Systems Design
Process Design
UI/UX
In 2022 The Recording Service experienced explosive growth. Sales volume for January 2023 was 4x greater than the previous year. Overburdened by this success, their service quality started slipping. The organization was outgrowing itself.
I had previously worked with The Recording Service and in that time I oversaw their expansion into Live Streaming and Hybrid Events production. Based on that experience, I was contracted to improve reliability in the short-term and design new, robust business processes that could serve them in the long-term.
I began by taking stock of the current state of the company and the problems they had been having. Who are the employees? What are their job roles? What tools and systems do they use? What were the problems they had been experiencing?
After interviewing the employees and walking through each of their tasks, I presented my findings to management:
- Addressing the quality slippage would require new business processes rather than headcount changes
- Information about client projects is heavily siloed across several separate Google Sheets, each requiring their own manual data entry
- Institutional knowledge was locked away as individual knowledge
- The existing system was insecure and offered little access control
- UI/UX for employees was very cumbersome
- Ad hoc equipment management had become unsustainable and a dedicated Quartermaster role would need to be developed
In order to meet the needs of the organization we needed a tool that could:
- Solve the data siloing issue
- Serve as a knowledge-base for employees
- Manage employee roles and access
- Provide a simple front-end UI for employees
- Be simple enough for ongoing upkeep by the employees
To meet these needs I settled on Notion. The platform offers a simple customizable page-builder without the need to set up hosting or maintain any codebase. I adapted the existing Google Sheets into Notion Databases, added additional databases for relevant data, and linked them to one another, connecting relevant information from across the business. Since each database entry in Notion also functions as a fully editable page, notes can live within the database entry.
Information stays out of the way, reducing clutter and overload. But the details are fast at hand when needed.
For example all the relevant details of a Client Project can be stored within the Project’s database line-item.
Ex. Client Project Database -> Client Org -> Past Work with Client
Client Project Database -> Client Contact
Client Project Database -> Venue Database