building a ux team

Building a UX Team

Based on: http://us5.campaign-archive1.com/?awesome=no&u=7e093c5cf4&id=cfe9dbcac8

@bruno2ms

Aaron Walter Director of User Experience at MailChimp

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USER EXPERIENCE

research

development

design

customer support

UX

MailChimp UX team of one generalist professional, who:

Designed UIs; Wrote front-end code; Built prototypes; Interviewed customers;

Conducted usability tests; Responded to Customer Support;

Back in 2008

Aaron Walter Director of User Experience at MailChimp

A Team of Generalists with specific skills:

4 design researches 2 UI designers

1 expert email designer/developer Aaron Walter (Leader)

In 2014

When you focus on wireframes and workflows things get lost in translation as

ideas are passed to other departments

A team filled with specialists but no generalists creates silos.

Don`ts

EASY TO HIRE, HARD TO FIRE

Because it`s easy to hire someone who`s mediocre, but it`s really hard to fire them.

Look for passion, curiosity, selflessness, openness, confidence, communication, skills, emotional

intelligence, and intrinsic motivation, too.

Hiring is hard

These things can`t be taught, most skills can

Can this person say “we" instead of “me”?

Can they let someone else have the glory?

Can they put in their best work, then leave control to someone else to take it further?

Ask Yourself

RESPECT

Great designers need to understand engineering enough to empathize with,

listen to, and respond to the people who build what they want.

Respect between design and development is critical. It don`t happens organically.

It has to be a core value of the company, demonstrated by leadership daily.

AUTONOMY

If failure is not an option in your organization,

then neither is success

Team needs autonomy to follow their gut. When big decisions need to be made, team

autonomy has to give way to the perspective of the whole company.

Absolute Autonomy

leads to

CHAOS

Sometimes

"Autonomy sometimes lead to miscommunication. Meeting are often vilify,

but there`s great value in short, regularly scheduled check-ins."

PARALLEL CYCLES

5 weeks release cycle followed by our UI design, front-end dev, and engineering teams. It works for refinement but restricts deeper studies. The cycle for deep research is considerably longer, and happens parallel to the rapid cycles of app development.

Having in-depht research continually tricking into rapid iteration cycles helps ensure that

we`re not only moving fast, but that we`re also moving in the right direction.

CREATE A CULTURE OF EMPATHY

For a UX team, nothing is more motivating

than watching users struggle with your app.

THAT`S SERIOUS

The outcome of these tests is always the same: We`re made so uncomfortable on their behalf that we`re compelled to make things better

immediately.

as your customers` experiences

become more visible your team will become more empathetic.

TELL STORIES

Research can`t create change in an organization until it has been turned into a compelling story.

research is much more influential when it`s made accessible to others

tl;dr;

When smart, capable people with complementary skills are united by a deep

desire to help customers, great things happen.

http://us5.campaign-archive1.com/?awesome=no&u=7e093c5cf4&id=cfe9dbcac8

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