How to assemble a winning UX design team

User experience (UX) is how a user interacts with a product, system, or service. If the experience of using your app or website is tedious, confusing, or frustrating, people will seek alternatives.

Investing in UX can make your customers happier, increase their loyalty, and, ultimately, help you grow your organization.

Every dollar you invest in UX comes back one hundredfold. UX continues to be a great investment, even during economic turbulence. While the tools and software systems you invest in play a significant role in your UX efforts, you also need to hire the best UX professionals to offer your users the best experience.

Let’s take a closer look at how to create a high-performing UX design team. In this guide, we explore:

• The roles and responsibilities your UX design team should manage

• Different types of UX team structures

• How to manage a great UX team

• How your UX design team interacts with other teams in your organization

UX teams are composed of professionals who coordinate with other teams throughout an organization to:

• Research customer and user experiences

• Identify potential improvements to interfaces

• Enable those changes

The term "user experience" encompasses all the ways users interact with an app or website, including:

• Accessibility

• Functionality

• Ease of use

• Aesthetics

• Satisfaction

Each member of the UX team may handle a different dynamic of user experience and bring different skills and perspectives. This leads to a more well-rounded team so no aspect of UX is missed.

Throughout UX projects, they'll conduct and manage tasks such as:

• Carrying out research

• Proposing redesigns and feature additions

• Supporting user testing and implementation cycles

• Analyzing feedback on changes

Many UX design teams use an iterative approach to continually conduct research, make and assess the value of changes, and assess new areas for improvement.

Depending on the structure of your organization, UX teams may be housed as part of engineering, marketing, or product departments and will answer to the corresponding director or executive. But UX teams also coordinate with teams outside their organization to complete projects and conduct research.

What is the role of a UX team?

Ultimately, the role of a UX design team is to make sure users enjoy interacting with your organization's app, software, or platform interface.

This can focus on:

• Enjoyability: adding features and elements that increase the joy and pleasure of using your platform

• Minimizing pain: eliminating inconveniences, improving organization, and adapting the tools to meet users' needs.

While the core role of improving user outcomes and experiences should guide every project or task, the specific objectives of UX teams may change. For example, one project may focus on bringing a website up to WCAG standards to improve accessibility and compliance with accessibility standards. Another project might improve UX by speeding up load times to reduce user frustration.

While both of these projects fall under the broad UX umbrella, they have different design goals.

Let’s look at six of the most common UX design goals that teams should prioritize.

Satisfy the end users

Satisfying the end user is about focusing on needs and pain points that users have identified. For example, your UX researcher might arrange feedback projects and conduct surveys to directly ask end users what they would like to see.

UX teams can then:

• Assess these ideas

• Rank them based on priority and feasibility

• Introduce them to the product roadmap for design and implementation

Use clear language

UX teams handle different facets of an app or website, including:

• Graphics

• Text

• Navigation and sitemap

• Backend elements that users never directly see

Over time, text and language can drift, resulting in inconsistent experiences, an unfocused tone, or simply outdated language.

UX teams routinely conduct projects to:

• Create or refine style guides

• Identify text or pages that need to be refreshed

• Research changing terminology and language over time to ensure company communications align with user expectations

Provide informative feedback

A key aspect of UX design is research.

Before projects begin, UX professionals gather feedback about current user experiences and pain points. During projects, they gather feedback on wireframes, prototype pages, and other "rough drafts" of in-development features.

After a new feature or page is released, they gather more feedback about how it has impacted users' experiences.

Winning UX teams are continually seeking feedback, either as direct commentary or by assessing changes in user behavior.

Make a product enjoyable

What makes a product enjoyable to use may not be clearly defined by user feedback and requests, and it won't be captured through compliance or product requirements.

UX team members may bring in knowledge about gamification, engagement, rewards, and intuitive workflows that can make products a pleasure to use.

UX professionals may bring market research to the table or analyze small changes in user behavior over time.

Consistent UX

Consistency is the foundation of a great UX experience. Your end users need to have consistent experiences powered by:

• Standardized navigation systems

• Wording and messaging that sounds familiar throughout the interface

• Warnings about upcoming changes and, whenever possible, small, iterative changes instead of abrupt transformations

• The sense they can confidently navigate the tool and do what they need to accomplish with minimal confusion

Testing

Testing is a standalone goal that should support every UX effort. Your organization cannot know if a user-facing change is positive or negative without thoroughly testing it.

Testing might include:

• Sequential test sets, such as concept and then prototype testing

• Longitudinal studies to understand customers more over time

• Surveys and interviews to get specific feedback

To build your high-performance UX team, you don't just need to know their objectives and roles. You must choose the right structure that fits the flow of your organization.

Here are five common UX team structures to consider:

Centralized UX team

Centralized teams are internal teams that report to a UX manager who sets them UX-related tasks. In larger organizations, there might be multiple centralized UX teams, each reporting to a manager who, in turn, reports to a director.

