Thoughts on managing a UX team
One year in: Why take this job?
After four years as a UX researcher on a few different teams at Google, I had watched my latest team grow from three people to nearly 20. Our lone manager, while extremely capable, was stretched thin as her responsibilities outstripped the number of available hours in a day. She approached me about taking on a subset of the team to give them more attention and focus than she could. With zero years of management experience under my belt and very little idea of what I was doing, I said yes.
One year later, my initial team of three is approaching a dozen designers and researchers distributed across three locations. Along the way, I’ve relied on mentors, training, and experience to help me with this job. I’m starting this series of posts to share some of that learning with other current or prospective UX managers. Still being relatively new to this game, I’m also hoping that I will also learn from the comments and dialogue that these posts will hopefully precipitate.
Obviously, much has transpired in this first year, but for this first post, I want to discuss why anyone goes into this role at all. Let’s start with what I would consider some bad reasons.
What UX management is not
Status
One of the first comments I received upon becoming a manager was a congratulatory note from a new hire on my “promotion”. I cringed a little, because I think one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to equate a managerial role in UX with some sort of promotion or boost in status. There are a few reasons this can happen.
First, there are still companies where the only way up is to join the ranks of management. I feel that this is changing, as even older companies these days tend to have both technical and managerial tracks. These options are particularly important in UX where creative control and freedom can be so hard to give up. So a move into UX management is effectively a lateral one. Moreover, it could even be a slight step down for those (like me) who are new to the role, still have a lot to learn, and take some time to be effective.
A second reason is the idea that management implies power over the product, or the people working on it. Where I work, this is laughably false, to the point where engineers wonder why anyone goes into management at all. True, managers do performance reviews and help their teammates navigate promotions, but teammates also review their managers and design the products for which they are accountable. In terms of product direction, their voices are heard along with, not over, those of engineers, UX designers and researchers, and PMs. There is no decision by fiat; even directors are fair game for debate from the rank-and-file individual contributor. Why should one manager have the power to override a team of people who were hired specifically for their creative talents and technical ability?
Inertia
I have had a few colleagues who basically “fell into management” as a result of some personnel change, temporary fill-in, or favor. The ones who have been successful took a lot of time to learn about the job, about their team, track deliverables, and put processes in place to maintain a quality bar. The ones who didn’t do these things, and who didn’t seriously change the nature of their work, typically left the job soon after. We all eventually happen into new territory with our jobs, and trying new things should always be encouraged, but management really is fundamentally different from IC work. Thinking you can just carry on as you were with a few extra expense reports to approve is a pretty strong signal that you aren’t ready to let go of core design work.
Refocusing on the team
I have had the good luck of being mentored early on to understand that UX managers are there to make everyone else better; in turn, the company and its products will benefit from teams that are more productive, feel free to try new things, value their roles, and feel challenged.
What’s most important, though, is that this is the kind of work that seemed more personally fulfilling to me. Even as a UX researcher, I gravitated towards team-focused aspects of the job such as mentoring interns, connecting people across product teams, leading forums to share expertise among the greater UX team, and getting heavily involved in recruiting and hiring. It wasn’t that I disliked core research work; on balance, however, I was happier helping my colleagues than running my own studies. So, while on the surface, management was a new path to take and an experience to learn from, there were clear intrinsic motivations for me as well.
At this point, the hardest part for me is being the interface between my team and all the goings-on in functions above and around us (execs, engineering, product management, marketing, etc.) I’m to blame when deadlines aren’t met, when stakeholders don’t understand how to work with UX, or when my team is the last to hear about a product change. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen often. The point is that my teammates can focus on their work and not worry about those issues because I’m worrying for them.
One year in, I have experiences to share that I think can benefit others outside of my own team and company, such as ramping up on the job, dealing with reluctant stakeholders, and establishing a productive culture for a UX team. At the same time, I’m encountering new challenges such as managing across time zones and roles where I could benefit from the advice of others who have been in this position before. My goal is to discuss all of these issues and more in future posts. Until next time!
