Dara Tasha

✦ My Selected Works

Navigating Design Direction Amidst Ambiguity for Public Education Report Card

✻ Overview

Role : Design Manager

Skillset : Design leadership, strategy, project & team management, facilitation, design advocacy, stakeholder management

Category : Education, school assessment, data

Company : GovTech Edu

What is Public Education Report Card?

The Education Report Card was first released in 2022 to showcase the National Assessment scores of schools in Indonesia. It was initially built for schools and regional governments to assess their quality of education and use it as a foundation to identify, reflect, and strategize their improvement plans. Now, we're designing a new version of the Report Card specifically for the public as a form of transparency, and to encourage societal collaboration for better education quality.

Before

After

A bit context about my role and my team in this project

As a design manager, I led a design team consisting of a designer, copywriter, and researcher. My responsibility was to supervise the entire process, ensure design quality (from strategy to execution), manage team workload, and foster collaboration with other stakeholders. The design team collaborated closely with both internal (product, substantial, engineer) and external teams (government executives & task force), and my job was to ensure that all design decisions were well-communicated across teams.

So.. what was the main challenge during the process?

There's a lot of involvement from the external government teams, each with their own agendas, resulting in back-and-forth discussion and an ineffective process.

The Education Report Card is a high-stakes product for government stakeholders, filled with substantial context over which we have little control. Therefore, everyone wanted to get involved and voice their opinions. They often paid a lot of attention to minor details and made ad-hoc requests that sometimes required us to step back, even if it had already been discussed before. One thing that I also noticed was the nature of the feedback itself was not straightforward as they tended to get distracted with non-related issues. This situation often obstructs the design process as we are highly dependent on them as the knowledge owners.

Indecisive vision owners who changed direction simultaneously and was not internally aligned with each other.

We reported to several vision owners from the government on a monthly basis. They were in charge of the product and responsible for its direction. However, these meetings often became their internal debates rather than being productive. Each vision owner had a different point of view, and there was a lot of fear about public backlash when discussing data exposure. As a result, we often found ourselves in lengthy meetings that concluded without any clear decisions. This situation hampered our productivity and left the team confused.

Okay what did I do then?

One thing that I’ve learned from working with the government is to recognize what is beyond my control, and instead focus on what my team and I can manage. Despite the challenges, here’s how I optimized my role as a design manager to empower my team and still achieve excellent results:

Connecting insights from stakeholders to provide clarity and actionable items to team members.

The design team regularly met with external government stakeholders to get design feedback and direction. As I mentioned earlier, these meetings involved many people, and we often received various inputs, not all of which were relevant. When this happened, I would identify common concerns by doing a quick on-site synthesis. Then, at the right moment, I would step in and clarify their intentions. If the discussion veered off-topic, I guided it back. If it was moving in the right direction, I steered them towards potential actions my team could take. This kept the conversation moving forward while accommodating their concerns, ensuring everyone had the same understanding of the issue. At the end of the meetings, I jotted down the list of actionable items and shared them on our internal communication channel. My goal was to ensure the design team had a clear picture of the next steps.

Educate and be a design advocate to bridge between substantial and design context.

Our government stakeholders work in substantial area on a day-to-day basis. They’re not familiar with how technology works, let alone the design process. Their top priority is to ensure that substantial context is well-delivered, and my priority is to fulfill our stakeholders’ needs without harming user-friendliness. To achieve this win-win solution, I used our regular design feedback sessions to educate them about our process and thinking. I encouraged my team to always share the thinking process behind their work and made sure our design rationale was well articulated during presentations. By familiarizing them with our thinking process, it will be easier to gain trust & empathy from our stakeholders.

Strategize on the design approach to negotiate and get quicker buy-ins from stakeholders.

When proposing designs to our government stakeholders, we didn’t just show the prototype directly. I worked with the product team to create a pitch deck to showcase the concept. From this experience, I realized that having a clear narrative is crucial to selling your design. It shows how the design is relevant to the overarching strategy and meets substantial needs. This is why I always allocate time to carefully craft the design narratives so they align with what we want to push as a team. Even my word choice matters, as a little ambiguity can lead to ineffective discussions. Sometimes I also provide wording recommendations for the product team to ensure it leaves no room for misinterpretation. My other strategy is to always come with a clear discussion scope beforehand to remind our stakeholders of what’s been agreed upon vs. what still needs to be discussed to avoid repetitiveness.

