Chapter 5. Roles and Team Composition

SO FAR IN THIS BOOK, we have been vague about the people who make up the design organization, mostly lumping them under the term “designers.” Roles, responsibilities, and job titles don’t exist in a vacuum, but respond to the nature and needs of the organization. Explaining the Centralized Partnership was necessary before digging into our role definitions.

Design roles are notorious for their confusing titles and responsibilities. Should you hire a UX Designer? A UI Designer? UX/UI Designer? An Interaction Designer? A Product Designer? A Visual Interface Designer? Maybe an Information Architect? Design for marketing is a little more mature, but still suffers from label mania—are you looking for a Graphic Designer? Marketing Designer? Communication Designer? Brand Experience Designer? And what about the team’s leaders? Do you call them Creative Directors? Design Directors? Should you have a VP of Design? What is a Head of Design? What does that person do?

Though frustrating in practice, this confusion speaks to a dynamism and vitality in the design profession that makes the work so exciting. To help temper that confusion, we propose a taxonomy of roles and responsibilities for a progressive organization that upholds our view of design’s potential. It may at the outset be confusing, as it runs contrary to legacy practices that many have come to accept unquestioningly. Stay with it through to the end, and all the pieces should fall into place.

It’s worth noting our antipathy toward job titles. Job titles exist to make company operations easier. Instead of accepting the messiness of individual people, companies operate at a level of abstraction and treat everyone with the same title the same. Such bureaucratic practices support a 20th-century need to operate at scale, but remove the humanity necessary in a 21st-century services-based economy. In reality, just because two people have the same title doesn’t mean they are interchangeable. Nor does any title describe the totality of what any person does.

Titles are useful as you plan to build the team and don’t know who the specific members are. You will need to shape your organization in the abstract, when asking for headcount, opening requisitions, and recruiting and hiring (discussed in the next chapter). In defining the roles that make up a design organization, our bias is toward generalization over specialization. Titles that are too specific become straitjackets, confining people to a limited set of duties, encouraging a bureaucratic mindset that employees are cogs in a machine. While generalist titles might feel uncertain, they provide wiggle room that allows for career growth, and encourage dealing with those who have these titles as people, not labels.

Individual Contributors

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:

Whether a design team includes the next three roles is a matter of size, industry, and the problems being solved:

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. In Chapter 7, when we delve into professional development, such distinctions will prove crucial for articulating career paths.

Product Designer

In the 1990s, when the authors entered this field, the standard model was to split software design into two camps: Interaction (or UX) Designers and Visual (or UI) Designers. Using the conceptual scale introduced in Chapter 3, the former are responsible for Structure (workflows and wireframes) and the latter for Surface (layout, colors, typography, iconography). At that time, visual designers were typically people with print design backgrounds, and interaction designers were either people with computer science backgrounds, who studied human–computer interaction (HCI), or people who lacked formal design training but were comfortable thinking in systems and structures.

With subsequent professional generations have emerged software design natives, some practicing the craft as early as high school, and colleges now offer degrees in programs that develop both Structure and Surface skills. However, many current design teams retain the old split, which leaves designers who want to do it all feeling constrained by job titles that tie them to a specific practice. In particular, Visual Designers often feel that their role has been reduced to “make it pretty,” and many seek to move into Interaction Design, which is often treated with greater respect.

Partly as a reaction to this new class of more broadly capable designer, in Silicon Valley the emerging consensus job title for software designers is Product Designer, sometimes specifically “Digital Product Designer.” While we recognize the irony of promoting the title “product designer” after having argued so strongly that we’ve moved away from products and toward services, no other alternative captures the appropriate breadth, and is free from unfortunate legacy associations. A product designer is responsible for the interaction design, the visual design, and sometimes even frontend development. In practice, very few people excel at all these skills (they’re so rare, they’re called “Design Unicorns”), and that’s OK. Teams have interaction-oriented product designers and visual-oriented product designers who can complement each other.