This organization is clear and transparent, especially if there are many different products or interfaces to manage.

Decentralized UX team

Decentralized teams have distributed UX professionals who operate as members of product or engineering teams.

For example, there might be a product team with an engineer, product manager, UX professional, and marketing lead, and there may be a second team for a second product with the same structure.

The UX professionals may interact, but they largely stay within their product team.

Matrix UX team 

In matrix models, UX professionals operate within a product team (headed by a team lead or product manager), but they also have a UX manager who coordinates UX training, tasks, and career growth initiatives.

This model offers the flexibility of decentralized structures while giving UX staff more structure and career growth potential. 

Embedded UX team

Embedded UX teams are similar to decentralized teams, but UX professionals still exist within a core UX team.

Managers might assign UX staff to product projects in a round-robin fashion, or a UX professional with a designated role—such as a UX researcher—may be assigned to products as needed.

Agency or consultancy

Small organizations might not want to have an in-house UX team, usually due to the costs of retaining salaried professionals in each specialty.

Companies can outsource their UX design needs to an agency or consulting team, which can offer the right structure, number of work hours, or specializations that best fit your organization's needs. 

Within UX teams, there are professionals with different main roles and responsibilities. In very small teams, one staff member may manage a couple of different roles, while larger organizations may have one of each role for each product department.

Let’s look at five of the key roles for a UX team.

UX researcher

UX researchers gather and interpret the information available about end-user experiences, user behaviors, and the impact of different interface changes.

They are experienced in conducting exploratory and evaluative research, know how to handle and present data, and continually search for answers regarding what guides user behavior.

UX designer

UX designers may be the people who first come to mind when you think about assembling a winning UX design team.

These professionals handle tasks such as:

• Creating workflow designs and ideas based on research of end users' interactions with an app or website

• Managing design refinement cycles

• Understanding visual design and information architecture to create a consistent, navigable experience

• Coordinating with researchers and engineers to create and implement designs that directly address identified user needs

UI designer

UI designers complement UX designers. They handle more of the visual design elements and have a better understanding of how the interface's code can accommodate different changes and updates.

UX designers develop wireframes and big-picture structural elements that govern the "feel" of a user experience. UI designers create detailed designs to generate the specific "look" of the interface. As a general rule, UI designers handle the more technical aspects of design after broad UX decisions have been made.

Information architect

A lot of UX work is structural work that end users may not directly notice or know to give feedback on.

An information architect focuses on:

• Content organization such as menus, links, and other infrastructural connections

• Consistently presenting information like CTA button text, formatting, titles, naming conventions, and more

• Designing the flow of information, interactive elements, and how information is laid out

Information architects may also collaborate on technical elements such as site maps, where information is saved and loaded from, and different functions users can wield to get to different pieces of information.

UX writer

UX writers create the content that guides user experience. This might include:

• Tutorials for navigating the platform

• Technical content

• Answers for chatbots

On a more granular level, it includes the text for clickable/tappable buttons, error messages, menus, and more.

UX writers might also coordinate with translators or localization teams to make sure every version of the site or app offers clear navigation.

Having the right team structure and the right professionals can help you create a good UX team. But as you're hiring or internally transferring people into UX team roles, other characteristics can help make your team great.

Look for people who can work together to prioritize: 

• Diversity: Diverse team members will help ensure certain perspectives or needs don't go unaddressed. You can have UX professionals with experience in different corporate areas, different industries, or different user needs to create a cohesive, well-rounded team.

• Collaboration: UX team members need to be willing and able to collaborate with people in different specializations, especially on product teams where they coordinate results with engineers, marketers, and other non-UX roles.

• User-centric mindset: Ultimately, UX team members need to consistently value creating experiences and assets that benefit users. This requires having an open mind, not making assumptions, and being willing to test every outcome.

• Continuous learning: UX never stands still, so UX professionals can't either. Look for professionals who are continuously willing to learn. You can also bolster your organization by implementing robust learning and development programs or giving every team a UX manager committed to continuous learning.

• Effective communication: UX teams need to communicate with each other, internal stakeholders, and users when conducting interviews. Having strong soft skills rather than only technical skills is a core part of the job.

Once you know what you're looking for in a winning UX design team, you can start hiring or internally promoting staff members.

Follow these eight steps to build the team and manage it over time so it becomes stronger and more adept. 

1. Use skills-based hiring

Especially in decentralized teams, or teams where everyone has a specific role with little overlap between team members, you need to be confident that each new hire can handle their responsibilities.

Use skills-based hiring practices to determine whether candidates have the relevant practical skills and insights (and the ability to learn new ones).

2. Define roles and responsibilities

As you structure the team(s), create specific roles and fully illustrate the responsibilities tied to each role.

This practice helps you hire the right professional for a given role. It also helps prevent role creep, which can result in overworking your UX team members or assigning work they aren't equipped for.

