did, to elevate the design function focussed on delivery into an org which affected the strategy for the entire business.

My Role

Head of Product Design

October 2022 - Present

Heading up the Product Design function (7 designers 1 UXR) within Pion (formerly Student Beans). Student Beans are on a mission to help students across the world thrive.

I believe our multidisciplinary Product Design function has a key role to play in reaching our mission. By designing delightful experiences for our customers and making sure we show empathy for every user, from the person using a discount in-store or online, to the cashier who needs to check the discount, to our colleagues using our internal tools, to developers and product managers taking a dive into our design system, we can ensure we're looking at the whole picture.

I try and provide the structure and organisation within which the designers and researchers can excel. Happiness and enjoyment at work are important, but something which provides the most longevity, satisfaction and drive is purpose, and that's something we try hard to maintain.

Student Beans is a global company catering to millions of users worldwide, which means we consider how our design thinking applies across multiple cultures and languages.

Problem

The mission

To turn an embedded design team acting as a delivery function into a top of the funnel strategic design organisation, in an attempt to boost our YoY growth by differentiating us from our rivals through best in class UX.

Feedback

What I found out

The main problem I encountered time and again, through interviews with key stakeholders across the business, was the perception of the design team. We were seen as delivery only, a skillset embedded within a product squad who, once the problem was shaped by product, was then made to look nice by design before being built.

Due to this, the mindset of the designers had settled to accept this paradigm. On the whole, 70% of the team were willing to change their mindsets, and a few were not suited to the new ways of working and so left the team.

There was also a suspicion that UX Research took too long and didn’t provide any tangible value.

It was clear here we need to do many things, with a key focus on creating an annual objective with which we could relay back to the business. I needed to change the perception and impact of the design team, with measurable metrics to prove our efficacy.

Process

Overview

As this is an ongoing project, I will attempt to summarise what we’ve been doing as a Product Design & Research Guild in an attempt to elevate design within the organisation, with the help of supporting articles written by myself for posterity.

Mission, Vision, Values

After surveying my team for their core skillsets and understanding from them their position within the business, it was time to create our mission, vision and values. I held a workshop in our London HQ over 2 days to determine our future vision and why it mattered, using feedback from the business as core areas for opportunity for growth.

Design System

One of our major focuses in raising UX Maturity was to improve the design system. Over the last 12-months, the changes we’ve made have increased efficiency across Product and Engineering by 41%, saving the business roughly £150,000 in wasted time.

Strategy Setting

In January 2023, Design & Research led the strategy for the first time in Pion history from a human-centred perspective. This has led to a £10mil budget allocation for retention, and initial metrics show a huge jump of conversion through our new onboarding flow of 94%.

X Studio

Something I’ve noticed in my career, with no exception at Pion, is that many teams, including design and research become stuck in the day-to-day problem solving and firefighting. I’m combatting that by creating something I’m calling the Experience Studio, or X Studio. This initiative will bring together the right skillsets to tackle the biggest problems or prototype the riskiest ideas, in a very focussed amount of time. It will be led by Design & Research, and will focus first on desirability, before evaluating viability or feasibility. This was we know that what we’re innovating will be solving a genuine need. The hope for this company-wide Experience Studio is for us to be able to differentiate ourselves from our competitors in rapid time.

Conclusion

Do Differently

There are many things I’d do differently to elevate design, with the benefits of hindsight. I’d start with my biggest ideas first. X Studio would have been as relevant on day 1 as it is today. Despite introducing Design Objectives early on, I failed to link them to a vision, and so crafting the vision first would have helped. I also believe repetition is the key to successful change, and so I’d have updated the entire business on our journey far more often and in more visible places (we already occupy the weekly newsletter, and present in all monthly All-hands).

We have, to date, increased the UX Maturity - informed by the NNg suvey - from around 3.3 to 5. This is a massive increase in the way UX is perceived.