Darci Dutcher - Designing a Design Team One of the biggest design challenges we face is how to design and build our own teams. This can be even harder when working in agile/lean companies. User Experience Design is a broad term that encompasses so many different skillsets that it can be difficult to bring together a design team that has the right mix of skills, knowledge and interests. This talk will cover a few approaches for identifying and creating the right balance of skills (both hard skills and soft skills) within a design team to help promote happy, healthy and successful design teams.

1. Designing a Design Team
(or designing your own career)
Darci D Dutcher
@darcid
#UCD14

2. Who are you?

3. Who am I?

4. Life is a design problem
So is your career
And your team

5. Specialist vs Generalist

6. T-Shaped People
http://chiefexecutive.net/ideo-ceo-tim-brown-t-shaped-stars-the-backbone-of-
ideoae%E2%84%A2s-collaborative-culture

7. Broken Comb
http://spin.atomicobject.com/2013/06/27/broken-comb-people/

9. Personal and Team Skills
• acceptance of critique
• accessibility and inclusive design
• active listener
• analytics (data analysis, AB testing, etc)
• animation/motion/video
• attention to detail
• big picture thinking
• cognitive psychology
• collaboration
• colour theory
• communication
• constantly seeking to improve designs
• constantly seeking to improve skills
• content strategy
• critiquing others' work
• curiousity
• design thinking
• desire to bring ideas to life
• empathy
• enthusiasm when challenged
• flexibility
• gestalt and unity theory
• having fun / enjoying work
• heuristic evaluation
• hierarchy in visual design
• honest
• HTML/CSS
• humility - know when you're right, and when you're wrong
• infographic design
• information architecture
• interaction design
• justify/defend decisions
• knowledge of usability theories
• lean design, agile delivery
• love for their craft
• not afraid to fail
• persona development
• pragmatism
• prototyping
• prototyping at multiple levels of detail and choosing the right fidelity for deliverables
• running workshops
• semiotics
• sharing knowledge and new information
• sketching
• sound design
• stakeholder management
• stays up to date with technology and trends
• story-telling
• team player
• technical understanding (platforms, code, etc)
• thinking outside the box
• time management
• typography
• understand other disciplines (product management, dev, marketing, etc)
• understanding of multi-device/channel context
• usability concepts
• usability testing/research (choosing the appropriate method and running it)
• user centered design
• wilingness to explore and inspire
• wireframing
• working with multi-disciplinary teams