Org Design for Design Orgs: Building and Managing In-House Design Teams

199 Pages·2016·21.472 MB·English

by  Peter Merholz, Kristin Skinner

Org Design for
Design Orgs
Building and Managing
In-House Design Teams
Peter Merholz and Kristin Skinner
Beijing Boston Farnham Sebastopol Tokyo
Org Design for Design Orgs
by Peter Merholz and Kristin Skinner
Copyright © 2016 Peter Merholz, Kristin Skinner. All rights reserved.
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978-1-491-93840-9
[LSI]
[ contents ]
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Chapter 1 Why Design? Why Now? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter 2 Realizing the Potential of Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Chapter 3 12 Qualities of Effective Design Organizations . . . . . . . . 21
Chapter 4 The Centralized Partnership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Chapter 5 Roles and Team Composition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Chapter 6 Recruiting and Hiring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Chapter 7 Developing the Team: Professional Growth and
Managing People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Chapter 8 Creating a Design Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Chapter 9 Successful Interaction with Other Disciplines . . . . . . . . 155
Chapter 10 Parting Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
iii

[ Foreword ]
“The space between is just as important as the objects themselves.”
My 10th-grade graphic arts teacher had just finished tearing into
my layout, complaining that my kerning was off, my margins were
wrong, and my proportions were uneven . I was manually laying a page
of text and images, and having just burned my hand on the waxer, I
wasn’t interested in his advice . What did it matter if the top was off by
a millimeter? There’s plenty of room on the page for the rest of the . . .
Oh .
It turns out Mr . Mackie was less concerned about my ability to follow
his instructions precisely and more interested in my understanding
of the relationships between the content on the page—the letters, the
images, the whitespace . Without planning and proper attention, the
effects can ripple through the work . I didn’t need to work on my kern-
ing—I needed to get better at seeing the bigger picture .
This lesson stood out more than any other and has followed me through-
out my design career . There is a distinct rhythm to content on a page,
objects on a screen, and people in physical space . The sum of these
interactions defines the success or failure of the design . As designers,
we’re charged with solving detailed problems, and those solutions are
often most powerful when balanced with a larger perspective .
I’ve often thought about design teams in terms of organization and
operation—the structure and methods created to help designers do
their best work . Designers who have worked both at an agency and
in-house have probably experienced a few different approaches to
v
creative problem solving . We’ve seen the tension between speed, cost,
and quality . We’ve felt the desire to get design a seat at the table . And
we’ve experienced the fear and opportunity once we’ve sat down .
The reality is that designers have never been in a better situation to
make an impact on the world . Our methods and thinking are valued
and respected . We not only make the things but we help create the
strategy that brings the things to life . So now what?
We get better .
We get better at understanding business, the needs of people, the opera-
tions of our creativity, and the framework in which we find the freedom
to apply our skills . We get better at being active partners to analysts,
marketers, and engineers . We get better at building services and expe-
riences, not just features . We get better at seeing the bigger picture .
This book finds itself in the right spot at the right time . It doesn’t take
a place next to the piles of books attempting to define what is UX and
what is UI . It serves to help create a framework for design teams to
thrive . Peter and Kristin have spent years working with many design-
ers, agencies, organizations, and companies, and have seen what works
and what could work better . With the increasing growth of in-house
design teams, design leaders need the right tools to build successful
organizations . This book gives insight into methods for growth and
support of design teams that are rarely discussed . It shines light in the
spaces between problems, projects, and people .
We’re witnessing an amazing maturity in our craft . As we expand our
opportunity for impact, we must get better at creating frameworks to
support those efforts . This text is your start .
ANDREW CROW,
HEAD OF DESIGN AT MEDIUM
vi  |   Foreword
[ Preface ]
Why We Wrote This Book
Design books typically discuss design practice—tools, processes,
and methods for doing design work, and case studies that show how
that work has been applied to real-world problems . These books are
meant for design practitioners who are looking to improve their craft .
This is not that kind of design book . Instead, this book responds to a
profound shift that has occurred within enterprises over the past 10
years . Businesses and other organizations have realized that design,
like sales, marketing, and information technology, must now be a core
competency . Design has proven vital to business success, whether
reducing costs and customer churn, or increasing revenue through
creation of new value . This has driven companies to seriously invest in
internal design capabilities .
The thing is, design is way less mature than other corporate functions,
and its practice and impact suffer because of its lack of sophistication .
Companies aren’t realizing the potential of their design investments .
Most business leaders are not designers, and so don’t know how best
to establish design in their organizations . Many design leaders, with
backgrounds in the practice of their craft, don’t understand managerial
and operational issues, and struggle with the organizational aspects of
building and leading teams .
Org Design for Design Orgs is for those business and design leaders .
This is the book we wish we had as we began our careers building and
managing design teams . Like so many others, we figured it out as we
went along, stumbling toward a set of approaches that work pretty well .
We share what we’ve learned not because we have it all figured out (far
from it!), but because it’s time to elevate the dialogue around design
operations and management .
vii
This is a handbook for making the most out of design organizations
within enterprises, regardless of their present size and sophistication .
Instead of design practice methods and tools, it features maturity mod-
els, organizational frameworks, guides for staffing and retaining tal-
ent, and recommendations for successful cross-team collaboration .
The Authors
Peter Merholz’s career in design management began during the first
web boom at Internet startup Epinions, where he built a small team
and realized that the best thing he could do was get out of their way .
He followed this with establishing Adaptive Path, a world-renowned
user experience consultancy . In helping it grow from the original 7 to
nearly 50, Peter led much of the recruiting and hiring, scoped and led
dozens of projects and programs, and codified the key roles and respon-
sibilities of project teams . After leaving Adaptive Path, Peter tackled a
series of in-house challenges, most notably as VP of Global Design at
Groupon . There, he took a team of nearly 30 product and communica-
tion designers in three different locations, and grew it to nearly 60 in
six locations, while improving their effectiveness and shifting design
from an afterthought to a critical function .
Kristin Skinner began her career in design management by working
at a slew of Bay Area startups in various design capacities, and then
took a Design Program Manager role at Microsoft at a time when there
were just 400 designers at a company of 90,000 . After an initial stint in
the Server and Tools division, she switched to a Design Manager role
focused on user experience strategy, and device and services design at
Microsoft’s Pioneer Studios, which was created to incubate new busi-
ness opportunities for emerging consumer experiences in gaming,
entertainment, and media . She managed the end-to-end work of a team
of 25 UX, visual, and motion designers focused on strategy, vision, pro-
totyping, and design for mobile .
After four years at Microsoft, she joined Adaptive Path, where she
spearheaded its program management efforts, streamlined operations,
co-programmed and co-hosted its annual Managing Experience confer-
ence, and shaped and led over 50 projects and programs . After Capital
One’s acquisition of Adaptive Path, she remained, focusing on tran-
sitioning the consultancy to an in-house specialty design team while
viii  |   PreFace