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

by Peter Merholz

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...