Enterprise UX for the rest of us, Part 1
T-Shaped Generalists for Enterprise: Being (or Hiring) a Shapeshifter
Written with Emma Lee Zaissa Robison
We’re going to say it; some solutions need a different style of UX practice than others. Not all great players get to be MVP in the national league, not all great guitarists get to be rock stars, and not all UX professionals will build the thing that disrupts its industry.
We read 3 to 5 articles a day about what Twitter, DocuSign, Dropbox, Facebook, etc. are doing to disrupt the status quo. We’d like to acknowledge the great design work by these, and by the AirBnbs, InVisions, Slacks, (et cetera) and then set them aside to talk about enterprise UX for the rest of us. We’re speaking of the countless industry-specific enterprise companies most people will never hear of (and where most of us will spend our careers and shed our blood, sweat, and tears to improve the day-to-day lives of our users).
Nonetheless, many of these companies are serving hundreds of thousands, or even millions of end-users every day. If you work for one of these, you may work in the shadows, so-to-speak, but your work will impact the experience of masses of people; users who need your tools to do their jobs, and their customers too.
Tech companies are ever defining (and redefining) the experiences of workers in every industry. People who are custodians, auto mechanics, MLM reps, day care workers, and college professors, sales clerks, and even medical doctors — they have this in common: somewhere a SaaS company’s Product Team is heavily influencing the processes that get their jobs done.
For instance, our company, Accela, is a Civic Tech company that creates software for government agencies (bureaucracy management). It’s a good example of a company serving millions of end-users, and odds are, you’ve never heard of it. But our User Experience team (researchers, designers, and one front-end developer) keep in mind that what we do successfully, or what we fail to do well, will impact the lives of entire communities. At the time this piece is being written, this is of particular importance as we work with cities and communities to, for example, overcome the challenges of no-contact site inspections during Shelter in Place orders.
In an industry where “Fail Fast” has been the motto for about a decade now, Civic Tech companies try their best to simply “Never Fail” — or at least “Only Fail Internally and Recover Quickly.” With that in mind, we must be efficient collaborators, fantastic communicators, and above all we much trust each other enough to show our works in progress, and be welcoming to the feedback those partnerships brings.
Anatomy of a User Experience Team
Working on only ONE project is a luxury many of us in the industry dream about. Between us (the two ladies who wrote this), we have only worked in ONE company where a person was dedicated to ONE project.(1) That was Walmart.com, one of the largest retailers in the world, it was as a contract hire to lead the content team handling the pharmacy refill checkout redesign. There were three content people fully dedicated to this project, two UI designers, one visual designer, a product manager, a principal architect, and a room full of developers. Again, this was Walmart.com, so they had resources.
In the rest of our experience, very few companies — even big ones — have their employees or contractors dedicated full-time to one project. This means that the phenomenally productive process of spending 40 hours in a room with your colleagues to solve a big challenge your project is facing (see the book SPRINT) is great for teams who have the budget, time (away from other projects), and working space; but it’s completely unattainable for many teams.
The reality is, in most enterprise companies, UX teams and their individual members are dedicated to multiple products at once.(2) They juggle scrum teams, products, projects, tools, and even roles. The entity the company calls “UX” is tasked with affording customers new solutions for handling mission-critical tasks in domains where needs are continually reshaping due to rapidly evolving market demands, sudden regulatory shifts, and fluctuating staffing models. UX is expected to insightfully deliver such solutions, while also providing moments of delight, and maintaining lean processes where, in many instances, the developer to UX designer ratio is 10:1 or even 20:1.
In UX, we are cartographers of the waters our users will have to navigate to interact with our products. Twenty years ago, we would have said the Holy Trinity of the design team was Visual Designer, Interaction Designer, and Content Strategist, each with a very specific expertise, perhaps overlapping in the center on Information Architecture.
But, as we don’t have to tell you, expectations have changed:
Presumably content strategy would fall under “Other” for the diagram on the right, but this is a visual representation of the evolution of User Experience roles toward an overlap with other roles, including business. This evolution is evident in job descriptions and in the way we are called upon to practice. How are you expected by your companies’ senior executives to conduct your discovery research? How has the way UX practitioners work out their design strategy and validate designs changed in the past decade or two? And how does it, in your experience, differ from organization to organization?
The answer is closely tied to two things: what the product is (or what its owners want it to be) and the construct of the UX team.
These days, agile SaaS companies are asking much more of each type of UX role. With these kinds of demands on the design team, it’s no wonder the belief is prevalent that we must all be expert in a few things, and proficient in a few more. A job req for a UI designer is often really a job req for someone fluent in interactions and visual design, and competent in, say, research, content strategy, information architecture, who can recite the 10 heuristics, and have the savvy to work these things together into a cohesive and moderately elegant UI.
