Org Design for Design Orgs: Building and Managing In-House Design Teams

by Peter Merholz

A design team’s output is the result not only of their skill, but the sophistication and sensitivity of how they operate.

The qualities are broken up into three groups: Foundation, Output, and Management (Table 3-1). The Foundation outlines the core concepts that drive the team’s behavior, and explain its very reason for being. With a strong Foundation established, energies then shift toward Output and Management. These qualities are indicative of the broader creative/operational split that is required to sustainably deliver good design, and is a theme throughout this book. Output and Management need to be tackled in tandem, as they reinforce each other. Output addresses what most people think of when considering design — is the team able to produce quality work across the necessary set of capabilities? Management addresses the unsung and often overlooked aspects of actually running a team. To realize team longevity and continued broadening impact, it’s imperative to treat operations as seriously as the work product.

Table 3-1. The 12 qualities of effective design organizations Foundation Output Management 1. Shared sense of purpose 2. Focused, empowered leadership 3. Authentic user empathy 4. Understand, articulate, and create value 5. Support the entire journey 6. Deliver at all levels of scale 7. Establish and uphold standards of quality 8. Value delivery over perfection 9. Treat team members as people, not resources 10. Diversity of perspective and background 11. Foster a collaborative environment 12. Manage operations effectively

One way to articulate this shared sense of purpose is through a team charter. Charters can come in all shapes and sizes, from brief mission statements to lengthier documents that detail how a team operates. Start brief and expand as needed. Every design team is different, so no one charter will apply universally. We propose the following as a way to get started. We’re not here just to make it pretty or easy to use. Through empathy, we ensure meaning and utility. With craft, we elicit understanding and desire. We wrangle the complexity of our offering to deliver a clear, coherent, and satisfying experience from start to finish.

More frustrating are large organizations that should know better but continue this practice. An example was a Silicon Valley company (that shall remain nameless) that had four design directors as peers, each reporting to the VP of Product Management. While it might seem that design had real presence, in actuality none of the design directors were the head of design — that VP was. And that person was making decisions that affected the design team, even though he didn’t understand the potential that design could be delivering. A design team needs to be in charge of its own destiny, and this requires focused leadership with autonomy and executive access.

The skills that made someone a great designer or creative director are almost wholly unrelated to the skills that make them a great manager and team leader. Instead, this design leader’s primary responsibilities will prove organizational, working with other executives to clear the path for design, and serving as a manager, mentor, team builder, and operator for the team itself, creating both a figurative and literal space where design can thrive.

With focused leadership established, they must have autonomy over how the design organization works. Leadership’s overarching responsibility is to make their organization as effective and efficient as possible, and given the expanded role of design, this will likely mean it doesn’t conform to how other departments are structured or operate. This requires freedom to establish methods of practice, both internal to the design team and cross-functionally. And, finally, because design teams are always asked to do more than they have the capacity for, leadership must be able to prioritize their own efforts. For design to be seen as a truly essential contributor, it must be able to focus efforts on what matters, and say “No” to that which is not crucial.

For design to realize its full potential, leadership must be only one or two rungs away from the CEO, and so must either be an executive or have executive access. If too far away from the “C-suite,” then the politics needed to navigate the organizational reality of end-to-end experiences becomes extremely difficult. Such distance makes it easy for others to dismiss design’s contribution. Executive engagement (whether in the form of sponsorship, organizational cover, or simple reporting structures) demonstrates the importance that design has within the organization. Such executive support will prove necessary as the expanded role of design inevitably upsets corporate “business as usual.”

Essential in design’s ability to succeed is an authentic understanding of user contexts and behaviors. This goes beyond standard practices of market research and user testing, and toward deeper engagement with the lives of the people being served. Nothing beats going into people’s homes or offices, and following them as they go about their days. While quantitative and marketing methods such as usage analytics and surveys provide data as to where things aren’t working, findings from such efforts focus on optimizations and point solutions. Good user research, particularly out in the field, reveals a richness of understanding that you simply cannot get anywhere else. It is this work that ends up revealing a customer’s journey, and inevitably, the experiential breakdowns that happen when people try to accomplish things that require them to unknowingly cross siloed departments in an organization. The primary benefit of such observations is that designers develop empathy for their users, which in turns leads them to design systems that have real impact, and avoid solutions that will be rejected by the intended audience. A secondary benefit that can be just as important is when executives and other people with authority outside of design witness the results of such user research, whether it’s the raw data (e.g., videos of people expressing frustration with the current situation), or the analyses that makes clear problematic patterns. When these executives ask how these breakdowns...

