CHI 2012 Workshop

Call For Participation

Managing User Experience Teams:

Lessons from Case Studies and Establishing Best Practices 


Janice Anne Rohn — Vice President, User Experience, Experian
Dennis Wixon — User Research Lead, Business Products Division, Microsoft Corporation

Submission Deadline:  March 1, 2012
 

Workshop Overview

This workshop was held at CHI 2011 and was a resounding success. Participants cited it as one of the most interesting and impactful aspects of the conference, and were eager to participate in a workshop at CHI 2012. The results of this workshop were presented at a highly successful and highly attended SIG.

As user research and design teams have developed over the last 30 years, there has been an increasing interest in understanding how to manage HCI teams. New and experienced managers want to learn from each other by sharing experiences. This has been done though SIGs, panels and in collected works. This work usually focused on a single question or challenge and have provided valuable insights, but the conclusions from this work are often hard to find. They also tend to be hard to interpret and apply because of their different styles, approaches, and foci. In short, there has not been an effort to develop a cumulative knowledge of HCI management, nor has there been an effective consideration of the situational relevance or universality of some of these generalizations. For example, are some funding models uniformly better than others, or does the best model depend on situational factors?

At the CHI 2011 workshop, the participants created a prioritized list of themes that were most important to leading and managing User Experience teams. Due to the limited time, the top themes were discussed, with the goal to have a follow-on workshop to further discuss and create a body of knowledge, including best practices and guidance for the field. The format will be:

  1. Provide top themes from CHI 2011 workshop
  2. Ask the workshop candidates to provide a set of their guidelines for each of the top themes
  3. Provide a standard template for submissions
  4. Encourage participants from the previous year to participate, along with new participants
  5. Use selection criteria that are designed to encourage diversity
  6. Share submissions prior to the workshop
  7. Allocate two full days to the workshop to give the participants the maximum opportunity to interact, share, and create a common set of guidelines
  8. Document the results of the workshop to make them readily accessible
  9. Build upon the previous years' workshop results

The Goals and Approach of this Workshop

This workshop will bring together a diverse set of experienced industry leaders together to create a foundation of important topics and guidelines for each topic. The approach was adapted from the case study methodology used in business schools and advocated by qualitative researchers. Each case follows a predefined structure:

Topics of this Workshop

The primary goal of this workshop is to create a set of guidelines and best practices particular to a variety of important topics, which were determined by the previous year's workshop as the most important topics. These topics include, in priority order:

  1. Employees, including recruiting, hiring, mentoring, and team-building
  2. Building and leveraging advocates
  3. Strategic relevance, business impact, and evangelizing
  4. Emotional design
  5. Roles and responsibilities
  6. Types of data used to influence the business
  7. Adapting to and influencing company culture
  8. Prioritization and saying no
  9. Lead indicators of issues and warnings (the canary in the coal mine)
  10. Stepping into the white space and filling in gaps in responsibilities
  11. Tools and processes
  12. Organizational models, structure, and levels
  13. Retaining the creative spark and practice while managing
  14. Research within and outside the department
  15. Agile development
  16. Business and management training
  17. Assessing your own success
  18. Managing expectations

Who should submit

This workshop is intended for experienced UX managers. Experienced means that you managed a user experience team for at least 3 years at some point in your career. We define UX broadly, including design teams, research teams, and cross-functional teams. If you have questions about whether you should submit, please contact us

Selection Criteria

Successful submissions should contain one or more management case studies with a sufficient level of detailed information to provide guidance to the field.  Case studies that demonstrate novel insights or outline new possibilities will be welcomed. In addition, case studies will be selected to maximize the diversity of the workshop.

Organization of the workshop

In the workshop we will review the case studies on the first day.  For the remainder of the first and second days, we will analyze and organize the learnings, and create a set of guidelines based on the case studies.  See the Workshop Description for a detailed timeline.

Format of the submission

Please choose a topic from the above list and prepare a 3-page (minimum) submission using the following sections:

1.    A description of the context and background that sets the stage for discussion.

2.    The opportunity and obstacles that were faced by the UX management team.

3.    The approach taken by UX management and the rationale for that approach.

4.    The short- and long-term results from the approach taken.

5.    The lessons learned.

6.    A perspective on the each of the questions outlined in the introduction.

If you have any questions, please contact us.

Feel free to forward the link to this site to anyone whom you feel might be interested in submitting.