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Critical Mass: A digital experience design company a great place to work.

Looking forward to working as a user experience designer with a collaborative environment of work then this company is the reason why you would want to choose to work for.

Things you consider while looking for where you wish to work and why that company would be a great place to work.

Always know what the company is about?

About the Company:

The company was founded in Calgary in 1996 and is expanded globally with 11 offices across the geography. The company expertise’s in consulting strategies for digital advertising agencies, marketing communications, experience design, interaction design, building brands majorly focused on customer experience. Overall, we can call it an advertising and marketing agency in the industry sector.

The company consists of overall 501 to 1000 employees. The headquarters of the company is located in Calgary, Alberta. The company is distributed into studios based on expertise and the core services as a center of excellence. Employees working here come from different backgrounds with different experiences in various fields which cover

Digital Marketing, Brand Launch & Experience, User Experience & Interaction, Design, Digital Campaign Management, Social Media, Mobile, Technology Services, Experience Design, Experience Distribution, Marketing Science, and eCommerce.

It is important to know the core values of the company which are defined has Honesty /Inspired/driven/purposeful/real/equal, which makes us think about how the company culture might be.

Would help if you are aware of what clients you would be working with the company include Apple Inc. ASICS Corporation ,AT&T Inc. Bayer AG, Blizzard entertainment inc. BMW, Citi global, Infiniti motor limited, Johnson and Johnson, legal shield, Marriot International, Mc Donalds, Mckinsey and more.

DIANNE WILKINS
Chief Executive officer

As CEO of Critical Mass, Dianne is from the English literature background, later she pursued her MBA in business administration and began her career as a gold pro and now since 17years she has been connected and at an influential position at critical mass, as a coach, managing director, entrepreneur at a global level. She says

“We are universally obsessed with putting the client’s customer first.”

Dianne Wilkins, Global CEO, Critical Mass Interview

Opportunities:

Opportunities at the company

The company along with its core values have many opportunities as they are a global agency which believes in a collaborative work environment. Their main focus is customer driven. There is a paid internship opportunity offered by the company for people who are passionate like for students and new grads looking to learn and experience the industry. The Company offers an in-depth course for the newcomers in the beginning by teaching them about the company culture, disciplines, clients, and work. The best part is they provide the employees with A Professional Development Spending Account, which can be used for conferences, courses, subscriptions, books.

The Company appreciates work done, recognizes and reward their employees, Each month they give out spot bonuses. The company pays the employees for their referrals. Provides Opportunity to work from wherever best possible for the employees as long as they deliver consistent quality work. Throughout the year the company has different celebrations based on the work done along with their clients. There are different facilities for the employees such has sports pool, clubs, etc. The salary offered at critical mass on glassdoor shows $91k cad per anum.

How is the working culture of the company and what are the values?

The Vision of the company?

Culture and Values :

The culture of the company seems to be a cooperate culture. The company vision is to create experiences that improve customers’ lives. There is flexibility in the company working standards.The company values include Honesty/Inspired/driven/purposeful/real/equal. The company has a process where throughout the year, their offices devote time and resources to communities by donating goods through various means. The company consists of a diverse working culture has most of the employees working are from Canada. They also keep on moving more and more staff around the organization for new experiences and career development.

A Book Every Designer Should Read : 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People

By Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D.

“100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People” is a book I would recommend to every interactive media professional. This book is written by Susan Weinschenk who is a behavioural scientist. She has written several books on user-centered design. This book describes how to design a product or a website in a simplified manner. It also describes how people react to what they perceive through these designs. It talks about usability issues of the designed products; how important it is for a designer to design certain things which are helpful and appealing to the audience. It describes how design plays an important role in behaviour study of people and how people interact to a design.

It is a well-researched and well-documented compendium of design facts to get insights into customers’ psychology that drives their behaviour and interactions.

As I was reading the book it gave me a clear understanding about how to design for web. The author spoke about design principles and User experience of a website and of making a user’s journey more engaging on the website. She has used lots of facts and examples which makes it helpful and easy to understand. She talks about takeaways in points through which she gives insight full ideas.

*You can influence what people see, or think they see, by the use of shapes and colors. Source : Book*

This book is divided in different sections and each section describes people’s interaction with design products or websites.

For example:

How people see
How people think and remember
How people decide
How people read and interpret information
How people are influenced by stories
How people relate to other people and technology
How creativity influences design
How people’s bodies affect design
How people shop and buy
How generations, geography and gender influence design
How people interact with interfaces and devices

I liked the “How people decide” part where the writer speaks about ‘How people make decisions unconsciously’. In this she explains the science behind unconscious decision making, the role of external and internal influences, intuition vs logic and the effects of the calendar year on motivation.

I also like the part “What Motivates People” where the writer talks about how people are more motivated as they get closer to accomplishing their goal and how we can design for users to access information easily and engage them through their journey on the website.

The book describes heuristics principles in a very good manner. It elaborates on creating effective designs by following the design principles and human behaviour patterns to make a good product design.

