Notes on where we are, and where we want to be

Design Team Structure

Centralized Team of UX, with squads.  1 Product Designer or UX Writer can span across 2 squads at a time.

Squads and Platforms

Squad 1 = 1PM > 1PD > 1 UX Writer > 4-5 Engineers

Squad 2 = 1PM > 1PD > 4-5 Engineers

One Product Designer will cover the web experience, mobile web, and app.  Our app is a web app, not a native app, so one PD can offer full coverage across a product and platform. Product Designers do their own research with the help of the team and mostly me to structure and execute studies surveys and usability testing.

Hiring Product Design Generalists

We are hiring Product Design generalists, matching them based on skill level to the right squad. 1-2 years exp required on a SaSS product.  Visual design not going to be a necessary core strength because our design system and UX (user journey, wireframes, flows) are the higher prioritized skillset.  They can rely on the more senior designers and design system to guide and fill in on visual.

UX Writer - floating

Hiring 1 UX Writer to span across 2 squads that need it the most- Tackles Product Marketing Ad hoc requests as needed

Design System- Dedicated resource 2 Designers manage the design system, each person has 1 dedicated day a week each.

• all design system updates go through the publishing done by this team, always reviewed with the group first

Visual and UI Design

Primarily set and established by senior designer, library is created.

Interns and Co-ops can help manage marketing design requests and smaller visual requests from the team for icons, illustrations. One central library for all of those assets, a lot of reused elements are shared with marketing and PD to create consistency.

Product Rotation

I would ideally want to start rotating product designers into different verticals once a year for the designers to keep them learning and growing into new areas.

Skills matching

Keep skills balanced on a squad, build a great team not a team of greats.