NCR
Designing features that will be used cross-functionally
NCR or National Cash Register started in 1884. All of us, at some point in our lives, have used an NCR product. Entering the SaaS space with a lot of customers, NCR is innovating and taking its ecosystem of products to another level.
I was part of the Common Capabilities team and its mission is to build products and features that can be used cross-functionally across NCR's ecosystem of products that lie in its different lines of business.
With that said, my direct team comprised of the following amazing individuals with diverse backgrounds:
Common Capabilities was involved in two projects. The Project That Must Not be Named is where I did most of my work. (All I can say is it involved food 🥗, and NCR's legacy systems 🏴)
NCR follows this structure for most of its projects. These teams were responsible for designing, coding, and implementing different features into the product. In Team Charmander, as a designer from the Common Capabilities, within our project roadmap, I led a particular set of feature designs.
NCR's Agile methodology was key to work on a project in a proper pace. Using tools like JIRA and Trello, we amplified our performance and completed sprints with great confidence (I love me a good burndown chart 😀 but a look at the backlog 😅)
Being a global fintech company with a large ecosystem of products, a standardized design system established companywide is crucial. With NCR's own design system, dubbed NUI, we used this design system for building and styling components for the projects we were working on. It is important to note that NUI was going through a revamp (NUI 2.0) and the NUI design team was proactively communicating with design teams across NCR to provide feedback and suggestions.
For Common Capabilities' projects, it was important for us to conduct design sessions to brainstorm, connect with POs to elucidate any unseen requirements, and synchronizing with the devs to clarify any doubts or assumptions they have for the design. These were responsibilities that I held closely, and in effect, enabled our team to have a strong cadence with respect to our roadmap.
With different projects, there were unique design workflows that worked best for the various design teams. Common Capabilities' design workflow evolved from the time I started. Before I joined, the team was using Sketch and a plugin called Plant to maintain version control. When I joined the team, I realized something was amiss with the current design workflow; it was slowing us down tremendously.
The major cons were no system to provide feedback, no system to collaborate, and many more reasons. Change is never easy because we are very good at optimizing ourselves to processes and with change, it forces us to go through that uncomfortable cycle. When introducing anything new, there will always be friction and push-back. but with these major gaps it was important for NCR to transition to take its design operations to the next level.
Ask any of my team members today and they will tell you I am Figma's biggest cheerleader. While I am clearly biased for Figma, the speed and efficiency today's world operates in, this workflow was not meeting that standard. Having used Figma in many different environments, it allowed an uninhibited design workflow. I decided to share this with the UX lead and manager to start a conversation and discover if a potential change can be made.
Lo and behold, a month later, NCR had decided to migrate to Figma. (one of the happiest days of my life 🤩)
'Sup
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😏 For my TL;DR folks