Using the generic “product designers,” regardless of whether they are more Structure- or Surface-oriented, provides for team members’ growth and agency. It encourages designers to bolster skills that they are weaker in and discourages others in the organization from pigeon-holing them into a narrow set of expectations.

The one caveat for “product designer” is that in some contexts, it refers to a person who designs physical products, with product design a subset of industrial design.

Product designers are people who can interpret the complexity of software into a form that is accessible and understandable to users. Communication designers distill the essence of a company’s personality into visual communications that connect with viewers. Product designers are expected to have a baseline understanding of technical issues and how they affect design; they’re not expected to have any familiarity with non-digital design. Though communication designers are typically not as technical, they ought to be comfortable with design in both digital and analog media. These designers usually have backgrounds in traditional programs such as visual arts and graphic design.

All communication designers are not cut from the same cloth. While they share a foundation in core concepts such as layout, color, composition, typography, and use of imagery, how these tools are used can be quite distinct. The more analytically minded tend toward information design, using graphic design to communicate concepts and processes with an emphasis on clarity and understanding. Those who are more playful and stylish gravitate toward visual and brand design, where the objective is to communicate the personality of a company in an emotionally resonant way.

Structure and Surface come into play, too. Structure-oriented communication designers create systems, such as brand standards and guidelines, and tie together the presence of a complicated service—for example, producing maps, signage, brochures, and other material for a mass transit system. Those working on the Surface obsess about typography, imagery, the interplay between words and pictures, and how all of this tells a story appropriate to the brand. Those communication designers who appreciate Strategy bring their skills to bear to define brand characteristics and establish a vision for an entire company—think about Target’s use of red and the bull’s-eye logo.

In terms of titles, matters are not as fraught as they can be within software design. While “Marketing Designer” is quite common, it is too limiting given the reality of a services world. Communication Designer acknowledges that this person is focused on the act of communication but is not limited to a particular business context. While most communications are to serve marketing, there are product and service communications such as printed collateral, direct mail, packaging, email notifications, and signage, and wayfinding. Communication designers should be collaborating with product designers to ensure the coherence of this end-to-end experience.

While great product design can be the product of intuition, great end-to-end service design requires the deeply empathic perspective born of user research. In leading technical organizations, it is common that once they reach a certain scale, often around the time they have five or six designers, they bring on a dedicated User Experience (UX) Researcher to do everything from out-in-the-world field research to user testing of interfaces.

Given our aversion to “UX Design” as a phrase, it might be surprising to see the title User Experience Researcher. “UX Design” is not appropriate because it’s too vague, and user experience should be everyone’s responsibility. UX Researcher is appropriate, though, because this role seeks to understand the totality of the user’s experience, and the insights drawn from such research will inform work across marketing, sales, product, and customer care, as well as design.

The key responsibilities are generative and evaluative research. Generative research, typically field research such as in-home observations or diary studies, leads to insights for framing problems in new ways that stimulate the development of innovative solutions. Evaluative research tests the efficacy of designed solutions, through observing use and seeing where people have problems. Strong organizational skills and keen attention to detail are required, as much of UX research is operational management: screening and recruiting participants; scheduling them; note-taking and other data collection; and analysis and organization of that data.

This role is also commonly called “User Researcher.” We prefer “User Experience Researcher,” as it sounds less clinical and vague, and highlights what about the user is the subject of study—their experience with the service.

Developing a dedicated user experience research function does not absolve others from taking part in research. Researchers who work on their own, delivering reports filled with findings in hopes that others take heed, will find their impact blunted. Instead, the UX research team should remain small, highly leveraged, and supportive of everyone else’s ability to engage with users directly. For larger, more robust studies, involving travel or time-consuming observation, it might not make sense for marketing and product development staff to take that much time away from their primary duties. In these cases, UX researchers will conduct the work. But within an iterative design and development context, most research efforts should be conducted by designers, product managers, and even engineers, with help from the UX research team.

