From time to time I see references to the 'design team' on lists and on phabricator. But what does this really mean now? As I understood it, the previous monolithic Design Team was essentially disbanded toward the beginning of the year, with the designers themselves distributed amongst the other WMF teams in order to more directly integrate their services into the development workflow (which sounds like a pretty good idea to me, at least, since design is such an integral part of most development). Did this happen? According to https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff_and_contractors, there seem to still be two teams now with the word 'design' in their names, Reading Design and Design Research, though these both seem to have somewhat more specialised functions than just general design, namely Reading (sounds like front-end non-interactive mw stuff, the visuals perhaps?) and Research.
So what is the 'design team'? Is it one of these, though the teams only have 5 and 4 people on them, respectively? Is it just WMF designers in general?
As much as this is also just a plea to please be more specific, if you have an actual answer, or if you have been saying this, please, speak up, share your experience and where you're coming from. As confusing as it is, I suspect a discussion of what and why this has been going on could also clear up quite a bit.
Thanks.
-I
Hi Isarra,
what is the 'design team'?
Even though the design team (as it used to be) is now split out under different managers with no centralized Director, we still consider ourselves a "team" in that we still work together across teams to maintain consistency and provide feedback, collaborate, and review one another's work where needed. We have a weekly meeting and regularly talk and brainstorm in person across teams to support one another in our work.
Design Research is the team that conducts research that informs the design of products we build on all other teams. The employees on this team are not designers.
Reading Design is a sub-team under Reading, and it designs reading experiences, mostly for mobile platforms. Where you see "Visual Designer" as a title, that person works on visual designs. "UX Designer" works on combinations of visual and user experience design, mostly the latter, and "UX Engineer" builds interactive prototypes and interaction design.
The reorganization that you reference happened in late April this year and was not a decision the design team itself made. Rather, it came from upper management. We do now work within the teams you see listed on the staff page, on experiences for those teams specifically. So for example, you will not see a designer on the Search & Discovery team working on experiences for the Editing team.
Is there a particular concern you have about this organization that you feel like we should be discussing, or does this answer your questions?
Thank you,
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 1:21 PM, Isarra Yos zhorishna@gmail.com wrote:
From time to time I see references to the 'design team' on lists and on phabricator. But what does this really mean now? As I understood it, the previous monolithic Design Team was essentially disbanded toward the beginning of the year, with the designers themselves distributed amongst the other WMF teams in order to more directly integrate their services into the development workflow (which sounds like a pretty good idea to me, at least, since design is such an integral part of most development). Did this happen? According to https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff_and_contractors, there seem to still be two teams now with the word 'design' in their names, Reading Design and Design Research, though these both seem to have somewhat more specialised functions than just general design, namely Reading (sounds like front-end non-interactive mw stuff, the visuals perhaps?) and Research.
So what is the 'design team'? Is it one of these, though the teams only have 5 and 4 people on them, respectively? Is it just WMF designers in general?
As much as this is also just a plea to please be more specific, if you have an actual answer, or if you have been saying this, please, speak up, share your experience and where you're coming from. As confusing as it is, I suspect a discussion of what and why this has been going on could also clear up quite a bit.
Thanks.
-I
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
Hi, thank you for your response. This does clarify a lot.
Why do you make the distinction that UX designers also do visual when you stated already that you also have specifically visual designers? Are the visual designers the ones doing the UI standardisation?
How does Design Research relate to the rest of this? You state that they are not designers, but their work is an integral part of the user experience design process.
Also, in the future, could you please use a darker colour (or even just leave it as the default) for your emails? That grey is really hard to read and I misread a few things the first time that made it look a little... different from what you obviously meant.
Thanks!
On 10/11/15 22:04, Sherah Smith wrote:
Hi Isarra,
what is the 'design team'?
Even though the design team (as it used to be) is now split out under different managers with no centralized Director, we still consider ourselves a "team" in that we still work together across teams to maintain consistency and provide feedback, collaborate, and review one another's work where needed. We have a weekly meeting and regularly talk and brainstorm in person across teams to support one another in our work.
Design Research is the team that conducts research that informs the design of products we build on all other teams. The employees on this team are not designers.
Reading Design is a sub-team under Reading, and it designs reading experiences, mostly for mobile platforms. Where you see "Visual Designer" as a title, that person works on visual designs. "UX Designer" works on combinations of visual and user experience design, mostly the latter, and "UX Engineer" builds interactive prototypes and interaction design.
The reorganization that you reference happened in late April this year and was not a decision the design team itself made. Rather, it came from upper management. We do now work within the teams you see listed on the staff page, on experiences for those teams specifically. So for example, you will not see a designer on the Search & Discovery team working on experiences for the Editing team.
Is there a particular concern you have about this organization that you feel like we should be discussing, or does this answer your questions?
