How to create a Kick-ass in-house design team

Jon Wiley User Experience Designer, Google

Lisa Anderson Director of User Experience, Intuit
Irene Au Director of User Experience, Google
Edward Garana Creative Services Manager, Hoover’s Inc
Tjeerd Hoek Director of User Experience, Microsoft

Synopsis: Be clear with your staff, your co-workers, and yourself. Define your limits. Define the areas you want to improve. Nurture the people you have and take every measure to keep them on staff. Recruit the right kinds of people in the right way.

It is imperative (Lisa; Intuit, turbo tax, quicken) to set up your employees’ workflows in the right way. The people who need to be specialists should be focused, with a strong manager. Someone who is looking at the brand should be far away from the trenches, and looking at the big picture.

Jon asks: how do you nurture your employees.
Lisa–helping the passionate people through mentorship

Process, libraries, brand elements, are all key. All of these things, used effectively, can help take these things out of the conflict equation and promotes clarity for the team.

Give outsourcers enough information.

Set a metric for success and set the emphasis on the user.

Get out of complaining and whining and be an advocate and an inspirational. Someone must be an inspiration or else the team will essentially not grow.

Never try to own the design or break away from the other parts of the company. Don’t protect people who are not willing to improve.