Each hire may need to step in to run a usability test for a different project to avoid designers interpreting data related to their own designs. Each teammate may need to do competitive analysis, because there is only a Marketing head-count of one for 18 products. Sometimes, a UX person on a scrum team may be managing the Kanban board, or writing user messaging or guidance due to the lack of a technical writer available to the project. (3)
T-Shaped Generalist to Fill the T-shaped Need — Shapeshifters to Fill Shifting Needs
More and more, hirers talk about wanting UX designers who are T-shaped. Subsequently there is no shortage of discourse on the shape of designers , how they are defined, which to look for, which to strive to be.
But we don’t look for which candidate will be our next Rock Star. Instead we are looking for that candidate who be the catalyst or accelerant our team needs to turn what the product is today, into what it needs to be tomorrow (or…should have been today but, you know, isn’t yet). The capacity for a team to “shapeshift” around the domain’s needs isn’t an ability that comes automatically just because someone (or everyone) has a broad skill set.
Fortunately, the types of roles we’re describing (these t-shaped openings, if you will) also tend to be the kinds of endeavors that attract individuals who have the most potential for shapeshifting. These roles are actually perfect for people who get bored with repetitive tasks. (We are raising our hands!)
Enterprise UX often appeals specifically to people who are interested in gaining the perspective of several disciplines, who are interested in a broad connection with the product development cycle. They’re often individuals who can’t comprehend a significant divide between artistic creation and scientific formulation.
UX generalists, figure out your current “shape” by defining what you can do. Tell hiring managers what you want to do. Figure out specifically, how you can, better than anyone else, use your set of skills to get the best results.
And mangers, be encouraged, as the specialty of UX attracts such people, it’s likely your design team already has people with a RANGE of skills that fall somewhere along the spectrum. To perfect your team, when it is time to build it out, be looking for hires who augment your team’s current talents. Notice we said augmentation — don’t strive to just fill gaps on the spectrum your team fall onto. You aren’t just filling in the capacity you already have. You should be using each hire, whether they be backfill or new req, to recreate your team to be one that can create the process and output needed NOW.
For us, each open req has needed to be something slightly different from what we needed before. Not to suggest, of course, that you scrap everything and start over. But, if each new teammate simply conformed to what you have always had, and always done, it almost wouldn’t matter who you hired. But UX is not a factory and you aren’t just hiring an experience machinist for your production line. Your hire should be adaptive to your team’s methods, and also feel empowered to bring their experiences and perspectives to the team. In turn your team should assimilate what this new piece of the puzzle brings with them to the group. As hiring managers, you should also be open to, and even actively seeking, new and diverse perspectives and experiences in your new hires. If not, you are not evolving as much as you could.
To illustrate, we can use our design process at Accela. Our UX team is somewhat divided into two halves (like a brain!)
On one side (the left brain), there is the team called Research + Strategy, which has been generally responsible the left half of the diagram shown below. On the other half (the right brain), is the group called Product Design, which, generally, oversees the right half of the diagram.
One of the UX manager’s background is in content strategy, and the other is in visual design — the two managers have the least in common in terms of skill sets which makes them perfect partners (and in fact, this is the 3rd company they have partnered in). The research team members each possess a range of skills that fall across this diagram, mostly on the left, but not only on the left. And in enterprise UX, this is very often the case.
And though, when it was drawn, this diagram represented our team’s process well, we have hired since then. A few times. Generally, our day-to-day activities seem nearly the same but, we don’t interact the same. We don’t collaborate the same. We don’t have the same expectations of each other. Some things no one on the team could do before, nor could the new hires, but together, now we can. Now, we can do things better than we did before by doing them differently than the way that worked best with the old team.
If we were to draw the new process for you, we might today represent it more like this:
Or over time, this:
Or perhaps it will be more like this:
None of these look anything like the processes any of us would have drawn last year, or would have drawn for our previous job’s design processes. And that’s great. These weren’t right for our previous organizations, our previous teams, or this team previously.
How to Hire (or be Hired as) a Shapeshifter
Having an open job req is both extremely exciting and hugely daunting. As a team, we get to determine what we want to become and what kind of savvy we are seeking to get us there. This is fun and exciting!
There will be a lot of responses and very few of them will be exactly what a team thinks it’s looking for, because what you really need is a specific shapeshifter who currently fits into the goals and vision you have now. For example, since Shelter in Place began, many teams have had to downsize, which means that the skillsets left have more pressure to fit together. If you are managing a team that had to lose people, you likely had to seriously consider how everyone would work together to achieve your roadmap with fewer resources. On the other hand, if you are lucky enough to be hiring right now, you will likely be looking for someone who has skills across a spectrum that fit like a puzzle piece into your team. We want to be clear here that we are not talking about “cultural fit.” Cultural fit is difficult to pin down and is often used to create a homogenous team or culture, or worse, to discriminate. In fact, we should probably stop throwing that phrase around.
Perhaps you would do better to describe the product you are creating, or the team you think is most likely to be able to create that product. This will help potential applicants understand the exact shape they will need to be successful on your team.
