One of my old colleagues from the Barclays design team recently posted this on linked in, made me realise how lucky I was to manage such a lovely group of people. Couldn’t resist a silly comment.

I was asked to turn around the UX team by Jo Brown (Director of Propositions and Development, Digital Banking) who asked me to move from Seren to join her at Barclays. It was the beginning of two or so years of very hard work, I wanted to build a confident team culture that allowed my team to have purpose and enjoy designing in the very demanding and ambitious environment of Barclays Bank.

Large corporate website are constantly changing. New products to promote, and new commercial goals. The users needs change from desktop to mobile, from mouse to touchscreen, from static to dynamic. An existing web site can begin to look tired, staid and incoherent. Over time each area of the site has created a solution unique to their needs, and so has moved away from the simple templated site of the original. It  begins to feel as if design and the user experience is becoming arbitrary. Every one starts getting nervous and asking for a redesign.

With a corporate bank there are many conflicting sources of design and creative direction. So having gathered the users needs, understood the sites objectives, discussed the functional specifications and content requirements the project has to navigate through the corporations design culture. This culture is always changing, like a river.