architecting a sustainable experience design team for long-term growth
DESCRIPTION
From the IA Summit 2014 site: The design team for a large experience design agency has been growing at an alarming rate over the last year and has reached a point of critical mass. The balance between utilisation, quality, and thinking time has been lost. Roles and responsibilities do not respond to the need to distribute and delegate the design work across the team. In short, the team is at breaking point and it’s starting to show. Experience designers working on long-term projects are lost to the studios in the corner. New starters aren’t getting the support they need. Seniors are being dragged across multiple projects while still being resourced on delivery. Heads of design practice are losing sight of everything. They’re even losing their sight. This is a story about recognising the pain points in an evolving design team before they have serious impact on the team, the client relationships and the company as a whole. We will talk about the challenge faced when beginning to think about the restructuring the team to support a long-term, extensible practice, dealing with promotion, recruitment, work/life balance, and close collaboration with the rest of the agency. It’s a success story. But with the bad bits left in. Attendees can learn about the simple steps we went through to re-engineer our design team to focus on quality and sustainability, rather than delivery. We’ll talk about how we introduced a team hierarchy to enable cascading ownership and accountability to alleviate single points of stress. We’ll also cover specific role definitions and responsibilities and how the team integrates with the rest of the agency and the joys of resourcing and team management. Original session page: http://2014.iasummit.org/architecting-a-sustainable-experience-design-team-for-long-term-growth/TRANSCRIPT
ARCHITECTING A SUSTAINABLE EXPERIENCE
DESIGN TEAM FOR LONG-TERM
GROWTH
@timcAynes
interaction design
design
I hate it when people
just put words on the screen and read them out
because that might get a bit, like, you
know, boring for
you, the audience
I might
I will
21
14
3
false pretence
(photo of impossibly happy conference goers)
actually, I did
spend hours
what are you
doing?
5
StructureFlat
StructureTall
StructureBalanced
Structure(Single extensible model)
Structure(Single extensible model with a number 3 on
it)
33
Structure(Extend diagram to show lines of
mentoring)
Structure(growing team diagram)
Structure(growing team diagram)
Structure(growing team diagram)
Structure(growing team diagram)
Structure(growing team diagram)
StructurePathways
(diagram of structure with roles)
(diagram of structure with accountability by roles)
massive thing about delivery
delivery
massive thing about delivery
change
Change
flexibility sustainability growth
hey. where’s my nose?
dude. I’m not sure.
Building a teamrule 2:
interaction dEsign InfroMatin Arhciekture Visual designering InnoVationating DREEMWEEVER
“I WAs involved in a project where we
designEd a chair
out of nuns where I was given the role
of nun direCtor”
?
this may not
be true
do I like you?
!
values & culture
for clarity,
!
for the long term,
!
i love you
!
people, not
process
architect the team find the people provide vision,
strategy & direction love the people let them do it
@timcAynes