Date post: | 20-Jun-2015 |
Category: |
Leadership & Management |
Upload: | sarah-bloomer |
View: | 122 times |
Download: | 2 times |
BUILDING A STRATEGIC
UX TEAM Insights from effective UX teams
Sarah Bloomer
UX India | 9 October 2014
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 1
Our goals for today
Part 1- Assessing your Team
• Your issues
Part 2 – Your world
• Company culture
• Business goals
Part 3 – High performing teams
• Team models
• The attributes of high performing team
Part 4 – UX leadership
• Leading vs managing
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 2
Who is Sarah?
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
• Usability Engineering
• User Centered Design
• User Experience Designer
• UX Director
• Coach & Mentor
• Mom
3
Who are you?
Stand up if:
• You are a UX team manager
• You are a UX team of one
• Your team is brand new (less than a year old)
• Your team is more than a year old
• Your team is global and spread across different
countries
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 4
First let’s define organizations…
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Software
Enterprise
Creative Agency
The software is the business
Software to support the business
Website or webapps to deliver services
Work with software companies and
enterprises to help them design user
experiences
5
What you’re creating
• Commercial software
• GUI
• Web app
• Internal software
• GUI
• Web apps
• Enterprise apps
• Websites
• eCommerce
• Marketing
• Informational
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Single platform
Multi-platform
6
What is your biggest team
challenge today?
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Discuss with your table:
• Write down the top challenge you are trying to solve
Tell your table:
• Your company
• The type of organisation:
Software, Enterprise or Agency/Consulting
• Your team size
• How long your team has been set up
Do you have a shared challenge or are they all
different?
7
The Big Stumbling Blocks
• Wrong focus—no alignment to business goals
• Team lacks direction or cohesion
• Lack of communication
• No champion or stakeholder support
• Being unaware of your corporate culture
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
UX teams and UX strategies fail when….
8
Your team lives in a bigger world
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
People
Methods
Location
Vision
Your UX Team Your world
Culture
UX Maturity
Interaction
9
What is a UX Strategy?
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
UX Team Acceptance
Product Vision
Integrated CX strategy
Business Goals Brand Strategy Market Share
10
There are many different types of UX strategies
What makes a UX team “Strategic”?
11
IMPACT
EF
FO
RT
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Five tactics for teams big and small
Communicate Share, knowledge share, integrate
Educate Enable others
Adapt Change, try it out, improve
Leverage Find allies and opportunities
Facilitate Help others, integrate
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 12
YOUR WORLD How corporate culture impacts UX
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 13
Each situation is unique
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Business goals / drivers
Product(s)
& Team
Process
What How
Who When
and
and
Constraints
Company culture
The sum of the parts will help
determine the best approach
14
Start with your company culture
"the specific collection of values and norms that are shared
by people and groups in an organization and that control
the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders
outside the organization."
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Charles W. L. Hill, and Gareth R. Jones,
Strategic Management. Houghton Mifflin 2001.
• Myths
• Values
• Barriers
• Opportunities
15
Culture drives the values and norms
that drive actions
K. Goodwin: Leading UX
UX London, April 2011
Identify barriers and opportunities
A barrier may prevent or undermine the adoption of UX • UX is new to the organization
• No skilled people
• Design research is under valued
An opportunity may help with acceptance of user experience activities
• New senior manager with previous UX experience
• Initiative to reduce the calls to technical support
• Developers don’t have time to design and code
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 16
Identify myths and values
A myth is a belief held by your stakeholders • UI design is subjective and cannot be measured or engineered
• If we design for ourselves, it’ll be fine
A value is a belief that defines the culture through actions • Developers are rewarded for rescuing failing projects
• Pleasing senior management is good regardless of solution
• We’re a consensus driven organization—everyone gets a say in the design
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 17
Discussion
Small groups:
• Pick one barrier and one opportunity at your company
from the list presented
• Tally the similar barriers and opportunities
• Discuss them with each other: why?
Together:
• What are the shared experiences?
