hustle. Last week we talked about the process. We built that fun size for designing digital products in a collaborative environment with their plans. After we talked about that, we started talking about affording Once the project's over, we're gonna continue that conversation now. You know, we had a client once, and you know, he's like, so what? It's the engagement's over, like, okay. And so we're like, yeah, we needed,

like, strengthen that up a little bit, you know? So we've been thinking about it quite a bit, and

it's so weird when you know you work together was with the someone for so well and so collaborative, and all of a sudden you're, like, face with, like, Okay, this is over. You mean you mean from a business point of view, you do have to shut down the project, right? You do have to do that cause your team needs to go on to other projects, and it's hard. I think it's the hardest thing. And honestly, that's gonna be the what they remember.

Yeah, exactly. However good, like the process or working with was like the last thing is the last thing.

Brandon from pair booking, who was on last season. We had a visit of great example because we had a really good It's really good bye with him. We created an M V p of this whole service and perform in time for him and all that. And then all of a sudden, you know, since he did made the decision not to renew a retainer. We had toe move the team onto other stuff and he, you know, he gave me and sent me a note. When he's like, Dude, I kind of feel like you just kick me to the curb like, um you know, And then, you know, I think that made me think,

like, wow. I mean, you know, we're just going through the motions of things we need to do. But man, this this doesn't feel right, you know? So I I think way have as a studio have already done a lot of things that I think changed that. All right, but

yeah, so one of the I mean, there's there's a couple of things I think we're taking more steps towards, like, sort of coming to a softer landing because we, you know, it's it's hard because we have all these other things starting. It's like, OK, the project's done. Let's go on the next one we got onboard this next client. You know, it's really hard to think about after projects over, but we do need thio and it's way better experience if that whole thing sort of feels like, Oh, they're really thinking about us at the end and after the end even. Um,

just maintaining some contact with the client after is the least we could do. But we've kind of started. Like I've noticed. Aaron has actually been, like, kind of helping me. Like I've had two projects sort of end the last month or so. And so he's been helping me like early snows. Hey, let's put on the brakes a little bit like letter clients understand what's about to happen, but also really, really love what you had been doing with our past clients with the slack. Do you want to talk about that first again? I love that

idea. Yeah, um, some of my advisors advise me not to do this, but, hey, it's my company. Anyway, uh, I didn't want Thio when the project was in just to say good Bye. See you later. Because it this not what anyone looks for. So you Natalie and decided that. Okay, well, what if what could we do to surprise our clients at the end of the engagement? We don't tell them during the engagement.

What we're doing now is, once the project is complete, we're adding them to a fun size family channel. And in that channel is all of our other client partners. You know, mixture of venture capitalists, owner, operator CEOs, B. P's engineers, product managers. And so now the conversation can continue and and they can meet each other and

build digging, talkto us. They can talk Thio, you know each other like that's pretty cool, like they've all had the experience of working. In fact, that's the in most cases, the one thing that they all have in common. They've worked with fun size in the past.

I hope that people find value from my hope was that, you know, they could stay in contact with not just their design director and product design lead, but anyone in the company and me, other people that could help them with, you know, specific business problems

or was part of the idea like we were trying to sell the problem. Well, okay, this project is over. We need to shut down this slack channel that was just dedicated that project. So

that was the original problem, because slack change their the way their channels worked. And it used used to be able to close out a channel in the sidebar like you can with a direct message, but they remove that functionality. So if the only way that you could keep someone is to keep him in that channel, But any channel that you're in is gonna be on your side bar. So, like, for someone like me, that would be like 60 60 channels. So and not to mention they're only able to chat with the people that were in that group. So bye bye. Adding them to by adding them all into this one channel,

they can we no longer have tohave that maintain that channel. You know, we can go ahead and move on from that, but still leave like any of our past clients can reach out to me or you. You know what in time? Because we're all in that. It has

been a good. It's been a good avenue, too, for me to get input. Like I've used that channel to survey clients, you know? How was your experience working with us? How could we have a better value? Like just instead of like, sending them e mails or formal surveys? I could just talk to them like, yeah, like nothing really changed. And some of our clients have even shared work that they're working on post engagement. We've We've been able to keep some clients engage and re engage a new engagement. So so far, I think it's Ah, it's Ah, it's a good thing

calling even doing that like you set that up recently

not very long, like maybe a month. But I think it's cool, because it just the way that I the way that I try to think about it, is that the the relationship is not over. The project is, but you know, this is where the relationship continues until our next project starts, as I guess, is a way I think about it, and I would honestly much brother prefer to communicate with people in slack versus and people emails anyway,

