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Forging rock solid design disciplines

Forging rock solid design disciplines

Embedding designers within multidisciplinary delivery teams is all the rage. But as a leader, with your design team scattered throughout many teams, how can you cultivate an environment where your designers can grow their skills, benefit from each others unique specialisations, and develop their confidence to stand up as a user advocate within their product team? Let’s explore how establishing a design guild can help bridge these gaps & build an even stronger team.

Laura Van Doore

May 11, 2018
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  1. Looking at design cultures through the lens of: SaaS &

    Startups Large Enterprise Agency Government @lauravandoore
  2. Centralised Teams • The ‘Agency’ model • Designers work in

    one team in shared space. • Other teams approach the central design team with projects • Great for creating a strong design disciplines, but other parts of the product delivery cycle can suffer. @lauravandoore
  3. Decentralised Teams • The ‘Agile’ approach • Each designer is

    assigned to a cross-functional team • Designers have great autonomy, but it can be challenging to develop their skills further • Designers can feel isolated and disconnected from their peers @lauravandoore
  4. Hybrid Teams • The ‘Blended’ model • Designers are embedded

    in agile teams, but regularly return to a central ‘design guild’ • Benefits from cross-functional collaboration, but retains a strong sense of design culture @lauravandoore
  5. • Aligned with agile delivery methods
 Designers working within delivery

    teams to shape outcomes • Better communication, faster product development
 Less chance of communication breakdowns, and bottlenecking • No ‘us vs them’
 Fosters a collaborative culture across disciplines to build great products The Benefits of cross-functional teams @lauravandoore
  6. Isolating designers
 Designers have more autonomy, but less support &

    guidance to turn to when they need it, and less development/progression opportunities.
 The Challenges @lauravandoore
  7. Generalist Fever
 In cross-functional teams, all designers tend to be

    treated as if they have perfectly matching skill sets
 • How can we utilise design specialisations?
 Designers will have different strengths & weaknesses, but how can you benefit from these if no one works together? 
 The Challenges @lauravandoore
  8. Inconsistent Deliverables
 Since output from designers can vary radically from

    one designer to the next, no one really knows what to expect from a designer in their cross-functional team. 
 The Challenges @lauravandoore
  9. Designers feel outnumbered
 It can be exhausting for designers to

    be the solo design & user advocate in their delivery team. Engineering priorities can easily overtake UX priorities 
 The Challenges @lauravandoore
  10. The Spartan Phalanx • Forms a ‘wall of shields’ •

    Fought in formation in a highly organised and disciplined manner • Each Spartan uses his shield to protect the man to his left • Codified, streamlined battle training @lauravandoore
  11. The things you’ll need • Your design team • A

    dedicated time slot each week to meet together
 @lauravandoore
  12. The Idea: Set aside one day every 6 months for

    designing the way you work together. Codify Together @lauravandoore
  13. Codify Together • Uniformity vs fluidity
 Decide as a team

    what should be locked in & where there’s some flexibility. 
 
 E.g. At Fathom, we require Sketch for high fidelity UI, but wireframes & prototypes can be designed in your tool of choice. @lauravandoore
  14. Codify Together • Templates and guides for common UX deliverables


    As a team, design the best possible templates for Personas, Empathy Maps, Journey Maps, and other common design deliverables your team produces. This saves time from everyone creating their own versions, standardises the outputs, and helps newly onboard designers get productive as fast as possible. @lauravandoore
  15. The Idea: Instead of having one designer on 100% of

    one project, split two designers 50% across two projects. Design Pairing @lauravandoore
  16. Design Pairing The Reality: • More design iteration, happening at

    a faster cadence • Two designers will continually challenge each others concepts until they are solid • Work doesn’t grind to a halt if someone gets ill • Benefits from cross-pollination @lauravandoore
  17. The Idea: Reading the same short book, and discussing it

    as a group a month later. A Book Apart club @lauravandoore
  18. The Reality: Realising way too late that everyone in our

    team had different tolerances for reading. A Book Apart club @lauravandoore
  19. The Idea: Each member pitches their latest design concepts to

    the group. 
 
 The group offers constructive criticism & tries to ‘enrich’ the design further. Pitch & Enrich @lauravandoore
  20. The Reality: • More robust design choices • Better presentation

    skills • Support, guidance and validation for designers throughout their design process • Identify early when experiences are feeling inconsistent Pitch & Enrich @lauravandoore
  21. The Idea: Read & research a principle outlined in the

    book 
 ‘Universal Principles of Design’ 1 week later, give a 10 minute interactive presentation to the rest of the design guild. Universal Design Presentations @lauravandoore
  22. BENEFITS: • Improved team presentation and public speaking skills. •

    Challenged designers to present concepts creatively & persuasively. • All designers became fluent across a standard set of principles and terminology. Universal Design Presentations @lauravandoore
  23. Codify Together 1 Design Pairing A Book(club) Apart Pitch &

    Enrich Universal Design Presentations 2 3 4 5 @lauravandoore
  24. Don’t forget to take stock Regularly ask your designers what

    they need out of their guild time. @lauravandoore
  25. Crafting a ‘Design Phalanx’ Core Design Principles Codified Deliverables Discipline

    Strengthening Design Pairing (No lone wolves) @lauravandoore