What is the most effective way to structure a design team to work effectively within an enterprise organization while also providing a career path and growth of the designers?
The answer to this question is directly impacted by the organizational structure itself, as well as the ingrained corporate culture but through my experience leading teams that a hub and spoke structuring of the teams has served my teams well.
I have been working as a creative leader for decades now across most major verticals. I have usually been brought into a new team or company that needs to build a creative team and so I am frequently faced with the question of, “How do we structure this creative team?” by leadership. Through my experience to successfully operate and deliver value to the business, the group must be optimally organized to respond to the specific demands of the business while ensuring structure and growth opportunities for the team.
Problem
How do you ensure an effective team structure that promotes design excellence and efficiency while also allowing a career path for those on the team.
Solution
Structure your design team to allow key interactions between the team, its leadership, and its partners while empowering them with decisions based on their role in the organization. Have a strong eye on the corporate culture today and how it will need to evolve to allow design to have its proper impact on the business itself.
Like many of my peers, I have favored a hub and spoke approach to the structure. This allows a strong central design organization that supports the core discipline in the organization while allow designers to work among teams and vendors to become subject matter experts on the verticals they are working within. a
Within this structure, we also focus the team on design themes. These are capabilities that require a combination of applied knowledge, skills, abilities, competencies, or other characteristics. That combination is developed through experiences that are repeatable, demonstrable consistently in practice before it becomes a capability. Some key themes I have used in the composition of past design teams are:
Designing for Emotional Impact – Which requires an extensive repertoire of ways to create a visceral response, that will help them build into an expected behavioral action and leave the actor with a reflection on the experience.
Influencing Through Understanding – Combines human observation, research methods, social and anthropological study are used to create the stimulus that will garner actionable insights that influence the design outcome.
Storytelling – Expressive experiences that involve an audience in a participatory story that construct a defensible design argument.
Utilizing Technology as a Medium – Technology is the fabrication material of the craft of design. It is imperative that we understand how to leverage it properly while ensuring ethical uses at all times.
Cross-Discipline Collaboration – Elevates team capabilities through seamless and effortless co-operation, succeeding and failing as one unit towards great outcomes.
Ensuring there is a wide creative berth of skillsets within the team to ideate and deliver high fidelity prototypes are key elements to a successful team as well. I believe a successful design team is comprised these key skillsets:
Design Research – translate business requirements into a hypothesis to explore with users and uncover emotional connections which develop into actionable insights that drive both strategic and tactical decision-making.
User Experience Design – focus on the interpretation and synthesis of research while adhering to the requirements of the product. They will craft stories around intentional experiences which connect people in meaningful, enduring ways to our products and services.
User Interface/Visual Design – initiates and maintains intentional user behaviors, that evokes emotional reactions, and leaves users with a positive reflection when interacting with our products and services.
Motion Design – must be able to clearly communicate concepts through storyboarding, animations, interactions, and immersive storytelling to engage user’s across journeys.
Front-End Design – prototypes concepts to help validate ideas and make design concepts tangible while testing the efficacy of the design interactions.
User Experience Writing – understands use of micro-copy, short-form, and long-form editorial processes as they relate to digital products and software development. Strong competency in content strategy and its importance in guiding users through journeys to accomplish tasks.
I also ensure that each role has a codified set of expectations that define the role its responsibilities and expectations as well as structure to allow for a career path to everyone on the team.
As growth is a main concern for not only the business but also the members of any given team, a codified set of roles, responsibilities, behaviors, and expectations is paramount to a cohesive team. For junior through executive-level roles we can break down some of these attributes into 6 main categories: contribution, complexity, influence, interaction, approvals, and accountability.
Designers build their skillsets and work towards the next level of advancement, guided by these requirements to reach their next career goal. From a high level they are:
Associate Designer
Contribution – Individual contributor, directed by senior team member
Complexity – Priority of tasks is established by senior team
Influence – Expected to be a good collaborator with team
Customer Interaction – A moderate level of customer interaction is expected
Reviews & Approvals – Work is reviewed by more experienced design team members
Accountability – Accountable for their individual results and contribution to team
Designer
Contribution – Individual contributor
Complexity – Independently prioritizes tasks with team leadership
Influence – Expected to be a good collaborator with team and mentor less experienced members of the team
Customer Interaction – A moderate level of customer interaction is required
Reviews & Approvals – Work is often reviewed by more experienced design team members.
Accountability – Accountable for their individual results and overall team contribution.
Advisory Designer
Contribution – Lead Individual contributor
Complexity – Independently prioritizes tasks across multiple projects
Influence – Expected to lead designers on a single project and mentor on multiple projects
Customer Interaction – A moderate to significant level of customer interaction is required
Reviews & Approvals – Work is often reviewed by peers
Accountability – Accountable for their individual results and overall team contribution and project success
Senior Designer
Contribution – Directing the team organization and direction
Complexity – Orchestrates multiple teams and prioritization
Influence – Directs team across multiple projects and team expectations
Customer Interaction – A significant level of customer interaction is required
Reviews & Approvals – All work should support core business initiatives
Accountability – Accountable for team contribution and overall project success
Principal Designer
Contribution – Act as consultant and trusted advisor to Senior Management
Complexity – Orchestrates and influences strategy
Influence – Significantly contributes to the direction of a suite of offerings
Customer Interaction – A significant level of customer and executive interaction is required
Reviews & Approvals – Manages multiple teams across multiple projects to ensure continuity in design
Accountability – Accountable for their team contribution and overall project success
Design Executive
Contribution – Act as consultant and trusted advisor to Senior Management
Complexity – Establishes the strategy and plans priority
Influence – Significantly impacts the direction of a division
Customer Interaction – A significant level of executive interaction is required
Reviews & Approvals – Work should define core business initiatives at division level
Accountability – Accountable for the overall success of their division
These are only a few high level thoughts around the initial steps to forming a team. Job descriptions, pay rates, reporting structure, integration into the organizational structure to support core business initiatives, etc.
There are so many variables that can affect building your perfect design team. However, there are some structural foundations that remain mostly static when considering how to build out a team, most of which is based upon a wide distribution of creative skills and a career path for those on the team that allows them to grow in their design career.