On the one hand, being a designer is a creative profession, which implies a certain creativity and informality. On the other hand, creativity alone is not the only way to go, so the profession has long had its own standards and norms, its own technologies and approaches. This is especially true when it comes to the corporate development of interfaces for web services or mobile applications.
Therefore, we can conclude that the process of managing a team of designers will be largely identical to managing any other team of professionals, with a few additions and nuances.
We looked at the general principles of working with a team earlier in ‘The role of the team leader‘.
Here we will only discuss the specifics of working with designers.
Tip 1. Stop doing everything yourself
In 90% of cases, the most experienced and responsible designer is appointed to lead the design team. For some people, this can be both a serious surprise and a problem.
The fact is that management is not at all like a creative process, although sometimes you have to be creative. But the list of tasks changes dramatically and, above all, the responsibility grows.
What do conscientious professionals do when they realise they are missing deadlines? That’s right, they start working twice as hard so as not to disappoint anyone.
And… this is the biggest mistake inexperienced managers make.
They have to organise their work first and foremost. And they have to achieve results with other people’s hands. This is hard to get used to, and even harder to implement. Again and again, you will have to fight the sudden urge to do or redo something yourself. Don’t do it.
The exception is very urgent projects, where it’s too late to delegate fixes.
Tip 2. Divide and conquer
It’s a truth as old as time. When you have a large team, you need to establish a clear hierarchy. There’s nothing you can do about it, there’s a reason why the rules of leadership exist. It’s our nature, it’s a necessity.
Even if you are uncomfortable with vertical organisation, you can take a more creative approach — build a hierarchy of responsibility.
This is where more experienced designers work on the most important and responsible tasks, while less experienced people work on less important tasks.
For example, many teams practice a hierarchy of interns, junior designers, designers, senior and lead designers. There are five steps to achieving zen 🙂
For example, interns may be assigned to work only on established design schemes and, for greater control, may be assigned a mentor from among the senior or lead designers.
While the intern-mentor pairing may seem irrational to the average employee, both sides of the process will benefit. The senior team members will be able to pass on experience and concepts, while the junior team members will be able to get up to speed with the team, move with the flow and increase their productivity.
Tip 3. Improvement tasks
Like any other IT person, designers value professional skills. It’s one thing to read books, study a generic programme or work with a mentor, but it’s quite another to have a real ‘battle’ project. Someone can immediately lose their creativity or simply get confused by the responsibility that comes with it.
What do athletes do to set new records? That’s right — they train.
Creativity and other design skills can and should be developed through practice. If you want newcomers to feel comfortable in real projects, to be confident in their abilities and not get lost — train them with practical tasks.
Simulate abstract technical tasks and accept the results as if they were real tasks to be performed. For example, ask them to design the interface of a mobile application of a non-existent bank for aliens from the planet Omicron 8.
All these ideas may well be useful in real projects, but a little later. Someone will take their mistakes into account in the future. As an alternative to fictional projects, there are various challenges, design marathons and other ways to unleash the potential of designers.
Tip 4. Develop visual experience
In order to develop their professional outlook, keep abreast of current trends and stay on trend, professional designers should spend a certain percentage of their time studying successful and less successful products.
Established professionals do this automatically. It’s harder for newcomers. But if you’re managing a team, you can’t afford for any of your subordinates not to be professionals. So it’s in your interest to make this process work.
That’s why you need to set aside time to discuss fresh and interesting niche solutions together. Ideally, you can make a list of successful and unsuccessful features implemented in the analysed product, to think through what could be improved and how, what the result would be, and more.
If you have a really specific niche, it is relevant to appoint one or more people to spend time researching and reviewing changes in your niche and related trends. The output will be a digest of sorts, with links for those who wish to delve into the details.
Some material from this digest can be presented for discussion.
Tip 5. Use a shared space to run and discuss projects
All moves should be written down. Communicating via Telegram or other messengers is good and convenient, but only for solving personal problems.
Business correspondence, especially in the case of a design team, where bright ideas can arise, must be linked to the subject of the discussion, i.e. the task.
The more tasks, the more chats, messages, ideas… To avoid getting lost in all this, you need to structure and separate tasks.
Special software and services are available for this. Some people use a bundle of different services, but this is not quite right. Ideally, tasks can be set, controlled and discussed in a single window, preferably without renting your own server and other inconvenient issues related to hardware and software installation.
You can use Projecto for just such a pool of turnkey tasks.
This is a Russian task manager that works in a cloud infrastructure with ready-made mobile applications and a user-friendly interface.
Instead of saying a thousand words, it’s better to give Projecto a try. It is completely free and does not require any registration or complicated actions.
