Main conference presentation

How to manage a user experience team (without losing your mind)

Katrina Alcorn

Monday March 26 2007, 2:00 - 2:45PM

Chances are, if you’ve been working as a user experience architect (or information architect) for many years, you didn’t go to "information architecture school"” Maybe you studied anthropology or graphic design or journalism or library science. You fell into the work, and to your surprise and delight, you found that you liked it. Through trial and error, you actually got good at it. Likewise, many of us who rose in the ranks to become managers didn’t go to management school. Someone saw we were capable, they offered us the job, and we were off to the races. It was hard enough to master all the different skills involved in being a good user experience architect. Most of us are generalists. We need to know enough about technology to work with engineers. We need to know enough about visual design to work with designers. Every time we start a new project, we need to learn about our client’s business and their business problems, until we can recite them in our sleep. We need to be part designer, part psychologist, part researcher, part corporate therapist. We need to be able to write cogently, sketch our ideas so that even the most distracted marketing executives can understand them, and give killer presentations.

But managing a user experience team takes these skills to a whole new level.

• How do you find people who have potential to be as good at this work as (or even better than) you are?
• How do you inspire them to do their best work, and keep getting better?
• How do you handle a team member who is not performing?
• What if, (heaven forbid), you have to fire someone?
• How do you keep yourself inspired, when your job is to make the rest of your team look good?

These were some of the questions I had when I was hired as the director of a user experience group three years ago for an award-winning design agency in San Francisco. In those three years, I built the team from zero to an all-star group of a dozen full-time employees and long-term freelancers. Along the way, I learned a lot about creativity, human nature, and communication. Now I’m ready to share this hard-won knowledge with others in the field.

Whether you manage a UX team, or you’re just thinking about it, this presentation will give you practical advice grounded in real-world experience. It will incorporate interviews with other managers of UX teams from consulting agencies as well as in-house groups. If you’re thinking about becoming a manager, it may help you decide if the job is for you. And for experienced managers, you may confirm what you have learned on your own, and pick up some new ideas as well.