From the IA Summit 2014 site: The design team for a large experience design agency has been growing at an alarming rate over the last year and has reached a point of critical mass. The balance between utilisation, quality, and thinking time has been lost. Roles and responsibilities do not respond to the need to distribute and delegate the design work across the team. In short, the team is at breaking point and it’s starting to show. Experience designers working on long-term projects are lost to the studios in the corner. New starters aren’t getting the support they need. Seniors are being dragged across multiple projects while still being resourced on delivery. Heads of design practice are losing sight of everything. They’re even losing their sight. This is a story about recognising the pain points in an evolving design team before they have serious impact on the team, the client relationships and the company as a whole. We will talk about the challenge faced when beginning to think about the restructuring the team to support a long-term, extensible practice, dealing with promotion, recruitment, work/life balance, and close collaboration with the rest of the agency. It’s a success story. But with the bad bits left in. Attendees can learn about the simple steps we went through to re-engineer our design team to focus on quality and sustainability, rather than delivery. We’ll talk about how we introduced a team hierarchy to enable cascading ownership and accountability to alleviate single points of stress. We’ll also cover specific role definitions and responsibilities and how the team integrates with the rest of the agency and the joys of resourcing and team management. Original session page: http://2014.iasummit.org/architecting-a-sustainable-experience-design-team-for-long-term-growth/

1. ARCHITECTING A
SUSTAINABLE
EXPERIENCE
DESIGN TEAM FOR
LONG-TERM
GROWTH

2. @timcAynes

3. interaction design

4. design

5. I hate it
when people
just put
words on
the screen
and read
them out

6. because that
might get a
bit, like, you
know,
boring for
you, the
audience

7. I might

8. I will

9. 21

10. 14

11. 3

12. false
pretence

13. (photo of impossibly happy conference
goers)

14. actually, I did
spend hours

15. what are you
doing?

20. 5

21. Structure
Flat

22. Structure
Tall

23. Structure
Balanced

24. Structure
(Single extensible model)

25. Structure
(Single extensible model with a number 3 on
it)
33

26. Structure
(Extend diagram to show lines of
mentoring)

28. Structure
(growing team diagram)

29. Structure
(growing team diagram)

30. Structure
(growing team diagram)

31. Structure
(growing team diagram)

32. Structure
(growing team diagram)

33. Structure
Pathways

34. (diagram of structure with roles)

35. (diagram of structure with accountability
by roles)

36. massive thing about delivery
delivery

37. massive thing about delivery
change

38. Change
flexibility
sustainability
growth

39. hey. where’s
my nose?
dude. I’m
not sure.

40. Building a team
rule 2:

41. interaction dEsign
InfroMatin Arhciekture
Visual designering
InnoVationating
DREEMWEEVER

42. “I WAs involved in
a project where we
designEd a chair
out of nuns where
I was given the role
of nun direCtor”

43. ?

44. this
maynot
be
true

45. do I like you?

51. !
values &
culture

52. for
clarity,

53. !
for the
long
term,

54. !
i love you

56. !
people,not
process

59. architect the team
find the people
provide vision,
strategy & direction
love the people
let them do it

60. @timcAynes