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 18
Barriers • UX is new to the organisation
• Not enough UX resources
• Difficult to hire skilled UX people
• Not enough time to do research or evaluation
• Product management “owns” the user interface design
• Big egos / lots of politics
• Limited access to users
• Lack of trust between Development and Product
Management
• Short sprints cause Development to change design to
meet deadlines
• Design research is under valued
• [your own]
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 19
Opportunities
• Well accepted user experience team
• Senior management willing to ‘champion’ usability
• Other staff are interested in user experience (eg QA, tech writers)
• Starting a new product
• A company reorganization
• New funding for more resources
• A huge product failure
• Initiative to reduce the calls to technical support
• Developers don’t have time to design and code
• [ your own ]
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 20
Another angle on culture
Design centric
Engineering centric
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Paul Sherman. Changing Processes and Cultures. Nov ‘07
Creative approach to design
Tend to design for designers—visually oriented
Technology driven
Have always owned the user interface
Believe they know their customers
Features over usability or user experience
Sales &
Marketing centric
Find ways to collaborate that match
the values of the culture
21
Increase acceptance by meeting half way
• Engineers like:
• Rules, standards and patterns
• Deadlines
• Designers like:
• Wireframes with latitude to do their own thing
• Opportunities to be innovative
• Sales & Marketing like:
• Feature lists
• Research
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 22
Analyzing the culture
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Engineering/ Development:
Process:
Design decisions:
Performance:
User Experience:
Formal or informal?
Requirements driven? Technology driven?
Deadline/budget driven?
Creates nice pictures? Critical to success?
Communication:
User research and feedback
UX Vision
Yes or no? Coordinated or fragmented?
Shared and understood or not?
Product Definition:
Ownership:
Design decisions:
Product managers? Marketing?
Engineering? User Experience Team?
Feature driven? Competitor driven?
23
Be strategic by understanding culture Barrier:
Small UX team
Design research is under valued
Myth:
If we design for ourselves,
it’ll work fine
Value:
We have to adopt Agile because
everyone else is
Communicate:
Start small design research activities
focusing on strategic design issues
Educate:
Demonstrations of effective designs
Usability testing
Facilitate:
Bring groups together, don’t work in
isolation
Provide tools and resources
Leverage:
Collect user experience data from
customer facing groups
Adapt:
Embed yourself with key scrum teams
Opportunity:
Adopting a new approach
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 24
UX STRATEGY Move into a position of influence
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 25
What is a UX Strategy?
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
UX Team Acceptance
Product Vision
Integrated CX strategy
Business Goals Brand Strategy Market Share
26
3 tips for creating a UX strategy
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 27
1. Align your strategy with
business goals
2. Track your impact
3. Communicate
Be clear about what is driving your UX strategy
Identify business goals you can impact
Build your activities and UX goals to support the business goals
Create UX or Design Goals as a framework
Determine success metrics
NPS or Forrester’s CXi
Talk up the attributes of your vision
Create comics or storyboards
Present your designs or concepts
What are business goals?
A goal should be
• Action oriented
• Completed within a target time frame
• Specific and well defined
• Achievable yet challenging.
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Business goals reflect the strategy of an organisation (how),
how to accomplish the mission (what).
28
Corporate
vision and goals
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Samsung Electronics
Vision 2020
http://www.samsung.com/sg/aboutsamsung/
samsungelectronics/vision2020.html
29
Discussion
Small groups or pairs:
• Review your one barrier and one opportunity
• Review your biggest challenge
• Write down one business goal from your company (that
you are allowed to share) or make one up
• How can UX help achieve the business goal?
• Will the barrier or opportunity may impact your team’s
ability to support the goal?
• Will your challenge be a barrier to helping achieve the
business goal?
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 30
Be aware of other forces
Goals
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Location
Approach
People
31
Company culture
Business goals
UX maturity
UX strategy drivers
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
What are you trying to achieve through your UX strategy?
Influence how
we do things
Change
the culture
Improve a
product or service
Improve development
efficiency
Get people to think
differently
Better product design
What are yours?
32
A strategy looks to the future
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
An experience strategy:
1. Anticipates and accounts for future form factors, technology
platforms, and user expectations
2. Promotes a perspective on the character of uniquely GE product
experiences
3. Uses values and principles as guides to design and development.
Case study:
GE wanted to drive revenue and growth through user
experience practices
• UX Framework
• UX Process
• UX Principles (tied to brand promise)
GE UX Center of Excellence
http://archive.mxconference.com/2012/videos/building-ux-and-
design-culture-at-ge/
http://www.slideshare.net/UXSTRAT/ux-strat-2013-susan-rice
33
What is a UX Design Goal?