Thank you,
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 1:21 PM, Isarra Yos <zhorishna@gmail.com mailto:zhorishna@gmail.com> wrote:
From time to time I see references to the 'design team' on lists and on phabricator. But what does this really mean now? As I understood it, the previous monolithic Design Team was essentially disbanded toward the beginning of the year, with the designers themselves distributed amongst the other WMF teams in order to more directly integrate their services into the development workflow (which sounds like a pretty good idea to me, at least, since design is such an integral part of most development). Did this happen? According to https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff_and_contractors, there seem to still be two teams now with the word 'design' in their names, Reading Design and Design Research, though these both seem to have somewhat more specialised functions than just general design, namely Reading (sounds like front-end non-interactive mw stuff, the visuals perhaps?) and Research. So what is the 'design team'? Is it one of these, though the teams only have 5 and 4 people on them, respectively? Is it just WMF designers in general? As much as this is also just a plea to please be more specific, if you have an actual answer, or if you have been saying this, please, speak up, share your experience and where you're coming from. As confusing as it is, I suspect a discussion of what and why this has been going on could also clear up quite a bit. Thanks. -I _______________________________________________ Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:Design@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design-- *Sherah Smith* UX Engineer Wikimedia Foundation 206-660-6585 sherahsmith.com http://sherahsmith.com donate.wikipedia.org http://donate.wikipedia.org
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
Er, forgot to cc the main list, since I did cross-post in the first place.
Sorry about that!
On 10/11/15 22:25, Isarra Yos wrote:
Hi, thank you for your response. This does clarify a lot.
Why do you make the distinction that UX designers also do visual when you stated already that you also have specifically visual designers? Are the visual designers the ones doing the UI standardisation?
How does Design Research relate to the rest of this? You state that they are not designers, but their work is an integral part of the user experience design process.
Also, in the future, could you please use a darker colour (or even just leave it as the default) for your emails? That grey is really hard to read and I misread a few things the first time that made it look a little... different from what you obviously meant.
Thanks!
On 10/11/15 22:04, Sherah Smith wrote:
Hi Isarra,
what is the 'design team'?
Even though the design team (as it used to be) is now split out under different managers with no centralized Director, we still consider ourselves a "team" in that we still work together across teams to maintain consistency and provide feedback, collaborate, and review one another's work where needed. We have a weekly meeting and regularly talk and brainstorm in person across teams to support one another in our work.
Design Research is the team that conducts research that informs the design of products we build on all other teams. The employees on this team are not designers.
Reading Design is a sub-team under Reading, and it designs reading experiences, mostly for mobile platforms. Where you see "Visual Designer" as a title, that person works on visual designs. "UX Designer" works on combinations of visual and user experience design, mostly the latter, and "UX Engineer" builds interactive prototypes and interaction design.
The reorganization that you reference happened in late April this year and was not a decision the design team itself made. Rather, it came from upper management. We do now work within the teams you see listed on the staff page, on experiences for those teams specifically. So for example, you will not see a designer on the Search & Discovery team working on experiences for the Editing team.
Is there a particular concern you have about this organization that you feel like we should be discussing, or does this answer your questions?
Thank you,
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 1:21 PM, Isarra Yos <zhorishna@gmail.com mailto:zhorishna@gmail.com> wrote:
From time to time I see references to the 'design team' on lists and on phabricator. But what does this really mean now? As I understood it, the previous monolithic Design Team was essentially disbanded toward the beginning of the year, with the designers themselves distributed amongst the other WMF teams in order to more directly integrate their services into the development workflow (which sounds like a pretty good idea to me, at least, since design is such an integral part of most development). Did this happen? According to https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff_and_contractors, there seem to still be two teams now with the word 'design' in their names, Reading Design and Design Research, though these both seem to have somewhat more specialised functions than just general design, namely Reading (sounds like front-end non-interactive mw stuff, the visuals perhaps?) and Research. So what is the 'design team'? Is it one of these, though the teams only have 5 and 4 people on them, respectively? Is it just WMF designers in general? As much as this is also just a plea to please be more specific, if you have an actual answer, or if you have been saying this, please, speak up, share your experience and where you're coming from. As confusing as it is, I suspect a discussion of what and why this has been going on could also clear up quite a bit. Thanks. -I _______________________________________________ Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:Design@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design-- *Sherah Smith* UX Engineer Wikimedia Foundation 206-660-6585 sherahsmith.com http://sherahsmith.com donate.wikipedia.org http://donate.wikipedia.org
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 2:32 PM, Isarra Yos zhorishna@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/11/15 22:25, Isarra Yos wrote:
Hi, thank you for your response. This does clarify a lot.
Why do you make the distinction that UX designers also do visual when you stated already that you also have specifically visual designers? Are the visual designers the ones doing the UI standardisation?
How does Design Research relate to the rest of this? You state that they are not designers, but their work is an integral part of the user experience design process.
Hi Isarra,
Yeah, the current organizational structure is confusing that way. However, Design Research works pretty closely with designers (although we don't currently work on every product... that's partially a capacity issue, and it needs to change).
To take one example: I've been working with Pau Giner on a series of user studies to evaluate the design of a new Notifications prototype: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Global_notifications_user_research
And FWIW, 'UX [designer, engineer]' is a title that I've never been able to parse either ;)
J
Also, in the future, could you please use a darker colour (or even just leave it as the default) for your emails? That grey is really hard to read and I misread a few things the first time that made it look a little... different from what you obviously meant.