As discussed in Chapter 4, managing the operational aspects of design is particularly important in the Centralized Partnership. This is often neglected, or it is assumed that the design leaders can handle it. However, when a design organization achieves critical mass, at around 10 members, communications both within the team and across non-design functions outside of it become significant overhead. It takes real, focused effort to identify priorities, define cross-functional milestones, coordinate schedules, timing, file and document types, and other operating matters. If design leaders have to handle it, they can no longer give appropriate focus to the creative matters under their watch.

Bring on a Design Program Manager, someone with the explicit responsibility to keep design operations running smoothly. This person’s primary objective is to make the design organization as effective as possible by enabling designers to focus on the work. This means facilitating prioritization, identifying milestones, connecting similar workstreams, managing risk, streamlining communications, articulating standards for tools and processes, aligning schedules, and ensuring the team has the people and resources it needs. This person also handles the logistics of relationships with external parties, such as contractors or vendors. To succeed, a Design Program Manager cannot simply be a generic operations manager—they must have an appreciation for design practice and process, so they can appropriately advocate for design when other members of the team aren’t there, and not commit the team to timelines and outcomes that aren’t feasible.

The Design Program Manager is a peer to multiple team leads, supporting them and their teams in their work.

Design Program Management operates at a strategic level, where it introduces design as a powerful tool with value to both the business, in helping to differentiate the company from competitors, and to customers, through guiding innovative and human-centered products, services, and brands.

As there are many specialist and corporate functions collaborating to deliver a service, there is an exponential amount of interests to be considered and coordinated. Here Design Managers need to:

Design Managers bring excellent communication skills, an understanding of design methods and thinking, empathy for the needs of all stakeholders, and strong managerial and influencing skills to make sure that projects deliver as planned.

A plethora of potential titles exist for this role: Project Manager, Design Project Manager, Program Manager, Design Operations Manager, Project Coordinator, and Producer. Design Program Manager has the benefit of being specific to design, and gets away from the clipboard-and-spreadsheets quality of “Operations Manager.” It speaks to a broad, portfolio-level view that “Project Manager” and “Producer” do not.

Content Strategist

An area where marketing has long surpassed product development is the marriage of content and design. Since the 1950s, advertising firms have understood the importance of having art directors and copywriters work hand in hand, whereas even today, typical product and service design practice separates writing and design. The design team dictates form and structure, and the content contributors are expected to fill boxes with words. This is a broken approach. For most digital services, it’s the content, not the design, that is of primary interest to the user.

Progressive design organizations include content strategists, working side by side with product and communication designers. And like their design colleagues, they may operate across Strategy, Structure, and Surface. At the level of Strategy, they inform the brand strategy, and interpret it as a content strategy that includes editorial voice and tone, as well as a plan for ongoing content development. Within Structure, content strategists develop content models and navigation design, and on the Surface they write the words, whether it’s the labels in the user interface, or the copy that helps people accomplish their tasks.

We suggest using the more general Content Strategist label instead of specific roles of Copywriter and UI Writer. As it is with product designers, some content strategists will lean more toward the systems-level structural challenges, and others will be more comfortable writing the final copy. Instead of siloing these roles, keeping it general encourages the Content Strategist to expand their purview, and tells the rest of the organization that this is a serious role to embrace, and not just a matter of filling space with copy. When it comes to content in end-to-end service experiences, it’s important to recognize that it’s not just about “writing,” but crafting a content experience every bit as intentional as the design of features and functionality.

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.

Too often engineering is seen solely as an implementation function, focused on executing against a well-defined plan. Design teams benefit from being able to engage with technology as part of the exploration of design solutions. Prototyping helps designers quickly appreciate the experiential impacts of their design decisions. When designers are limited to static representations (comps, mockups, wireframes), they may propose solutions that do not “feel” right, and need reconsideration after being built. Better to uncover this as part of the design process, when the engineering can be rougher (i.e., not production-ready), and there’s not a significant investment in any particular direction.

Many product designers have this skillset, which allows a design organization to grow for a while without warranting a dedicated creative technologist. 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.

