A New Way to Guarantee High Quality UX Design for Agile Businesses
Introducing the Exalt Excellence Programme
The Effects the Current State of Design Has on Your Business
UX and UI design has become a high demand resource in the past two years, when various stores and services had to funnel their content to online platforms in order to stay in business. However, some serious issues have emerged from such high demands:
Most service providers have a hard time determining the skill level of designers they commission. So it is difficult for companies to find those who deliver quality controlled, professional products. What is even more problematic, though, is that more often than not, months pass before anyone notices the skill gap, and by then, the project has cost a fortune.
The second major issue the pandemic and the digitalization of services has innately brought is a shortage of highly-skilled designers available for service providers on demand, which consequently leads to said bad business decisions and failed commissions.
Some might argue that it would have been a very lucrative decision to take on all the projects we were propositioned with. (It would have been quick money and easy execution.) However, we have decided to take a step back instead because we feel responsible for the quality of the finished products we create.
Instead of accepting every project, we decided to shift our resources to bringing up new talents and finding answers to the pressing issues Design faces today. We have started to recruit passionate individuals who, with the help of our incubator framework, could bring not only creative ideas and fresh points of view of your vision but also a disciplined approach with which you can expect them to execute those ideas meticulously and professionally.
Our incubator programme has become a whole metasystem that expands day-by-day as we are putting it constantly to the test. It mirrors the design processes of the double diamond model, a practice that is familiar to most design companies, but it also builds on three very fundamental pillars —
- The First Pillar: a paradigm shift that comes when mentees understand what design thinking really is
- The Second Pillar: the four Cs, soft skills ranging from communication and creativity to active collaboration and critical thinking to better solve problems
- The Third Pillar: the practical knowledge of the craft of UX and UI design
Read on to find out out more about our framework:
On-boarding Experiences at Different Companies
Before starting the construction of our incubator programme, we have conducted an in-depth research on our competitors to analyze and synthesize the current and recurring local practices of on-boarding.
In Europe, mid-senior level designers are heavily preferred to juniors. So much so, that entry-level candidates get ignored when applying for a position. And when they don’t, they are expected to perform just on the level of their mid-senior colleagues, without proper guidance. Some companies try to support incoming talents by introducing buddy-systems, or giving them low-risk, low-impact tasks…
Basically playing hot potato with juniors until they magically transform into full-fledged designers.
This lack of proper care results in still unsure candidates when they are assigned to more high-profile projects. It is a risk that can cost a lot to all parties involved and a risk we took steps to alleviate. Constructing our specific framework for nurturing incoming talents serves to answer both the increasing demand for qualified designers and the much-needed guidance within our local designer community.
Who are we, and why do we have the credentials?
Exalt is a company whose seniors have decades of experience and a passion unrivalled for design. We intend not just to practice and teach Design but to influence it as it evolves.
These might seem like meaningless clichés, statements that you have heard hundreds of times already, but our crew truly gets the business: We are present at universities and are involved in about 80% of the locally available UX and UI design courses.
Our incubator programme makes use of all of our experiences: the methodology, industry-specific knowledge, the goals, the thoughts, and every action taken. We built our framework block by block to strategically expand into a company that is able to successfully answer the demand for design while still keeping high-quality standards.
The Dilemma of Nurturing Talents
I. Discover Your Design Needs
After scrutinizing the landscape of design during the pandemic, we have discovered many challenges that enterprises face when contracting designers and design companies and how the needs of businesses and strategic partners are often subordinate to gains:
Many go after quantity instead of quality.
Especially because design has become such a lucrative genre, designers are spread thin and strategic partners will often end up dissatisfied with the end results produced by the many, whose goal is to crunch out the maximum number of projects with the minimum resource needed.
Few make an effort to really invest in talents.
Whether this is an inherent result of the min-maxing of revenue, we are not entirely sure of. However, what we do know, is that the lack of proper care for junior designers results in unmotivated individuals who might be good at the specifics but lack the overarching understanding of design. Because, as much as creating flashy UIs or structured wireframes is important, a designer has to see the bigger picture: they have to know how to plan, empathize with customers, and best communicate their ideas and intentions in specific domains.
‘Say, you employ a freelancer that promises you a complete wireframe and a clickable prototype for your mobile application in a month, for X dollars. You will most likely get a reskinned generic layout with a beautiful looking UI. You might be happy with it, for a while, until the ratings come in, and you realize that even though your product looks astonishingly good, the users hate using it. The customer flow is jumbled, and it confuses them, and the labels are in the wrong place and…’
Your freelancer likely spent no time researching your target audience or had no means to do so, and that small step you did not even know was important now costs you your conversion rate or, worse, your credibility.
