UX Skill Matrix - Rayana’s reports
It's been awhile since we've done a UX Skill Matrix exercise. Our team has changed and so we have different people working together now so it's an opportunity to assess and find skills to grow this year.
- Product Design Manager: @rayana
- UX team: CI/CD
Overview
From time to time we like product designers to assess their UX skills. This is so that we have an updated view of everyone's top strengths and can assess interest in learning new skills.
We will use the output of the UX Skills Matrix in a few different ways:
- Identify learning opportunities - for example, if a lot of designers want to improve their communication, we could look into a book club or class to take together
- Hiring managers can use it as a guide for skills to look for when hiring
- Team members can use it as part of their career growth
Results
Current State | Future State |
---|---|
Current State
- Higher scores: Our design team is balanced in the areas of User Research, Technical Proficiency, and Communication.
- Lower scores: The combined results shows UX Vision & Strategy and Content consistently scoring less than 4.
The high-score skills allow our design team to build a deep understanding of the areas of the product we support, effectively challenge technical problems, seek out and integrate feedback, communicate with engineers and PMs, and find new opportunities based on other tools.
Future State
Note: The goal of mapping the "Future State" of our team's skills is not necessarily to have designers cover all areas. It is to get a clear and up-to-date picture of our team’s strengths and weakness.
The learning opportunities for our team are in the areas of Leadership, Visual and Interaction Design, UX Vision and Strategy, and Systems Thinking.
- Leadership skills will help designers to be able to work effectively across teams in order to effectively problem solve.
- Our team generally has a need to improve on their Visual and Interaction skills, which can help deliver work that raises the quality bar and helps define standards across products.
- UX Vision and Strategy also include iteration. It is important to tie the team’s activities to the strategy of the business, complete with measurable outcomes.
- The self assessment in Systems Thinking might show that there's an opportunity to bring consistency to both an individual’s work and to the work of the team as a whole.
What tools, classes, or hands-on learning does our team need order to bridge the level gap identified?
Checklist
-
Product Design manager to create a copy of the UX Skill Matrix spreadsheet and share with their reports -
Product Designers to complete their individual mapping in the 🔗 UX Skills Matrix spreadsheet - due date: 2024-03-01 -
Product Design Manager to combine the team skill assessment -
Product Design Manager to update this issue with the summary and themes, share the results with team members -
Product Design Manager to share the results with department
Is this another Talent Assessment?
No - it's a self-assessment of your design skills now, and where you'd like them to be in the future.
You might use your Talent Assessment (TA) as an input to it if you'd like, but this isn't about assessing performance in the role. It's also different from TAs, in that it's shared with the team, where a TA is private. Sharing it helps everyone see where the strengths are in the team, so they can learn from others.