Thanks!
On 10/11/15 22:04, Sherah Smith wrote:
Hi Isarra,
what is the 'design team'?
Even though the design team (as it used to be) is now split out under different managers with no centralized Director, we still consider ourselves a "team" in that we still work together across teams to maintain consistency and provide feedback, collaborate, and review one another's work where needed. We have a weekly meeting and regularly talk and brainstorm in person across teams to support one another in our work.
Design Research is the team that conducts research that informs the design of products we build on all other teams. The employees on this team are not designers.
Reading Design is a sub-team under Reading, and it designs reading experiences, mostly for mobile platforms. Where you see "Visual Designer" as a title, that person works on visual designs. "UX Designer" works on combinations of visual and user experience design, mostly the latter, and "UX Engineer" builds interactive prototypes and interaction design.
The reorganization that you reference happened in late April this year and was not a decision the design team itself made. Rather, it came from upper management. We do now work within the teams you see listed on the staff page, on experiences for those teams specifically. So for example, you will not see a designer on the Search & Discovery team working on experiences for the Editing team.
Is there a particular concern you have about this organization that you feel like we should be discussing, or does this answer your questions?
Thank you,
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 1:21 PM, Isarra Yos zhorishna@gmail.com wrote:
From time to time I see references to the 'design team' on lists and on phabricator. But what does this really mean now? As I understood it, the previous monolithic Design Team was essentially disbanded toward the beginning of the year, with the designers themselves distributed amongst the other WMF teams in order to more directly integrate their services into the development workflow (which sounds like a pretty good idea to me, at least, since design is such an integral part of most development). Did this happen? According to https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff_and_contractors, there seem to still be two teams now with the word 'design' in their names, Reading Design and Design Research, though these both seem to have somewhat more specialised functions than just general design, namely Reading (sounds like front-end non-interactive mw stuff, the visuals perhaps?) and Research.
So what is the 'design team'? Is it one of these, though the teams only have 5 and 4 people on them, respectively? Is it just WMF designers in general?
As much as this is also just a plea to please be more specific, if you have an actual answer, or if you have been saying this, please, speak up, share your experience and where you're coming from. As confusing as it is, I suspect a discussion of what and why this has been going on could also clear up quite a bit.
Thanks.
-I
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
-- *Sherah Smith* UX Engineer Wikimedia Foundation 206-660-6585 sherahsmith.com donate.wikipedia.org
Design mailing listDesign@lists.wikimedia.orghttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
Why do you make the distinction that UX designers also do visual when you
stated already that you also have specifically visual designers?
Because interaction design and visual design are separate things. Visual designers are hired to design visual components, while UX designers are hired to design user experiences. Sometimes building experiences involves visual design, but not always - for example, in cases where we are innovating new ideas that do not yet have standards.
Are the visual designers the ones doing the UI standardisation?
May, who is a Visual Designer, is indeed working on UI Standardization, along with Volker, who is a UX Engineer.
How does Design Research relate to the rest of this?
Roughly: Design Researchers conduct user research ---> UX Engineers build interactive prototypes working with Design Research and Designers ---> Designers polish and iterate the prototypes with the prototypers ---> Engineers build the designs
As for the difference between UX Designer and UX Engineer, the main difference is that the UX Engineer has an engineering background and applies that to the building (coding) of interactive prototypes.
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 2:32 PM, Isarra Yos zhorishna@gmail.com wrote:
Er, forgot to cc the main list, since I did cross-post in the first place.
Sorry about that!
On 10/11/15 22:25, Isarra Yos wrote:
Hi, thank you for your response. This does clarify a lot.
Why do you make the distinction that UX designers also do visual when you stated already that you also have specifically visual designers? Are the visual designers the ones doing the UI standardisation?
How does Design Research relate to the rest of this? You state that they are not designers, but their work is an integral part of the user experience design process.
Also, in the future, could you please use a darker colour (or even just leave it as the default) for your emails? That grey is really hard to read and I misread a few things the first time that made it look a little... different from what you obviously meant.
Thanks!
On 10/11/15 22:04, Sherah Smith wrote:
Hi Isarra,
what is the 'design team'?
Even though the design team (as it used to be) is now split out under different managers with no centralized Director, we still consider ourselves a "team" in that we still work together across teams to maintain consistency and provide feedback, collaborate, and review one another's work where needed. We have a weekly meeting and regularly talk and brainstorm in person across teams to support one another in our work.
Design Research is the team that conducts research that informs the design of products we build on all other teams. The employees on this team are not designers.
Reading Design is a sub-team under Reading, and it designs reading experiences, mostly for mobile platforms. Where you see "Visual Designer" as a title, that person works on visual designs. "UX Designer" works on combinations of visual and user experience design, mostly the latter, and "UX Engineer" builds interactive prototypes and interaction design.
