My take on design leadership
Being a leader is more than just being the most senior or tenured designer on the team. In the year+ that I’ve been UX Director at Axial, I’ve gotten a crash course in design leadership. Here are some insights I’ve learned through the crucible of product design at a small startup that may sound obvious on the surface, but when you’re in the day to day, are useful to step back and remember.
Empower independence
The biggest challenge and transition for me from being an individually contributing designer to becoming a design leader was really encouraging my team to follow their own paths and processes, and checking my own opinions. Every designer approaches a problem differently and will have a different solution. The important thing to remember as a design leader is that there is a delicate balance between providing guidance, maintaining direction and velocity, and knowing when to allow a designer to explore and wander in order to find the right path back on their own. I’ve heard managers often say that it’s important to sometimes let a team member make a mistake or fail (within reason) in order to help them learn the lesson for themselves, and that’s the same principle. With independence, trust that your team and processes will help guide the solution forward, and own that responsibility without undermining or over-influencing.
Teach, don’t tell
Having been at Axial for longer than most of my team, there’s a lot of historical context for decisions, directions, challenges and solutions living in my head. When someone without that context is grappling with a challenge, I have to remember to provide that context in my feedback in a way that encourages their independent arrival at a solution. This isn’t Inception, and this isn’t dictating a solution. After all, whatever solution I have in mind may not be the best one, anyway. Combining ideas and exploring feedback while empowering their own independent problem-solving process tends to lead to better outcomes, in both the short and the long-term.
Open up the process to non-designers
One of the best things we’ve done at Axial (full credit to our VP of Product for encouraging and stoking this fire) is to open up our design sessions and ideation to the rest of the organization. We now hold bi-weekly Design Studios with members from all groups across the company where we posit a challenge or concept (or we invite attendees beforehand to submit ideas), and then give everyone 10 minutes to sketch or write on paper how they would approach or solve the problem. We each get 2–3 minutes to stick our sketch on the wall and explain our thinking, and at the end, everyone gets a couple of votes to ‘dot-vote’ their favorite components or ideas. It’s been a great way to synthesize and identify strong ideas to guide the design team as they start to formally think through a problem in their next project, or 6 months later when finally tackling that set of features.
Additionally, these design studios give those outside of the team a sense of how design and product thinks about the everyday challenges we face and our customers face, and shows how the design process works. We’re actively seeing more participation in the studios, and getting positive feedback from everyone involved.
Don’t limit your critiques and process to just your team, vertical, or other artificial constraint
Design is organization wide. It affects every part of your brand, product, and user experience. Even if your marketing team is a different team in a different building or state, you have to extend your process to include them (and they to you). You have to meet regularly to talk about design and collaborate to solve problems together. A potential or current customer doesn’t know about your hierarchy, but they notice when your marketing site, your sign up process, your core application, and your engagement emails are all inconsistent in voice, experience, or visual treatment.
Right, duh, I’ve heard all this before.
None of this came as a surprise to me. I’ve been reading about, talking to, and working with great design leaders for a long time. What did come as a surprise, and the ‘aha!’ moments came when it was MY turn to be that voice. As a design leader, you’re working with a different set of filters and tools, with different objectives. It’s about listening to your team, and collaborating without preconception and without ego. It’s providing context where necessary, and providing the freedom to explore and ideate in a safe and productive way. It’s lifting and supporting your team from behind as well as pulling them forward from the front. And it’s making sure that design is part of every conversation.
