Managing a UX Team of One (as a non-design leader)

At development-focused tech companies, there are often less resources available to invest in design teams than in engineering teams. That’s not to say that designers aren’t critical to the product development process - in fact, having a well run design department is what separates many successful product launches from flopped ventures.

The result of this balance between available resources and needs at a small to mid-sized tech company is the UX team of one.

Many UX and UI professionals are comfortable working as the sole designer at a company nowadays. From the perspective of company management, it seems like a win to have one designer that is capable of tackling all of the design needs of the organization (and in many cases it is a win!). With that said, utilizing the “one designer approach” has its limitations and risks, especially for a manager with little-to-no design experience. In cases of employing one designer, the vast majority of the time there are massive inefficiencies in design-specific operations (or DesignOps). These can be mitigated by understanding, planning, and implementing industry DesignOps standards that can be adopted by your one person design department - just as it’s utilized at large scale design departments at FAANG companies. 

Understanding DesignOps 

A solo designer tends to be so focused on output that they seldom have time to review current processes, documentation, or anything that doesn’t require moving pixels around Figma for that matter.

The designer can’t be expected to fall behind on software projects to prioritize these operational tasks, and if management doesn’t have a deep understanding of DesignOps, things can get bogged down pretty quickly. 

Depending on the leadership structure of your organization, it’s possible that whoever is directly managing your designer is not experienced in design, and might not know where to look for inefficiencies. Becoming a DesignOps professional is not always realistic for management, so the key here is really to bridge the gap between designer and manager. This can be done by:

1. Designers regularly reporting on standards, metrics, and results in a way that non-designers can understand
2. Managers asking abundant questions to better understand the current needs of the designer without challenging the designers way of working
3. Gathering cross-functional feedback from other teams (ie. developers) to see if any design inefficiencies are creeping into other areas of the software creation process
4. Bringing in outside help to audit current processes and create custom DesignOps solutions

Using DesignOps to Plan Ahead

Design operations don’t just cover day to day processes. With one designer working at your organization, either full-time or as a contractor, it’s critically important to have a contingency plan for if they leave - or a growth plan if you’re ready to begin growing your design team. 

Let’s take a look at two examples where DesignOps becomes vital to the future of your design department. 

Example 1:

A marketing SaaS company has 15 employees and 1 designer handling all of the user research, UX, and UI for the entire product. She’s been at the company for over four years (doing an excellent job) and understands how to communicate with each developer individually and what each of their preferences are around handoff notes and documentation. Operations have been running smoothly, but she ends up giving her two weeks notice and leaving the company. It isn’t fair to expect the new designer to be able to seamlessly take on the open role, because they haven’t spent years solidifying unique handoff processes with each developer - and those processes aren’t recorded anywhere. The lack of a standardized handoff process has never been an issue so nobody has ever looked to improve it. Now, with a new designer and disgruntled developers, an expensive and complicated challenge lies ahead to realign the new designer with the existing development team. 

Example 2:

A mobile fitness application has 8 full-time employees. The company has a full-time junior designer, since that is all the company could budget for at the time of hiring. The junior/mid-level employee is doing well (given the circumstances), but it is clear that the company is lacking design maturity. Now, the company is in a position to hire a senior designer. A lack of planning and understanding around DesignOps has created a situation where the company doesn’t know how to hire a designer, what to look for in a portfolio, what questions to ask in an interview, and what steps to take during onboarding. They make a poor hiring decision, and the junior designer (along with the entire design of the fitness application) is being guided by a designer that shouldn’t be in that position. In addition to the immediate damage to the company, it ends up taking longer to identify that the hire was even an issue because there is a general lack of understanding of DesignOps at the management level.

Planning for DesignOps can be done in a few ways:

1. Standardize processes as much as possible, rather than going with “what works best” individually
2. Document any processes, even if every current member on your team knows them
3. Create all design roles for different levels of experience along with hiring guidelines, interview plans, and onboarding documentation for each - even if they don’t exist yet in your organization (this is also helpful for promoting current designers and showing growth trajectory)

Implementing DesignOps for One Designer

Designers (especially at the senior level) have ways that they adamantly prefer working, as is the case with most other creative professions. As a good leader (especially one with no design background), it’s important not to be a hurdle for them to complete their work properly and quickly. 

With a lack of design expertise, your job should be viewed more as a “facilitator” than an “enforcer” of design operations. This can be done in a bunch of different ways, but at the very least:

• Budget time for your current designer to reflect on their own processes and allow them to brainstorm solutions to inefficiencies that they see
• Create a collection of documentation that goes over every aspect of your current design operations
• Keep note of every tool that is being used by designers, and stay up to date on the latest releases in this space
• Have recurring meetings with your designer to discuss high-level and operational items (this should be separate from a design critique or review meeting)
• Create a 1, 2, and 5 year plan for design at your company (what roles may be filled, how many team members, etc.)
• Have plans in place to develop your current designers, and allow them to continue growing (they don’t have a design manager, so investment may need to be made in courses or design events)
• Create metrics that are understood clearly by both designers and managers to keep up to date on what is/isn’t working for design
• Bring in a third party, like Krumware, to evaluate and improve DesignOps at your company