Elevating Your Design Team - Course overview
Learn to build a highly effective design team from the ground up by defining your team’s identity and building your ideal team structure. Raise the bar on quality through shared norms and learn to grow careers and hire right.
Who this course is for
From Senior UX and Design Managers to UX and Design Executives.
Design Operations Leaders and Chiefs of Staff.
Choose your course time slot
Tailored to your individual needs, select the perfect time slot for you and book the course.
Assess the composition and engagement of your design team
Lead a team through the creation of a Team Charter
Determine the best structure for your team’s objectives
Define your teams roles and practices
Connect the work of design to what the business values
Create career architectures for flexible development
Conduct effective recruiting and hiring processes
Find the people who are the best fit for your team
Peter Merholz has worked at the intersection of design, technology, and humans for over 25 years. Currently, he’s an independent consultant focused on improving the effectiveness of design teams. His clients include JP Morgan Chase, Contentsquare, The New York Times, Roblox, and Target.
He co-founded the user experience consultancy Adaptive Path in 2014, before serving as a design executive at Groupon, OpenTable, Capital One and Kaiser Permanente. Peter co-wrote Org Design for Design Orgs, still the premier book on building in-house design teams, and co-hosts Finding Our Way, a podcast on design leadership.
Guest Lecturers
Lena is the founder of kuːl, a boutique agency helping designers land great roles and helping teams finding great designers.
Venessa is Global UX Director at Dye & Durham. She has developed a career framework that has significantly impacted her teams’ growth and success.
As a fractional design executive, Jose works with Chief Design Officers and Global Heads of Design as a strategic advisor, helping them solve critical problems in their organizations.
Want more details? Get your personal consultation session!
Kickoff session
We start the course with a live kick-off session to get to know each other and set you up for success.
Week 1: Assess and define your design team
Learn how to understand and lay the groundwork for your team to make a big impact. We’ll assess your team’s health and performance and show you how to define your team with a charter. We’ll finish by creating a change management action plan to guide you moving forward.
Week 2: Plan the organizational structure
Explore how to structure your team for optimal impact. We’ll review standard organizational structures for internal design teams and propose a new kind of hybrid structure. We’ll then discuss the shortcomings of most product development organizations and why and how you can organize with user experience in mind. We finish by looking at possible best practice patterns to see what it suggests when considering reorganizing your team.
Week 3: Build a flexible and robust career architecture
Shift your mindset from ‘ladder’ to ‘trellis’ as we see how you can create a career framework built on principles of being flexible, employee-centered, and fair. You’ll learn how to develop a pragmatic set of skills, how to define the practices your team performs, and how to set appropriate expectations for levels and career advancement.
Week 4: Recruit and hire effectively
Understand how best to recruit and hire for your design team, the importance of thoughtful planning ahead, structuring conversation with candidates to get the most out of each step, and knowing when you’re ready to hire.
Week 5: Clarify the value of design
To realize their full potential, design teams must clearly define and communicate the value they bring. This starts with understanding what the business truly values, which isn’t always as obvious as it seems. Through stakeholder analysis and maturity mapping, you’ll identify where your team fits in the broader organizational context. You’ll then explore how to link design efforts to business outcomes using UX metrics, product goals, and lightweight financial modeling.
Closing session
We end our course with a live session to celebrate your achievements and onboard you to the iF DESIGN ACADEMY alumni community.