3. Invest in professional development

This is where a focus on continuous learning and development comes in. Make sure every UX team has a manager or advocate who will lead professional development opportunities and career growth.

Not only does this practice make your team stronger over time, but it can appeal to candidates looking for a clear career trajectory within your organization. 

4. Foster a safe, collaborative culture

UX involves a lot of ideating, experimentation, and design cycles. Focus on creating an environment and culture where team members feel comfortable suggesting ideas, getting feedback, and participating in creative exercises.

If you don't foster the right environment, UX professionals may feel nervous or unwilling to come up with new ideas, or there might be too much criticism and negativity. 

5. Learn what motivates your team

As a manager, part of your role is to:

• Incentivize your team members

• Give them the right resources and tools for success

• Drive them to do their best

This includes understanding their motivations. For example, some professionals may be motivated by concrete goals and completing clear tasks with an endpoint. Others might be more motivated by seeing big-picture objectives and having input into a larger whole.

6. Create an environment of learning and development

By prioritizing continuous learning, your team will:

• Develop new skills

• Stay on top of technology that can aid in their roles

• Implement better processes

Create this environment by making learning a job responsibility and allocating at-work time and resources to it so it never feels like a burden. Also, introduce learning courses that directly tie to UX or that teach UX members about adjacent fields and skills.

7. Promote a user-centric culture

Your management style will have a big impact on what your UX team prioritizes.

A negative management style could lead to employees simply ticking tasks off their to-do list or focusing on cost-cutting design rather than user-centric decisions and user experience design priorities.

Continuously prioritize users' experiences, and make sure team members have the time and resources to do the same instead of feeling pressured by other constraints and priorities.

8. Get buy-in from stakeholders

To create a user-centric culture, your executive team and key stakeholders need to agree on this approach. You can't encourage UX designers to develop user-focused designs that require multiple revisions and testing cycles when other organization leaders are putting pressure on them to work quickly.

Talk to your executive team about carving out sufficient time, resources, and separation from burdensome deadline cycles so your team can focus on the right things.

One of the key elements of developing a winning UX design team isn't simply having a great team that stays user-centric and motivated. Your UX professionals also need to develop strong relationships with other departments and stakeholders in UX and UI development projects.

The six teams they may frequently work alongside are:

• Product team

• Design team

• Development team

• Customer success team

• Customer support team

• Marketing team

Product team

Product teams own a specific product, such as an app, website, or specific service.

UX teams need to regularly coordinate with these teams to understand the technical capabilities and use cases of the product, as well as the most common challenges users encounter. 

Understanding the full context of the product helps UX designers and other team members create the best user journey.

What is the difference between UX teams and product design teams?

While both teams impact the final product, product teams focus more on developing the tool's specific capabilities and functions, while the UX team shapes how users interact with it to achieve results.

Design team

The design team creates the visuals, branding assets, web design, and other features that companies use to communicate with or serve audiences.

UX professionals often work hand in hand with designers to make sure those visuals are consistently used throughout user experiences, and that the layout of websites and apps serves user interests. For example, a UX designer might weigh in on a website rebranding project.

Development team

Developers and UX professionals work together to implement changes, test user experiences, and refine or modify them as needed. Collaboration is key to ensuring changes align with existing infrastructure and avoiding downstream complications.

UX designers provide detailed prototypes to guide development. Clear communication during hand-off ensures designs are translated accurately into code, respecting technical constraints and timelines.

Both teams maintain the integrity of reusable design components. Developers implement the system while UX teams ensure updates are clearly communicated to avoid inconsistencies.

UX and development teams collaborate to test features post-implementation, using real user feedback to refine designs and optimize the overall experience.

Customer success team

The UX team works closely with the customer success team to ensure user feedback is integrated into product improvements.

By collaborating on user pain points, feature requests, and common support issues, the UX team can design solutions that address real customer needs. The customer success team provides valuable insights into post-launch experiences, helping the UX team prioritize features that enhance satisfaction and reduce churn.

This partnership helps the product evolve in a way that benefits the business and its users.

Customer support team

The UX team collaborates with the customer support team to gain insights into common user frustrations and usability issues.

By analyzing support tickets, chat logs, and user inquiries, the UX team can identify patterns and prioritize improvements to reduce friction points in the product. Customer support benefits from UX-led enhancements that make the product more intuitive, helping to lower support volume and increase overall customer satisfaction.

This ongoing feedback loop ensures user pain points are addressed promptly and effectively.

Marketing team

Marketers and UX researchers frequently collaborate to gather feedback from users and communicate changes or new features that will appeal to them.

By working together throughout campaign planning sessions, ideating features and design changes, and getting feedback, marketing and UX teams can understand users better and serve their needs.

Your organization's UX team will have a unique structure, and each member of the team will have distinct roles based on the needs of your company, products, and users.

By understanding the most common structures and roles for winning UX teams, you can organize your internal UX structures, hire right-fit candidates for each role, and support each team member as they begin to improve your products and pursue their career paths.