Design Management Philosophy

Throughout much of my career I’ve built, scaled, lead and mentored teams of UX/UI Designers and Front-End Engineers. Design Management has been my focus for over a dozen years and whether as a player/coach or an individual contributor, I am always observing, learning and adapting. Every day and every project has brought lessons in how to keep individuals and teams happy, motivated, challenged, productive and collaborative.

In addition to working with my own teams, I enjoy acting as a mentor and coach for UX Design and Front End Development students through the online career accelerators Thinkful.com and Bloc.io (now a part of Chegg.com the largest ed-tech company in the US).

The Approach These days, assuring quality and efficiency of output are just table stakes for a design leader.

The true goals are:

1. Achieving an environment where both individuals and the overall culture is collaborative and open.

2. Getting all team members and stakeholders thinking about the bigger picture - the product experience. Training the team to be big picture thinkers gets them motivated, engaged, curious, user centered, and business savvy. There is no better formula for taking your product or service to new heights.

Methods

Designer 1 on 1s These are at the heart of the relationship with any team member. While 1 on 1s happen naturally throughout the work process, a good team leader will take advantage of them as teachable moments to share and expose designers to broader horizons in interpersonal skills, business logic and requirements, analytical thinking, new methods and best practices and more. The observant team leader will know what their designers are ready for as well as what they need.

One on ones can also be scheduled and used to privately check in with the designer regarding their goals, frustrations, relationships, stresses and explore how I can help them get more satisfaction from their work life and career. Stand Ups If the devs can do it so can we. Quick daily standups (or video call ins) are a great way to promote collaboration and transparency within the team. The time can be used to make other team members aware of each other’s projects and relationships including sharing wins, frustrations, discoveries, past experience and advice.

Weekly Team Time A time to discuss challenges with work, process improvements, best practices, design trends and tools, keeping up with tech news and updates, sharing inspiration (both positive and negative) or whatever constructive topic comes up. Caffeine or alcohol optional.

Design Kickoffs The Design Kickoff is the time to get a project started on a good footing. It's now that a leader can instill the curiosity, motivation and big picture thinking that makes the work rewarding. Now is the time to get the team to a shared understanding of the challenge and to set goals and expectations. Our stakeholder superfriends are welcome to this meeting too as we are all here to serve the users and the product.

Design Reviews This is our time – designers present their work, formally or not, to the design team and the ideas fly. Team members hone their skills in explaining their design decisions, constraints, goals and challenges. Presentation and interpersonal skills are given a workout and both the work and the designer come out more polished and ready for whatever is next.

Retrospectives Reflection leads to growth. Design or project retrospectives give us a chance to reflect on how we worked together as a team, how we interacted with stakeholders and clients, how our processes stood up and how our output met, exceeded or fell short of expectations. Everyone has a voice and the pronoun to use whether for praise, blame or planning is “we.” The important thing is to turn observations and learning into trackable actions and plans.

I have had an opportunity to work with Gary for 3 years and consider him one of the most professional and skilled Design Leads I have ever had the pleasure of collaborating with. Gary is not just an expert in his area, but also an amazing mentor to his staff and an inspirational leader.

Vitaliy Dikker - currently Product Manager, Google