Expectations of myself

• Foster an ethos of continuous improvement
• Repeatedly return to user needs and goals to create alignment
• Frame design goals as the marriage of user goals and business wishes
• Exhibit genuine care for each person I support
• Use wisdom and humor when shaping behavior
• Model desired behavior and attitudes for others
• Address what's needed wherever it appears

Expectations of designers

• Scenario-based, goal-oriented
• Use storyboards to start understanding a scenario
• Freely move between storyboard, workflow, wires, prototype as needed to tackle problems
• Make small prototypes to test and learn
• The prioritization and arrangement of data directs user attention and action
• Organize "done" work into bite-size chunks, set apart from exploratory work

Expectations of all workers

• Work to make the job of the next person easier
• Work in public, out in the open
• Go and see
• Be aware of and have your work informed by user goals and business needs together
• Create possibilities cheaply, winnow according to goals, improve the best ones
• Involve others in solving problems, chewing on possibilities
• When presenting possibilities, arrive with your own evaluation of each one – pros and cons, fit to purpose, what you like and don’t like – and the sort of feedback you need
• Scope is negotiated – watch for improvements AND for lighter interventions
• Experiment with possible improvements to your own and collective work

Recruiters I've recently spoken to about passive opportunities (where the recruiter reached out to me before I was aware of the position) are more accessible to me than hiring managers, so my research will have to start there. In a previous article I said

The first step in capturing passive opportunities is clearly to get my profile in front of relevant recruiters. LinkedIn seems pretty good for this. While my LinkedIn profile is also not a subject of this research, I'm sure I'll learn things relevant to it along the was as well.

The second is to get that recruiter to invite me to an interview so I can get them to pass me to the hiring manager if the position seems to be a fit. My impression is that my resume does an okay job here, and my portfolio could do better. I don't know how many good opportunities have not com my way due to insufficiency of my portfolio, and I'm not sure I have a way of finding out.

The third is for my profile and the assessment of the recruiter to work together to encourage the hiring manager to grant me an interview. My impression is that my portfolio is not effective in this third step.

Revamping my design portfolio: audiences

The questions raised here include

• Is LinkedIn a good way to get my profile in front of recruiters?
• Does my resume do a good job of getting the recruiter to pass my profile on to the hiring manager?
• Does my portfolio do a good job of getting the recruiter to pass my profile on to the hiring manager?

But of course these are not the sorts of questions I can usefully ask directly; the likely answers (yes or no) wouldn't improve my understanding much or help me make changes. Instead, I should ask questions that will help me gauge the effectiveness of what I have, provide details that may lead me toward changes, and identify what is already working. These questions will look more like

• Which of my assumptions are off base? (with a list of these assumptions)
• For the position in question, did you have any misgivings about my profile, other than location?
• What seemed most relevant about my profile?
• What seemed to be missing?
• Did you review my portfolio?

This sort of question will ideally not be too much to answer, and spark a little conversation that will help me know what to keep or play up in my profile, what to give more emphasis, and where I've left gaps. But first I must get them to engage, so I'll contact them via LinkedIn with a simple message:

Hi, [name]. I've decided to turn my design research powers on my portfolio and resume. I'd love to ask you a few questions, since we recently discussed a position. If you are willing, I promise to make it easy and not take up too much of your time. Yes? Thanks, —Jon

Next up: understanding the results.

In a previous post I said

My highest-level goal is to be an impressive candidate design leader to firms that are looking for experience design leadership. They needn’t work hard to qualify themselves; I’ll assess these companies myself for culture, personal growth opportunity, financial opportunity, and interesting work to do.

Revamping my design leadership portfolio: goals

I'd like my portfolio to represent me well for advertised positions that I apply to, and for positions where a recruiter comes to me as a passive candidate. These two avenues probably have different processes and slightly different audiences. I'm a little bit more interested in the passive opportunities, since recently these have been the more interesting ones (iRobot, Neato, Kohler), but I suspect that there will be goals enough in common that I can do a good job for each audience with one portfolio. (For now I'm going to leave my resume out of the analysis and research, though I am sure I will learn things that are useful to improving it along the way.)

Since I have some experience recruiting designers and managers in small and large companies, I understand that the key variables and audiences break down like so:

• When applying to an advertised position, one's profile is screened
  • first by a recruiter, then passed to a hiring manager for further review, OR
  • first by a hiring manager who is a "product person" (knowledgeable about experience design or product management), OR
  • first by a hiring manager who is not a product person (focused on some other area such as engineering, sales, or marketing and less knowledgeable about experience design or product management).
• A passive candidate's profile is first screened by a recruiter, then
  • reviewed by a hiring manager who is a product person, OR
  • reviewed by a hiring manager who is not a product person.

