13 things to do as Design Manager

Hi, I’m Daisuke from “Rakuten Travel” that is a No’1 OTA (Online Travel Agency) site in Japan. I live in Tokyo and in charge of UI Designer / Design Manager.

Let me ask one thing.

What is the responsibility of Design Manager?

The role of Design Manager is defined by the book “Org Design for Design Orgs”.

Responsible for both Creativity management and Talent management.

That is a very simple and convincing definition. It means what Design Manager responsible not only Creative Quality like a Creative Director works but also the Growth of your Designer.

Of course, this kind of role is different among Business Size, Phase, Corporate Culture, and Organizational Structure.

In this article, I listed “13 things to do as Design Manager” based on my usual tasks while referring to the Job Description of some companies.

1. Develop a design team strategy

Following the business/product vision and looking at the future, lead the design team by showing the direction. You need to consider how to contribute with business and organization by using your activities and outputs. And involve end-to-end by using the designing approach.

2. Discover the essential solution and establish the new worth

Identifying the demands that are not defined yet with hearing user’s voice, create the new worth that not in the world. You lead the product to light direction considering not only the user insight but also value proposition and business strategy.

3. Evangelize all things around designs

Visual Design, Interaction Design, Design Concept, Design Strategy … you are accountable to members, stakeholders, and executives. To gain trust from the organization and implement the design approach to the organization, you need to keep evangelizing as Evangelist. And need to have many actions outside of the office for increasing your team presence and connecting to recruitment and branding.

4. Build relationships with other departments

It’s no exaggeration to say that there are NO works that can be completed by the only designer. Product Manager, Engineer, Marketing, Executive… By build relationships with other departments and gaining trust, the scope designer can involve will increase.

5. Rebuild the design process

Build a good work environment for designers, like rebuild the communication path among multiple teams and reconsider the workflow. One example, it’s important to find the best that which designing-tool is valuable for teams.

6. Create the well-performance structure in the design team

Looking for the benefit of designing by the team. Create a good structure, workflow, or environment that worth like an answer of “1+1” is larger than “2”. It’s included the team building and playing a beloved Design Manager role :)

7. Help designer career building

Look at the middle period (2 or 3 years?), Ask members what kind of designer you want to be. Clarify the area that wants to grow based on a career plan and consider how to contribute to the business. Sometimes, it might need to consider a job change or transfer to other departments.

8. Understand evaluation system, set target, and evaluate designers

One of the important work is increasing the Designer’s salary. Understand business culture and evaluation system (e.g. like a Competency-Oriented? Number-Oriented?), consider the way how to lead to a good evaluation. Based on that, set and commit the target with a member at the beginning of the period. Then look back among this period and consider what achievements and what growth. In addition, need to care what sometimes the evaluator is not a Designer.

9. Recruit new designers

Plan the recruitment-plan considering business growth. Define clearly “what level” “what character” and “how many”, and commit to your boss/executives. Write a Job Description, proceed hiring process with HR. Sometimes it might need to scout directly and to consider exhibit to some events.

10. Assign designers to each project

Assign designers to each project considering each member’s strong point, career plan, and schedule. It might need to consider divided into several teams, add new roles and responsibilities to your design team. And it’s an important task that assign your successor.

11. Set the priority, manage the progress

Set the priority of each task and tell clearly to your members. Request reconsidering the schedule to stakeholders if need. There is a case that the task suddenly comes to us in spite of finishing already. It lead to reduce the psychological burden of designers if clearly define the priority. And manage the progress and status of each task. Sometimes you might need to manage by micro-management.

12. Responsible for the quality

Responsible for the quality of all designs that include User Experience. Design User Experience before, during, and after touch your products. Not only that but also responsible for Brand Strategy, Usability, Visual design. Define some regulations from each product’s specific design rules to Design Principles for keeping good quality.

13. Contribute as one of a designer

Design Manager should work as a designer when there is a case of a vacancy on the staff or over capacity. Depending on the company environment or organization structure, Design Manager needs to work as Playing-Manager at all times.

About these 13 items, there might be an item that not match your works or lack of items because each company/team has each working style.

If so, please teach me your opinion/item/idea. I will behappy to receive this kind of message.

この記事の日本語版も用意しています↓
「デザインマネージャーがやっている13のお仕事」