Design Leadership

While the individual contributors do the work of design, the organization’s leadership expends effort making a space, both literal and figurative, where great design can happen. Also, they must evangelize the organization outside the design team, helping their peers understand what it takes to be design-driven, and repeatedly deliver great experiences.

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.

Operational leadership is a combination of very little things and very big things, all in the interest of optimizing the design organization’s effectiveness. The little things are what the rest of the team sees, in terms of how communications are handled, which tools are supported, how work is scheduled, how team meetings are run. The big things happen behind the scenes, and involve interactions with a company’s core operations teams such as finance, HR, IT, and facilities. These include opening requisitions for headcount, adjusting salaries to ensure market competitiveness, establishing employee growth paths, acquiring the necessary hardware and software, and claiming physical spaces.

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.

As the team grows, the Head of Design will not be able to perform detailed duties across these three areas. This is the time to bring on Design Managers and Directors (for people management), Creative Directors (for creative vision), and Directors of Design Program Management (to run operations). With these lieutenants in place, there is still plenty to do. At that point, a Head of Design focuses on:

Recruiting and hiring

There may be nothing more important in the organization than identifying talent and getting them to join the team.

Living the culture

Addressed in depth in Chapter 8, the culture of a design team is essential to its long-term success. A Head of Design not only establishes the team’s cultural values, but demonstrates them every day through his or her actions.

Process and practices

Working with Design Managers and Creative Directors, establish a methodological toolkit, and make sure it is shared, understood, and used throughout the team.

Vision

Developing a “north star” for the company is not a one-time act, but an ongoing process of refinement and evolution.

Represent design for the organization

The Head is the primary voice of design inside and outside the company, sharing its work, evangelizing its success, and articulating its vision. Sometimes this representation means fighting for design in the face of policies, procedures, and bureaucracy that limits the team’s potential.

Design Manager/Design Director

Design Managers and Design Directors are the unsung “middle management” heroes of any successful design organization larger than 10 members. They typically perform double-duty, responsible for both creative leadership and people management.

As people managers, they are key in nurturing the individuals on their team, helping them realize their potential. This requires a balance of compassion when providing career guidance, and candor when critiquing their work and exhorting them to improve. Good managers know their success is inextricably linked to the team’s success, and are comfortable with the suppression of ego this requires. Folks who crave personal affirmation and recognition will struggle as Design Managers.

Design Managers must also be skilled practitioners. To earn credibility and their team’s trust, they show that they can bring it when it comes to design delivery. This delivery can exist at whichever level (Strategy, Structure, or Surface) they are most comfortable. But Design Managers, even Design Directors, are not free from the requirements of rolling up their sleeves and doing the work.

The difference between a Design Manager and Design Director is either a matter of scale (directors might be managing other Design Managers, and have a broader purview) or seniority. But the nature of their work is fundamentally the same.

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:

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.

As the design organization grows, the Head of Design, fulfilling the “CEO of Design” charter, spends more and more time addressing operational concerns. This takes time away from creative and managerial responsibilities, which can suffer without attention. When this happens, it is time to establish a Director of Design Program Management. The design program managers report to this person, who is now chiefly responsible for the effectiveness and productivity of the design team (as opposed to quality and creative vision). If the Head of Design is the captain of the ship, the Director of Design Program Management is the executive officer (as on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Commander Riker was to Captain Picard), making things go, striving for smoothness in how the team works, and removing the logistical and procedural obstacles that get in the way.

Five Stages of Design Organization Evolution

The roles just defined are the players in the game. Now the question is “When do they come out onto the field?” The rest of the chapter depicts the evolution of a design organization, from the first hires to when it has dozens of members, and shows when those roles are needed:

Companies that start by hiring a single designer force themselves to work through a series of trade-offs. Should they hire for experience and management savvy, someone who can build out a team, but who might be overqualified or disconnected on matters of delivery, and be expensive to boot? Or hire someone strong but junior, who can execute rapidly and with quality, but places design in a role subservient to others? Should emphasis be placed on pixel-level polish, or more on the structural level of workflows and wireframes?

