Job crafting for design teams
According to surveys, as much as 51% of the workforce is not engaged in their jobs.
When employees feel that they have no input on their company’s role, they have trouble staying engaged and feeling satisfied at work.
While there is no easy fix for this problem, one of the exercises proven very effective is job crafting. There are many ways to do this, and you can read more about it in the articles linked below or research further on your own, but here is a suggestion for how you can use job crafting to build a product design team.
Titlemania and unicorns
UX Designer, UX/UI, Product designer, Interaction designer, visual designer, CX Designer, UX Architect, Unicorn, Polymath. There are so many titles in our industry, and nobody knows what any of them mean until we start asking what it is they do.
There have been several attempts to come to a consensus about these titles. Still, part of the problem is that people are different and have different interests and don’t necessarily want to paint themselves into a specialist corner.
I say — forget the titles, it doesn’t matter what you call it!
I’ve been to conferences and seen design leaders present amazingly complicated strategies for building a good UX team, but I like simplicity, so here is my suggestion.
Together with your team, plot everybody’s skills into a skill and interest matrix. Use the matrix as a foundation also for building personal development plans and future team skills. When you are hiring, you know immediately where your weaknesses are, and you could even ask candidates to place themselves to see how they fit.
My chart is just an example, and you can put in whatever skills you need in your team, make it as granular as you wish, and cluster them as you see fit. You can also use the UX spectrum as your base if you prefer.
Read more about job crafting here:
Crafting a Job Revisioning Employees
Job Crafting Exercise Material
