Working Together

There are four different ways we can work together. Listed in increasing complexity and involvement, I can offer audits, training, projects, and fractional leadership for you.

• Audits

  I will take a look at what you have,
  then we discuss what you can do next.

  Audits are small engagements. They are focused in scope, and therefore can be completed in a short period. I offer 5 different types of audits:

  • UX audit: I can review your product from a user experience perspective and tell you what you have done right, what may need improvement, and what absolutely has to change. I can do this with your design files, your working product, or a combination of both. This usually takes about a week, never longer than a month.
  • Process audit: Instead of reviewing your product, I review your design process. I assess how it relates to the business flow, product management, marketing and development in your company. I improved processes for the tiniest design teams of 1 in startups, all the way up to 70 designers in larger corporations. Depending on the depth of the inspection, this audit takes multiple weeks.
  • Research audit: Think of this as a focused process audit for your research workflow. I work with the people who do research in your company to highlight their strengths and offer improvement suggestions. We review their research work and their way of working with participants and data. This audit takes a couple of weeks based on the size of the team.
  • Hiring: I can review design and research portfolios to help you hire the right designers and researchers. If you want a more in-depth assessment of your candidates, we can set up technical interviews, interactive design sessions, or ethical case flows. We can plan this as a batch review or an ongoing service.
  • Policing: This service is not nice, but it is useful... I have seen many companies who have been ripped off by bad agencies and freelancers. These companies believed in the importance of design, but didn't have the technical expertise to tell if their vendor was good or bad. The malign agencies and freelancers have tricked these companies with their shiny shopfronts and their well-crafted sexily-worded presentations. Maybe even nice dinners. Yet they lack even the basic design capabilities and all they want is to get paid for shitty, usually stolen, nowadays AI-generated crappy work. I hate this kind of exploit. If you think you are in a similar situation, I can sit at the table and joyfully expose these frauds while you sip your drink.

• Training

  I will teach you a new skill,
  so that you can do it by yourself.

  • Class training: I will work with your team to setup a training program to improve their UX skills. I offer comprehensive training on user research, interaction design, and information architecture. I offer training on the fundamentals of visual design and UX writing. If you must ask, I teach design thinking and how to use AI in design workflows too. I structure the program based on your teams' specific needs, so the duration and cadence varies. My shortest training engagement was half day, my longest one was 8 months.
  • Workshops: If you want to have an interactive session to learn new things, I can plan a workshop for you. This can be planned as a learning/teaching activity, or it can be planned as a working session for your team. Depending on the complexity of the topic, setup and planning could take up to a month, but usually it is a couple of weeks.
  • Mentoring: I am careful in not calling this coaching, as I am not a trained coach and I don't plan to be. Coaching is where a trained coach helps you find answers; mentoring is where an experienced person guides you through best if not better practices. I can work with the juniors on your team to give them specific skills, I can work with potential leads and managers to help them address some of the design leadership challenges that no one has told them about. The cadence and the duration of these sessions vary depending on the specific need.
  • Speaking: If you want a large number of people in your organization to learn about a design topic, I am happy to deliver it as a talk. Refer to the speaking page to see a list of the conference talks I have given and to listen to two publicly available talks.

• Project Work

  I join your project as a team member
  and do hands-on work with your team.

  If you have a specific project in mind, with a reasonably known scope and a rough timeline, I can join your team as a team member. I will do hands-on work in these areas:

  • UX strategy: Understand the business landscape and the internal forces to make sure that the design effort is used in the most optimal way with minimal waste towards the project goal. Work with stakeholders to make sure that everyone is aligned.
  • Research: Identify the things that we need to know, and formulate efficient research plans that yield correct results with the right methods, budgets, and timelines.
  • Information architecture: Create the simplest logical structure for the app so that it delivers a consistent, scalable experience.
  • Interaction design: Create the flows and screen structures that make your app easy to understand and use.
  • General UI oversight: It would be quite inefficient to expect fully production-ready visuals from me, but I will be checking layouts, color, typography, accessibility and your design system for consistency.

• Fractional Leadership

  I take responsibility of a UX function
  in your organization.

  Fractional leadership is my most involved working model. In this model, I take responsibility of a portion of your UX capability, and work with you for multiple months. For example:

  • I work as a lead in 2-3 projects, but not get involved in other projects in the organization.
  • I represent your design capability to certain clients during the sales cycle, but not to all of them.
  • I become a line mentor to several employees, such as promotion candidates or new managers, that need to grow in certain directions.
  • I review the performance of employees and create development plans, but their managers/leads are responsible for following those plans.
  • I audit and critique your key projects every week, but your teams decide on the priority and take on the execution.

  You may ask: "Why fractional, why not join us full-time?" I'm not opposed to the idea, if the conditions are right. Connect and send me a message on on LinkedIn, we can always chat.