Designing My Ideal Team

Any other highly visual people out there have weird ways of strategizing? I do, and so I find myself making bubble charts to help figure out how many designers I need to ask for. Here's how I approach this task in a way that works with my ADHD rather than against it.

Step 1...List it all out

I started by listing every feature currently identified by the POs for each product, and giving a quick, instinctive estimate of impact on the design team - high, medium, low. No overthinking, just a quick estimate.

Step 2...Size it

Then I tagged each feature with bubbles that represent the 3 main design roles (Architect, UI, Research). Each bubble's size corresponds roughly to the amount of effort/attention each feature will require from each role. Again, important not to overthink and just go with your gut and your knowledge of your users and products, like a dev sizing a feature during grooming.

Step 3...Sort and analyze

Finally, I dragged all those bubbles to another area on my whiteboard, grouped them up under their products with the features removed, and voila. A clear, visual representation of where I need to put who.

Final Thoughts

Does this give me an exact number? Absolutely not. But it does help me step outside my assumptions and biases and very quickly, methodically examine the landscape we'll be navigating over the coming year. From there, I can more objectively determine how much work needs to be done and where to put what types of people.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. ^_^