Scott Berkun

We’re a pair of UX folks (a designer and a usability engineer). We’ve teamed up to turn our team around, but despite our awesome talent combo, we’re spinning our wheels. The team had the good sense to hire both of us, but is fixated on tiny, short term, miniature UI developments. Big architecture work is added to the schedule easily, but all the UI bits are “tweak this”, “improve that”, or “provide a basic UI for new feature blah”.

Our team is smart and leaders are good – but they’ve never taken, or witnessed, a big bet on UI, despite the customer centric project goals. How do we use our powers, design or usability, to change our leadership psychology so that sizable UI/UX investments are part of the game?

– Superhero UX vs. the conservatives

Right now, our company is growing by leaps and bounds and an initiative has been put forth to reduce the time it takes a new hire to become productive. My question really is what approach have others seen work when it comes to getting new hires (fresh out of college/grad school) up to speed as usability engineers or designers?

How long does it typically take a new hire in your company to be completing projects on their own?  What topics are included in your training program and what format do those training sessions take (e.g., lecture style, one-on-one w/ a mentor, hands-on “lab” type training, etc.)?

While managing a small design team how does one manage both a strong design vision, and maintain a sense of collaboration and team ownership over that vision at the same time? How do you keep your team of real designers from becoming production crafts people when the design vision is quite strong from the beginning? Let’s assume for this thread that the strong vision is internal to the design teams and held and managed by the design manager.