Designers United! Why we changed from “UX” to “XD”
I applied for a Creative Director role a couple of years ago to a company in Manchester that is quite well known in the industry (I won’t name names obviously) I was delighted to be invited in for an interview and afterwards, I asked to see their Design department. The guy took me to one side of the building and introduced me to their UX Department, took me to another little corner in a different area and introduced me to their Researchers, and then a good couple min walk across the other side of the building to meet their Visual Designers. I couldn’t mask the sheer shock in my face.
I asked him how they manage to work with each other sitting so far apart? To which he replied, “They don’t talk to each other much, the researchers just feed to the UXers and then the visuals guys skin their wireframes”.
WHAT THE FUUUU…..?
“Ha that's bonkers!” It was out my mouth before I even realised I had said anything. Surely he's joking… it wasn't until I was met with cutting silence, a dead stare and a bit of tumbleweed crossed the room that I realised he wasn’t. Needless to say, I didn’t get that job, and what a relief. I didn’t want to work like that, and to be honest, there were too many roles above the Creative Director at the company that I knew even if I did get the job, I couldn’t change that culture.
Fast forward a couple of years and here I am, the Head of my own Design department for a super ace company, DigitalBridge. This was my chance to shape not just the department, but the company.
When I started a year and a half ago I began as Head of Design. My first mission was to make sure my title reflected what I believe a good design department should look like, but also so externally other people knew we cared about this stuff.
Within a couple of months, I got my title changed to Head of UX, Design and User Research. It’s a mouthful, sure, but it done its job. It brought together 3 main departments into one. It was a load of work, lots to do and manage, and by far one of the hardest years of my career. Ups and downs, good days and bad. But I wouldn't change a second of it. It has certainly made me a much better manager.
Mid-2019 we started to expand to look outside the Product Design and more into what the Service Design looked like. I hired probably the most talented Service Designer I have ever had the pleasure of working with, Vimla Appadoo. Vim joined us and helped us open our eyes into the wonderful world of Service Design and how it's important for our users that we shape their full end to end journey and not just the single product journey they interact with.
With that came the dilemma of department silos. We don’t want to now start having a separate place where all our Service Design work happens, we still want to all work together as one unified team.
From this came Experience Design (XD), and the birth of my new role title, Head of Experience Design. Instead of having multiple departments with multiple Heads of and teams that don’t speak to each other, I have the responsibility of one unified team that are experts in :
User Research
Service Design
UX Design
Visual Design
UI Design
Product Design
We‘ve eliminated the “factory” way of working where one designer passes their work onto the next. We don’t believe in siloed departments. We work together as one team to design the best product and service for our users and think about their full experience from beginning to end. We have experts in each field, but each one of us takes part in user research, wireframing, prototyping, service design etc. This allows us to work together cohesively towards the same goal.
The best part? Our title “XD” resembles the super happy emoji, which is fitting for a department whose responsibility is making sure our end users experience make them happy!
