How to Assemble a Winning UX Design Team

More and more businesses in the IT industry need an in-house UX design team. This usually happens with the increase in the number of services a company wants to offer on the market. Hiring outsourcers and freelancers might sound like a good idea at first, but this solution can soon turn out to be too complicated and inefficient. With this in mind, here’s how to build a strong UX design crew within your company.

UX Lead

This person will have two main roles: the supervisor of the UX team and its spokesperson. As such, he or she will ensure that everything within the team works smoothly and nicely. He will represent the team at company meetings and communicate with clients, as well. As the front man of your UX team, he or she needs to possess substantial knowledge of the industry. Also, this has to be an experienced person who knows how to manage both on the inside and the outside.

Finally, your UX lead should be willing to teach the other team members, improving their skills and productivity.

FrontEnd Developer

FrontEnd developers are in charge of making user-friendly graphical features based on the code contained in browsers and other tools. That’s why you need to find a person adept at using HTML 5, JavaScript, CSS3, and various codebases. As things are changing fast on the mobile market, this developer will need to be able to follow the trends and implement all the code changes. So, make sure to check the portfolios of all the candidates for this position. You should opt for someone who has some experience or at least knows how to do things properly.

UX-Researcher

Input data is an important aspect of every design process. You need to collect information about your client’s needs and their current graphic solutions. This is something that a UX-researcher does for a living. That’s why every UX design team needs such a professional on their payroll. When you know more about your client’s problems, it’s easier to come up with the right UX-strategy.

Apart from these a priorielements, UX-researchers usually organize and supervise design tests, and content placement. This means that your candidate should know how to interpret and use statistical data, as well.

Visual Designer

This role is close to the role of a traditional designer. This person chooses and arranges all the visual components of a graphic product. From colors and pictures to fonts and symbols, a visual designer is the creative powerhouse of every UX-team. Still, this professional will need to keep improving their skills because the design is changing a lot. The growth of the mobile market has led to an increase in the number of roles for visual designers.

According to an innovative bachelor degree in visual design, future professionals in this line of work will need to know how to handle design solutions for various niches. From IT-ventures to emerging small businesses, every serious business enterprise needs to have such a person in their team.

Interaction Designer

In this digitalized world, it’s important to supervise how people react to digital solutions. Also, design teams need to make changes on their products if they’re not user-friendly. This is where an interaction designer comes on stage. This role in UX-team ensures that digital tools provide services that are beneficial for their users. They need to focus on the layout and organization, as well as on the pace at which users can use their products.

It’s not easy to find a pure interaction designer because it’s a position that requires possessing knowledge of some other design areas, like visual designers and front-end developers.

It’s not easy to find a pure interaction designer because it’s a position that requires possessing knowledge of some other design areas, like visual designers and front-end developers. If you have any misgivings about potential candidates for this role, you can now even use a recruitment assessment tool to ensure you really hire a job-fit talent. 

Content Strategist

All these designers – and one developer – need to work within a certain time frame. Also, it’s necessary to have someone who will decide how and when to place the produced visual content. This is why you need a content strategist in your UX-team. This person will take care of the publishing schedule and editorial calendar. Also, he or she will create the textual content that will appear together with those visual solutions. If necessary, your content strategist will incorporate the vital SEO elements into your design project.

With a strong in-house UX design team your company can go a long way, both in terms of efficiency and cost-reduction.When you’re forming this team, it’s crucial to find the best experts for your specific business needs, who possess the proper skillset and experience for the role they’re going to play. Make sure to get the right people for all the roles described in this guide and let your business take off with flying colors.

Guest Poster – Jennifer Hahn Masterson

Jennifer Hahn Masterson is the Lead Content Strategist at Spread the Word Solutions, holding an MA degree in design management and communication. She is always doing her best to help her clients find their place in the ever so competitive business arena