Given design’s success in the decade-plus since that report, it might seem that the value of design is understood and such practices are no longer warranted. However, for a design organization to realize its full potential, its members must still be able to speak the language of value in a meaningful way. If designers shield themselves in the cloak of “creatives” as a way not to engage with the business, they will lose impact and credibility. Designers need to understand how their work contributes to business success. Too often, designers practice design-for-design’s-sake, where what’s produced, however cool or innovative, isn’t connected with the company’s goals. Savvy design leaders embrace business value, realizing it can serve as a powerful input into the design process. Whether it’s “hard” metrics such as improving conversion rates or increasing engagement times, or “soft” matters such as representing the company’s brand in an elegant and appropriate way, these connections to what the company cares about are crucial for keeping design efforts on track. And when these business objectives are paired with authentic user empathy, new means of value creation can emerge. When design organizations propose ways to unlock new business value, their credibility and impact increases.

Another implication is that there should be only one design organization to undergird the entire customer journey. This runs contrary to a common practice, where companies often have two teams — a product or UX design team and a marketing design team. This is the legacy of 20th-century mass manufacturing thinking, where the way a product is designed and developed is divorced from how the product is sold and talked about. In a services world, this distinction no longer holds. “Marketing” and “product” experiences are simply milestones on the same customer journey. Also, whereas traditional marketing design was delivered through media (publications, broadcast, billboards) and product design was for a thing placed on a retail shelf, in a world of connected software, the platform for many marketing and product experiences has converged in digital realms such as email, web, and mobile. Granted, there are efforts particular to specific media — users don’t interact with products on a billboard — but those are relatively few, and diminishing. Companies beholden to the archaic “marketing” and “product” distinctions also get in the way of new opportunities, such as the rise of “growth” product development, where what would have been considered a classic marketing function (acquiring users) becomes part of product development. Given a single design organization invited to work end to end throughout the customer’s journey, a third implication arises: the need for a vast array of desig...

To overcome this, the design organization must be empowered to define quality standards for their team and their organization. Those standards then must be externalized so that others know what is being upheld. The goal is to take as much subjectivity as possible out of the equation, shifting design critique from a stance of personal preferences (“I really love this shade of blue”) or a desire to stand out (the infamous “make the logo bigger”) to an agreed-upon set of principles and guidelines that explain the team’s definition of quality, supported by numerous examples of design work that demonstrate good quality with callouts as to why.

Design leaders need to wield the power of “No.” Design work should only be done when adequately prioritized and staffed, and when there is time to develop quality solutions.

Many design organizations rely on process as a proxy for quality. This is a false connection. Critical thinking is essential for delivering great work, and an over-adherence to a methodology leads to teams making unthinking decisions. While a high-level process or general approach can help designers communicate how they work with other functions, insisting on a granular step-by-step process for every project engenders a rigidity that can actually harm quality. Design problems vary, and design teams should be familiar with a range of approaches and methods to solve them appropriately. “We must follow a user-centered design process” may sound like a good plan, but when any process becomes an assumption or accepted dogma, it becomes a crutch that replaces critical thinking. Instead of following a well-trod process, design leadership should make the effort to figure out the best ways to tackle different challenges, drawing from a broad methodological toolkit.

While design professionals are roughly split 50/50 across male/female lines, it’s not uncommon for more technical product design teams to exhibit the same lack of gender and racial diversity of their broader organization. When Peter joined one company, he inherited a product design team of 11 men and 2 women, almost all in their mid-20s. Peter witnessed how this narrowed the team’s worldview, with expectations that users had a degree of savvy with mobile and web conventions as they who were born digital. However, the company’s audience was overwhelmingly female and middle-aged. And while a design team shouldn’t necessarily reflect its user base, and user research can go far in engendering empathy for those different from ourselves, by having a variety of perspectives and backgrounds represented, designers are encouraged at all times to check their assumptions. Also, on that team of young people, all but one were white. Race and ethnic diversity have long been challenges for the design industry, and very little has changed in the 20 years the authors have worked in the field. It’s not an easy problem to solve, because even those eager to hire for diversity are hindered by the lack of diverse candidates. And diverse candidates might find themselves subject to unintentionally biased recruiting, interviewing, and promotion practices.

