Design Operations

Established a regular cadence of 1:1 meetings with all direct reports. Adjusted rituals and meetings based on team feedback. Conducted internal training on productive critique practices, and set a rotational schedule to ensure everyone was regularly sharing work.

Clarified and documented design process. Early on, the need was really to clarify when approvals were required through the process. Later, process challenges were making time for discovery and testing prototypes with users before development began.

Realigned resources on the team to match strengths and professional interests to areas of needs. Moved to a hybrid model rather than fully embedded, to encourage collaboration and pairing within UX. Work with AVP on headcount planning as the team continues to grow.

Obtained leadership training for team members who were interested in future management. Brought in Nielsen Norman Group for cross-functional training on Omnichannel Customer Experiences, Mobile Design, and Discoveries. Entire team completed basic web accessibility training. Worked on a plan for reimbursement for IAAP certifications.

Defined job levels and provided a framework for progression. Delegated responsibilities to a team member to demonstrate he was ready for a promotion to manager. He did well and was promoted. I also recommended achieved promotions for individual contributors who had grown their UX skillset and taken on new challenges.

Introduced structured interviewing, defined a scoring rubric, and created a shared bank of interview questions to reduce bias in the hiring process.

Improved the team onboarding process by dedicating time over the first week to get new hires through the basics of the team, answer questions they had and ease them in to things before pairing them with a veteran team member who introduced them to the product team practices and projects.

Initiated an effort to evaluate and compare design tools. Transitioned the team from Sketch to Figma. Formed a Figma working group to build out component libraries and facilitate internal trainings to increase familiarity with features.

Evaluated remote user testing solutions. Purchased UserZoom, implemented and provided training to the team. Designers were then able to easily conduct remote unmoderated and moderated studies.

Conducted a listening tour of people in different roles to understand pain points for a design system effort that had stalled out. Invested time in focused learning about design systems, and then drafted a future vision and business case for dedicated resources. Hired approved roles and oversaw new design system effort.

We evolved our standards for quality. There had been a large organizational push for brand and design consistency. Within our team we defined quality as a combination of utility, usability and accessibility.