UX/UI Design   •   December 15, 2017

I’ve worked with many organizations who have struggled with scaling their experience design services. Often times I see the hiring criteria is not well defined -or- is asking for everything under the sun. In either case, this signals to me that the organization has little experience with experience design as a practice. Coming into situations like these are can be scary and perhaps off-putting. However, I’ve found if you have a good plan to scale your practice, you can move forward with confidence and peace-of-mind.

While I’ve witnessed many different ways an organization can approach implementing an experience design practice, I have identified some common themes and broken it down into four levels. This should provide you with some context of where an organization stands and how they could scale their experience design practice moving forward.

Level 1 – Single UX/UI Designer as a shared service

This is where most organizations start, by adding a single UX/UI Designer as a shared service. The disadvantage of having a single UX/UI Designer is that this person is at risk of being a bottle neck. In addition, it’s more difficult to stay ahead of development. You will most likely be involved in developing multiple projects/products at the same time. At the Enterprise level, a single UX/UI Designer is only a temporary solution.

Level 2 – UX/UI Team as a shared service

By adding an additional UX/UI Designer as a shared service, you mitigate most of the risks mentioned above. At this point, you can consider hiring Designers with blended skills. However, you should consider the needs of the organization moving forward, as you scale. It may be more advantageous to hire a designer with stronger UX skills, over UI skills (or vice-versa).

Level 3 – Embedded UX/UI Designers
At this phase, you should have a strong team of designers with a blend of UX/UI skills. Now, it’s time to consider embedding the designers into seperate cross-functional product teams. These individuals should understand the organizations experience design flow and best practices, and should be able to lead projects on their own.

Level 4 – Embedded UX and UI Specialists

Finally, it’s time to begin hiring experts focused on a particular discipline. This may include roles like; UX researchers, interaction designers, design system managers, etc. These individuals have a specialized set of skills that will help your product grow. Note, you may still need to hire generalists (with blended skills) to increase your capacity for larger products. However, you should not overlook hiring specialists.   

Conclusion

While there are many different ways an organization can approach implementing an experience design practice, I have found the approach that I’ve outlined above works well for most cases. It will, at the least, provide you with some context of where an organization is and how they could scale moving forward. Until next time, thanks for reading!