When recruiting and interviewing, adopt practices that focus on competencies and results, using tools that replace casual assessment with rigorous analysis of candidates’ work and behaviors.

The gravest issue for designers is that they find themselves fundamentally disempowered. By the time designers are brought in to the project, the important decisions have already been made. Their concerns about assumptions underlying a brief are easily dismissed, because those designers will be gone when their part of the work is over. It’s the people in the business who are held accountable, and with that accountability comes authority. Design may be seen only as aesthetics and styling, or as one former client referred to it, “SUAC: Shut Up and Color.” God forbid you actually conduct any usability studies, because any issues found will probably not get addressed, as designs need to be handed to the engineers at a specified time in order to meet the predetermined ship date. This disempowerment leads to designers developing an “us versus them” attitude. They become disenchanted, nodding during meetings, but rolling their eyes afterward at the requirements they’ve been handed. They put in the bare minimum to get the work done, because their effort isn’t going to be appreciated. And such attitude and behavior only reinforces the business’s treatment of designers, leading to a vicious cycle of diminished expectations.

Designers (D) are embedded in each product/feature team (“Search/Browse,” “Product Page,” etc.), alongside product managers (P) and engineers (E). A director-level leadership team (DD-Design Director, DP- Director of Product Management, DE-Director of Engineering) overlooks all the efforts.

The benefits of decentralization are realized immediately, and directly overcome the challenges of centralization. The benefits include: Development is speedier and iterative Designers are empowered and engaged as full team members Teams have greater ownership for what is delivered Output is higher quality Because these decentralized business and product teams have been wholly staffed, they have freedom and speed that they couldn’t achieve before. They no longer have to sit in someone else’s queue. They no longer have to wait for approvals. They are in control of their own destiny, and design is part of that. For the designers, instead of being brought in only after all the important decisions are made, they are now full team members. They participate throughout the product lifecycle, including the agenda-setting requirements development. They contribute to the strategy, and their perspective helps ensure superior product delivery. Their voices cannot be dismissed, because they’re as accountable as any other team member. The “us versus them” they may have felt before falls away. They better understand the challenges that their team members face, and no longer see their job as simply handing off deliverables, but ultimately making the team successful. Thus, this no longer feels like “work for hire,” but instead something worth investing extra effort in. Being involved throughout the lifecycle means developing a real sense of ownership, and with that comes pride at wanting t...

Centralized Partnership: The Best of Both Worlds Being centralized is too slow and disempowering. Designers enjoy the variety and collegiality, but ultimately feel stifled by their lack of impact. Going decentralized initially improves matters, in terms of both speed of release and quality, but over time designers grow restless and feel lost, and customers struggle with the lack of cohesion. Teams are thus tempted to re-centralize, but fear they’ll just end up in the same place. It’s like the Kobayashi Maru,[14] but there’s a lesson to take from Captain Kirk. There’s a third way to run design organizations, one that is slowly gaining wider acceptance. There’s no standard name for it, so we will call it the Centralized Partnership. For most companies, it makes sense to have business and product teams decentralized. There are very real benefits of autonomy, primarily speed of execution, and decision making that takes into account the actual on-the-ground, day-to-day reality. It’s a force that mostly does good. But it can lead to entropy, where the sum of these seemingly right decisions made in isolation leads to a fractured user experience. A centralized design organization serves as a beneficially opposing force whose holistic perspective can ensure coherence. It’s not uncommon for multiple product teams to work on related, adjacent, or even identical stuff without knowing it. In the Centralized Partnership, the ongoing communication across the design organization makes thi...

In the Centralized Partnership, there is a distinct design team that has committed connections to the different product/feature/business teams. The team includes a team lead (TL), senior designers (S), other designers (D), and a content strategist (CS). The team lead and senior designers have direct relationships with product managers (P). Experiences are treated more holistically, as the entire team understands the breadth of what is being delivered.

