identity and mascot for the product team
of developers and designers.
A product team builds what it believes in. C.A.T., short for Client Application Team, started from that idea. When I took over the delivery of PaySet’s client app, work was being shipped literally: design went in, code came out, and nobody felt they owned the space in between. I could have added another checklist. Instead I gave the team something to belong to: a name, a mascot, an identity of its own. A brand is how people decide who they are, and I wanted a small team of engineers, QA and a designer to decide they were the ones who care about the details nobody is checking.
The brand was never meant to stay inside the team. It was part of a wider strategy to raise the product development quality bar, and it was built to work from the bottom up: pride in the work first, then proof by example. When one team visibly holds itself to a higher standard, and visibly enjoys it, the people around it notice. The idea was for that standard to spread to other departments the way a good habit does, through contact, not through mandate. A grassroots movement for change, with the team as patient zero.
Culture can’t be ordered into a company. It can only be shown. C.A.T. was how we showed it.
paws, whiskers or tentacles? the definition
of shape doesn't really matter when it comes
to a means of sending waves of change.
it's a genesis of a though. a buzz in your head
calling to act and spread it further.