A UX Goal describes the experience you aim to deliver,
using adjectives you’d like to hear when others review or
describe your product. They define the goals of your
product and drive design decisions. A design goal:
1. Helps distinguish your product from your competitors. (Jared Spool)
2. Is aligned with your unique value proposition and brand experience
3. Guides design decisions
4. Can be applied to multiple products to create a common, shared
experience.
5. Is broad enough to be defined more narrowly, eg what is “speedy”
on a desktop app vs a mobile app?
6. Is the way you want your customers to describe their experience
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 34
Align
Create UX Design Goals
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Kronos
Innovative Our products are modern and unique in both visual appearance and
behavior. We lead the industry in leveraging the latest advances in
technology.
Easy to learn Like your favorite consumer products, minimal training is needed to get
started.
Fast & Responsive Speed matters. We balance ease-of-use with powerful features that
optimize task completion with minimal time and clicks.
Engaging & Playful Solve complex problems with enjoyable interactions that are an extension
of customers’ everyday experiences.
Smart & Powerful Make better decisions. Our products harness the power of technology and
industry experience to deliver insights when and how a user needs them.
35
Align
Kronos Workforce Management
Derive UX goals from business goals
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Experience Goal Issues Business
Objectives
UX
Requirements
Success
Metrics
Customer is confident
that TN will streamline
their training
management
• Users report that they
often enter the same
prospect multiple
times, so they are
called repeatedly.
• Sales isn’t aware
when a course is
close to full
• Courses
underperform when
registrants drop out
late
• Administrative staff
are often interrupted
and lose their work
• Enable sales to sell
the product based on
productivity gains
• Increase the number
of customer reference
sites
• Reduce customer
support calls
• Improve admin staff
efficiency
• Enable
information to be
viewed in different
ways in multiple
locations in the
organization
• Create reports for
management
which reflect
improvements
• Create a top notch
customer
database
• Customer contact
logs are shared by
all users
• Implement
persistent save
• 10% reduced
customer
support calls
• Increase time to
proficiency from
2 months to 2
weeks
• 20% increase in
customer
satisfaction
Company: TrainingNOW
36
Align
7 Evaluation Guidelines
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
User Objectives and Actions
Layout & Visual Treatment
Orientation
Language & Terminology
Feedback
Forgiveness
Navigation
At Kronos,we aligned UX goals with
design principles and taught product
management how to critique against
the goals.
37
Kronos Workforce Management
Communicate
Track effort vs impact
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
IMPACT
EF
FO
RT
38
Track
Establish specific metrics
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Measure Benchmark Timing Ownership
Productivity
improvement
Reduce task time
by 20%.
Track and time
current process
(usability and
end-users)
1.Usability test
during dev
2.6 months
after launch
Product
Owners
UX Team
Customer
satisfaction
Reduce customer
complaints by
10%
Capture current
survey results
Monthly for 6
months
Customer
Service
Sales Increase sales by
10%
Capture current
statistics for
past year
Every month
for a year
Sales
Some companies like metrics, some don’t. For those who do, choose
your metrics carefully.
Don’t be afraid to go for non-measurable goals:
“our customers report that it’s helped their work.”
39
Track
Talk it up all the time
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Reduce your vision to 5 attributes
that fit on one hand
Modular for
quick updates
Supports multiple
roles
Easy to
learn UI
Enables
collaboration
Seamlessly
integrated with
other systems
Describe the attributes
during meetings and
elevator conversations
40
Communicate
Show the UX vision
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
• User narratives, tell stories
• Conceptual prototypes
• Comics and Storyboards • Kevin Cheng at kevnull.com
• Davy Hoornaert on Printrest
• Video • Knowledge Navigator (1987)
• Mozilla Labs & Adaptive Path Aurora
• Microsoft Silverlight Productivity Future Vision
Knowledge Navigator: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGYFEI6uLy0
Aurora: www.vimeo.com/1347289
Microsoft www.officelabs.com/Pages/Default.aspx
Microsoft's Future Vision : Live, Work, Play 2013
41
Communicate
Building influence is change
Skepticism
Curiosity
Acceptance
Partnership
When you introduce a new
approach, you’re asking
your company to change
Enrlich & Rohn, 1994
User interface design and evaluation, Stone, Jarrett, Woodroffe & Minocha 2005
www.useit.com/alertbox/process_maturity.html
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 42
YOUR UX TEAM Fit your team into your culture
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 43
The UX Team ingredients
Goals
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Company
Location
Approach
People
44
People: What roles do you need?
