UX Management: developing and growing yourself and a team of user experience professionals
Sunday, October 21, 1:00-4:30 PM
by Margaret Hanley
Many people who move into a Management role within a User Experience (UX) group are left to work out by themselves ways to lead, manage and develop both their team and their practice. We are not given the guidance on how to create favourable circumstances where our staff can work or shown how to “enable” our staff to design and develop the web site or products that we are tasked to create.
This course helps provide managers, at whatever stage of their career, the ability to put in place procedures and environments for development. The course will also help managers to work out Personal Development Plans with team members; identify the correct skills mix for a team; talk through common problems as a group and remember that they need to take time for themselves and their development.
It is made up of four parts; three focusing on the development of the team, the individual and the manager and the last focusing on the development and leadership of the UX practice.
The course will be taught as a combination of lecture, exercises and discussion.
For example, as a UX manager I have dealt with many management challenges, from non-performing staff to allocation; from dealing with becoming a manager - not a practitioner, to realising that the organisation cannot provide senior practitioners with a continued development path. In this course, I will provide a number of case studies based on those experiences that the participants will firstly discuss in small groups and then discuss as a whole group identifying ways to address the problems.
In previous courses that I have taught, I have also encouraged participation throughout the course with question times at the end of each session. This gives participants a chance to write down their burning questions throughout the course so that I can then review and answer them at the end of the day.
I will also provide as a supplement to the core notes for the course
- A list of links to key management books for UX professionals
- A list of web sites and discussion groups for UX management issues
- Documents that can be used as templates for development like Personal Development Plans, Skills audits and Interview questions and exercises
Workshop details
Learning objectivesTo provide new and experienced managers with a management framework that can be built upon over the years; lots of discussion about the pitfalls and the start of a community of UX managers who can provide support to each other
This is a very hands-on course with exercises, discussion and interaction. It cannot be completed with an hour and half.
This is a half-day course. A suggested agenda is below.
- Developing your UX team (1.00 – 2.00)
- What is a User Experience team?
- Identifying skills do you need to build your team based on your situation – discussion plus exercise
- Developing the right composition of a team
- Interviewing and job descriptions
- Allocating team members to projects as development and to get the work done
- Developing each team member (2.00 – 3.00)
- Introduction to assessment and development plans
- Identifying individual skills strengths and weaknesses
- Finding a specialisation
- Identifying career paths and growing members of your team to move to the next level - discussion plus exercise
- Developing technical vs. soft skills
- Developing their confidence and abilities
- Wrap up questions
- Developing yourself (3.00 – 3.30)
- What your role?
- Developing your career while managing a team – discussion plus exercise
- Finding a coach and mentor
- Finding your peer group
- Identifying your strengths and weaknesses
- Wrap up questions
- Developing and leading your UX work in the organisation (3.30 – 4.30)
- Identifying the type of UX is needed in your organisation
- Overlaps and connections with technology, design, project management; what deliverables do we create, what activities do we do?
- Negotiate your way around the politics – discussion plus exercise
- Creating proposals for work
- Identifying projects that need UX team help
- Wrap up questions
Many practitioners of usability and user experience find themselves moving into management as they move up the corporate ladder, without the training to do this effectively. As someone who has managed teams for the last seven years, I have learnt on the job from other talented managers, some management training and a lot of mistakes. My aim with this course is to provide managers with a framework that can be built upon over the years; lots of discussion about the pitfalls and the start of a community of UX managers who can provide support to each other.
The course is designed for User Experience or Information Architecture managers at all levels. There will be both information for those who are new to management and those who have been managing team for a number of years and want to share their experiences and learn new techniques.
It is not designed for new members to the information architecture or user experience profession; I will not be teaching any information architecture techniques; only management within the information architecture context.
Each participant must come ready to discuss experiences in their working life. I would also like to do a pre-conference survey to help me understand the composition of the audience and make sure that I focus on topics that are most needed by the participants.
About Margaret Hanley
Margaret Hanley is the Head of Consulting at the Web Technology Group in London, UK. She has worked as a User Experience lead and manager over the last seven years in companies ranging from Yellow Pages in Australia and Argus Associates in the US; to Information Architecture Team Leader and Executive Producer at the BBC in the UK and Head of User Experience of DNA, a division of Avenue A| Razorfish. Throughout her time as a manager she has managed teams as large as 50 and as small as three. Her credo is to learn from as many situations as possible especially from your mistakes.