Meditations of a Lead UX Designer

In this article, we’ll observe some of the lessons learned while working as a Lead UX / Product Designer over the last 2+ years. Most of the insights come from the current setting with a six UX designer sized team managing six+ products and other additional projects and initiatives from various departments.

1. Align agendas

I know it sounds like a cliche but it really is important. Finding a common ground with the key stakeholders is really the core job in order to proceed smoothly forward. In the end, it’s in everyone’s interest to make the most success out of a particular product. However, the ways to achieve this are very different and with various angles. At the same time, there can be some legacy attitudes / biases and echoes from the past interdepartmental relationships which (if existent) need to be reestablished. There’s a lot of information out there about how to align agendas with the stakeholders and colleagues. Nevertheless, from my experience, finding the balance between relationship management and professional “what’s in it for you / your department” approach has been the most effective way of alignment.

2. Create an environment for the team to flourish

Within the UX team there will be differences between individuals as per their past experiences, maturity, hard- and people’s skills, approach, cultural background, and future perspectives. The acknowledged variables and influences within the team do not make the final list. There are a lot more elements that will get in the way of aligning everyone in the team while keeping their personal-professional safe space. However, depending on the challenges faced, there will be more or less room for nurturing each and every team member with their personal desired direction. It’s important that these directions don’t conflict with each other. If they do, they need to be resolved. Without alignment the progress will be threatened and in the worst case scenario it can backfire with unsatisfied views of the direction taken or the environment the direction is set as. This again can trigger a domino effect for other unpleasant things in the future.

In short, each and every one of us has a certain agenda, things we want to achieve, projects we want to work on, personal views on how things should run, and where we want to be in the future. Within the team setting we collaborate, align, and learn from each other. At the same time, we need a space and understanding from others that there are elements of our own interest where we want to leave our footprints. Therefore, we need to ensure that the environment we create is supportive and non-conflicting for the team members’ agendas.

3. State your goals and vision

If you are a UX lead or are planning to become one, it’s fundamental and completely natural that there are some aspects of your work that you’re focussing on more than others. Surely, different views will have different goals carried by a certain vision. However, the vision is global and it encompasses broad elements that drive and align the evolution of certain activity areas. To drive the current processes to a point B, firstly, we got to understand the current setting or point A and consider the global UX state within the company. For example, myself, I focus on increasing the UX maturity in the company which can become a very broad topic if applied generically. However, by conducting a UX audit and working on the biggest pain points that are specifically defined is a simply explainable, logical, and clear approach that even your less experienced stakeholder will understand. Once the existing UX status is clear, we can gather and combine the data to define and state our tasks, goals as well as the mission and vision. The only thing left to do then is to communicate it all with an approach and activities in a manner that’s effective and yet generally aligned with the company’s cultural setting.

By defining and stating clearly what your vision is, you’ll ensure that the agenda is understood by everyone around you while keeping yourself and your actions transparent — the same way you want your colleagues to be. So, why not start with yourself?

4. Set the standards

There definitely will be some cultural, professional, and/or visionary differences between your team members. The challenge is for these differences to become constructive and supportive. How can we achieve it? One of the ways that has worked for me is setting internal collaborative and cultural standards. These standards can contain several aspects including (and not limited to) how we talk to each other, give feedback, follow (or not) certain design standards, approach research, provide space for growth and so on. The contents will completely depend on your team’s background and needs, therefore, I recommend everyone to come up with these standards collaboratively by respecting everyone’s input. By executing this activity and having the agreement between the team members, we’ll always be able to reflect on this centralised agreement / standards. In addition, it’s good to do an iteration after a while once we have witnessed that some of these elements are not working or fitting in our setting as we expected. The important thing is for the team to have a professional and cultural setting that has been created internally in order to have our own aligned space for team appreciation and fruitful collaboration.

5. Balance between reactive and proactive tasks and initiatives

Depending on what’s in the basket you have received when starting with a new venture, you’ll often find that there is a misalignment between reactive and proactive tasks and initiatives. Different departments work in a different manner, therefore, living in a proactive UX dimension only in the majority of cases is hard to achieve.

The change doesn’t happen over a day or week. If the previously set reactive processes in your environment have been foundational for the company, then the game becomes even more long-term. Nevertheless, there are always elements that can be brought into a more pragmatic and considerate approach. Therefore, one must understand the environment and the influences of the current setting in order to make a decision and actions about what’s feasible for change now and later. A step-by-step approach towards the proactivity for at least for some of the initiatives will ensure a stable progress and direction. The successful projects with adjustments and process improvements will prove and speak for themselves over time. Finding the balance between the reactive and proactive established processes and introduction of a more strategic approach can trigger certain sensitivity from some stakeholders, therefore, a rather slow but consistent and steady process change and approach update will probably keep more stability over the transition period.

6. Help both users and business and provide evidence

UX in its definition alone already focuses on users. However, if we work for a business organisation, there’s also the monetary aspect to take into the account. A trivial example: if the product is related to money and/or banking, we can satisfy our users’ needs by handing them free money directly at any point. Will the business survive? Probably not.

In this case a close collaboration is required not only with a user but also business stakeholders in order to bring stability for the organisation. One of the ways is to build the bridge between the business OKRs and user behavioural and attitudinal metrics. Of course, if your team is not measuring these already, they should start doing it. Once the gap between the business OKRs and more user-related OKRs has been bridged, aligned, tested, onboarded and agreed upon, the project starts to turn into a completely different game. From that point, everyone is aligned with the evidence of the UX observations, metrics, and analysis and how it all contributes to the success of the company.

7. Serve your team

Be the leader you wish you had! Nevertheless, during the learning process and personal progress there are some things that can be seen differently from various perspectives. That’s then where our ability of being a leader really kicks in — how do we ensure the progress of a team member when balancing between a good lead and providing personal growth while staying fair, constructive, and team-oriented.

As leads we know when to drive and when to let others flourish. It’s not beneficial for either of us to focus on one side of the coin only. Everyone wants to succeed in some way, therefore, we need to ensure that everyone gets an opportunity.

Happy leading!