Jeff Gothelf, a user experience designer working for TheLadders.com, blogs for us about project management and UX careers and trends.
Several folks have written recently about how to operate a design team of one. Those posts, like this one by Leah Buley, discuss the tools, methodologies and tips/tricks for successfully pulling off a UX practice with only one practitioner. But once you’ve got the tools in place, you need to make sure your “team of one” also succeeds politically. First, you’ll need to convince the organization to fund your work and provide you with the bare essentials you need to function. Once those are in place, the onus is on you to prove that those funds were well spent. The following tactics will help keep your team funded, appreciated, and (with luck) expanding beyond its single member in the future.
Metrics: your new best friend
The beauty of online work is that it’s measurable. If it’s measurable, it’s controllable. And if it’s controllable, then you are its master. The first thing you should do is set benchmarks. Use the company’s reporting tools or free options like Google Analytics to gain a sense of where things stand now. As you begin to operate, report to the rest of the organization how the metrics are changing based on the work you’re doing. Make sure that as key performance indicators (KPIs) trend up and to the right, the UX work you’re doing gets the proper credit.
Transparency: not just for overhead projectors anymore!
For your team of one to succeed, everyone (yes, the entire organization) needs to know what you’re up to and why. Write a weekly internal newsletter, keep a blog, or update the company wiki with regular insight into your activities. Did you talk to customers this week? Tell the company what they said. Did you launch a new feature? Point it out. Are you planning an overhaul of a critical component in the coming months? Make sure everyone knows. By demystifying your work–and make no mistake about it, many organizations still view UX and design as “magic”–you bring others in your company closer to the work. After first getting interested in your work, they’ll eventually feel they have a stake in your success.
Brag: no one else will do it for you
Publicize your wins. Every time a KPI target is hit and that success was driven by good UX and design work, let the rest of the company know. Use whatever techniques you develop to broadcast your successes. If other channels exist (an all-hands meeting, for example), try to get on the agenda. Companies often struggle to fill up the agenda for those meetings, so a two-minute talk about UX and its successes will likely be welcomed. Use whatever opportunities arise to tout your successes.
Together, these three tactics will help a fledgling UX practice gain support, succeed, and hopefully grow beyond the initial one-person staffing allotment. The goal of these tactics is to bring UX into similar dialogues as other disciplines through explicit measurement. If conversations about UX happen regularly, the “magic” and mysterious element of design starts to wear away, and others outside the team will have an interest in your department’s work. If you can solidify others’ buy-in with constant reminders of your successes, your department’s growth is all but assured.
