I helped out old friends Method as a temp Design Director in early 2019, jumping in on a project for CBRE who were looking to overhaul their workplace services apps. The app we designed covers things like navigation between and around buildings; room capabilities and booking; food and beverage; cleaning and so on – all the everyday needs of a typical corporate tenant.

I came in roughly midway through the project, charged with looking after the design team, client liaison, and overhauling a working process that had taken some rough knocks. I took a hands-on, player-coach approach, building a working prototype in Swift from scratch, and getting the design team up and running on Github, where we all iterated and polished together on a ‘single source of truth’ TestFlight app.

CBRE wanted a modular, customizable interface that they could configure and skin in bespoke ways for each of their clients – everyone from Nike to EY. Over the course of 3 months I helped the team move away from a lumbering ‘design system and sprints’ approach, toward a nimbler prototyping-led process.

Method’s brilliantly-talented design team had done a lot of great visual work (shout out to Misa Rodriguez for documenting it!) before I swooped in to direct, so it was my job as player-coach both to amplify this work by weaving it all together in a Swift prototype, and to create space and time for them (and their client!) to focus on the fundamentals: clear thinking and craft.