Can we also send gift baskets to our clients, like with chocolate turtles and stuff with cheeses and sausage. Yeah,

but you know that. I mean, there's there's still other issues right there. Still, like transferring knowledge and files, like, you know, we have all these constraints to work within our Dropbox got Dropbox and Dr Environments and, you know, all of theirs. We use so many tools that actually make that allow us to work effectively with our clients. But transferring all of those over is a enormous

chore. It's annoying. Yeah, Yeah. I mean, it's there's not really a real way around that, uh, it's just kind of a nature of

burn everything a DVD

and mail it. Yeah, Yeah, that's our new reporting process. Burn a DVD and then send a gift

basket. Yeah, so I don't know. I mean, maybe I'd be curious to hear how people think about that, but I don't know, I like I would like to think that there's some value and, you know, and maybe a little surprise factor, even if they don't want to participate. Like just knowing that we can provide that value of, ah, additional

relationship building palaces, plugging into the network, you know, you never know what kind of relationship our previous clients me they make together. You know, we may never hear about that.

You may never know because they're just

the ending and yeah, yeah, but, I mean, I think that's great. Is whatever they remember how they met the person. They're gonna think, you know how

how they worked. Then you know what? They might meet someone else in that channel that they prefer to work with us. And, you know, we have to just be willing to embrace that chaos of the conversations were not seeing and be the facilitator of it.

Yeah, that. I mean, that's pretty much our process and off boarding right now. I think we're still iterating on. Kind of how we want to get the off boarding is not a solid. I'd like to, you know, continue to work on that. But I like what you said about asking others if, um

well, yeah, well, you know, we've grown a little bit, you know, over the last year. And, you know, we you know, I talk about this all the time. Um, I think what we're trying to figure out now is a new position that kind of if the if the design team has sort of taken care of the client during engagement, like, who is this other person that can take care of the client before it starts? And after it ends like like a, You know, ahead of studio or something like that, that makes that on boarding process really smooth.

And what is that like? It's not a project manager. It's not,

uh, it's really difficult because I only understand design jobs. And but, you know, I mean, there's so many things that we that we could do, you know, like when when we were on boarding a client, we could send them, you know, in our swag plus like tools that they need to, like, work with us and, you know, gather all the, you know, make robust profiles on slacks of people. No contact. There's like

that. Some of these things are so small. The other thing that we've really never taken advantage of with the client experience stuff is that, like every project we've ever done, like you confined like pictures of like us meeting together pictures of our sketches and white board sessions and stuff like um, you know, those those posters that we have? You know, we could kind of make, like, collages of, like, the process of working with us and kind of give that as a gift to remember. I mean, it sounds cheesy, but it's also like there's not a lot of tangible exchanges like Here's this tangible thin from this experience, you know,

you know, I would love to have someone whose job is to do that. Like, if that's the same person like that's helping with on boarding and off Courtney. Maybe during the project they could be this person that looks at the calendar and intentionally goes into meetings and workshops and life captures the moments that are happening. Exactly. That stuff means a lot to me because, you know, 20 years from now, the stuff that I'm gonna be looking for is probably the photos of people working together and not like markups. Yeah, I don't know. I I think that stuff that's the stuff that kind of will will live forever. And, um, I think you have to be willing to spend money to do some of this stuff, which is hard when you're,

you know, a Designer Development Service's company. But I think I'm beginning to understand that, you know, it's it's great to be able to, like, do really great work and have a really unique process to do it in. But if you can't do that on boarding and off boarding as equal as equally high caliber, then you know it comes along. Yeah, with some potential negativity.

Yeah, it's a good point. So no,

it's where it's worth investing time and thought

into Yeah, those air just such impactful touchpoints the beginning because they don't know what to expect and in the end, because that's the last thing that they remember. Like, yeah, man,

the Jim Jim is working on an interesting concept right now that could potentially automate a lot of that stuff. I don't know. We don't know its viability that I'm that That's pretty interesting, I think

is working on a product,

a product idea that could potentially automate some parts of off boarding and on boarding, especially like the things that require, like inviting users into things like slack and envision. And

that would be so great. Then we just have like it's such a house or like just find everybody like who needs to be on this and everything. Yeah, that would be really cool. It's Claudia. It's just gonna be called boarding is on and just boarding. Boarding. They got a boarding school. That sounds terrible. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think you know, hopefully, with your help, we can take our our process and brand it, write about it somewhere online and maybe show people how they can do what we do if they want to do that, because it's not. It's not like the typical project. And it's also not like a typical sprint,

either. I'm finally I'm glad you said that because we kind of mentioned it a couple times now. And I think that's an interesting idea. Um, because I think we have something that works. It's not perfect, but we're continuing iterated on it. I think the it's more like the soul of the thing is what is really good, which is just being open about everything, but then actually brought up on interesting point, something I want to ask you about. You recently read that design sprint book? Yeah, I saw you read that on the plane. Willinto San Fran, wait SF you got to say, you got to say the right way.

