Leading the Thinslices Product Design team

Thinslices’ Leadership Team reached out to me with clear goals: improve the current design career level system, validate if there’s a need for a UX Lead role inside the design team, and help find the right person to fill in that role. 

Getting Started

The collaboration took four months to complete.

First, I started assessing & evaluating the current status of the design team:

  • I found the team in a decentralized configuration. I started experimenting with a more centralized approach, but ultimately, it led naturally to a Matrix setup (a UX lead supervising and allocating designers inside separate product teams).

Before going deeper into the design culture of the team, I organized two workshops:

  • I held a workshop using a format provided by Nielsen Norman where the colleagues could map their skill sets to understand strengths and weaknesses.

  • I held a workshop to determine the daily and weekly activities’ duration. This way, I could understand how much time the members spent on design tasks, meetings learning, or administration.

Designing a meeting rhythm

I started organizing a team meeting rhythm to promote a healthy design culture.

Design Weekly

During this meeting, we reviewed all the design tasks in progress, checked the team vibe, did design critiques, and shared resources that could benefit the team toolbox.

Weekly 1:1

I met every week with one design member (each taking turns), and using a team happiness agenda, we shared success stories, learnings, challenges, or potential red flags.

Monthly Social Gathering

We would gather and socialize at the end of each month: beer hangouts, board game nights (UX/UI-themed games), and joining company parties.

Weekly Status

Each week I would present a team health status to the leadership team. If there were any red flags, I would signal them in time to allocate the right amount of commitment.

Creating the new design career level system

  • Career paths

    The design path was split into two tracks: craft and leadership. A designer could choose the craft track and excel in design or pursue a leadership role without any obligations or constraints after reaching a certain level.

  • Design Levels

    For each track, designers could evolve from Junior to Senior to Principal or Design Manager. Each level was carefully created to go along the path the designer pursues: being a specialist in their craft or an inspirational leader.

  • Design Sub-Levels

    The levels were structured using sub-levels to motivate and offer the chance to evolve each year. For example, before reaching Mid-level, a designer could advance first to Junior I, II, or III.

  • Design Criteria

    Each sub-level has corresponding criteria the designer needs to fulfill to advance in the career track. Depending on the level, the requirements can include product design, design research, design ops, or design leadership criteria.

  • Recommendations

    Each criteria item includes real-work examples of recommendations the designer could follow to upgrade to the next level. This way, the designer could pre-validate their work done so far and have a more precise status in mind.

  • Feedback

    At each stage completed of the design career level system (skill tree), I requested feedback from both the design team and part of the leadership team accountable for my supervision. This way, all parties involved were in sync and aligned.

Finding the right candidate

During this time, acting as lead for the team has concluded that a full-time role is needed. As my collaboration would be limited and coming to a close, I took the challenge to work with Thinslices’ HR team and find the next full-time UX Lead.

To start recruiting for the UX lead role, I created a series of assets to help with the interviewing process.

Interviews

The HR Manager and I did the interviews remotely and provided each candidate with feedback after each session.

Duration

Finding a match for the UX lead role took just one month to complete.

UX Lead practical test

I created a custom practical test where each team member is represented in a Pokémon-like trading card, and the candidate must answer questions based on real-life team scenarios using the properties of that card. 

UX Lead Interview Sheet

I created a template with questions matching the culture and scenarios within the actual design team and the expected responsibilities and experience.

Coaching the team to interview

Moreover, for other internal design roles (ex: Mid Product Designer), I trained the design team to prepare themselves for the interviews, including screening, evaluating, and interviewing candidates.