Organize by customer type

Organize by the customer’s journey

The bulk of the team are practitioners, individuals rolling up their sleeves and getting the work done. The first four roles are core to pretty much any design team: Product Designer Communication Designer User Experience Researcher Design Program Manager Whether a design team includes the next three roles is a matter of size, industry, and the problems being solved: Service Designer Content Strategist Creative Technologist Each of these roles contains a range of experience. For now, we’re not distinguishing between junior and senior practitioners. Their basic responsibilities do not change in type, only as a matter of degree.

Throughout this book we have advocated a service design mindset. Most organizations don’t need dedicated service designers — product design leads, UX researchers, and communication designers can practice service design, employing its tools such as experience maps, customer journeys, service blueprints, and prototypes of new experiences. However, some service-heavy environments, such as hospitality, financial services, and health care, will benefit from individuals dedicated to service design. These team members integrate efforts across product teams into a coherent whole. Whereas product designers typically work within Surface and Structure, service designers operate within Structure and Strategy, specifying the design of a system that will deliver a great service experience. While craft is important, this role is more about coordination — the service designer works hard to connect with all the frontline people who will be delivering the service. At the outset of work, this involves facilitation and co-creation, coming up with solutions that will work across roles and contexts. When the solutions are deployed, the focus shifts to training and implementation, supporting people as they execute the service.

Teams can also prototype using tools such as Axure and Invision, which don’t require coding knowledge. But at some point, usually around 15–20 team members, it makes sense to have someone who focuses on this practice. At this scale, efficiency is realized as creative technologists can go deeper and work faster than product designers who also happen to code as a part of their job. Additionally, without dedicated creative technologists, a design problem with a tricky technological bent requires a production engineer to take time away from delivery and support this exploration. A creative technologist on the team allows others to focus on what they do best, and serves as a deep connection between design and engineering. This role can get confused for another such connection, the Frontend Developer. While frontend developers work closely with design and can be quite design savvy, the role is fundamentally an engineering role oriented on delivery. The Creative Technologist is less concerned about delivery than possibility. They can be fast and loose with their code in a way that frontend developers cannot. Frontend developers ultimately serve the purpose of the engineering team, focused on performance matters of stability, speed, and working-as-it-should at scale. Creative technologists align with the mission of the design organization, using engineering as a tool to uncover opportunities for a clear, coherent, and satisfying user experience.

As discussed in Chapter 3, for design to realize its potential requires focused, empowered leadership. Head of Design has emerged as a title for this role, which works regardless of whether they are considered a manager, director, or VP. Whatever the level, the Head of Design is the “CEO” of the design organization, ultimately accountable for the team’s results. Their impact is the outcome of how they handle three types of leadership: Creative Managerial Operational A Head of Design provides a creative vision not just for the design team but the whole company. They establish processes and practices for realizing that vision, and set the bar for quality. They contribute to the development of brand definition and experience principles, and ensure that those are appropriately interpreted through the team’s work. Their managerial leadership is realized through the tone they set for their team. What kind of work environment do they foster? How are team members treated, and what opportunities are they given to grow? How is feedback given? How do they hire, and who does that bring in? Is the team encouraged to wear lucha libre masks?[16] The sum of these decisions defines the Head of Design’s managerial style.

A common mistake made by company leaders when hiring a Head of Design is to favor creative leadership qualities over the managerial and operational. They bring in a creative visionary with big ideas and a beautiful portfolio, but often those folks don’t have the patience or mindset for the mechanics needed to actually make an organization run. Design team members struggle without good management, flail without tight operations, and end up far less effective than they could be. Admittedly, it’s a challenge to find an individual skilled in all three forms of leadership. This role is the “CEO” of the design team, and thus, managerial and operational excellence are crucial.

Unlike Design Directors, whose primary responsibilities are managerial and team-oriented, Creative Directors are leaders whose primary responsibilities are creative, and even with “Director” in the title, might have no managerial responsibility. This role emerges in recognition of a couple conditions: As teams scale, it can be difficult for the Head of Design, and even the Design Directors, to provide exceptional creative leadership alongside their managerial and operational duties. There are brilliantly creative people who warrant leadership roles with authority, but who are ill-suited to managing direct reports. A Creative Director works as a peer of design directors, and is responsible for articulating a creative vision and setting creative standards for the design team. Brand identity standards, style guides, experience principles, and other aspects that touch on the entirety of the end-to-end experience fall under this purview. In sufficiently large organizations, there may be multiple Creative Directors responsible for different parts of the service experience. For a marketplace, there may be a Creative Director each for the seller experience and buyer experience.