According to The Gomez Report (2010), “88% of users are less likely to return to a website after a bad user experience.” So it is all the more important to commission services that offer quality control and know your customers’ needs as well as your own.
II. Define Our Goal
The Exalt incubator programme was created as an answer to these obstructive issues and pain-points we have seen much too many times around us to ignore. Our goal is to offer our strategic partners the designers they need: jacks of all trades with added expertise in their specific interests and domains. This is why our mentors work with every new incoming talent closely together, determining their specialties, analyzing their strengths and determining the areas they still need to improve.
To meet the business needs of those who prefer the quality and the niche, we chose our mentees based on how well they could offer a fresh point of view in design. Paired with our disciplined approach in teaching and the stepping stones of our incubator programme, they will be able to solve problems that would prove difficult to non-Exalter designers.
Our goal is that when you think about Exalt, you think about quality work and great designers.
III. Develop Our Strategy
To achieve our goal, we have created a strategy that is a complex amalgam of things that all contribute to the nurturing of incoming talents. The primary objective of this framework is to develop all three pillars mentioned in our introduction: mentality, the Four Cs and an unrivalled proficiency in design.
The First Pillar: Mentality
Our mentees will be trained by super seniors with ten years plus experience in their given fields and will stand by each new Exalter, offering guidance as they begin breathing in design. We wish to achieve a paradigm shift where our mentees will be able to think outside of the box, meaning that rather than constructing products based on either an inductive or a deductive thought process, they begin seeing problems in an abductive way (Nigel Cross, 2011) that helps them create solutions that are both brand new and analytically correct.
With the help of our constant guidance system, our new Exalters are quickly expected to begin thinking in design so that when they encounter a project, they can dig deep and find the core issues, the overlapping pain-points and how to solve them. As they grow, they are encouraged to plan ahead and manage their own time and tasks while still accessing the professional safety net provided by their superiors.
The Second Pillar: Soft-skills
This constant feedback and relative dependence create an environment where mentees are inherently trained in soft skills. We strive to offer mentees a balanced education based on the Four Cs of the 21st century: They are required to work in agile teams and need to collaborate with their peers and their superiors alike, right from the moment they set foot into our company. Clear communication skills are expected of our mentees by the end of our incubator programme. They will learn how to ask for help when they need it, not only in the manner of speech but also in how well they can formulate questions they need answers for, thinking critically about the set of given problems before seeking out the aid of a mentor. The last soft skill might be self-evident as designers are generally thought of as creative people. However, we intend to amplify and regulate this innate quality to better suit specific domains and customer needs.
The Third Pillar: Expertise
To achieve both the regulative qualities and the analytical mindset we prefer for our design processes, we have devised a practice-based, intensive training programme that allows our mentees to exercise their prowess in most of our projects. Even those that have higher risks. Our mentees are set to shadow the domains from day one and are expected to work on different sub-tasks, gradually assuming more responsibility for their work. In some cases, our Design Principals (leaders with a senior UX designer background) are only acting as mentors helping others to find the best ways and practices, while said mentees actively share their ideas, also learning from each other in the process. (Zamberlan & Wilson, 2017).
Building on the traditions of the design studio method and the practice-based idea of reflection-in-action (Schön, 1985), we constructed our framework to fit as many practicalities on the action of reflective ‘doing’ as possible. As Kolklo (2012) puts it, in design studios, knowledge is produced, not disseminated. The industry needs more structure, more people who have the ability to not just ideate on a project but those who meticulously deliver the final product, more people who understand the domain-specific details and see the bigger picture and who can tailor and craft user experiences to the exact target audience. Yet it also needs designers who are trained in critical thinking, as well as in reflective and therefore iterative working methods: Crafters, who are good at giving, taking and implementing valuable feedback through specific design studio rituals.
IV. Deliver Their Experience
We believe that consistent mentoring generates constant improvement.
Therefore we are relentless in perfecting the details of what we give and what we demand from our junior designers. To further analyze the degree of our success, we conduct recurring in-depth interviews with our partners and with those who have joined our programme to see the critical points we have missed and those we have achieved.
Has your company ever suffered the consequences of inept junior on-boarding? Share your experiences in the comments below.
References:
Kolko, Jon (2012), “Transformative Learning in the Design Studio”. Interactions magazine, November/December
Schön, D. A. (1985). The Design Studio: An Exploration of Its Traditions and Potential. London: RIBA Publications for RIBA Building Industry Trust.
Zamberlan, L., & Wilson, S. (2017). Reconceiving Creativity in Design Studio Education. The International Journal of Design Education, 11(3). https://doi.org/http://doi.org/10.18848/2325-128X/CGP