The first step in capturing passive opportunities is clearly to get my profile in front of relevant recruiters. LinkedIn seems pretty good for this. While my LinkedIn profile is also not a subject of this research, I'm sure I'll learn things relevant to it along the was as well.

The second is to get that recruiter to invite me to an interview so I can get them to pass me to the hiring manager if the position seems to be a fit. My impression is that my resume does an okay job here, and my portfolio could do better. I don't know how many good opportunities have not come my way due to insufficiency of my portfolio, and I'm not sure I have a way of finding out.

The third is for my profile and the assessment of the recruiter to work together to encourage the hiring manager to grant me an interview. My impression is that my portfolio is not effective in this third step.

I'm going to have to make some more assumptions here, but my strategy should not be informed solely by assumptions.

Assumption: a recruiter is going to try to match my profile to the "spec" they are given, either a job description or something more specific about the signals the hiring manager is looking for. So a recruiter will be looking for these signals in my resume, and possibly in my portfolio. They are not likely to be expert in experience design, so the recruiter will be watching for general quality of portfolio items and that the right topics are mentioned or otherwise evident. I'd like to test this assumption, learn if it is correct and how I might address it. Assumption: a hiring manager who is not a product person will be seeking to add or improve the design function in their organization by hiring a seasoned leader who can evaluate current staff and processes, develop staff, hire, improve processes, improve integration of the design function with the rest of the business, bring new capabilities to the design function, and deliver results in doing so that clearly further the aims of the business. I'd like to test this assumption.

Assumption: a hiring manager who is a product person will have goals for the improvement of the design function, but will not be able to accomplish it on their own, due to too many people and/or product lines to support, rapid growth, expertise or interest gaps, or other structural challenges. They may have a strong sense of the signals they are looking for, but regardless of that will be helped by clarity that I can tick all the boxes as a design leader. I'd like to test this assumption. Assumption: whether a recruiter is the first hurdle or not, the needs of the different types of hiring manager will be the same. This assumption feels pretty safe, if the above hypotheses hold.

So, how might I test my assumptions for each of the three audiences? What might my research plan be for these three audiences?

Often in design research we look where the light is best. Folks like to complain about this; it's a bad way to look for your keys, for example. But needs must; we may not have direct access to the people we need to learn from. In this case, I do not have direct access to hiring managers of either type that I have recently succeeded or failed with, other than my current boss. I do have access to the recruiters I've spoken to recently. I can start with them.

These recruiters are busy people, so I'll need to interrogate them gently and in ways that don't feel expensive to them in terms of time or thought. But I can send an email asking if they'd be willing to answer a few questions by email about the recruiting process and my case in particular, and see what they say.

Next up: the message and the results.

A little while ago I resolved to use explicit dimensions to solicit peer feedback and to organize my feedback on employees I needed to review. I also said that I'd let you know how it goes.

Quality – HMT (how might they) contribute to better results for the users of the product/project

Content – HMT improve the delivery of their own work

Collaboration – HMT foster greater collaboration among the team

Client – HMT better serve the needs of the client

Improvement – where have we noticed improvement in the review period

My previous post: Reviews

I've done two such reviews this way so far, incorporating these dimensions into the existing structure.

Peer feedback quality was greatly improved. Not everyone had something to say for each dimension, but when they did it was more useful and a nice mix of specific praise and specific constructive feedback. And the recipients of the feedback noticed and appreciated this difference. Granted, the prior peer feedback solicitation questions were pretty slim, essentially "do you have any constructive feedback for {person}" and "do you have any other feedback for {person}?" So anything might be better.

In each review I've gone over the peer feedback and my own thoughts for each dimension, and brought key points for praise and development in the summary. Employees have found this helpful, and the specificity (both topic and feedback) sparked good discussion. Granted, without the usual tight connection of the review to compensation there was less pressure on the employee's part to maneuver the discussion toward whatever would get them the biggest raise. We were free to talk about the future, informed by the past, rather than be tempted to merely put the bravest face we could on the past.

There's an opportunity to reinforce team or company values, or other desired behaviors, with review dimensions such as these. As we hammer out which behaviors these are, I expect the dimensions will change. For now I'll go on using them as-is, as they have already been bearing fruit.