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Interaction Designer
Information Architect
Front End Developer
Usability Researcher
Writer Content Strategist
Front End Developer
Visual designer
Application design: Website design:
Interaction Designer
Visual designer
Usability Researcher
Writer
Business Analyst
45
UX today
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Interaction design:
Navigation
Layout
Controls
Style and tone:
Visual treatment
Language
Interaction design
Information architecture
Development
Visual design
Writing/Editorial
Deep customer knowledge:
Ongoing research and feedback
Evaluation
User research
Experience analysis
Usability testing
Analytics Technology:
Opportunities/constraints
Trends
Technology
Responsive design, social, mobile etc.
46
Emerging roles
• Product Steward Tim McCoy
• Represent user needs and goals
• Manage product vision, framework
• Provide creative direction
• Collaborate with team
• UX Architect
• Works across program within a product/multiple products
• Reviewing designer
• Drive vision & strategy
• Lead special projects
• Typically found in large UX teams:
2 on a team of 30 designers plus 10 writers
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Slideshare: Lean UX Product
Stewardship and Integrated Teams
47
Make sure the team fits into the culture
Create roles your culture will accept right away
• Engineering: evaluation and needs analysis
• Design: information architecture and evaluation
• Sales & Marketing: research (by stealth) and evaluation
Recognize myths and values, change from within Build allies and demonstrate complementary skills.
• Engineering: collaborate in UI design
• Design: clear hand-off from wireframes to visual design
• Sales & Marketing: share customer research; prioritize feature lists.
Invite to usability testing sessions
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 48
TEAM MODELS Find a good match
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 49
Where should your team live?
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Software
Enterprise
Creative Agency
Product Development 30%
Product Management 40%
IT Department 40%
Product Management 28%
N/A
To be strategic: Locate your team where product
decisions are made
Bloomer: Effective UX Teams 2013
50
UX team models
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Centralised
De-centralised
Hybrid
Advanced Typical
Range of skills
applied as needed
Center of
Excellence
Generalists assigned
to specific product
teams
Communities of
practice
Specific activities
centralised, others
team based
Teams of specialists
and generalists
51
Models to structure your team
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Project
Project
Project
Project
Centralised
All projects go through the same team
Software companies
Consulting companies
Pros:
Consistent approach
Cons:
Projects require different
levels of effort
52
Models to structure your team
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Decentralised
Project
Project Project
Project
UX practitioners work individually
UX manager
Software companies
Pros:
UX knows their product well;
works in Agile
Cons:
Lack of communication across
products causes variable UX
53
UX practise models
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Project
UX manager
Hybrid Specialist activities are centralised (eg. usability testing)
Enterprises (non-software)
Design Agencies
UX research
UX testing
54
UX practise models
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Project
UX manager
Hybrid Specialist activities are centralised and shared
Enterprises (non-software)
Design Agencies
Writing/Editorial
UI Development
Visual Design
Customer research
UX product strategy
Project
Project
For example:
Personas, Journey maps
Shared components
Research results
55
UX practise models
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Project
Guild model
Project Project
UX manager
Project Project
QA
2 Engineers
Product Owner
UX manager
Work individually
UX meets together weekly for one full day
Software companies
56
Communities of practice
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Communities of practice are groups of people who share a
concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to
do it better as they interact regularly. (Etienne Wenger 2007)
Community: engage in joint activities, help each other, share information
Practise: shared stories and experiences, shared tools.
57
Build internal communities of practice
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Build relationships within your organization through Communities of Practice.
Promote cross-functional collaboration. Cross-functional teams drive ongoing
research, design and evaluation.
