DESIGN TEAMS & USER EXPERIENCE
User Experience is part of everyone's job at the company not just UX design and research. Sales, customer support, marketing, brand -- all shape the experience of the product or service. These touch points are part of the users' journey and directly impact engagement and retention. Creating a culture of design means creating an environment where everyone in the company feels they are a stakeholder in shaping customers' experience. Defining and promoting design principles makes the customer experience goals more visible, "puts the user first" and highlights the company focus on customers.
DESIGN ORGANIZATIONS
Teams are typically either centralized or matrixed out into business units (BUs) run with the traditional triad of PM, UX, and engineering. The rationale for a centralized team is that it creates more coherent experiences across related areas of a product by keeping a core group that can work cohesively. The business unit model lets teams operate more independently and launch products faster. The BU model tends to fracture and isolate UX team members often resulting in disjointed solutions.
There are pros and cons to both approaches. See Peter Merholtz's book on Design For Design Orgs for more details on the nuances and pros and cons of different structures
To address the short-comings of the business unit model, I try to maintain a core set of designers to bridge the business units, develop style guides, and focus on flows across business units where break-downs typically occur.
User Experience is part of everyone's job at the company not just UX design and research. Sales, customer support, marketing, brand -- all shape the experience of the product or service. These touch points are part of the users' journey and directly impact engagement and retention. Creating a culture of design means creating an environment where everyone in the company feels they are a stakeholder in shaping customers' experience. Defining and promoting design principles makes the customer experience goals more visible, "puts the user first" and highlights the company focus on customers.
DESIGN ORGANIZATIONS
Teams are typically either centralized or matrixed out into business units (BUs) run with the traditional triad of PM, UX, and engineering. The rationale for a centralized team is that it creates more coherent experiences across related areas of a product by keeping a core group that can work cohesively. The business unit model lets teams operate more independently and launch products faster. The BU model tends to fracture and isolate UX team members often resulting in disjointed solutions.
There are pros and cons to both approaches. See Peter Merholtz's book on Design For Design Orgs for more details on the nuances and pros and cons of different structures
To address the short-comings of the business unit model, I try to maintain a core set of designers to bridge the business units, develop style guides, and focus on flows across business units where break-downs typically occur.
Centralized UX Team
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Matrixed UX Team
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Matrix+Central Team
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The choice of model determines the points where friction and breakdowns happens. I have first-hand experience with all of these environments and set up team structures to maximize the efficiencies while reducing friction. For example, when I first joined Google in 2007 there were less than 100 designers sitting together in one building in Mountain View. When I left in 2015, there were 1,000+ designers distributed across dozens of buildings, campuses and business groups. Within this larger organization, several centralized groups emerged focused on initiatives like Material Design.
DISTRIBUTED & INTERNATIONAL TEAMS
One of the most difficult and common situations is working with teams that are globally distributed. This situation introduces several issues that can disrupt and create breakdowns between teams.
Cultural Differences: I worked closely with Google's Shanghai team and intermittently with groups in Tokyo. During brainstorming sessions, I was surprised that even at Google many participants were reluctant to speak out. Involving everyone is key to developing a shared sense of ownership, especially for distributed teams. Going around the room and soliciting opinions worked much better in this situation.
Remote teams in general don't like to be treated as a service organization and this is particularly true for designers. I always try to give remote teams as much autonomy as possible to define and come up with solutions. PicsArt is a predominantly Armenian company and Armenians have strong opinions. Interestingly, they will rarely criticize people directly. Instead feedback comes through secondary channels. I typically take steps to increase critique of work using design principles versus personal preferences.
Building Trust: Face-to-face relationships are critical for distributed and international teams to have any chance of working. I typically run design sprints or other team building activities to connect people across teams.
One of the most difficult and common situations is working with teams that are globally distributed. This situation introduces several issues that can disrupt and create breakdowns between teams.
Cultural Differences: I worked closely with Google's Shanghai team and intermittently with groups in Tokyo. During brainstorming sessions, I was surprised that even at Google many participants were reluctant to speak out. Involving everyone is key to developing a shared sense of ownership, especially for distributed teams. Going around the room and soliciting opinions worked much better in this situation.