Core to the philosophy of the Centralized Partnership is to orient around teams, not individuals. When that is done, the answer to these questions becomes clear: “Yes.” From the outset, establish a design team with at least two designers who complement each other (Figure 5-1).

The design team starts with a Head of Design (HD) and a Product Designer (PD)
Figure 5-1. The design team starts with a Head of Design (HD) and a Product Designer (PD)

If the organization is serious about design as a competency, starting with two should not be too much to ask. Two designers allows for leadership experience and output velocity, structural competence, and surface savvy. The senior-most designer is the Head of Design, a role worth establishing as early as possible. This person is peers with lead product managers and engineers, contributing to product strategy and definition, as well as getting their hands dirty with the work. The other is a Product Designer, focused on execution. Together they set a strong foundation for design within the organization.

As the design team demonstrates its value, it grows to meet demand. The next stage of development is having a full, skills-complete team (Figure 5-2), ready to tackle pretty much anything thrown at it.

A skills-complete design team, with a Head of Design, four Product Designers, a Communication Designer (CD), and a Content Strategist (CS)
Figure 5-2. A skills-complete design team, with a Head of Design, four Product Designers, a Communication Designer (CD), and a Content Strategist (CS)

Along with the Head of Design and the initial Product Designer, three more Product Designers have joined. The specific makeup of each designer can vary. What matters is that there are strong capabilities in user research, strategy, interaction design, visual design, and prototyping, and competence across conceptual levels from the Big Picture to the Surface. The team also features a Communication Designer to address the growing need for non-digital design, such as marketing, packaging, or environments. Rounding out the team is a Content Strategist, working across marketing and product needs.

Everyone reports directly to the Head of Design. In day-to-day practice, this team tackles projects in units of two, so it can handle three distinct efforts at once.

A single team of more than seven members proves unwieldy and hard to manage. Now is the time for organizational mitosis, splitting the team into two. This crucial step is where design goes from being a straightforward team to being a more complex organization (Figure 5-3).

The design organization is composed of two teams; new roles include the Team Lead (TL) and a User Experience Researcher (UXR)
Figure 5-3. The design organization is composed of two teams; new roles include the Team Lead (TL) and a User Experience Researcher (UXR)

As discussed in Chapter 4, each team is skills-complete, and is committed to a particular part of the business. Continuing our marketplace example, one team would be dedicated to the Buyer experience, and the other to the Seller experience.

At this stage, two new roles emerge. First is Team Lead. This person is the ultimate creative authority for their team. The Team Lead will have come up as a Product Designer, Communication Designer, or Content Strategist, and is now expected to lead and oversee the work of their specific team. Team Lead is not a job you specifically hire—it’s a role that an existing team member assumes. As shown here, they are not a manager—all team members still report to the Head of Design. The Head of Design also still serves as a Team Lead, because at this size it’s important that they keep their hands directly in the work.

For products or services where the product team is familiar with the user base, this is the time to hire a dedicated UX Researcher. The UX Researcher is not part of either specific design team, but supports both. If the team’s users are unfamiliar or the work is specialized (such as in heavy industry, or health care), it may make sense to have the UX Research join in Stage 2, and have a researcher dedicated to each design team.

Design teams vary in size and makeup. Teams focused purely on software product do not need Communication Designers. Some teams might have a larger scope and need more people to handle it. What’s important is that each team have the complete set of skills needed to deliver in the partnership.

Moving into this stage tests the Head of Design. In order to achieve scale, the role becomes more operational and managerial. Some design leaders struggle with the mechanics of running a team, and some resist getting further from creative delivery. Such struggles, while understandable and worth addressing, aren’t fair to put on the rest of the team, and aren’t worth jeopardizing the organization’s overall health. Many companies realize at this stage it is necessary to bring in a new Head of Design, one who is comfortable at this broader organizational level.

Adding another handful of designers means creating yet another team (Figure 5-4), which signals a new level of complexity. Coordinating across three teams is an order of magnitude more difficult, requiring new roles ensuring end-to-end coherence, and keeping operations smooth.

