How design studio Yummygum brings structure to their creative workflow

Launched in 2009, Yummygum is a design studio based in Amsterdam. They work with startups and established businesses to refine, design and build their digital products. Since their launch, co-founders Vince and Leon have built a team of 9 collaborators: an interesting bunch of developers and designers.

Read on to discover:

• How the design studio structure client projects to encourage transparency and collaboration
• How they stay on top of new collaborative products to fit their workflow
• Why they switched from Dropbox Paper to Slite
• How they're building their knowledge base and data bank on Slite

A transparent and streamlined workflow

They work in a sunny open space where helping each other out is the motto. "We are a very open company, we value feedback and encourage people to ask for help on what they're working on," Leon told me. Keeping transparency and creativity run free in the office doesn't mean their worflow is free for all: "Vince loves when things are super organized!" joked Leon.

And with good reason! The team of 9 work on several client projects in parallel and each employee is involved in every project. This means their workflow is extremely streamlined: processes and guidelines have been part of their culture since day 1.

Slite: an alternative to Dropbox Paper

Not only is the entire team involved in 9 out of 10 of their current projects, but they're also in close and frequent contact with their clients. At Yummygum, they value transparency internally but also with their clients. "We touch base with them every day and we instantly bounce on their feedback" Leon explained.

This means they are strict and neat about the way they deliver files and communicate with them. Since efficient collaboration is so crucial to the way their work, they put biweekly meetings in place Mondays and Thursdays. The goal of these meetings is for everyone to present relevant tech articles from around the web including keeping an eye out for new tools. It's their way of keeping up with the fast-paced tech industry.

During one of those meetings, Slite came up. Leon even admitted that "It felt almost too good to be true." For all their internal content, they had tried Evernote, then moved on to Dropbox Paper but were always searching for a more efficient way to handle content at Yummygum.

Making the move: building Yummygum's knowledge bank

For the past two years, they were storing their company playbook, internal guidelines and meeting notes in Dropbox Paper but they were always on the look out for an alternative. Their main issue with Dropbox Paper was the organization: the folders made it hard to access information. Leon added, "organization sounds like a small pain, but really it's huge." Channels felt exactly like what was missing in the other tools they had tested.

They were also using process.st to onboard new hires. After stumbling on our free onboarding templates, they decided to centralize all the content into a dedicated onboarding Slite channel. Now, all their internal documentation is stored, updated and collaborated on in Slite:

"Eventually, we see Slite becoming the data bank and knowledge base we send our employees to." explained Vince. Even if they have a very open policy of walking up to each other or slacking one another when a question comes up, the idea is that any information that should be kept safe is in Slite. This way they're sure never to lose best practices from client communication etiquette to tips on how to use Sketch.

Yummygum pro tip: get started with some of the free Slite templates to discover possible use cases for your team.

A sneak peek into their Slite

So how exactly are they organizing all of this in Slite? Here's a quick look:

The private channel is for business and related management matters. There are channels for their stock: playbooks surrounding topics such as company life, process guidelines, tool pro tips. They also have channels that are subject to change more often: Project Notes are all client meeting notes that 9 of them should have easy access to.

"It's a standalone app so it's always accessible. That makes it a go-to tool for content collaboration." explained Leon

Well, we couldn't be more thrilled to power your budding knowledge bank, Yummygum!