[IxDA Discuss] Career paths & organizational structures for IxDs

[Wilson, Russell]

IMO:

- What are the possible career paths for IxDs?

I'm beginning to see titles all over the place like "VP Product Design",
"VP User Experience", etc.  But, my exec recruiter points out that it's
still
much more difficult to find req's out for positions with those titles.
I have found that it requires significant selling (and rep, experience)
to land
these positions.  I am currently the Director of Product Design,
reporting
to the CEO of a software company (160 people and growing fast)
specializing in 
network performance mgt (B2B). The CEO recognized the need for design
leadership 
in the company, and I am expected to show ROI (even if it is fuzzy).
But, there 
is probably not a good justification in our company for a CDO.  We
aren't a consumer
product, and I fight "it's good enough" all the time.

So, with all of that said, I do see the following:

IxD/IA --> Senior IxD/IA --> Manager IxD/IA --> Director of UX/Director
of Product Design --> VP (same) --> CDO

	(disregarding the issues of a talented designer moving into
management, etc.)

I have also considered moving into more traditional roles and
emphasizing design.
For example, VP Product Management or VP Development.  The problem there
is that with
VP of Product Management you wind up doing and being responsible for so
much more outside of 
pure design, and you're in marketing (which has it's own set of politcal
problems).  With
VP Development (which I've been) you also are pulled in other directions
and it requires
so much people management...  Neither an ideal choice, but thought I
should bring them up
because they have crossed my mind and have been suggested to me in the
past.


- What sort of strategic value are IxDs expected to offer once they
possess a certain level of experience?

At the Director (and up) level, the expectations broaden a little beyond
just IxD and seem to cover
more aspects of UX; strategic thinking becomes more important.  I think
about how we can improve our UX
and align it with our corporate goals to stay ahead of the competition
and drive our revenue goals all the time.
I also think about staffing and resources and how best to grow the
department to optimally service the needs
of the organization and to ultimately create "best of class" products.


- What sort of organizational & departmental structures best support
IxDs advancing within a corporate environment?

I believe that the IxD function (and IA, etc.) needs to be within the
development organization, or possibly sit between
development and marketing.  It should not be within marketing because it
will be positioned somewhat "against" 
development and designers will have a hard time with politics  and
gaining the *cred* with the development team to drive
their designs.  That doesn't mean that it can't work (I'm sure there are
examples out there), but I don't think it's
optimal.  Designers need to be aligned with developers.  In my company,
I actually have my own indpendent design
department, and I work daily with product managers and architects and
programmers.  I carefully work politics between
the two.




Anything you can share or contribute would be very welcome! Does anybody
have a "Chief Design Officer" example yet?? I'd especially love to
receive org charts & information from established companies like Apple,
Yahoo!, IBM, Google, eBay, SAP, etc. since your companies lead the
industry in terms of hiring & establishing expectations for our
profession. (I can leave corporate attributions or remove them if
desired, just let me know....)

Collecting information about this question would benefit the entire IxDA
community, and I intend to contribute my general findings to the
Resource Library if all goes well. I'd like to create something
analogous to Challis Hodge's great model of UX career paths (see
<http://www.challishodge.com/models_ux_careerpath.html>) but with an eye
more towards practitioners working on complex software & systems beyond
the web domain.