Generally, art and design schools ensure a classic design foundation, including color theory, composition, typography, and the like, and encourage a more generative approach to problem solving. HCI and information schools have a stronger technical bent, with students learning programming, managing data, and cognitive psychology, and follow a more analytical mode of problem solving. That said, as design for software and services professionalize, and as employers make clear what it is they are looking for, the difference between these programs grows subtler. Any decent program teaches basics such as user research and analysis, the use of schematic design tools such as workflows and wireframes, graphic design, and basic programming and prototyping. Along with navigating the art and technology divide, organizations must also consider whether to hire out of undergraduate or graduate schools. Undergraduates are more predictable — the overwhelming majority attended right out of high school, are 21 or 22 years old, and have no meaningful professional experience except perhaps internships. With rare exceptions, undergraduates will be projects, committing to a real job for the first time, needing guidance not just in how to work in design, but simply be a professional in the world. Graduate students have far greater variance in their backgrounds, from those who came straight from undergraduate, to others who fell into design practice in the course of their professional lives and dec...

Career fairs typically take place in some large room (a large classroom, a meeting hall, even a gymnasium) with a series of booths (or, rather, card tables), arrayed like a trade show floor. A common mistake is to staff booths only with full-time recruiters. While these people are preternaturally pleasant and have delightful smiles, students want to understand what it’s like to be on the team. A strong booth has one full-time recruiter (to handle logistics and set up and track candidates), one design manager, and one designer. If you can only afford to send two people, favor designers over recruiters. The design manager is there to give a bigger picture view of what it’s like to work on the team, and to assess the prospective talent. The designer should be someone recently out of school themselves, ideally an alumnus, who can articulate the bridge between the college experience and the working world, and whom the students can closely identify with. Make the booth attractive — we’re hiring designers here! A banner hung limply over a table and a pile of business cards will not draw students. Consider standing banners, iPads with the company’s work showcased, or even an HD display. Branded schwag is fun, but unnecessary — cheap-o sunglasses with a logo have swayed no one to work for a particular company. Some career fairs provide opportunities for hiring companies to present to the whole student body. Prepare a deck that not only shows the work, but gives a feel for the compa...

When reaching out, be concise and clear about the opportunity. Find a sweet spot between being too vague and brief, and verbose and long-winded. Don’t: Hi! I saw your profile on LinkedIn. We’re looking for a Senior Product Designer, and I think you could be a fit for the role! Apply here: http://companyexample.com/careers/spd Do: Hi, I’m John Doe, a Senior Product Designer at CompanyExample. I saw your portfolio and really dug your work on that mobile ticketing app. I also noticed that we have Samantha Jones and Colin Yang in common. We have a Senior Product Designer role open here, to lead work on our Android App. We’re looking to embrace Material Design, which you’re clearly very familiar with. I really like working here, and would love to talk to you more about it, if you’re interested. If not you, maybe you know someone I could reach out to? Remember, designers are getting hammered by such inquiries. Give the person a week to respond. If they don’t, follow up with one more outreach. Then let it go.

External design recruiting firms fall into a few different categories: Big Recruiters with a “design practice” Global recruiting firms like Robert Half and Robert Walters now feature design practices. Companies already working with such a firm for other roles will be tempted to use them for design as well. Never select a recruiter by default. Much of what works in recruiting for other disciplines does not apply to design. Make sure the recruiter understands this, and doesn’t apply a one-size-fits-all approach. If they’re approaching designers the same way they approach engineers, marketers, and salespeople, take a different path. Creative staffing agencies We won’t name specific companies because, to be frank, these recruiters are the least pleasant to engage with, and have done the most to give design recruiting a bad name. Representatives from these firms hound hiring managers, relentless in their sales. They do very little filtering of candidates, primarily serving as a clearinghouse for people looking for work. The quality of the candidates is highly variable, and on average, subpar. Unless you have no other options in your area, steer clear of such companies. Small design-focused shops In our experience, these have been the best firms to work with. With just one, two, or maybe three recruiters, these firms provide high levels of service, getting to know you, your business, and what you’re looking for. They also actively network with their local design community, and u...