Customer research
Customer facing experience
Product Strategy
Branding
Marketing
UX Team
Product Strategy
Personas
Field studies
Analytics
Sales
Stores
Customer service
Tech support
Training
Personas
Stories
Customer feedback
Voice of the Customer
Sales
Marketing
UX Team
Tech Support
Product Development
Usability test results
Tech support issues
Release plans
58
Focus your UX design efforts
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Priority projects:
UX team works directly on
product team
2nd
tier projects:
UX team facilitates the product
team’s work
Provide UI standards and
resources for self-serve
3rd
tier projects:
Educate and facilitate:
Share the outcomes of priority
projects
Project
Project
Project
Project Project
59
HIGH PERFORMING UX How to create a team that works well together
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 60
The attributes of high performing teams
• Good listeners
• Listen to other points of view
• Able to relate to other people
• Strong communicators
• Make shared decisions
• Collaborative and relational
• Continuously learning
• Each project teaches something new
• Build collective intelligence
• Reflect on what works and doesn’t work.
• Teams should be launched and relaunched
• Agree on goals, challenges, roles and engagement (charter)
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Amy Edmondson.
www.athenahealth.com/leadership-
forum/_doc/Teamwork_On_The_Fly.pdf
Daniel Pink. Drive. Book or watch this:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
61
Skill Development
Soft skills
Shared knowledge
Product consistency
UXers must work within many teams
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
User Experience Group Product Team
Expertise subgroup:
eg. user research, testing,
interaction design
Applied skills
Hard & Soft skills
Communication
Process (eg Agile)
Applied skills
Hard & Soft skills
Communication
Shared knowledge
UX practitioners must excel at working with long term and
short term teams
62
UX teams include different types of people
sequential
detail-driven, anal
logical
analytical
rational, clinical,
disciplined
objective
quantitative
literal, word- and
number-driven
nonlinear, random
holistic, big-picture,
strategic
intuitive
synthesizing
emotional, instinctive,
passionate
subjective
qualitative
visual and image
driven
Emily Cohen: Managing creatives in a left-brain world
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 63
What is your biggest team
challenge today?
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Group Discussion:
• Review your team challenge from earlier
• What would you do differently with your team to
address your challenge?
• Different team model?
• How the team works together?
• How the team works with product teams?
• Develop new skills?
64
UX MATURITY Evolving UX acceptance
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 65
UX maturity
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Skepticism
Curiosity
Acceptance
Partnership
Stop battling for acceptance
and get strategic
Ehrlich & Rohn, 1994
www.useit.com/alertbox/process_maturity.html
66
Show and include
67
Users
Business Analysts
Product Owners
Stakeholders
Product Team
Users
End users
Developers (participatory)
Stakeholders (observers)
Definition workshop
Field research
User story mapping (Agile)
Process mapping
Brainstorming
Sketchboarding
Collaborative paper
prototyping
Design studio
Group collaborative
walkthroughs
Participatory paper
prototyping
Usability testing
5-9 participants 2-9 participants 1-2 participants
Group of 5-10
Discover & Analyse Envision & Design Evaluate & Refine
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Required skill: facilitation
Especially useful for teams of 1-3
Spread your value to gain acceptance
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Adjacent teams
Colleagues
Allied teams
Beneficiaries
Upper management
Stakeholders
Your UX team
Other beneficiaries
Facilitate & communicate:
Capture goals, thoughts and needs
Leverage & facilitate:
Support their goals
Educate & collaborate:
Customer support, marketing etc.
Collaborate:
QA, Tech writers etc.
68
Collaborate to communicate
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 69
Focus your message to the audience
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Increase sales
Lowers support and training costs
Reduces IT development costs
Increases product quality
Increases user acceptance
Increases productivity; fewer errors
by end users
Decreases staff turnover
Fewer late design changes
Potential re-use
Shortens overall development cycle
Meet goals of a sprint
Increases product quality
Decreases maintenance cost and
effort
Greater satisfaction; less fatigue
Reduces training time and effort
Less time spent seeking support and
help
Less learning required
Fewer errors; faster error recovery
Fosters focus on the tasks instead of
the technology
Senior managers look at
the bottom line of any
investment or
development.
How UX improves my
costs?
IT managers are
measured on ability to
meet budgets and
deadlines
How UX helps me make
my deadline and stay
within budget?
Users want better and
more appropriate tools
& experiences
How will this help me do
my task better?