Maybe someone will see the role and know it’s perfect for what they already are. Maybe they will know it’s what they want to be and will come to you with a demonstration of how they are the right person to get there.
Here are some additional tips:
Advice to Hiring Managers —
· Be transparent about your SPECIFIC needs in the job req, and very clear about what you are looking for. If what you really need is someone who is a UX Researcher who can create low-fidelity mock-ups, and also has experience writing content strategies, write that in the job req. This exists! We have it on our team, and it’s amazing.
· Include a list of expected deliverables and turnaround times. Has it ever happened that what you expected and what candidate expected didn’t line and that didn’t come to light until after the hire? It’s a lesson not easily forgotten, and the proactive prevention of that is to be clear in the job req and in the interviews about what kind of deliverables and on what timeline you expect from members of the team. For example, during your average two-week sprint, what is an example of expected deliverables and hand-off? A set of low-fi mocks for short workflow? A med-fi version of a few screens? A clickable prototype in something like InVision? A set of content guidelines? An S-M-L content audit? Results from previous sprint usability test? Write that — the right candidate will have examples, or similar experiences to share.
· Work with your HR team to help them understand your exact needs — be helpful. In enterprise companies, HR teams often don’t get a lot of opportunities to hire for design and UX, so it’s up to you to give an overview, show them examples of great fits, define terms, and give them questions to ask candidates so that they can screen for you. We worked in one enterprise company where our HR consultant didn’t know what “enterprise” meant — it was their first time ever getting that request. It’s not a big deal if it’s not their expertise. They WANT to hire the right person for you, and only you can help them do that.
· Work with recruiters who do this every day. They also exist. We know several. When you find one who gets it, you may end up working with them often over the years as you hire your team, or as you make your next career move. These partnerships are golden.
Advice to Applicants —
· Be transparent about your shapeshifting skills in your resume AND on LinkedIn.com. During the time our team has an open req, we could literally spend all day every day looking at applications — we receive hundreds. Unfortunately, less than 5% of these applications LOOK like they fit what we are actually looking for — even if the candidate might be a great match.
· Be specific about your skillset. Do you really only feel passionate about design production? If so, say that. Teams often need a lot of it and the particular way you know how to do it, might be exactly what they need to augment the team’s capabilities now. Have you been freelancing or working for startups and you accidentally ended up being a great user test facilitator? Fantastic! Mention it. We have seen many job calls for T-Shaped generalists, and we know many professionals who are actually more like W-Shaped generalists because they have been around for so long. You should always play to your strengths, but in enterprise, never forget to mention where you have additional skills and experience or where you want to stretch.
· State when you are flexible. Perhaps your resume looks very heavy in content or research, but you are really interested in expanding your UI portfolio. Sometimes content is one of the last areas funded on a team, so if you can do some double-duty, you will more likely be in the running for a position you might not have been otherwise.
· State what types of environments you thrive in. What kind of team are you hoping for? Do you like to mentor? Do you want a mentor yourself? Sometimes a manager is looking for mentoring experience — what luck! How do you like to work? Have you worked with remote teams? Have you facilitated remote ideation sessions? If so, say it! It’s invaluable.
· Get your LinkedIn profile in order. We can’t overstate this. Studies show that once your resume is in their hands, many recruiters and hiring managers go straight to LinkedIn to check you out. Does it match your resume? Does it look great? Does it sell you as a shapeshifter? If you would like a job in enterprise UX, we recommend that it does.
Good luck!
Footnotes (“I” in these footnotes is Nova)
- This count includes Wells Fargo where I was responsible, accountable, or consulting on up to 22 products at one time; TiVo where I was writing for all marketing campaigns, all website copy, direct mail, packaging, and new product releases at once and sometimes writing for the TiVo interface or TechPubs department; Blue Shield of California where I was content lead for the provider and broker portal but also was on retainer for marketing copywriting and internal communications; and DocuSign, where I was hired to rework the customer support community experience but also ended up rewriting all content for a complete site redesign and CMS migration, in-product copy, SEO for marketing site, and also copy for all ad campaigns.
- A casual survey of my UX/PM friends resulted in these lists of the roles that each of them has had to play in a single project AT ONE TIME:
- “Usually 2–3 of the following: Project Lead, Product Manager, Researcher, Strategist, Interaction Designer.”
- “I would say often my core team is three people playing some Venn diagram of business/product mgmt/tech/design. I tend to hold down the design/Prod mgmt end on most teams.”
- “At least 4 or 5 of the following for most projects: Project lead/manager, BA, UX Designer, UI Designer, researcher, microcopy writer, PM (writing/refining user stories and conditions of acceptance), and last but not least, diplomat (at times more difficult than at others).”
- “I tend to hold down some combination of 3–4 of the following: the lead, researcher, content strategist, UI designer, and sometimes PM, and always advocate.”
3. These are real issues that have arisen at companies I have worked.