The reorganization that you reference happened in late April this year and was not a decision the design team itself made. Rather, it came from upper management. We do now work within the teams you see listed on the staff page, on experiences for those teams specifically. So for example, you will not see a designer on the Search & Discovery team working on experiences for the Editing team.
Is there a particular concern you have about this organization that you feel like we should be discussing, or does this answer your questions?
Thank you,
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 1:21 PM, Isarra Yos zhorishna@gmail.com wrote:
From time to time I see references to the 'design team' on lists and on phabricator. But what does this really mean now? As I understood it, the previous monolithic Design Team was essentially disbanded toward the beginning of the year, with the designers themselves distributed amongst the other WMF teams in order to more directly integrate their services into the development workflow (which sounds like a pretty good idea to me, at least, since design is such an integral part of most development). Did this happen? According to https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff_and_contractors, there seem to still be two teams now with the word 'design' in their names, Reading Design and Design Research, though these both seem to have somewhat more specialised functions than just general design, namely Reading (sounds like front-end non-interactive mw stuff, the visuals perhaps?) and Research.
So what is the 'design team'? Is it one of these, though the teams only have 5 and 4 people on them, respectively? Is it just WMF designers in general?
As much as this is also just a plea to please be more specific, if you have an actual answer, or if you have been saying this, please, speak up, share your experience and where you're coming from. As confusing as it is, I suspect a discussion of what and why this has been going on could also clear up quite a bit.
Thanks.
-I
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
-- *Sherah Smith* UX Engineer Wikimedia Foundation 206-660-6585 sherahsmith.com donate.wikipedia.org
Design mailing listDesign@lists.wikimedia.orghttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
According to the Staff and Contractors page, May is a 'Visual Experience Designer', which sounds like exactly what you're describing when it comes to the overlap between interaction and visual design. Is it just that you lack the visual design resources currently (one visual designer who isn't even just visual design does seem a bit insufficient for such a huge task!) to not overlap your roles?
Also, very cool to see how the roles interact laid out like this.
You're a UX engineer too, right? Does this mean you're often one of the ones interacting with other engineers/developers?
Sorry if I'm getting a bit off track here - design has always been one of the more opaque areas of the Foundation, at least from a volunteer perspective, and it's really nice to get a view of what's going on in such an integral part of the organisation.
On 10/11/15 22:50, Sherah Smith wrote:
Why do you make the distinction that UX designers also do visual when you stated already that you
also have specifically visual designers?
Because interaction design and visual design are separate things. Visual designers are hired to design visual components, while UX designers are hired to design user experiences. Sometimes building experiences involves visual design, but not always - for example, in cases where we are innovating new ideas that do not yet have standards.
Are the visual designers the ones doing the UI standardisation?
May, who is a Visual Designer, is indeed working on UI Standardization, along with Volker, who is a UX Engineer.
How does Design Research relate to the rest of this?
Roughly: Design Researchers conduct user research ---> UX Engineers build interactive prototypes working with Design Research and Designers ---> Designers polish and iterate the prototypes with the prototypers ---> Engineers build the designs
As for the difference between UX Designer and UX Engineer, the main difference is that the UX Engineer has an engineering background and applies that to the building (coding) of interactive prototypes.
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 2:32 PM, Isarra Yos <zhorishna@gmail.com mailto:zhorishna@gmail.com> wrote:
Er, forgot to cc the main list, since I did cross-post in the first place. Sorry about that! On 10/11/15 22:25, Isarra Yos wrote:Hi, thank you for your response. This does clarify a lot. Why do you make the distinction that UX designers also do visual when you stated already that you also have specifically visual designers? Are the visual designers the ones doing the UI standardisation? How does Design Research relate to the rest of this? You state that they are not designers, but their work is an integral part of the user experience design process. Also, in the future, could you please use a darker colour (or even just leave it as the default) for your emails? That grey is really hard to read and I misread a few things the first time that made it look a little... different from what you obviously meant. Thanks! On 10/11/15 22:04, Sherah Smith wrote:Hi Isarra, >> what is the 'design team'? Even though the design team (as it used to be) is now split out under different managers with no centralized Director, we still consider ourselves a "team" in that we still work together across teams to maintain consistency and provide feedback, collaborate, and review one another's work where needed. We have a weekly meeting and regularly talk and brainstorm in person across teams to support one another in our work. Design Research is the team that conducts research that informs the design of products we build on all other teams. The employees on this team are not designers. Reading Design is a sub-team under Reading, and it designs reading experiences, mostly for mobile platforms. Where you see "Visual Designer" as a title, that person works on visual designs. "UX Designer" works on combinations of visual and user experience design, mostly the latter, and "UX Engineer" builds interactive prototypes and interaction design. The reorganization that you reference happened in late April this year and was not a decision the design team itself made. Rather, it came from upper management. We do now work within the teams you see listed on the staff page, on experiences for those teams specifically. So for example, you will not see a designer on the Search & Discovery team working on experiences for the Editing team. Is there a particular concern you have about this organization that you feel like we should be discussing, or does this answer your questions? Thank you, On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 