Expanding the UX Team
I decided to expand the team, enhancing the capabilities and strength of the UX team. In a six-month plan, three members and a dedicated UX Researcher and UX Writer were added to the UX team. Currently, the Commercial UX team consists of four designers, one UX researcher, one UX writer, and myself as the team leader.
Revamping the UX Decision-Making Culture
It was time to revise the decision-making process. This is how the department used to make decisions:
In a three-month plan, I collaborated with a committee consisting of Design, Research, and Product teams, and through meetings with stakeholders, gradually gained their trust for the correct decision-making process. As shown below, the new model is based on a five-stage design thinking process.
Internal Culture of the UX Team
With the expansion of the design team, to better advance processes and maximize the capacity and capabilities of the team, I devised the following workflow for the UX team to create greater coordination among different teams (Design, Research, and Writing) and foster a stronger team spirit:
1. Cross-Functional Collaboration:
Simultaneous presence of Design, Research, and Writing teams in a meeting where the issue is to be delivered to the UX team, that helps to have a unified approach to UX problem-solving
2. UX Team Strategy:
An internal UX team meeting to select the design responsible, decide whether research is needed, and estimate each task.
3. Synergistic Workflow:
Effective collaboration between Design, Research, and Writing teams to prevent task interference and maximize productivity.
4. Project Lifecycle Meetings:
Routine meetings for each project, including brainstorming sessions, solution demos at various stages for all team members, weekly updates, retrospective and lessons learned meetings after each project, if necessary.
5. Fostering Growth and Progress:
Increasing team seniority and creating a sense of progress among team members when achieving set goals.
6. Streamlining Onboarding:
Establishing a clear and documented onboarding process for new team members.
Enhancing stronger relationships among design, development, and product teams
To deliver the final output of the Design team more accurately and with fewer ambiguities to the Development team, I introduced a new set of standards within the Design team:
1. UX Documentation:
In addition to tracking project progress in Jira, I asked team members to create documentation for each project based on a predefined template. The general structure of the documentation begins with a brief history of the project, followed by a chronological list of tasks performed on the project. Finally, the chosen and final solution is presented, and after the project's final launch, the results obtained from the project are added to the documentation.
2. Improving the Standard of Delivering Final Designs to the Development Team:
By making the design system interactive and ultimately providing a fully interactive prototype along with a guide document to the Development team for all projects, we were able to more effectively communicate all aspects of the design and new flows, both during grooming and planning meetings and when developers were implementing the Design team's solutions.
3. Enhancing the UX Quality Assurance Process:
Reviewing the previous process of examining the implemented flows by the Development team, identifying issues that cause the final result to be lengthy and inaccurate, and proposing solutions to make this process more efficient and effective.