Uh, won't want to s f um, you had some thoughts about how what we do is is nothing like that. And I haven't read it, so I kind of thought it would be so

I think, and the reason why I think that is because design sprint that word or those words are starting to become buzz words just like New X and whatnot. And, um, I think the concept of sprinting is something that's very easily understood in engineering teams. But for the for those companies out there that are leveraging designs, prints at least the way that people are riding and talking about it kind of picking up or Google Ventures left off. The those engagements are structured time boxed engagements where there's a there's a defined problem, a Siri's of workshops that gets to the core of you know why you're working on that, what the outcome should be and then planned days of executing and prototyping and testing going full circle of like, full user experience, journey with, you know, you know, let's say, for example, like the five day example,

you know, where You know, Day one is like unpacking and day to your diverging and in the day three, you know, and then you're designing and protecting somebody and engagement your

validate. That's the Jake Nap. Later, Google Ventures designed

spread thin the designs friend book that Richard Banville wrote Richard Banfield's CEO of Thought. But I mean, I'm sorry, not thought, but he's the CEO of Fresh till Soil. But he interviewed a lot of companies like Thought bought and other companies that were running these things. And each of these companies are to provide perspectives on what activities to do in order to get from Point A to point B in a short time box time frame. And I knew what we did was a little bit different. But it wasn't till I really read that that I realized it was completely different because in this way that we work in these retainers and transparent design methodology. Whatever you call it, there is no plan structure other than the Sprint planning in the designing and the constant reviewing, its not it's open to do whatever is necessary at that time, Um, versus like and then Avery thoughtfully planned Siri's of five day workshops or whatever. So it started got me thinking about that, cause I wonder for using the right words were selling the work

Well, I mean, the terminology is sort of evolving. So maybe yeah, maybe what it means today is and what it meant, you know, before. But, um, so are you saying that like the design sprint thing is sort of like it is pretty prescriptive. Like, take two of these and call me in the morning Like, this is what you do to get the answer, and what we do is a little bit more like improv or, like reacts to, um, the problem in a more specific way to the problem, as opposed to just go through this process or this activity.

That's a loaded question. I mean, it's hard to kind of summarize, But, um, when Google Ventures first started talking about this, they you know, they didn't go into detail. They just said, Okay, we have a five day process for doing this, and it allows you to, like, get unstuck on a on a product problem. For a product that's already in market, it can help. It's a formula that can help you build a D M V P to go test,

but they didn't really describe how they do that. And so how these other companies are doing it or they're pulling, design, thinking or activities from, or traditional school design design school of thought into this short period of time to be able to go full circle. So, like, you know, you know things like, you know, well, first of all, in this sort of design sprint, you have all the people in the same room for five days, like, yeah,

you got, like, you know, CEO there, every client, the marketing person engineer, you got the agency, you know, moderator and a designer or two.

And there was, like,

a spring like leader. Yeah, they're in their room together for five days and each each day, there's goals and the book provides some guidance about which activities you might want to use. But there are actual gold, like actual goals to achieve, like at every day. It's Mark's. Yeah, yeah, versus what we're doing is more like working like a team. Would a product company that might want to leverage

a design sprint at some point? Yeah, like go on, do like a workshop like to work through this problem. Unless, like, here's your super concentrated thing that's going, you know, it's really short beginning and

end. Yeah, so I guess we do do that in a way. But it's It's more like we would offer that one week activity to a current client that this wants to spend a week focusing on something. But we don't really take a structured approach to It's all about like, well, using whatever activity at Hawker Activity or Deliver will ad hoc. That solves the problem that in that two week federation vs, um, a A program to follow.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's more like jazz, which is something

I one of the things that I hope we talk about soon is like knowing when to go to execute and like when to do design, thinking, research and sort of balancing that cause. It's risky to go too far the other way and,

you know, maybe soon we can talk it out. That's very important. I wondered that myself. Yeah, that's cool. Um, I mean, we pretty much split between on boarding and, ERM sorry off putting. And, um, and process coverage. So, um, everyone understands it around, right?

Yeah. Totally. Way Understand it, right? Sure. Yeah. Cool. Well, uh,

check out our Web site, and there's more. There's some other information about how we

do that. Yeah, fun size that co, uh, be a little bit at the end about that. Okay. Thanks a lot. Guys appreciate listening. And hey, please do send us, like if you guys have other thoughts on how How does your agency do off boarding? Like it would be fun to have a conversation on Twitter like we're in the hustle cast, um, and also have fun size. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks.

Episode is brought to you by the Iron Yard. The Iron Yard in Austin is now offering a 12 week intensive program in user interface design. Theon yard will teach you the tools and skills you need to become a professional interface designer and then help you find a job. If you're interested in launching a new career in tech and design, visit their website. The iron yard dot com scholarships are available for the summer semester, wherein user interface design at the Iron Yard. Life's too short for the wrong career. Hustle is brought to you by Fun Sized, a digital product design agency in Austin, Texas. At Krys Delightful, innovative products for Mobile Web and beyond. Visit us on Twitter at fun size or visit our website of fun sized taco.