1:21 PM, Isarra Yos <zhorishna@gmail.com <mailto:zhorishna@gmail.com>> wrote: From time to time I see references to the 'design team' on lists and on phabricator. But what does this really mean now? As I understood it, the previous monolithic Design Team was essentially disbanded toward the beginning of the year, with the designers themselves distributed amongst the other WMF teams in order to more directly integrate their services into the development workflow (which sounds like a pretty good idea to me, at least, since design is such an integral part of most development). Did this happen? According to https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff_and_contractors, there seem to still be two teams now with the word 'design' in their names, Reading Design and Design Research, though these both seem to have somewhat more specialised functions than just general design, namely Reading (sounds like front-end non-interactive mw stuff, the visuals perhaps?) and Research. So what is the 'design team'? Is it one of these, though the teams only have 5 and 4 people on them, respectively? Is it just WMF designers in general? As much as this is also just a plea to please be more specific, if you have an actual answer, or if you have been saying this, please, speak up, share your experience and where you're coming from. As confusing as it is, I suspect a discussion of what and why this has been going on could also clear up quite a bit. Thanks. -I _______________________________________________ Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:Design@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design -- *Sherah Smith* UX Engineer Wikimedia Foundation 206-660-6585 <tel:206-660-6585> sherahsmith.com <http://sherahsmith.com> donate.wikipedia.org <http://donate.wikipedia.org> _______________________________________________ Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:Design@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design_______________________________________________ Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:Design@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design-- *Sherah Smith* UX Engineer Wikimedia Foundation 206-660-6585 sherahsmith.com http://sherahsmith.com donate.wikipedia.org http://donate.wikipedia.org
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
Yes, you are correct, we have one visual designer, May, and she is working on UI Standardization right now. Ideally we would have more visual designers but you are correct about resources.
And yes, I am a UX engineer and I mainly interact with Design Research and Design. I build mobile prototypes that we take to users for testing before iterating/releasing them. I do not typically interact with engineers these days as I am on the design side of things. :)
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 3:27 PM, Isarra Yos zhorishna@gmail.com wrote:
According to the Staff and Contractors page, May is a 'Visual Experience Designer', which sounds like exactly what you're describing when it comes to the overlap between interaction and visual design. Is it just that you lack the visual design resources currently (one visual designer who isn't even just visual design does seem a bit insufficient for such a huge task!) to not overlap your roles?
Also, very cool to see how the roles interact laid out like this.
You're a UX engineer too, right? Does this mean you're often one of the ones interacting with other engineers/developers?
Sorry if I'm getting a bit off track here - design has always been one of the more opaque areas of the Foundation, at least from a volunteer perspective, and it's really nice to get a view of what's going on in such an integral part of the organisation.
On 10/11/15 22:50, Sherah Smith wrote:
Why do you make the distinction that UX designers also do visual when
you stated already that you also have specifically visual designers?
Because interaction design and visual design are separate things. Visual designers are hired to design visual components, while UX designers are hired to design user experiences. Sometimes building experiences involves visual design, but not always - for example, in cases where we are innovating new ideas that do not yet have standards.
Are the visual designers the ones doing the UI standardisation?
May, who is a Visual Designer, is indeed working on UI Standardization, along with Volker, who is a UX Engineer.
How does Design Research relate to the rest of this?
Roughly: Design Researchers conduct user research ---> UX Engineers build interactive prototypes working with Design Research and Designers ---> Designers polish and iterate the prototypes with the prototypers ---> Engineers build the designs
As for the difference between UX Designer and UX Engineer, the main difference is that the UX Engineer has an engineering background and applies that to the building (coding) of interactive prototypes.
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 2:32 PM, Isarra Yos zhorishna@gmail.com wrote:
Er, forgot to cc the main list, since I did cross-post in the first place.
Sorry about that!
On 10/11/15 22:25, Isarra Yos wrote:
Hi, thank you for your response. This does clarify a lot.
Why do you make the distinction that UX designers also do visual when you stated already that you also have specifically visual designers? Are the visual designers the ones doing the UI standardisation?
How does Design Research relate to the rest of this? You state that they are not designers, but their work is an integral part of the user experience design process.
Also, in the future, could you please use a darker colour (or even just leave it as the default) for your emails? That grey is really hard to read and I misread a few things the first time that made it look a little... different from what you obviously meant.
Thanks!
On 10/11/15 22:04, Sherah Smith wrote:
Hi Isarra,
what is the 'design team'?
Even though the design team (as it used to be) is now split out under different managers with no centralized Director, we still consider ourselves a "team" in that we still work together across teams to maintain consistency and provide feedback, collaborate, and review one another's work where needed. We have a weekly meeting and regularly talk and brainstorm in person across teams to support one another in our work.
Design Research is the team that conducts research that informs the design of products we build on all other teams. The employees on this team are not designers.
Reading Design is a sub-team under Reading, and it designs reading experiences, mostly for mobile platforms. Where you see "Visual Designer" as a title, that person works on visual designs. "UX Designer" works on combinations of visual and user experience design, mostly the latter, and "UX Engineer" builds interactive prototypes and interaction design.
