My routine as Design Lead
How do I create a collaborative team, use leadership technics, and set design strategies with few ceremonies and calls
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Here I will share a little about how I organize my team and the basic material that I created and use in my routine as Design Leader.
Important: this material is based on my knowledge of Design Thinking, Collaborative Workshops, Lean UX Process and people management. It's always been adapted to the companies and team that I already have worked with.
These ceremonies and boards are just basic suggestions for the most used management and design ceremonies. If you do this differently, let me know in the comments, or let's talk on LinkedIn :)
What I do as Design Leader?
- Lead the Product Designers: supporting their needs, developing their potential, and directing their work according to the solution, user and business needs.
- Lead the Tribe strategically: with product and tech leads we create all the squads strategies according to company OKRs.
- Develop the Design Chapter maturity: creating all process structures and ceremonies, promoting the company’s design culture about Design Thinking, Design Data Driven, User Experience Design (UX), User interface (UI), Innovation, Interactivity, and related topics.
How my teams work:
I usually understand how product designers are working and how we can bring them to the Design Thinking methodology with Agile and Lean philosophies. When the company already has a structured design process, my role is understand and implement it.
Below is an example of Workflow that I usually suggest and have already used in several companies:
Communication is the key!
It seems obvious, but it is really important for me that my team and stakeholders understand that I’m there for them and with them. So, is extremely important be clear and assertive, in addition to knowing how to manage synchronous and asynchronous communication.
Ceremonies and Tools:
Why do I promote design ceremonies on my team?
- Alignment and collaboration
- Team emotional security
- Professional development and better results
- Increase the design team’s capacity to argue and to be a focal and strategic point in the company.
1:1 (30' — biweekly)
Increasing confidence with constant feedback improves and expands the technical and behavioral context. Structuring and creating a close partnership with the lead.
Ceremony structure:
For this moment, I created a semi-structured dynamic between me and the product designer:
In this dynamic, we always talk about the following topics:
- Week activities: how the professional is working, if there is any kind of problem, knowledge exchange, and points that I can help with.
- The professional: professional expectations, what are the next steps in their careers, and how can I support them?
- The company: is there any aspect of the company that could be improved?
- The leadership: Is there anything that I could improve in my leadership? Is there something I could do that I’m not doing?
Design Sync (1h — biweekly or weekly)
It aligns expectations, processes, general directions, as well as integrate different squads to increase collaboration sense.
Ceremony structure:
For this moment I created a collaborative dynamic, where the main objective is to share ideas, knowledge, difficulties, and learning.
In this dynamic, we always talk about the following topics:
- Mood of the day: to understand the mood of my team that week.
- Icebreaker question: to create identification among the members of the tribe I lead.
- Work, work, work: To talk about the tasks of currently and next week. Here they are encouraged to share their screens and explain what tasks they are doing and how they are doing or planning to do this tasks.
- #TipsTime: This is the time to share some tips, an article, book, video, or any content that is interesting and had some importance in the professional’s life and work.
Design day (every quarter)
Presentation of the quarter’s projects, processes, discoveries, and tools for the entire company, focused on creating a design culture for all.
Goals:
- Facilitate the understanding of design processes by the team and stakeholders.
- Share and celebrate achievements
- Create a sense of collaboration and identification between different areas, improving and optimizing processes
✌🏻 Extra routines:
Design data driven
This is the moment to work with the design data-driven concept, creating business and UX implementation opportunities through data.
What is analyzed in this routine:
- Quanti data of the solution (google analytics)
- CX data
- Data Mix approach of the solution (heatmaps, screen recordings and etc)
- Quali feedback from users (surveys, forms, etc.)
What we want to understand:
What is the user behavior routine in the solution, identify possible insights and strategically direct the solution iteration
Design daily (15 min — diário)
The ceremony will only be used when there are actions to be taken together with other squads. It takes place outside of the squad’s daily hours and only counts on the designers and design leaders.
Goals:
→ Specific alignment of design actions
→ Better project organization with a focus on UX
→ Assertiveness and alignment of design actions.
Design critique
Presentation of the solution with a focus on collaboration and obtaining feedback and insights.
Goals:
→ Present a solution in prototype, architecture or rules based on UX studies done previously.
→ Share questions and get feedback on the solution
→ Gain insights and measure technical feasibility.
Who participates:
→ Design, technology, product + specific stakeholders (if interesting for the evolution of the project)
More about Design Critique in this article: WTF is design critique?
But why did I create, adapted, and transform all this?
This is my way to change the game, making less traditional and boring meetings, bringing more alignment and collaboration meetings that will really change design maturity in companies and designers development.
Thanks for reading!
Liked this article? Please tell me some of your learnings in the comments :)
Find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julianemonteiro/
Check me out here: http://www.julianemonteiro.com