Return on investment Performance goals Satisfaction and use
Senior management IT management Users
In-house development
70
Focus your message to the audience
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Increase sales
Lowers support and training costs
Reduces IT development costs
Increases product quality
Fewer late design changes
Potential re-use
Shortens overall development cycle
Meet goals of a sprint
Increases product quality
Decreases maintenance cost and
effort
Increases product quality
Creates a more competitive product
Increases Net Promoter Score
Greater customer satisfaction
Aligns with the brand strategy
Senior managers look at
the bottom line of any
investment or
development.
How UX improves
revenue?
IT managers are
measured on ability to
meet budgets and
deadlines
How UX helps me make
my deadline and stay
within budget?
Sales & Marketing want
to have the right story
How UX helps me
increase sales and
market share?
Return on investment Performance goals Market differentiation
Senior managers Engineering managers Sales & Marketing
Software development
71
Some approaches
I can’t do
customer research
UX doesn’t own
the design
Educate
Become a co-designer
Facilitate
Co-design/design brainstorms
Share reusable design assets
Communicate
Demonstrate your vision
Write stories, create prototypes
Adapt
Relocate your team to be with the
decision makers
Leverage
Work with customer facing teams
Sales
Customer Support
Training
Market research
Customer satisfaction surveys
Communicate
Engineering Design Sales &
Marketing
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 72
MANAGING YOUR TEAM Leading and managing
73 SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Management vs Leadership
“Just being able to be there for others and to listen to them
is one of the most important capacities a leader can have.”
Joseph Jaworski
Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership
“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the
right things."
Peter Drucker,
Essential Drucker: Management,
the Individual and Society
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 74
Making your team effective
• How your team works together
• How your team works with others
• Hard skills
• Soft skills
• Attributes: build trust and make it safe to explore designs
• Primary things we do:
• Meetings and workshops (work together)
• Design or analysis (work alone)
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 75
The attributes of a good manager
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 76
• Operational skills
• Plan and delegate
• Domain expert
• Set clear expectations
• Positive recognition
• Leadership
Necessary skills when leading both an ad hoc team,
or an established team
Soft skills
• Active listening
• Empathy
• Honesty
• Humour
• Keep your cool
Be a guide, not a commander.
Martin Zwilling, Forbes
Managing user experience
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 77
People
Assign work: communicate expectations
and deadlines
Avoid surprises: give feedback constantly
through weekly meetings
Develop skills through team reviews, paired
work, mentoring
Process
Integrate UX activities with development
process
Work both fast and slow
Be flexible
Build a library of common design elements
Projects
Prioritise and choose strategically
Don’t be afraid to say no
UX Leadership
• Working with your team:
• Build trust
• Appreciate different styles
• Give feedback; take criticism
• Mediate conflict
• Enable learning and mastery
• Build a shared vision and approach
• Working outside your team:
• Communicate vision
• Mediate conflict
• Negotiate
• Communicate, communicate, communicate
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 78
Spread your value to gain acceptance
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Adjacent teams
Colleagues
Allied teams
Beneficiaries
Upper management
Stakeholders
Your UX team
Other beneficiaries
Facilitate & communicate:
Capture goals, thoughts and needs
Leverage & facilitate:
Support their goals
Educate & collaborate:
Customer support, marketing etc.
Collaborate:
QA, Tech writers etc.
79
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
Group discussion:
What is the first thing you’ll do when you get
back to work?
80
Wrap up
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
People
Methods
Location
Vision
Your UX Team Your world
Culture
UX Maturity
Interaction
Communicate
Educate
Facilitate
Leverage
Adapt
81
Thank you
Sarah Bloomer
w: sarahbloomer.com
@boolie
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 82
Sample values
• We need to ‘innovate’ and make cool technology
• Pleasing senior management is good regardless of
solution
• The product managers are king
• Developers are rewarded for ‘rescuing’ failing projects
• Staff who don’t ‘rock the boat’ are safe in their jobs
• Clever code solutions are applauded
• Risk is dangerous
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 83
Sample myths
• UI standards can’t be implemented for all the diverse
needs of the user groups
• If I design for myself, it will work fine
• UX conflicts with Agile
• If developers are familiar with the interface guidelines and
principles, they’ll design good user interfaces
• UX specialists are not technical enough to grasp the
requirements of systems development
• Requirements are anti-agile
• Users don’t know what they want
SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 84