The reorganization that you reference happened in late April this year and was not a decision the design team itself made. Rather, it came from upper management. We do now work within the teams you see listed on the staff page, on experiences for those teams specifically. So for example, you will not see a designer on the Search & Discovery team working on experiences for the Editing team.
Is there a particular concern you have about this organization that you feel like we should be discussing, or does this answer your questions?
Thank you,
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 1:21 PM, Isarra Yos < zhorishna@gmail.com zhorishna@gmail.com> wrote:
From time to time I see references to the 'design team' on lists and on phabricator. But what does this really mean now? As I understood it, the previous monolithic Design Team was essentially disbanded toward the beginning of the year, with the designers themselves distributed amongst the other WMF teams in order to more directly integrate their services into the development workflow (which sounds like a pretty good idea to me, at least, since design is such an integral part of most development). Did this happen? According to https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff_and_contractors, there seem to still be two teams now with the word 'design' in their names, Reading Design and Design Research, though these both seem to have somewhat more specialised functions than just general design, namely Reading (sounds like front-end non-interactive mw stuff, the visuals perhaps?) and Research.
So what is the 'design team'? Is it one of these, though the teams only have 5 and 4 people on them, respectively? Is it just WMF designers in general?
As much as this is also just a plea to please be more specific, if you have an actual answer, or if you have been saying this, please, speak up, share your experience and where you're coming from. As confusing as it is, I suspect a discussion of what and why this has been going on could also clear up quite a bit.
Thanks.
-I
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
-- *Sherah Smith* UX Engineer Wikimedia Foundation 206-660-6585 sherahsmith.com donate.wikipedia.org
Design mailing listDesign@lists.wikimedia.orghttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
-- *Sherah Smith* UX Engineer Wikimedia Foundation 206-660-6585 sherahsmith.com donate.wikipedia.org
Design mailing listDesign@lists.wikimedia.orghttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
Resources are often a limiting factor in these things, and not even in places where one would normally expect, it seems like. Unfortunately when priorities are all over the place, what can you even do?
I'm a little confused by your second paragraph, though - if not the UX engineers, then who is getting the prototypes to the product engineers and making sure they're properly made?
Also, thank you so much for taking the time to respond to all of this.
On 10/11/15 23:50, Sherah Smith wrote:
Yes, you are correct, we have one visual designer, May, and she is working on UI Standardization right now. Ideally we would have more visual designers but you are correct about resources.
And yes, I am a UX engineer and I mainly interact with Design Research and Design. I build mobile prototypes that we take to users for testing before iterating/releasing them. I do not typically interact with engineers these days as I am on the design side of things. :)
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 3:27 PM, Isarra Yos <zhorishna@gmail.com mailto:zhorishna@gmail.com> wrote:
According to the Staff and Contractors page, May is a 'Visual Experience Designer', which sounds like exactly what you're describing when it comes to the overlap between interaction and visual design. Is it just that you lack the visual design resources currently (one visual designer who isn't even just visual design does seem a bit insufficient for such a huge task!) to not overlap your roles? Also, very cool to see how the roles interact laid out like this. You're a UX engineer too, right? Does this mean you're often one of the ones interacting with other engineers/developers? Sorry if I'm getting a bit off track here - design has always been one of the more opaque areas of the Foundation, at least from a volunteer perspective, and it's really nice to get a view of what's going on in such an integral part of the organisation. On 10/11/15 22:50, Sherah Smith wrote:>>Why do you make the distinction that UX designers also do visual when you stated already that you also have specifically visual designers? Because interaction design and visual design are separate things. Visual designers are hired to design visual components, while UX designers are hired to design user experiences. Sometimes building experiences involves visual design, but not always - for example, in cases where we are innovating new ideas that do not yet have standards. >>Are the visual designers the ones doing the UI standardisation? May, who is a Visual Designer, is indeed working on UI Standardization, along with Volker, who is a UX Engineer. >>How does Design Research relate to the rest of this? Roughly: Design Researchers conduct user research ---> UX Engineers build interactive prototypes working with Design Research and Designers ---> Designers polish and iterate the prototypes with the prototypers ---> Engineers build the designs As for the difference between UX Designer and UX Engineer, the main difference is that the UX Engineer has an engineering background and applies that to the building (coding) of interactive prototypes. On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 2:32 PM, Isarra Yos <zhorishna@gmail.com <mailto:zhorishna@gmail.com>> wrote: Er, forgot to cc the main list, since I did cross-post in the first place. Sorry about that! On 10/11/15 22:25, Isarra Yos wrote:Hi, thank you for your response. This does clarify a lot. Why do you make the distinction that UX designers also do visual when you stated already that you also have specifically visual designers? Are the visual designers the ones doing the UI standardisation? How does Design Research relate to the rest of this? You state that they are not designers, but their work is an integral part of the user experience design process. Also, in the future, could you please use a darker colour (or even just leave it as the default) for your emails? That grey is really hard to read and I misread a few things the first time that made it look a little... different from what you obviously meant. Thanks! On 10/11/15 22:04, Sherah Smith wrote:Hi Isarra, >> what is the 'design team'? Even though the design team (as it used to be) is now split out under different managers with no centralized Director, we still consider