Understanding the issue

On joining Bupa as Lead Product Designer (UX) in July 2022, I immediately asked my new team to share feedback on what was working well and what could be better at Bupa. This information was gathered via an anonymous Microsoft Form.

I was surprised that there wasn’t a regularly scheduled meeting for the UX design team to discuss their craft and offer each other support. This lack of dedicated time together came through loud and clear as something they desperately wanted. The team felt very disconnected as they all worked on different projects, usually remotely, and rarely saw each other or even spoke.

I set up a skeleton Community of Practice (CoP) in August 2022 so that we could simply begin by regularly getting together and trying out things that might work for us.

Testing and learning

Initially I facilitated these weekly meetings but increasingly encouraged the team to lead sessions and run different workshops.

For example, one Senior UX Designer wanted to improve their presentation skills so they used Pip Decks to teach us all how to better understand problems, frame them to stakeholders, and prioritise ideas and potential solutions.

Fairly quickly, our community expanded to include colleagues in Bupa Global, Product Designers contracted to Bupa UK from other organisations, and apprentices working in technology who had an interest in user experience design. This enabled us all to learn from people with different skills, backgrounds, experiences, and also to understand other parts of the business. Additionally it meant that people working in isolation were brought into a welcoming community.

Our CoP went through several iterations as we experimented with what worked well, such as how to include people who worked different patterns. We found that meeting for an hour every Tuesday allowed us to get through enough topics in enough detail, and enabled us all to meet frequently without impacting on delivery.

We ran team goal-setting sessions and retrospectives to look at how our CoP served us, what we were getting out of it, and things we could change to make it more valuable. This is something else we took turns leading on, so that everyone was developing planning, facilitation, and presentation skills in a safe space.