Brookfield Properties—Building Design Culture at Scale
Lead User Experience Designer • Scaling Design Practices • Design Strategy
Brookfield Properties, a renowned figure in commercial and residential real estate development worldwide, has been committed to bringing top-tier, sustainable properties since the early 1900s. In the last six years, the company has undergone a swift digital evolution to engage with its customers online and keep pace with rapidly changing market trends. And the onset of Covid-19 has only accelerated the imperative for the company to streamline its operations and provide optimized digital experiences for its customers.
Due to the extensive history of collaborating with multiple vendors and cross-functional business stakeholders, alongside the urgent demand for rapid digital transformation, the company's design-to-development process inevitably falters. As a result, the business finds itself losing valuable time due to prolonged product development cycles and increased occurrence of development errors.
After fully engaging in my role and participating in numerous development release cycles, I spearheaded the refinement of our design-to-development practice and process to better align with the current needs and cross-functional landscape. This initiative included gathering feedback and insights from sponsored users and seamlessly integrating the updated process into our cross-functional team's workflow.
With a clearly defined design-to-development practice and process in place, everyone throughout the company are able to effectively and efficiently engage with and contribute to the Design discipline.
As-is design process
As the team grown in size and embarked on more cross-functional engagements, it has become evident that our as-is design process, though straightforward, requires a much-needed refinement. The iteration is essential to establish clearly defined roles, responsibilities, and standardized ways of working that can accommodate our expanding scope and evolving needs.
To-be design process
Furthermore, with the intent to drastically minimize development errors resulting from design and development misalignments, I prioritized refining the design-to-development process. Working closely with the Head of Development and Senior UX Manager, we enhanced the development QA process by integrating Chromatic into our workflow. Additionally, we created a comprehensive development build kit template that includes all vital design and build information necessary for successful product development. Furthermore, this template is designed to be easily accessible and scalable, featuring repeatable components for any designers or developers joining the workflow.