When proposing designs to our government stakeholders, we didn’t just show the prototype directly. I worked with the product team to create a pitch deck to showcase the concept. From this experience, I realized that having a clear narrative is crucial to selling your design. It shows how the design is relevant to the overarching strategy and meets substantial needs. This is why I always allocate time to carefully craft the design narratives so they align with what we want to push as a team. Even my word choice matters, as a little ambiguity can lead to ineffective discussions. Sometimes I also provide wording recommendations for the product team to ensure it leaves no room for misinterpretation. My other strategy is to always come with a clear discussion scope beforehand to remind our stakeholders of what’s been agreed upon vs. what still needs to be discussed to avoid repetitiveness.

Maintaining team productivity by turning limitation into design challenges

Designing within a substantial scope often feels like a blockage for designers. There’s this one designer on my team who has great design skills and loves exploring fancy interactions. When designing the Education Report Card, he often came up with creative ideas, hoping to make a new breakthrough for our users. However, the reality wasn’t as smooth. The features were frequently adjusted or reduced due to substantial limitations. Though necessary, this process can affect his motivation and passion in the long run. To cope with this situation, I always try to instill a different perspective in him. Instead of seeing the requirements as limitations that block his creative process, I framed them as challenges for his creativity. This mindset highlights that good design is about problem-solving, not just visuals. Over time, I’ve seen him grow into a more creative designer who can create on-point design solutions and find clever ways to tackle less-than-ideal conditions.

Designing within a substantial scope often feels like a blockage for designers. There’s this one designer on my team who has great design skills and loves exploring fancy interactions. When designing the Education Report Card, he often came up with creative ideas, hoping to make a new breakthrough for our users. However, the reality wasn’t as smooth. The features were frequently adjusted or reduced due to substantial limitations. Though necessary, this process can affect his motivation and passion in the long run. To cope with this situation, I always try to instill a different perspective in him. Instead of seeing the requirements as limitations that block his creative process, I framed them as challenges for his creativity. This mindset highlights that good design is about problem-solving, not just visuals. Over time, I’ve seen him grow into a more creative designer who can create on-point design solutions and find clever ways to tackle less-than-ideal conditions.

Escalate issue directly to related team to seek support & reinforce problem solving

When I first joined this project, I created a multi-chat on Slack with the design team to brainstorm ideas asynchronously. That random multi-chat became a hub of active discussion where my team members shared updates, thoughts, and even rants. Managing two tribes simultaneously, that multi-chat helped me stay updated on my team’s current work and alerted me when something went wrong. Sometimes we would quickly solve problems together, but I often realized the issues needed to be escalated for better solutions. As an advocate for my team, it’s my responsibility to eliminate any blockers they face. I use my 1-on-1 sessions with other function leads or simply slack them to escalate my team’s issues and trigger a discussion. When the problem is visible to other cross-functional teams, it allows us to collaborate and reinforce more effective problem-solving.

Is there any great result from there?

Certainly! the design is finalized 3 weeks earlier from timeline so the output delivery is accelerated by 25% , and this Public Education Report Card was launched on 17th October 2024 to the public (specifically researchers & educational observation institutions). The release event was held offline in the Ministry building and was attended by 500+ participants.

✦ Team Credits

Shotout to..

Afnizar Nur Ghifari (Designer) for his design excellence and perseverance in finding hacky solutions despite the limitations.
Atika Sulistyan (Copywriter) for her meticulousness in copy crafting and patience in dealing with difficult stakeholders.
Thalia Shelyndra (Researcher) for her thorough research and assertiveness in keeping this project on track.

And to the other cross-functional teams who worked their hearts out for this project, thank you for your resilience, support, and cooperativeness:

Shan Sebastian, Geraldo Nicholas, Falih Hermon (Product)
Dimas, Ardhito (Engineer)
Putri, Ika, Abi (Substantial)

Medium

@2024 tashadara

Medium

@2024 tashadara

Medium

@2024 tashadara