Initial Screens (by Phone or In-Person) These are typically called “phone screens,” but if the person is local and willing to meet at a convenient time and place, it is often preferable to meet face to face. Conduct two initial screens. The first conversation is introductory. The candidate’s résumé and portfolio should have already provided a base sense of skills and capabilities, so probe other factors. Get a sense of the candidate, their background, and their career trajectory. Share more specifics about the opportunity. Instead of addressing specific design aptitude, look instead for the meta-qualities that will make someone successful — are they articulate, pleasant, and passionate? If it feels like there might be compatibility, and if time allows, have the candidate walk through one or two projects and describe their involvement on them. The assessment made after the first phone screen can be more forgiving. From the standpoint of career, experience, and personality, does this candidate feel like a potential fit? If so, proceed to the second screen. This screen returns focus to their work, skills, and execution. The interviewer should dig deeply, and engage with a critical eye. Have one of the design team’s harsher critics conduct this conversation. The purpose is to ensure that only qualified candidates are brought in for the Day of Interviews, a time-consuming endeavor for the whole team. If after the portfolio presentation that kicks off the Day of Interviews, it i...

Day of Interviews If the candidate makes it through the fine-meshed filter of the screening process, the next step is to bring them onsite. As is typical for other roles, conduct a Day of Interviews, where the candidate speaks with a variety of people. To get the most out of the conversations, there are certain practices to include, and one unfortunately common practice to exclude.

Portfolio presentation Begin the candidate’s day with a 45- to 60-minute portfolio presentation. Everyone speaking later to the candidate should attend — this way the candidate doesn’t need to walk through their work over and over again. This also gives interviewers a chance to appreciate the candidate’s presentation skills, which are instrumental to a designer’s success. When preparing the candidate before the Day of Interviews, encourage them in their portfolio review to share some personal background, to dive deeper on fewer projects (as opposed to presenting a little about a vast array of work), and to leave some time for discussion. If the location of the portfolio presentation has room for more attendees, open the invitation to the broader design team, with optional attendance. This has two benefits for team members: they can engage in the hiring process, even if they’re not conducting interviews; and it exposes them to new design work and how other people talk about it. A teaching opportunity emerges when design leadership’s assessment of a candidate’s work differs from their team members. This encourages explanations of what leadership is looking for, and helps team members develop and refine their review skills.

Schedule a series of conversations with team members as well as key people outside of design. Limit the number of conversations to no more than six. A typical day for a product designer, content strategist, UX researcher, or design program manager would feature these interview participants: Potential design team peers The candidate’s probable manager Product manager they would likely work with Engineer they would likely work with Design program manager A communication designer would likely not speak to product management and engineering, but should definitely speak with people in marketing and copywriting. For the peer interviews, feel free to have two on one. Such conversations can stoke camaraderie and gives the candidate a little more insight into whom they’d be working with. Keep the other conversations as one on one, either because of potential sensitivities (with a prospective manager) or because the people from different functions (engineering, product management) will have different avenues they want to explore. Each conversation should have a natural set of topics, though the hiring manager will want to coordinate the interviews to ensure a complete picture develops. Make sure potential design peers probe across matters of process, skills, collaboration style, behavioral traits (how the candidate performs under certain situations), and personality and cultural fit. If the hiring manager conducted the first phone screen, then this onsite conversation is an opportun...

A topic of some controversy within product design circles is whether candidate interviews should involve some kind of design test or challenge akin to what happens in engineering interviews. Our firm, resolute response to this is “no.” Design tests set up an unhealthy power dynamic in the interview environment, when instead you should be fostering collegiality. The context in which the challenge is given (typically narrowly time-boxed and with only a little information and little support) is wholly artificial — and so whether a candidate succeeds or fails is not a meaningful indicator of actual practice. There is nothing you will find out in such a test that you couldn’t better learn through probing the candidate about their portfolio.

