Inside Kumu: The Product Design Team's Process
A look at the meetings, rituals, and exercises our product design team relies on to build trust and stay efficient
There are a few things every design team needs to be effective. Two of the most essential are trust and communication.
This is a deeper dive into the Kumu Product Design team’s day-to-day, meeting cadences, rituals, and anything else that helped build that trust within the design team and has helped us stay connected and efficient.
But first, some quick caveats:
- Kumu is a remote-first company. The design team works fully remotely. Hence, most of our processes will be weighted towards keeping us efficient and effective (and sane) in our remote way of working.
- This is about the “design team” process, not the “product team” process. Kumu product designers are members of the “design team” (horizontal) and the “product team” or, as we call it, a “pod” (vertical). The horizontal team is responsible for maintaining consistency across the product and keeping a high-quality bar, elevating the craft of design in the company. The vertical team is responsible for shipping and delivering product improvements and building expertise within focused areas.
Daily Rituals
"Stand-up" or Status Updates
- Who: Product designers
- What: Each designer sends a list of things they worked on yesterday and are working on today
- When: Every Tuesday to Friday, 9:30 am
- Why: To be aware of what others are working on and if they are blocked and need help
This is the only daily ritual we have. We used to have this as a 15-min call to hear updates from everyone but, as we’ve grown in number, this took up too much time and was inefficient. So far, sending updates via Slack has helped. This ritual allows everyone to keep tabs on what everyone is doing or has done over the week (or past few weeks).
Weekly Rituals
Warm-Up
- Who: Product designers
- What: Kick off the week together
- When: Every Monday, 1:00–2:00 pm
- Why: To ease into the work week with something light and fun
Every Monday, we kick off the week together. The hour-long meeting consists of four parts:
- Weekend update (15 minutes): We each go around the room and share a quick highlight or two of what we did over the weekend (if we’re using Google Meet, one person starts and then nominates the next person). It helps us start the week on a positive note and allows us to ease into the workweek.
- Tasks and Blockers (15 minutes): We look at our kanban board and discuss the statuses/progress of our tasks. This also helps us see if any designer has a blocker or is overloaded and needs help in the coming week.
- Critique/meeting schedule (15 minutes): We plan our critiques and team meetings in a Notion doc ahead of time so everyone knows what to expect. We go around the room again (one person starts and then nominates the next person) and each person decides if they have a project they’d like critiqued during the week.
- Announcements (15 minutes): We share org-wide or company-wide announcements and updates specific to the design team. This includes topics like branding alignments with the brand team, updates to the design system, new company policies, hiring plans, and designer candidate progress.
Design Critique
- Who: Product designers, and any guests the presenter chooses to invite (e.g., their PM, tech lead, researcher)
- What: Run through a list of designs submitted for Critique on Tuesday
- When: Every Wednesday from 10:30–12:00 pm
- Why: To move projects along, help anyone who gets stuck, and share context with the team
Design critiques at Kumu are not product reviews. Critiques are not the forum to suggest new ideas, make major product decisions, or determine product roadmaps. It is a safe space for feedback independent from roadmap decision-making. Our design critiques focus on unblocking problems and generating ideas, elevating the quality of the designs, encouraging consistency in the product, and sharing context.
Cooldown
- Who: Product designers
- What: Wrap up the week
- When: Every Friday 4:00–5:00 pm
- Why: To hang out and relax
In remote settings where water-cooler conversations are hard to come by, time to hang out needs to be carved out actively. Cooldowns are our time to bond and have fun as a team—both important to building trust in each other.
We would usually do one of three things here: Play, Learn, or Chat.
Monthly and Quarterly Rituals
Retrospectives
- Who: Product designers
- What: An opportunity to review our current processes and team-wide responsibilities
- When: Twice a month, every other Thursday
- Why: To create a space for feedback on our design processes or our team
Offsites
- Who: Product designers (and interns)
- What: A full day of activities outside the office
- When: Quarterly
- Why: To learn, bond, and (maybe) brainstorm
We have two types of teambuilding offsites: one with the Design team and one with the product teams.
