Role Description

TLDR;

• You are a lead. This means you will act as a communicator, mentor, and will be able to jump in and aid in design at any point in the process.
• Being a lead does not mean you will design for your team, or speak for them in every situation. You should encourage your designers to gain the skills necessary to be a design lead.
  • Try to help them understand their own strengths and weaknesses
• Approach your designers like a friends (so they feel comfortable coming to you for help) but maintain a balanced relationship, because you may have to push deadlines and keep them on track
• Your meetings should roughly include:
  • Critique meetings with your designers (both brand and UX in one meeting)
    • Weekly, (~1 hour)
  • Design Lead meetings (with Chief designer and all design leads)
    • Weekly, (~30 min)
  • Team meetings (with your PL, everyone on team)
    • Weekly, (30 min - 1 hour)
  • Design Reviews (with Chief Designer and your design team)
    • Bi-weekly / Monthly / etc. (1 hour)
  • Client Meetings (with you and your client, only designers as needed)
    • Set these up as needed, be in communication with your PL about this

Roles & Responsibilities

• Lead team members in technical design work

  Solid understanding of Figma

  • Understanding of design thinking (how to problem solve within design contexts, and communicate this understanding to your designers)

• Communicate with the chief designer and software director to plan, schedule, and run design reviews which provide feedback to team members on a regular basis

  • You will hold a weekly design critique with just your team (including both UX and Brand design), you should encourage your designers to be comfortable with you and active in critique
  • Schedule design reviews with the chief designer. This can be anywhere from bi-weekly to monthly. It’s up to you to decide what you think your designers need.
    • In design reviews, we will discuss larger themes of the designs, and attempt to understand if the designs are succeeding with UX goals and client goals

• Assist the project lead in developing a semester long project scope, and ensuring the team stays on track to fulfill the scope

  • I will provide resources to help you set up the scope, and I will set up 1:1 meetings with you to help!

• Assist in interviewing, evaluating, and hiring build studio designers for their team during December and January

  • Y’all should’ve received an invite for tomorrow’s first meeting. More info about hiring will be disclosed during the meeting.

• Communicate with the project lead to help create and delegate development goals for the team over the course of the semester

  • One goal for this project is to make sure that design handoff to engineers is as seamless as possible. In the past, we have attempted to do this through many avenues, the most recent being handoff pages within our Figma file.
    • Another option for this is using separate “dev-handoff” Figma files with only dev handoff materials.
  • This is something I’m hoping to brainstorm further in our weekly Design Lead Meetings!

UX Design Skills Matrix

• Read this article and fill out this “UX Design skills Matrix” before our first 1:1 meeting

  • This will help me understand where I can provide support, and give a basis to establish goals for the semester!