ourselves a "team" in that we still work together across teams to maintain consistency and provide feedback, collaborate, and review one another's work where needed. We have a weekly meeting and regularly talk and brainstorm in person across teams to support one another in our work. Design Research is the team that conducts research that informs the design of products we build on all other teams. The employees on this team are not designers. Reading Design is a sub-team under Reading, and it designs reading experiences, mostly for mobile platforms. Where you see "Visual Designer" as a title, that person works on visual designs. "UX Designer" works on combinations of visual and user experience design, mostly the latter, and "UX Engineer" builds interactive prototypes and interaction design. The reorganization that you reference happened in late April this year and was not a decision the design team itself made. Rather, it came from upper management. We do now work within the teams you see listed on the staff page, on experiences for those teams specifically. So for example, you will not see a designer on the Search & Discovery team working on experiences for the Editing team. Is there a particular concern you have about this organization that you feel like we should be discussing, or does this answer your questions? Thank you, On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 1:21 PM, Isarra Yos <zhorishna@gmail.com <mailto:zhorishna@gmail.com>> wrote: From time to time I see references to the 'design team' on lists and on phabricator. But what does this really mean now? As I understood it, the previous monolithic Design Team was essentially disbanded toward the beginning of the year, with the designers themselves distributed amongst the other WMF teams in order to more directly integrate their services into the development workflow (which sounds like a pretty good idea to me, at least, since design is such an integral part of most development). Did this happen? According to https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff_and_contractors, there seem to still be two teams now with the word 'design' in their names, Reading Design and Design Research, though these both seem to have somewhat more specialised functions than just general design, namely Reading (sounds like front-end non-interactive mw stuff, the visuals perhaps?) and Research. So what is the 'design team'? Is it one of these, though the teams only have 5 and 4 people on them, respectively? Is it just WMF designers in general? As much as this is also just a plea to please be more specific, if you have an actual answer, or if you have been saying this, please, speak up, share your experience and where you're coming from. As confusing as it is, I suspect a discussion of what and why this has been going on could also clear up quite a bit. Thanks. -I _______________________________________________ Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:Design@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design -- *Sherah Smith* UX Engineer Wikimedia Foundation 206-660-6585 <tel:206-660-6585> sherahsmith.com <http://sherahsmith.com> donate.wikipedia.org <http://donate.wikipedia.org> _______________________________________________ Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:Design@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design_______________________________________________ Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:Design@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design -- *Sherah Smith* UX Engineer Wikimedia Foundation 206-660-6585 <tel:206-660-6585> sherahsmith.com <http://sherahsmith.com> donate.wikipedia.org <http://donate.wikipedia.org> _______________________________________________ Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:Design@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design_______________________________________________ Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:Design@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design-- *Sherah Smith* UX Engineer Wikimedia Foundation 206-660-6585 sherahsmith.com http://sherahsmith.com donate.wikipedia.org http://donate.wikipedia.org
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
To add more about Visual designers, they work on designing visual experiences, which includes the visual design and consistency of a brand, which then happen to include components or anything that falls within that realm. If an experience does not require users to see to experience, we wouldn't need to visualize it, hence no visual design.
There isn't a pure visual designer in the foundation, I'm a Visual Experience Designer, which means I am more of a visual designer but I also work on user experience. The role between Visual and Experience designers are distinct, but often the line can be blur. Some UX designers also have varying degrees of visual design chops here.
But, I agree with you that we need more Visual Designers. UxD and VD cannot come up with great experiences by themselves. I'm sure you know that without Design Research, UxD and VD, the whole experience would be mediocre and inconsistent. We used to have Visual Design interns where they get to be integrated into more teams, but we no longer have budget for something like that. We try to make things happen with what we have!
mm
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 2:50 PM, Sherah Smith ssmith@wikimedia.org wrote:
Why do you make the distinction that UX designers also do visual when you stated already that you also have specifically visual designers?
Because interaction design and visual design are separate things. Visual designers are hired to design visual components, while UX designers are hired to design user experiences. Sometimes building experiences involves visual design, but not always - for example, in cases where we are innovating new ideas that do not yet have standards.
Are the visual designers the ones doing the UI standardisation?
May, who is a Visual Designer, is indeed working on UI Standardization, along with Volker, who is a UX Engineer.
How does Design Research relate to the rest of this?
Roughly: Design Researchers conduct user research ---> UX Engineers build interactive prototypes working with Design Research and Designers ---> Designers polish and iterate the prototypes with the prototypers ---> Engineers build the designs
As for the difference between UX Designer and UX Engineer, the main difference is that the UX Engineer has an engineering background and applies that to the building (coding) of interactive prototypes.
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 2:32 PM, Isarra Yos zhorishna@gmail.com wrote:
Er, forgot to cc the main list, since I did cross-post in the first place.
Sorry about that!
