How might we streamline our process, optimize workflows and execute design more consistently to support marketing needs?

We started by meeting with the Marketing leadership on what their needs were. While discussing we had one big overarching question that summed up what they were asking for.

“Can we get a library of templates that the Marketing specialists can pick from and the content team can write to?”

As NNG put it “First Rule of Usability? Don't Listen to Users”.

My previous experience working with Marketing led me to believe that even though they were asking for singular templates, the nature of marketing is to quickly adjust and try new things. A small set library of anything would not have a long shelf life when used at the speed of marketing. I talked with the design team to gathered their insights on what they saw happening in the day to day. After interviewing them, they would confirm that requests would frequently come in and after being used once, would be reused with adjustments. We would come to revise the problem statement to include creating a more flexible solution.

how can we make create scalable systems to build templates that allow for flexibility, improved output andd consistency within brand guidelines while reducing churn between departments?

While solutioning we discovered that what we really needed were smaller lego blocks that we can put together in various ways to make templates. Utilizing the atomic design method would be the path that we took in creating our libraries for marketing. The next task would to be alignment with the departments, scoping out the work and setting the roadmap.

With the plan set and handshakes all around on the path forward, we would begin on the first of the three tasks. The Email Component Library.