Ahoj Linda, I've worked in a number of teams such as might interest you. All of them were small (<= 6 members), so I wouldn't want to theorise about how bigger teams would work.
The best situations for me have always been those in which the notion of a "UX team" is really a label used for convenience by human resources folks rather than a properly distinct business unit. That pours cold water on the ideas of those who like to 'build empires' but there you go. Maintaining a team as a kind of separate entity to developers or business analysts doesn't really work in my experience, usually because of the fact that what we do is still "alien" to a lot of people. I like to work in the tried-and-tested law firm format: a senior who provides leadership and also operates on a strategic level, a number of "associates" each with their specialities (interaction design, usability testing, requirements gathering) with some overlapping of course, and junior members who preferably "rotate" their duties to gain exposure to all parts of the process. I think junior team members don't get enough opportunities to develop themselves nowadays. It's important to encourage them to develop additional capabilities that can be utilised when they reach associate level and a kind of maturity in writing through their contributions to project documentation. Apart from feeling valued, they also respond well to being considered as upcoming experts in their areas. Discussions on this board and elsewhere have also highlighted the interesting angle of practising a methodology such as Agile or RUP. I'm working in a RUP regime at the moment and it's relatively new ground though much of it is common sense. It's always interesting to take what you know and make it work under the prevailing (and frequently different) business conditions, but in practical terms, it leads to an improved rapport between UX teams and the business/client which has been working this way for a lot longer. In this way, I once had to remodel a visual design team's business processes in order to meet ISO9001:2000 quality standards. You can probably imagine that, a UX professional sitting in seminars about feedback loops and kite marks, but there's actually a surprising amount of common ground in there with what we do everyday and I found myself really curious and increasingly keen despite myself! ;-) Thx, Mike Padgett www.mikepadgett.com >Hello everyone, >I am interested in learning / hearing about building UX teams. What makes a >³good² UX team? Have you been part of a ³great² UX design department? How >would you go about building an ³excellent² UXD team? > >If you will share your stories and ideas, I¹d appreciate it greatly. > >Thank you in advance!! >________________________________________________________________ >Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! >To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe >List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines >List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
