Welcome back. What’s your design mantra? I’d love to know the short saying, old adage, or phrase that’s on repeat when you’re elbows deep in Figma and trying to keep your head on straight. This one really stuck with me → —Tommy (@DesignerTom) The Wireframe:
How to Build a Design Team From the Ground UpIf you’ve ever been a design team of one working on a high-growth product with a killer team, you know this is true: There comes a point when cold brew after dinner can only get you so far. The long days tucker you out, the quality of your work starts to suffer, and you know it’s time to expand the team. But finding the right talent to join a design crew can be brutally hard. Not only are you on the hunt for someone who can provide real, measurable results that mesh well with the budding vision and brand you’re building…but you’re also trying to figure out what roles need to be filled and when. Knowing how to build your team—and the pitfalls to avoid when doing so—can be a huge advantage as you progress as a design leader. So today, I’m sharing some strong takeaways from Andrew Coyle’s goldmine of a guide to building a design team based on his time at Flexport in the early days, c/o my friend Vitaly Friedman in this post on LinkedIn. These tips can help you get from this… To this… Learning 1: There’s no blueprint.Designing your team is like designing your products—you have some baseline knowledge of what works, but there’s no formula for perfection. Especially if you’re building a team at a startup, all decisions require context: what you’re building, how your business model currently works, and where you’re headed. So instead of trying to mimic the team buildout you’ve read about online or been part of in the past, try this →
For example, that might include hiring a UI engineer to bridge the gap between design and engineering—that’s what Andrew did at Flexport, and it helped to reduce friction by ensuring both sides understood each other. This process will help you get from “I’m drowning in all this work” to “we’re starting to come up for air.” When the time is right, you can start to categorize the roles and responsibilities of your team (e.g. communication design, user research, etc.). That’ll give you a strong starting point for your hiring plan. Learning 2: Know where to complement your growing team.As you’re building a design team, know what strengths you’ve got covered and what strengths you’d like more of. Some examples, according to Andrew?
These skills can and should stack on top of some important fundamentals—strong taste, a general understanding of the business’ goals, and enthusiasm for the mission. When you bring on a diverse team with a wide range of perspectives that tick these boxes, you set yourself up for success. Which brings us to… Learning 3: Be methodical as you establish ways of working.One of the toughest parts of working on a startup team can be determining when to be scrappy and when to act like the company you want to become—and this is painfully clear when determining mature ways of working. Andrew’s POV? Create a framework for feedback, communication, and professional development. That might include…
Bottom line: It’s tempting to chase designers with big-brand portfolios, but that’s not what gets you a strong, repeatable pattern of design wins. What does? Seeking out diverse and ambitious players who are eager to learn, making responsibilities and ownership clear, and establishing the workflows that let you step back and watch your team make a big impact. TOGETHER WITH LEARN UI DESIGN​ Practical, no-nonsense UI design tips Want to level up your visual design skills? The Design Hacks newsletter will help you create better design. Features short, original, illustrated UI/UX tips & tactics. No fluff. Join over 60,000 readers from Apple, Google, Stripe, and more. Check it out. News, Tools, and Resources: Building a Design TeamThese are some invaluable resources to help you understand design job levels and the design career framework, as suggested by Vitaly:
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Hiring for a design role, or know someone who is? Submit it here to hit the inboxes of 75k+ talented designers. Thanks for reading! What are you currently doing to level up on your team? Hit reply and let me know. See you next week! Enjoying this newsletter? Let us know here. |
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Welcome back. My long-awaited course "Making UX Decisions" is finally available for pre-sale - get $100 off until this Thursday (this slick landing page is built in Framer), so I'm celebrating by sharing one of my favorite chapters with you today. I'm writing this from THiS24 (UserTesting Human Insights Summit) where I'm already filling pages of notes to share with you. You can catch me on this week's Honest UX Talks podcast where we get into some spicy takes about the state of design in...
Welcome back. I can't get the new Rosé + Bruno Mars song out of my head - and it really makes me wonder: how are some creative people able to produce banger after banger? Next year, I'm going to explore this concept of "taste" in a mini-docuseries on YouTube. Stay tuned for that. —Tommy (@DesignerTom) The Wireframe: Why designers need to be better scouts My 3-step framework for gathering real intel The chain of command for weighing information How to Actually Gather Information That Mattrs...
Welcome back. We're seeing the early signs of a seismic shift in the product design landscape, and it's time we talk about it. The industry is approaching what I'm calling a "hard reset," and it's affecting everything from job titles to the tools we use. Let's dive in. P.S. Grab our free 8-part video course to learn how to make sense of information problems like a pro. —Tommy (@DesignerTom) The Wireframe: The crisis of job titles (and what it means for you) How new tools are reshaping our...