This book is a great source of knowledge for designers and a very good source of user experience guide and so I would recommend this book to every interactive design professional.

Communication barriers at a diverse workplace

We don’t want to be the same but we do want to understand each other

Increased level of diversity at workplace has played a major role in shaping the industry growth. As being a User experience designer I wonder what it leads to when it comes to working with a collaborative team within a diverse culture. Interactive media and Tech industries tend to higher individuals from various fields of expertise and because of which there are people from diverse background cultures, languages, locations across the world. This combination of having employees from diverse backgrounds helps in the growth of the company but also brings in some challenges.

I read an article on Harvard Business review which described about how colleagues should be open to each other within a cross-culture team. They talked about how people coming from different hierarchical cultures speak up and share their ideas for example Team members from Australia or US provide unfiltered opinions and ideas while some speak up only after their more seniors colleagues have expressed their views. Also, people from some culture hesitate to contribute because they worry about how foolish they may sound. They also talk about how this can be fixed by making ensured that everyone is contributing, also by leaders from cross-culture teams establishing a clear communication protocols on giving every team member to contribute.

Source: AD council :Diversity & Inclusion

People speaking in their native language feel comfortable in sharing their opinions or ideas in their language but when it comes to speaking out at workplace across the globe with clients, they are unable to express their opinions or ideas. In the Interactive media industry when working within a collaborative team for example an interaction between a designer and the team, it is important that the designer communicates the information in terms everyone understand to meet the client goals. Also another problem faced at workplace is the use of dialects, people speaking the same language but speak with different dialects can create misunderstanding and gaps in communication.

Hence, to overcome these types of communication barriers at workplace we need to fix certain things like everyone should be given a chance to speak. Build a culture within the team of speaking with a simple and straight forward language. Another article I read on Forbes says that leaders should encourage teams build a positive attitude of developing a climate of trust where all colleagues always feel safe to speak their minds. Being an interactive media professional when one fails to communicate their ideas through words can make the use of visuals and diagrams to express their ideas to others. A communication problem at workplace can be solved prior by giving employees training on what the company’s expectations are so they are prepared to overcome such barriers. By working in a cross-culture team in the industry all need to find a common ground where everyone can understand and respect each other irrespective of being a diverse workplace.

Finding opportunities and being acquainted about your dream job.

“If opportunity doesn’t come knocking, build a door.”
Anonymous

About

GALE is a business agency. They work together as a top management consultant and has an ad agency to solve the world’s most complex marketing challenges under one umbrella. They operate to deliver innovative business strategies, data insights, and transformative creative work with various brands and innovative industries who are keen in solving future problems. They collaborate across continents to deliver innovative solution to their clients, they are globally spread with office locations in New York, Singapore, Toronto, and Bengaluru.

They believe in building a global structure and encourage the best global talent engagement. As being developed globally, gale partners consist of global teams across the world. They entirely focus on hiring passionate, curious and creative people and also invest in their growth and development.

The team works from diverse locations and being a global team, the company consists of employees from various different expertise such as:

E-Commerce, UX, Technology, Data Science, Performance Marketing, Innovation, Customer Loyalty, Addressable Marketing, Creative Production, Business Transformation, CRM, Media, Direct Mail, and Marketing Intelligence.

Leadership Team at Gale

Brad Simms
CEO & President

CEO of the Gale partner industry Brad founded with a vision to connect great people globally and build in great work and clients. Brad spent 20 years at top agencies and consultancies, including 13 years at Sapient Nitro.

A Conversation with Brad Simms, CEO & President of Gale Partners

Michael Tayag
Senior VP (Marketing and Tech delivery)

Michael is a senior digital marketing executive that has vast experience in technology and delivery across a wide variety of industries including travel, energy services, financial services, automotive and technology. He currently leads delivery at Gale where he is accountable for successfully delivering engagements spanning strategy, creative and technology.

Opportunities & Company Culture

Growth and development

Gale has a professional development program opportunity. This company also as a separate graduation development program for each different profession. There is a UX design program in which graduate students can apply and they get to work with the UX team, creative studio under the mentorship of their industry experts.

Also, opportunities to collaborate with the team to work on their client projects. It is a 12month program and they look for students who are curious and excited to learn about how the organization functions and passionate about contributing their knowledge. Currently the company is hiring UX designers for roles like Senior UX designer, Art director, Copywriter. CA$46K – CA$49K is the UX designer salary per annum mentioned on glass door

Apart from this Gale for their existing employees have various opportunities like health care facilities, social activities like fun events various outings, games sports and career development opportunities. They also have inbuilt gym facilities, unlimited food and snacks services, it is also a dog friendly office which welcomes pets.

Company Values and Vision

Values of the Company: They encourage creativity from all types of roles across the company. They believe in working together and encourage every person working in the company by appreciating them.

Their core values lays with their endowment. Be the best in what they do, Team collaboration, push creativity and innovation, have fun. Globally, GALE has over 280 people after only 4.5 years.All types of applicants are considered for employment and that what makes it worthwhile.