By Michael Carbaugh

Finding a sense of belonging across disciplines as a design team of one

After spending a decade on large enterprise design teams as a user experience designer, I couldn’t shake my curiosity. I wanted to know what it would be like to lead design at a small company that aligned closely with my values and interests. With fortunate timing and a little bit of luck, I’ve been able to spend the last year as a solo UX designer for a summer camp management software company. While I was ecstatic to find my dream position, I struggled to let go of the fear of feeling isolated knowing I’d be a design team of one.

I assumed that I’d need to exhibit more self-reliance and independence at work than I had as part of a large design team. How wrong I was! All it took was working on my first major feature that incorporated the input of many different roles, a revamped email communication tool. Starting out uncovering our user’s needs and the pain points, I quickly realized that when I made design practice more inclusive and collaborative with colleagues on other teams we all became more engaged. It also enabled design to have a larger impact than I could make on my own. While I still have plenty to learn through trial and error, I’ve recognized three themes that have helped create a sense of belonging and community for design within the company at large.

1 / Make Process Visible

When design projects lack clarity, feel overwhelming, or are restricted by tight timelines, it’s far too easy to feel the need to retreat and work quietly behind the scenes to progress as fast as possible. I’ve learned that falling into this trap leaves my colleagues yearning for more context and collaboration. Creating products should always be a team effort.

By making the design process transparent across teams, trust and confidence is built that design is doing the right thing. And even more importantly, visibility encourages colleagues to play a role in an inclusive environment where everyone’s input can make the product better. A job title isn’t a barrier to embracing design thinking, and participating in it together builds a stronger community. By sharing artifacts such as user research findings, pros and cons of different design approaches, and user feedback, colleagues also become more engaged by understanding the ‘why’ behind projects. Our work has a direct impact on our
users and understanding that impact on every project unites our team around a
common purpose.

2 / Identify Common Skills and Interests

As a designer supporting multiple products, trying to incorporate methods from the full lifecycle of the design process is a tough balancing act. With many design projects running in parallel,, there simply isn’t enough time to spend with end users for research, or to gather analytics for feedback. As I began to realize how similar my mindset on projects was to colleagues in other disciplines, I tried teaming up with them to see if we could make more progress together.

Our product managers have a deep knowledge of our users, schedule conversations with them, and are eager to know our product designs will achieve their intended results. By collaborating on user tests to evaluate in-progress designs and running through best practices, we’ve been able to distribute the way we handle user testing to get more done than I could have alone  — and we also gain empathy for the responsibilities we have in our individual roles.

3 / Visualize the Future

As designers, we know why our field is so valuable, but it’s not always easy to communicate that value to others. One of my responsibilities has been to use design to support our product strategy, creating prototypes of where we want to be in the next few years. It’s been exciting to dream a little bit and take a step back from the details of typical projects. By accompanying our vision not with words or numbers but visual representations of where we want to go, we’ve ended up with many outcomes I wouldn’t have anticipated. 

Many teams that designers don’t interact with as often, like sales and support, have said that they better understand where we’re headed and feel excited about the future. In addition to that, having more visibility into our design strategy has helped to validate and evaluate what we think is important in the future. I’ve had the fortune of hearing many types of feedback directly: our direction will help ease the burden on support teams facing frequent challenges, our products will be easier to showcase when we sell them, and our collaborative efforts will spark new ideas.

What’s Next?

Being a UX design team of one in a technology company may appear limiting or isolating, but  there’s a tremendous opportunity to create a sense of belonging for design by engaging colleagues in other disciplines. Embracing the principles of design thinking applies not just in the way we approach design work, but also in how we engage within the organization as a whole. I don’t just want to create products our end users love (though that’s certainly rewarding), I want to build a workplace where my colleagues feel valued and involved in design.