Session notes: Scaling UX Past the Size of Your Team

Day 4 of Enterprise Experience 2020 began with Abbey Smalley and Sylas Souza, Directors of Product Design at Target, discussing scaling UX past the size of their teams.

Scaling internal tools

Abbey kicked off by the presentation by sharing about the internal tools space at Target. Her team had eight designers to handle over 200 internal tools, with more partners asking for UX support. It seemed like a great problem to have.

Upon asking for increased funding to hire more designers, she received a lot of no’s. Leadership told her to do her best with what she had. This generated a sense of feeling undervalued or unsupported. The task of managing all internal tools was impossible with only 8 designers.

Ruminating on the pushback

Further reflection about the responses she received when requesting resources resulted in the realization that…

  1. She had made the request from her perspective and focused only on what she needed to succeed
  2. She did not take the time to understand what her cross-functional partners and leaders cared about

Thinking like a designer

Abbey approached the situation like a design problem. She conducted user interviews to understand her stakeholders’ needs. During this listening tour, she learned that stakeholders wanted a seamless experience for customers and to understand how the UX team measures success. These newfound connections and insights enabled Abbey to tie her goals of growing her UX team with the goals of her collaborators. Requesting 3 – 5 designers for key areas proved a much more effective approach compared to asking for 100 to fix everything.

Lessons learned 

  • Learn what matters to your partners and connect your goals to what they care bout
  • If you don’t know what your stakeholders’ goals are, ask with curiosity

Progress not perfection

While it isn’t realistic to train an army of new designers, it’s possible to create advocates. These individuals can fight for the best experience for users while keeping in mind business outcomes. At Target, Abbey developed a Product Design Advocate Training program. It’s a two day in-person or three-and-a-half-day course online course that covers the following

  1. Measuring usability
  2. How to sketch ideas for alignment + create wireframes & prototypes
  3. How to conduct user interviews
  4. How to improve accessibility
  5. How to leverage design systems

These hands-on activities provide attendees with the courage and experience to try the techniques in the real world. Graduates of the course become some of the best UX ambassadors in the organization.

Lessons learned:

  • Don’t be afraid to start small to get things moving in the right direction
  • Meet teams where they’re at while making plans for what’s next
  • Don’t wait for 100% confidence to get moving  – then get feedback and iterate

Give to get

Lastly, no matter what your goal is, give to get. And give first. This builds trust and influence.

Scaling design systems

Next, Sylas detailed a case study on how he and his team scaled design systems at Target.

What is the design maturity at your org?

Step one is to take stock of the design maturity level at your organization. Here are the levels on the Design Ladder.

The evaluation process also uncovered personas for the team’s designers and developers.

Designers

  • Architect: functional and information architecture expert
  • Visual designer: brings sketches to life
  • Generalist: does both of the above

Engineers

  • Unsupported developer
  • Novice developer
  • UX-friendly developer

Lessons learned:

  • Seek to understand where your org/company is in terms of UX maturity
  • Have assumptions, validate them, and look for opportunities that will have the most impact first
  • Understand those who you will be designing for

Defining your Design Principles

Next, connect with your team to define the mission of your team and who you are; for Target’s design systems team, these principles are

  • Consistent
  • Intuitive
  • Configurable
  • Accessible

The above Design System emerged as a result of the collaboration. 

Partnerships

Build connections with cross-functional partners. In the spirit of giving and connection, Sylas facilitated design sprints for teams that had no designers.

Lessons learned:

  • Be willing to be influenced if you hope to influence others
  • Give without expecting to receive