This is an area where what works for the rest of the organization pretty much works for design. Interviewers need to submit feedback in a timely fashion (i.e., within 24 hours), making clear what they discussed, what their impressions were, and how strongly they feel about hiring or not hiring the candidate. Even if the company does not otherwise conduct debriefs, where the interview panel meets in person to discuss their interviews, do so for design candidates. The newness of design as a corporate function comes into particular play in the hiring process. Many people, especially those outside of design, will not have interviewed designers before. Everyone benefits from understanding each other’s assessments. It helps the whole organization as it figures out how to hire for these roles. The debrief should also be timely, ideally the following day, but no more than three days after the interview. The panel should read one another’s feedback before the debrief, or if they haven’t had time, at the beginning of the debrief. Most debriefs will be straightforward — across the board thumbs up or thumbs down. Be careful of tepid approvals, though — if there are no strong advocates for a person’s hire, that’s a sign of something being off, even if none of the feedback is negative. A challenge arises when a candidate splits the panel, where some are strongly positive, and others are inclined not to hire. Navigating this is among the most heightened and sensitive tasks for a design l...

Designer-specific compensation is the subject of O’Reilly’s Design Salary Survey (http://www.oreilly.com/design/free/2016-design-salary-survey-report.csp) and Coroflot’s Design Salary Guide (http://www.coroflot.com/designsalaryguide). Candidates are likely talking to multiple companies, and will probably receive multiple offers. Being cheap demonstrates a lack of commitment and investment in design, and a sure way to have a candidate turn down the offer.

If someone other than the hiring manager communicates the offer, the hiring manager should reach out to the candidate immediately after the offer has been extended. If communication happens only through an HR functionary, the candidate loses their connection to the design team. It’s important to maintain that connection, and to be available to answer any questions or address any concerns. Work with the recruiting partner to make sure the candidate is not overwhelmed with communication, and that all discussions with the candidate are consistent. Ideally, the candidate accepts the offer, no questions asked. Practically, it’s rarely so smooth. For whatever reason (multiple offers, contentment at current job, uncertainty about relocation, etc.), there will likely be some negotiation about the offer. The two most common sticking points are money and role. With money, if the candidate has a higher competing offer, work with the recruiter to determine the maximum counter. If your offer is fair, consider one-time expenditures that demonstrate your commitment, such as signing or relocation bonuses. If the candidate still chooses elsewhere because of money, they probably would not have been right for the team. Often, it’s not the salary but the role that becomes the subject of negotiation. The offer is for a Product Designer title, but another company is willing to call them “Senior Product Designer.” Or they want promises of management or leadership responsibility that weren’t part...

We propose five basic levels of growth for members of a design organization, whether those members remain individual contributors or become managers. These levels should not be taken as universal — they will need interpretation and modification to fit within a company’s existing scheme. Our leveling framework has a series of criteria to assess a team member’s progress: Theme This is the overarching professional theme for the team member at this level, the orientation and focus for their development. Title A list of suggested titles for people working at this level. Achievements Concrete accomplishments in the member’s career that have gotten them to this level. Typically companies use “x years’ experience,” but that should be of secondary concern to what they’ve actually done. Scope The scope and scale of the work this person is expected to do. Process Their relationship to a broader design and development process. People What is this person’s relationship with people on their team, and with people on other teams? Cross-functional meetings Though this may seem a minor detail, what role this person plays in cross-functional meetings (i.e., with the product development team, or shareouts to executives) is a strong indicator of their influence and visiblity. Core skills How they deepen and add core design skills (outlined in the next section). Soft skills Working as a designer is just as much about working as designing. There are interpersonal skills that enable becoming a re...

The Myth of the Design Unicorn In Silicon Valley, there’s fetishization of the “full-stack” or “unicorn” designer, typically someone delivering interaction design, visual design, and frontend development. This is unfortunate, as no designer can be truly great across these skills, and this emphasis on technical execution serves to minimize design’s potential. The less technical skills are more strategic, and set design up for greater impact.

To achieve Level 3, team members have a portfolio featuring multiple shipped products; it should no longer contain schoolwork. Arriving at this level, they have demonstrated their understanding of the broader context in which their designs live, the intersection of business, technical, and customer factors that allow their work to be successful. They might not know how to navigate these interests, but they recognize their importance. This level requires the first big professional shift for the team member. To succeed means knowing when to set aside design and focus on the interpersonal aspects of work. No longer is it simply about practicing their craft. They acquire new leadership skills and develop a serious shift in mindset. They must appreciate how all the core design skills, not just those they directly practice, work together to produce a great experience. Understanding the business context in which they’re operating becomes important in driving better design decisions. This shift may prove challenging for designers whose success up to this point has been all about how they practiced their craft. Managers need to play an active role in helping team members navigate this shift. Engage in hands-on coaching, spending more one-on-one time in order to provide guidance through specific challenges. Suggest leadership and communication skills training that will give team members tools to better facilitate, present, and persuade. It takes about five years for someone to get t...