On 10/11/15 22:25, Isarra Yos wrote:
Hi, thank you for your response. This does clarify a lot.
Why do you make the distinction that UX designers also do visual when you stated already that you also have specifically visual designers? Are the visual designers the ones doing the UI standardisation?
How does Design Research relate to the rest of this? You state that they are not designers, but their work is an integral part of the user experience design process.
Also, in the future, could you please use a darker colour (or even just leave it as the default) for your emails? That grey is really hard to read and I misread a few things the first time that made it look a little... different from what you obviously meant.
Thanks!
On 10/11/15 22:04, Sherah Smith wrote:
Hi Isarra,
what is the 'design team'?
Even though the design team (as it used to be) is now split out under different managers with no centralized Director, we still consider ourselves a "team" in that we still work together across teams to maintain consistency and provide feedback, collaborate, and review one another's work where needed. We have a weekly meeting and regularly talk and brainstorm in person across teams to support one another in our work.
Design Research is the team that conducts research that informs the design of products we build on all other teams. The employees on this team are not designers.
Reading Design is a sub-team under Reading, and it designs reading experiences, mostly for mobile platforms. Where you see "Visual Designer" as a title, that person works on visual designs. "UX Designer" works on combinations of visual and user experience design, mostly the latter, and "UX Engineer" builds interactive prototypes and interaction design.
The reorganization that you reference happened in late April this year and was not a decision the design team itself made. Rather, it came from upper management. We do now work within the teams you see listed on the staff page, on experiences for those teams specifically. So for example, you will not see a designer on the Search & Discovery team working on experiences for the Editing team.
Is there a particular concern you have about this organization that you feel like we should be discussing, or does this answer your questions?
Thank you,
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 1:21 PM, Isarra Yos zhorishna@gmail.com wrote:
From time to time I see references to the 'design team' on lists and on phabricator. But what does this really mean now? As I understood it, the previous monolithic Design Team was essentially disbanded toward the beginning of the year, with the designers themselves distributed amongst the other WMF teams in order to more directly integrate their services into the development workflow (which sounds like a pretty good idea to me, at least, since design is such an integral part of most development). Did this happen? According to https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff_and_contractors, there seem to still be two teams now with the word 'design' in their names, Reading Design and Design Research, though these both seem to have somewhat more specialised functions than just general design, namely Reading (sounds like front-end non-interactive mw stuff, the visuals perhaps?) and Research.
So what is the 'design team'? Is it one of these, though the teams only have 5 and 4 people on them, respectively? Is it just WMF designers in general?
As much as this is also just a plea to please be more specific, if you have an actual answer, or if you have been saying this, please, speak up, share your experience and where you're coming from. As confusing as it is, I suspect a discussion of what and why this has been going on could also clear up quite a bit.
Thanks.
-I
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
-- Sherah Smith UX Engineer Wikimedia Foundation 206-660-6585 sherahsmith.com donate.wikipedia.org
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
-- Sherah Smith UX Engineer Wikimedia Foundation 206-660-6585 sherahsmith.com donate.wikipedia.org
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
Hi, this is a very interesting conversation, and I hope the most informative bits are reflected in https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Design
By the way, we are discussing the use of the term "Design" in the WMF product development process, as a stage involving not only visual/UX design but also architecture, performance, operations... Your feedback is welcomed.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WMF_product_development_process#Design
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:Srypura34nh1njr4
Hi Isarra --
I can clarify the way design is organized at the Foundation; the actual org page I'll have to leave to someone else.
There are currently designers sitting in the vertical teams, but as the teams themselves are organized slightly differently, it's hard to understand.
For example, the reading design team is composed of the designers and engineers that work on Wikipedia and sister sites' reading experiences and discovery is organized the same way. In editing, the designers are in the various product teams.
There are two teams that provide support to all of the audiences teams -- Design Research and UX Standardization. Design Research lives under Research and UX Standardization is in Reading.
This is a start; happy to provide more clarifications.
-Toby
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 1:21 PM, Isarra Yos zhorishna@gmail.com wrote:
From time to time I see references to the 'design team' on lists and on phabricator. But what does this really mean now? As I understood it, the previous monolithic Design Team was essentially disbanded toward the beginning of the year, with the designers themselves distributed amongst the other WMF teams in order to more directly integrate their services into the development workflow (which sounds like a pretty good idea to me, at least, since design is such an integral part of most development). Did this happen? According to https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff_and_contractors, there seem to still be two teams now with the word 'design' in their names, Reading Design and Design Research, though these both seem to have somewhat more specialised functions than just general design, namely Reading (sounds like front-end non-interactive mw stuff, the visuals perhaps?) and Research.
So what is the 'design team'? Is it one of these, though the teams only have 5 and 4 people on them, respectively? Is it just WMF designers in general?
As much as this is also just a plea to please be more specific, if you have an actual answer, or if you have been saying this, please, speak up, share your experience and where you're coming from. As confusing as it is, I suspect a discussion of what and why this has been going on could also clear up quite a bit.
Thanks.
-I
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