Complexity takes hold, requiring the coordinating efforts of a Service Designer (SD), a Design Program Manager (PM), and Design Managers (DM) doubling as Team Leads
Figure 5-4. Complexity takes hold, requiring the coordinating efforts of a Service Designer (SD), a Design Program Manager (PM), and Design Managers (DM) doubling as Team Leads

With three distinct design teams, the risk of fracturing the customer experience becomes greater. To address this, and particularly for companies with complex service offerings, this is the time to bring on a dedicated Service Designer. Their tools, such as journey maps and service blueprints, provide a systemic framework to undergird the entire design organization’s efforts. They also connect with frontline roles such as sales and support to ensure that design is cognizant of the full context of service delivery.

To handle coordination, communication, and planning across these distinct teams, bring on a Design Program Manager to focus on operations. Lastly, the team is too large to directly report to a single person. At the size depicted, the team should have two Design Managers to distribute the people management load. These managers also double as Team Leads.

When the team gets to five or six distinct teams, simple management is no longer sufficient, and a true leadership layer is needed to keep the organization humming (Figure 5-5).

The structure of this organization is basically doubling what was shown in Stage 4, and introducing a leadership team. Design Directors behave like a Stage 4 Head of Design, providing creative and managerial leadership for the teams they oversee, and partnering with a Service Designer and Design Program Manager to ensure coherence and coordination. These directors, and their reporting teams, are committed to a broad but bounded swath of the customer experience—drawing from our earlier marketplace examples, one Director would be responsible for the Buyer experience, and the other for the Seller experience. The Design Directors have a new peer, a Creative Director, who bolsters their creative leadership and sets a quality bar for the whole design organization.

The UX Researchers now have critical mass to be their own team. They function in a microcosm of the Centralized Partnership, with a couple researchers committed to each Design Director and that director’s teams. A Head of Research serves a purpose similar to the Head of Design, supporting the professional growth of the researchers, and maintaining a global understanding of research insights across all of a company’s products and services.

An organization of this size requires a leadership team. Introduced are two Design Directors (DD—each overseeing three teams), a Creative Director (CrD), and a Head of UX Research (HR). Also, Creative Technologists (CT) make their entrance.
Figure 5-5. An organization of this size requires a leadership team. Introduced are two Design Directors (DD—each overseeing three teams), a Creative Director (CrD), and a Head of UX Research (HR). Also, Creative Technologists (CT) make their entrance.

Joining the org at this stage are Creative Technologists. One may have been called for at an earlier stage, but by this point, the efficiencies gained in having a dedicated design-oriented engineer are definitely worth the headcount. As they are still individual contributors, they report up through either a Design Manager or Design Director.

The continued evolution of the design organization beyond this point is mostly a matter of degree—it simply gets bigger and bigger. With specific design teams as the fundamental organizational unit, scaling is a matter of adding more teams, and augmenting them with other roles as needed. For every new design team, add a UX Researcher. For every three teams, add a Service Designer, Design Program Manager, and a Design Director. The only major role introduced after this point is the Director of Design Program Management, who joins once the organization has about 60 people, and is a peer to the Design Directors.

The evolution depicted here is simplified and generic, regardless of specific contexts, such as the nature of the business, the customer base, the internal power of marketing, product management, engineering, and many other factors. Those specifics will push the organization in particular ways. A company that is more marketing-heavy, or is reliant on collateral and in-person experiences, may have a greater percentage of Communication Designers. Companies delivering hardware may feature Industrial Designers on design teams. An offering that is less of a service and more of a tool will need fewer Content Strategists.

What holds, regardless of context, is the foundation laid out in Chapter 4: this is a single design organization for the entire company, with teams organized across the customer journey. This is a radical departure from the common practice to organize design within departments and by function, with a team of Communication Designers and a team of Content Strategists in marketing, and a team of Product Designers in product management or engineering. The genius of this system is that, because it is skills-complete at every level, it should work regardless of the organization’s overall size.


[16] Hi, Chris Avore!