Level 4 requires confidence in coordinating with peers in business and technology to not just understand and implement against someone else’s strategy, but to craft that strategy. These leaders oversee a set of concurrent workstreams, requiring not only broad creative leadership, but a comfort in establishing process and conducting planning. Core skills Unlike previous levels, mastery of core design skills is not the primary marker of professional growth. Yes, team members should continue their mastery, but the reality is that in order for them to excel, it’s less about how well they practice their skills, and more about how they lead others through the delivery of great design work. Soft skills A shrinking violet will struggle leading multiple teams and coordinating with accomplished peers across functions. To succeed at this level requires developing the soft skill of projecting confidence and even exhibiting swagger. This isn’t about cockiness or arrogance — that kind of overbearing display turns people away.

Going from Level 3 to Level 4 is to move from “little L” to “big L” leadership. The organizational expectation is that they are rallying teams to deliver great work. Team members at this level may have multiple smaller teams they are overseeing, requiring coordination to ensure effectiveness. This requires skills around planning, figuring out how a team will realize a strategy. This also requires a rich understanding of a range of design tools and methods, the time and effort it takes to practice them, and how to coordinate and deploy them to achieve desired results. Getting the most out of a team means expending effort developing the members of that team. If this hasn’t happened organically already, it is at this level where mentorship becomes a necessary skill. Leaders gain leverage through coaching less experienced designers, improving their practices. They also garner respect from their team, both through the demonstration of their mastery, and in their willingness to spend time helping others. Responsibilities The scope again shifts beyond already-known point solutions and features, and toward shaping products and services at a more holistic level. Team members are no longer given known problems to solve (“the conversion funnel,” common to all ecommerce), but instead have to start by framing a problem before tackling it (“How do people transact with our service?”). This reframing means this leader is no longer following “best practices,” but is setting themselves up t...

Level 3 was about understanding strategy, Level 4 was about creating strategy and the planning to realize it, and Level 5 is about crafting and selling a vision that compels an organization to embrace that strategy. At this level, the team member’s impact goes beyond their team and direct peers. Their purview is to frame the end-to-end user experience for their company’s customers, and to establish the processes and mindsets to achieve it. Their efforts influence the work of large swaths of the organization, and prove crucial for setting the agenda for the company. A fundamental shift occurs in their relationship to cross-functional meetings. Where before they planned and drove the meeting, now they are a stakeholder for whom the meeting exists. They contribute through feedback and review.

The Manager Path appears at Level 3. At this level, someone interested in people management may take on a direct report, most likely someone at Level 1 who is new to the team. As managers grow, they take on more people. By Level 5, they become a Design Director or VP of Design, and may have other managers they are now managing. Managers continue to keep their hand in creative work, appropriate to their level on the team, though they cannot be expected to devote as much time to it, given their management responsibilities. Their skills and professional development evolve pretty much the same as those of individual contributors, with one key difference — they dig much deeper into the soft skill of empathy and compassion. Managers are the engine that drives everything discussed in this chapter, and as such they will benefit from receiving training and coaching specific to people management.

As designers become more senior, shift expectations to delivery, impact, and organizational influence. Consider factors such as the scope of projects, how many workstreams they are driving, timeliness and quality of their work, and their ability to productively engage senior executives. Because each team member is on their own journey, it’s important to manage expectations person by person, and resist the temptation to set middle-of-the-road standards everyone can meet. Tailoring growth plans to individuals encourages them to be the best they can be.

After setting expectations, the next step is to help team members achieve them. Avoid telling people how to do their work — this is the kind of behavior that gave the word “management” a negative association. While that may have been appropriate in companies geared toward mass work such as manufacturing or industry (and it’s debatable whether it was there), it’s never been the best way to engage people in creative or knowledge work. Instead, encourage the team member’s autonomy, and help them develop their own plan to achieve those expectations. When given ownership of not just their work product but also how they arrive there, the team member is even more driven to deliver.