Remote teams in general don't like to be treated as a service organization and this is particularly true for designers. I always try to give remote teams as much autonomy as possible to define and come up with solutions. PicsArt is a predominantly Armenian company and Armenians have strong opinions. Interestingly, they will rarely criticize people directly. Instead feedback comes through secondary channels. I typically take steps to increase critique of work using design principles versus personal preferences.
Building Trust: Face-to-face relationships are critical for distributed and international teams to have any chance of working. I typically run design sprints or other team building activities to connect people across teams.
Design Sprint Shanghai
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Design Sprint Yerevan
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Talent: Hiring is an essential part of building a design. I have hired over 100 designers, researchers, PMs and engineers and reviewed 30x that number of resumes and portfolios. One important part of the interview process is having a standard set of questions, protocol for asking them, and post-interview individual feedback before meeting as a group. I set these up across the design team and HR when they aren't already present.
Management: I have successfully managed some of the most talented and difficult designers when others could not. Part of being a senior designer is working well with a variety of people, being able to communicate the value of design, and work as a team. I set designers up to improve and succeed in these areas starting with templates for presentation decks and pairing designers with team members who complement their skills. Peer mentoring and collaboration is essential to developing a cohesive team.
Research: User research is one of the most valuable and least understood parts of the design organization. Most teams have surprisingly limited experience working with expert UX researchers. Even senior level product managers frequently think of UX research first and foremost as usability testing or surveys for market research. Savvy researchers start out doing this work and slowly branch out to do more formative and strategic work. Hiring and empowering UX researchers is one of the primary jobs of the design lead.
Design Goals: Principled design or user-centered design is one of the great equalizers. It shifts evaluation of alternatives from features and personal opinions to alignment with user needs. Many PMs and some designers have no idea what a design goal is. Once they figure out they can use design goals and user needs to systematically evaluate alternatives, it becomes the primary tool for managing conflicting input from multiple sources. Part of the deck on UX-PM collaboration covers designs and the connection to KPIs.
Management: I have successfully managed some of the most talented and difficult designers when others could not. Part of being a senior designer is working well with a variety of people, being able to communicate the value of design, and work as a team. I set designers up to improve and succeed in these areas starting with templates for presentation decks and pairing designers with team members who complement their skills. Peer mentoring and collaboration is essential to developing a cohesive team.
Research: User research is one of the most valuable and least understood parts of the design organization. Most teams have surprisingly limited experience working with expert UX researchers. Even senior level product managers frequently think of UX research first and foremost as usability testing or surveys for market research. Savvy researchers start out doing this work and slowly branch out to do more formative and strategic work. Hiring and empowering UX researchers is one of the primary jobs of the design lead.
Design Goals: Principled design or user-centered design is one of the great equalizers. It shifts evaluation of alternatives from features and personal opinions to alignment with user needs. Many PMs and some designers have no idea what a design goal is. Once they figure out they can use design goals and user needs to systematically evaluate alternatives, it becomes the primary tool for managing conflicting input from multiple sources. Part of the deck on UX-PM collaboration covers designs and the connection to KPIs.
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PM-UX REVIEWS
At Google we had three phases of design review within the Ads team. The ads team had some of the tightest reviews because they involved both advertiser and consumer facing solutions and of course revenue. I've found this model of Concept Review (phase 1), Design Review (alternatives), and Final Review (PRD and eng handoff) works well in most companies. At PicsArt, we tried several incarnations for tracking review requests and approvals ranging from spreadsheets where we did 300+ reviews in one year to Confluence docs and finally Kanban boards (below left):
At Google we had three phases of design review within the Ads team. The ads team had some of the tightest reviews because they involved both advertiser and consumer facing solutions and of course revenue. I've found this model of Concept Review (phase 1), Design Review (alternatives), and Final Review (PRD and eng handoff) works well in most companies. At PicsArt, we tried several incarnations for tracking review requests and approvals ranging from spreadsheets where we did 300+ reviews in one year to Confluence docs and finally Kanban boards (below left):
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The business unit model seems to encourage PMs to run lots of AB tests that potentially break the style guide. This can result in optimization of specific screens and at the same time the creation of an inconsistent Frankenstein for the overall experience. At PicsArt, I came up with a process to encourage AB testing while making sure we ran controlled experiments that would let us change the style guides if we found better performing patterns (above right).