I'm not in a big hurry to leave my job (hi, folks!). But every once in a while a really nice opportunity comes along, and I'd like to be prepared for it. And of late I've felt that I'm not prepared. I think my portfolio doesn't reflect my value as a design leader; it's only a little bit past a designer portfolio, and a hastily thrown-together one at that. Sure, it was sufficient to get my current gig, but I fell into the lap of this company at JUST the right moment; a lot of this last transition is down to good luck.

This is a good reminder that you should be looking for your next job before you want your next job.

Roy Rapoport, Director of Corporate Engineering at Netflix

Recently we've started to revamp the company site, which has gone untouched for half a decade. In doing so we've selected two audiences we want to impress based on our business goals, done research on each, and penned some aims and a mission for the site based on that research and some hopefully reasonable assumptions when research didn't suffice.

I'll take a similar approach, at least conceptually, to improve my own portfolio, using my own goals (why have a portfolio site, after all?) and what I've learned in my many contacts with recruiters and hiring managers over the past few years. Over several posts I'll go through the process, and eventually arrive at a portfolio site that I am proud of and I expect will do the job.

My highest-level goal is to be an impressive candidate design leader to firms that are looking for experience design leadership. They needn't work hard to qualify themselves; I'll assess these companies myself for culture, personal growth opportunity, financial opportunity, and interesting work to do. My design leadership portfolio will contribute to that goal by suggesting to recruiters and hiring managers looking for a product design leader at the director level or better that I am worth further evaluation and an interview.

It'll do so by demonstrating that my teams make great experiences for normal people in software, hardware, out-of-box, and services. It'll do so by showing how my organization of the team, the process, and the work, and my wrangling of the particular challenges of each project, contributed to outstanding results.

It'll do so by reflecting how I lead teams to use research, usability testing, and metrics to produce good experiences and improve them over time, and where organizational failure to do these things left money and opportunities on the table. It'll do so by making it clear that I'm concerned with exactly the things that a growing business needs to pay attention to, including

• delivering delight,
• becoming recommendable,
• demonstrating thoughtfulness through meaningful differentiation,
• avoiding churn, cancellations, returns, and support costs, and
• demonstrating continuous improvement.

Further, it'll do so by demonstrating that mentoring and developing designers, writers, researchers, and accessibility specialists is a part of the job that I find important, enjoy, and am successful at.

These writings have a part to play, of course. My ability to explain concepts, reveal my thinking, and work in public are all facets of my work personality that are material to whatever success I've had so far. So it'll be a help if these sometimes refer to the portfolio and vice versa.

Equally important are non-goals:

• While I know a bit about HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and cut my teeth on CSS back when we were rebuilding table-based layouts without tables, it's not important that I showcase particular skill with these tools. So I don't need to shy away from tools that make producing a site easier. I don't need to hand-roll everything.
• While I'm a design leader, I'm not producing a lot of shipping design myself; rather I'm helping teams of people think about and organize their work, and developing those people and the processes in which they operate, to deliver excellent experiences that drive business results. So I need just enough polish to demonstrate thoughtfulness and get my points across. I don't need to create a truly bespoke design. The content will matter more, and team results will matter more, than the frame in which these are shown.
• I've learned that designer-manager positions often become one or the other to the dissatisfaction of everyone. I know that what I love is coaching, up and down, and I don't want a player-coach role. So while my own design aptitude is important, my individual work should take a back seat to the results I lead cross-functional teams to achieve. My own sketches to help foster that achievement may have a role to play, however.

So I'll need to select projects and produce case studies that provide opportunities to do these things, and be explicit in pointing these things out as I go.

Along the way I'd like to do things a little differently. I'd like to share credit, perhaps by naming people who played a special role on the team. I'd like to discuss the sort of culture I hope to foster on design teams, where the team makes decisions together, knowingly for the good of users and the business, and sign-off by a superior is neither necessary nor sought. And I'd like to set myself up for regular maintenance of the portfolio, such that it's not burdensome to add to it over time. I'd rather not go through a spasm of intense work as I have at each major job transition in the past; rather I'd like a small amount of continuous effort to result in my preparedness for these transitions when the opportunity arises.

What's next? I can see a handful of needed activities:

• Product-managing the various possible portfolio pieces
• Considering overall positioning and messages that reflect that positioning
• Selecting and preparing to measure the appropriate primary actions that denote success for the site

It's probably sensible to go after the hardest part first: the portfolio pieces. Watch this space.