Design Team Restructure
Background
Caseware Working Papers is a large SaaS based platform used by accountants and auditors and has been a leader in its industry for the past 30 years. They are in the process of shifting their focus from the desktop application to the new cloud platform. This has created several product areas with 4 main verticals which have designers assigned to them.
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Challenge
The UX Designers are each working separately on a specific product vertical. They report directly to Product Managers and are embedded in their own product, siloed from each other. As a result of this, each product area looks different and there are several instances of different components being used for the same purpose. UXR is undervalued. In addition, designers do not have a leader who can mentor them in a design career.
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Design Requirements
Working with the product, design and development teams, we reviewed the design requirements for the entire company and created a weekly sync for the designers (open to anyone) to meet and talk about their current projects. We began to create our own artifact library and documentation on our processes which we shared to increase collaboration and raise UX awareness. At this time we also realized we needed a design system to reduce inconsistency, so we began to review a few existing component libraries.
Research
In reviewing what other companies with a more mature design team were doing, we realized that we needed to add specific processes we could create with product and development to tailor to our needs within the FinTech industry.
We also found that we needed to grow the team but before that we really needed a central figurehead who would represent and strategize with upper management.
Brainstorming
Some of the process documents we created:
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UX Checklist - while design process is not always the same there are constant stages we and we want to raise awareness of their value.
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Accessibility - basic accessibility will be designed into every prototype.
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Research - guidelines on usability testing were created.
Team Structure
Once the Head of Design, Chris Moorehead was hired he made a few changes to the existing team and promoted Marlene Aubin (myself) to UX Manager.
Chris and I worked together to create:
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A new team structure with several open roles
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Designer career track documentation
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Design process framework to reduce the length of the design phase and increase collaboration
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Cross platform experience plan for designers to improve consistency
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A robust user testing system
Proposed Hires
The new team structure featured Chris as Head of UX and then:
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Marlene Aubin - UX Manager, with 5 UX Designers
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Design Ops Manager, with 2 UX Designers
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UX Research Manager, with 2 UX Researchers
The value of these additions were presented to the CPO for approval.
Hiring
To begin with, I hired 2 top notch co-op students from a list of 360 applicants. In creating a constant list of questions and design challenges it was fairly easy to spot the top talent based on a few interviews.
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Using the co-op students for feedback, we created an onboarding plan to be used for future designers as we hired the empty roles. Since there was no prior onboarding we all saw the value in this and how important it was given the niche software we were creating.
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Working closely with the recruitment team, I hired a UXR Manager, Design Ops Manager, 4 very promising Junior Designers and 2 experienced Seniors.
Team Collaboration
Adding a UX stand-up 3 times a week gave us a constant check in with each other to identify and remove blockers while mentoring the junior designers.
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A weekly design critique enabled us to review everyone’s work and guidelines for this process were created to ensure participation and value feedback.
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UX leaders met weekly to discuss strategy.
UX Awareness
Working with each product vertical’s Product Manager, designers were able to add to their demos and townhall presentations a UX section used not only to raise awareness of their current projects but also the value of UX process and why we do the things we do.
UX Research
With our new UX Manager in place, user research was better than ever before, teams were coached on the interview scripts and learned about non-bias and non-leading questions in addition to integrated UX Research at every stage.
Results
Improved operational efficiency since Product, development and design worked closely together during the entire design process.
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Wider company awareness of the value of UX process, research methods and accessibility standards.
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Designers able to grow in their roles via goals towards movement through the career tracks.
And Finally
Consistently designed solutions based on user needs and meeting business goals while looking ahead to future versions for added value.
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Happy, well motivated designers eager to collaborate and receive feedback.