Design Sprints
I frequently work in engineering-driven companies where there is a lot of pressure to launch new features as quickly as possible. This typically works up to a point. Then the same method is used to try to launch more complicated experiences that span BUs. This is the point when I try to convince the teams to step back and spend a little more time up front to understand what resonates with the different audiences. I give them a choice and discuss the benefits of design sprints:
Design Sprints
I frequently work in engineering-driven companies where there is a lot of pressure to launch new features as quickly as possible. This typically works up to a point. Then the same method is used to try to launch more complicated experiences that span BUs. This is the point when I try to convince the teams to step back and spend a little more time up front to understand what resonates with the different audiences. I give them a choice and discuss the benefits of design sprints:
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Design sprints have the most impact for new projects that involve multiple business units or for new initiatives where the user needs and solutions aren't well understood.
BRAND & UX
In most companies, the brand and creative teams provide guidelines in the form of color and typography, update some marketing web site pages, control the app store and/or brand logos while UX and product run off to design and build the "product". I try to develop a closer relationship between marketing, creative, brand and UX.
Here are some of the touch points with arrows representing increased feedback.
In most companies, the brand and creative teams provide guidelines in the form of color and typography, update some marketing web site pages, control the app store and/or brand logos while UX and product run off to design and build the "product". I try to develop a closer relationship between marketing, creative, brand and UX.
Here are some of the touch points with arrows representing increased feedback.
This collaboration helps create a coherent visual language and consistent experience that aligns with the brand and the target audience. It also creates alignment between UX patterns and engineering components increasing the velocity of design and development and reducing the size of apps. See the section on Design Systems for more details.
Performance Reviews & OKRs: Evaluating designers fairly and having a clear track for promotion helps retain design talent. Google went through several iterations of performance reviews and settled on a very light-weight and simple set of questions that I use for performance reviews. I also work with each team member to define Objective Key Results (OKRs) tied to 1) company goals, 2) business unit goals, 3) personal goals. These are measurable and I want team members to score around 80% - aggressive, not easily achievable.
JOB LADDERS
UX job ladders for design and research are critical as teams grow and best introduced as early as possible. A job ladder with clear responsibilities and functions, level of supervision, and communication responsibilities helps set expectations within the team and across the company. These discussions also help to promote team members in organizations that resist promotion.
JOB LADDERS
UX job ladders for design and research are critical as teams grow and best introduced as early as possible. A job ladder with clear responsibilities and functions, level of supervision, and communication responsibilities helps set expectations within the team and across the company. These discussions also help to promote team members in organizations that resist promotion.
COMMUNICATING THE VALUE OF DESIGN
UX is something most people inside a company don't totally understand: "Your team makes the buttons beautiful, right?" This requires outreach to showcase the value and nature of design work if the UX team wants to be valued and leveraged for strategic work. UX has the potential to uncover the challenges addressed by users of products and services, align product initiatives with user needs, and accelerate growth. This is the promise of UX, but it needs to built into the design and development processes to have impact.
UX is something most people inside a company don't totally understand: "Your team makes the buttons beautiful, right?" This requires outreach to showcase the value and nature of design work if the UX team wants to be valued and leveraged for strategic work. UX has the potential to uncover the challenges addressed by users of products and services, align product initiatives with user needs, and accelerate growth. This is the promise of UX, but it needs to built into the design and development processes to have impact.
UX Project Impact Summaries include the project proposals, design work, impact and analytics from launches and AB test, and next steps. These summaries help align product and UX in larger organizations but also in small groups that move quickly. Circulated across the company, the post-launch summaries help increase the visibility and value of design work promoting a culture of focusing on the customer and their experience.