Design Leadership
How I empower, improve, and cross-train designers
Overview
Here’s a little bit about how I lead, grow, and manage design teams to be the best they can be.
“Design leadership helps define the future, design management provides the tools to get there.”
Empowering Designers
Background
A while back, I was telling my boss about an important meeting I was prepping for. He asked me:
"Who else should be there from your team? Who are you teaching this to?"
It gave me pause. I didn't have a good answer. Now it's a question regularly ask myself.
Goal
The goal is not to invite everyone to every meeting, but to ensure I'm not the single holder of information and that I'm exposing, guiding, and training designers on work that will help them move to the next level.
Approach
I have a pretty standard approach here and it centers around the audience, in this case fellow designers. I think to myself, "Why should they care? What's driving their interest?"
I position the opportunity as ... an opportunity. This is not work I'm trying to get rid of. It's an opportunity for them to learn something new and I want to share that with them!
I clarify the task, time commitment, role, and expectations. I write up a small brief that’s a few paragraphs max, to explain what the heck the assignment is and what I expect they'll deliver or how they’ll participate.
I communicate the 'why.' This is the most important part because they need to understand why this matters. This could be as simple as, “This is a key skill needed to move to the next level” or, “You haven't been expose to this before and it's a great learning opportunity.”
I give them a graceful opt out. I believe that it's my job as a leader to present opportunities and it's up to the individual to choose whether or not they participate. Honestly, it's rare that people decline, but when they do it's fine and it's what's right for them at that moment.
Examples
I've done this for tasks related to business development, intern management, design operations research, challenging client situations, and many more.
Impact
Increased mentorship and learning opportunities
Supported designers on their path to promotion
Improving Through Critique
Background
Once upon a time, the UX and creative teams at Forum One were separate. They had different leaders and different goals. Eventually the teams merged and became one big design team.
Enter me, the VP of Design. I noticed three things immediately:
Designers didn’t have a consistent way to seek guidance or feedback when they were stuck or unsure. They might set up an ad-hoc meeting with another designer. They might spin their wheels. They might do nothing.
The designers needed more shared time together to build stronger relationships and learn from one another. They needed more shared discussion about the thing they were all doing regardless of practice area. They were hitting the same roadblocks, but weren’t talking about it. And then consequently, they weren’t sharing ideas, wisdom, or helping each other out.
All designers had goals around improving their presentation skills, but the didn’t have many opportunities to present their work and explain their vision and logic.
Goal
Provide a better way for designers to share their work, seek feedback, and get better at presenting and selling our ideas.
Approach
One newly hired designer brought experience leading critiques at their previous job, so I tapped them to work with me and set up critiques for our team.
We established a framework and schedule. We clarified roles and participation expectations. And we launched weekly critiques!
Updates
Over the years we’ve had many retros and adjusted critiques so they work best for our team. Some of the changes we've made include:
adding review of inspiration products, sites, etc
inviting engineers, product strategists, and analysts
inviting new staff as part of onboarding
reducing the number of critique groups
introducing new ice breakers
testing out new design workshop activities
Impact
Stronger design work
Increased team connection
Improved presentation skills
Cross-Training Teams
Background
As the VP of Design, I meet every other month with my cross-functional partners (aka other VPs). In those meetings, one of my questions is always,
"How can I and the design team better serve you?"
During one meeting with the VP of Engineering, they said that they felt like the designers could use some training on the technology (specifically the CMS, Drupal) that our engineers were using.
Why? Recently there were a few cases where designers made recommendations or decisions that increased engineering time significantly. And those design decisions weren't related to major features that would positively impact the customer experience. In short, the designers were needlessly making things more complicated. There was an easier way. And the VP of Engineering thought some training would help. After talking through the examples in depth, I agreed and we made a plan!
Goal
The goal was help designers understand how their design decisions may impact engineering time. And to help them have better conversations to find an appropriate solution.
Approach
We set up a Drupal training for all designers. The VP of Engineering identified some videos that covered the basics, created a presentation, and then set up sandboxes for each designer.
Setting Expectations
I scheduled the meeting and briefed the designers on:
what the training is
why are we doing it
what do you need to do in advance
what you'll learn
The Training
The training included:
Pre-work - Designers watched ~45 min worth of intro to Drupal videos so they could get a grasp of the basics, especially terminology.
Presentation - The VP of Engineering gave a 30 min presentation to the whole group of designers, covering a few more complex topics.
Hand-on Practice - Then we broke out into small groups. Each group had 2-3 designers and 2-3 engineers. Designer were given an engineering task. They completed it and had engineers there with them, coaching them and answering questions along the way.
Debrief - We took 10 minutes at the end to reflect on how the training session went, any outstanding questions, and where to get more resources.
Immediately, during the training, many designers had "a-ha moments!" The concepts clicked. One designer even said, "I've been calling everything a block. Now understand why everyone was looking at me funny. I've been using the wrong word this whole time." They all had more clarity around the questions engineers were asking them about their designs.
Updates
We conduct this training about every year. It's a good refresher for existing designers and still an excellent intro for new designers.
Different engineers join the training as coaches.
Impact
Strengthened relationships and communication between engineers and designers (in the training and on projects)
Designers understand the engineering impact of their design decisions. And if they don't, both parties are more comfortable working out alternate solutions.
Staying Creative With Daily Drawing
The Goal: creativity + community
In an effort to encourage cross-functional fun and creativity within the company, I started the ‘Daily Post-it'.’ I was also inspired by the many books, blog posts, and challenges (ex. Inktober, Drawloween) that encourage folx to draw everyday.
The Prompt: Every morning I would post a prompt in Slack and encourage folx to reply with their post-it drawing. Anyone could participate. No drawing skills required.
What happened? It was fun to see what people drew! People from many teams participated, not just designers. It sometimes started a conversation or friendly competition. Some designers set personal goals to complete the Daily Post-it every day.
Outcome: The Daily Post-it was a fun, easy, asynchronous way for people (anyone! remote teams!) to draw every day, exercise a different part of their brain, and connect with colleagues over something silly. 10/10, would recommend.
What Prompts Worked Best: Prompts with two words worked best (ex. field trip, bad dog, lettuce outbreak). The sillier the better! Exotic animals or animals that are not well known increased engagement (ex. pangolin).
Next Time: I’ll automate it and set up a Slack-bot to post the daily prompt.