sxswi talk: How to Create a Kickass Design Team

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How to Create a Kickass Design Team with: Jon Wiley- Google, Lisa Anderson- Intuit, Irene Au- Google, Edward Garana- Hoover’s Inc,Tjeerd Hoek - Microsoft

How measure success?

• Happy clients, designers, product success
• Your designers sometimes make clients nervous (ask hard questions, push the envelope)
• How often and early clients WANT to bring your team in

Desired skill set?

• Ability to draw people in
• People who “go all the way” and do what’s necessary, as opposed to just strictly what’s in their job description
• People who can handle constraints
• People who can accept feature cutting

How manage to “create” kick ass designers

• Direct mentorship and coaching (don’t get too far from the product that you can’t give real and constant feedback)
• Design reviews
• Build a community- share best practices, makes sure teams work together

How deal with competing priorities of being tactical and strategic?

• Must allocate part of your team to thinking ahead
• One strategy is to put junior people on “production team” that deals with fast, less strategic projects that are still learning opportunities
• Outsource

How communicate success & value of team to rest of company?

• Bottoms up- “google tech talks”, toilet ads, build user-focused culture
• Top down- product reviews, feed execs good UE questions to ask
• Need inspirational UE leaders
• Show execs users using the product
• Create usability metrics and define what happens if you don’t meet them

What behaviors to avoid?

• Telling people we “own” the design
• Whining/ complaining
• Never stop innovating & challenging

How attract & keep top talent?

• First make sure you hire top designers AND employees
• Identifying who you want is 50-60% of it
• Learn to sell, understand what motivates someone and offer it
• Share the glory- big/ good projects
• Build a team from great junior people (hire from universities)
• Get really good at interviewing- build a great interview team that is well trained at identifying the characteristics you’re looking for (and not looking for) & recruiting
• Check references- people are usually quite honest about strengths and weaknesses
• Know the behavioral skills you’re after-
• Look for passion, intellect, relationship management skills

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