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AMA: Aarron Walter, Started UX at MailChimp, Author of Designing for Emotion, VP of Design Education at InVision

7 years ago from Aarron Walter, VP of Design Education at InVision

  • Amanda Pinsker, 7 years ago

    Hi Aarron! I'm about to start as the next Design Director of a student-run design studio at Northeastern University (called Scout!). We've already grown a lot in the ~3 years since we started, but we're still trying to figure out our process, in terms of hiring a team, choosing our clients, and how we do our work. We have some constraints in that our members are doing work while in classes, our projects can only really go for 4 months, and we work with a lot of early stage ventures. Considering this, I'm interested in trying out an agile process and introducing a more formalized strategy phase, but we have some concerns about implementing this with a part-time team.

    I'd love to hear any thoughts or advice you might have! Thanks!

    0 points
    • Aarron Walter, 7 years ago

      Agile is tough if your teams are mostly part-time, but it's not impossible. You can structure a lot of the work to be remote if schedules are hard to align. You'll need to make sure teams can find time for regular stand-ups to talk about what they've completed and what they'll be working on next. These don't have to be daily, but the intervals should be regular. They should schedule design reviews in-person if possible. There are so many good tools that make remote collaboration easy: google Hangouts, Basecamp, Slack, InVision.

      Choose clients that are committed to being available to students and providing the feedback they'll need to succeed. Choose clients that have meaningful problems to solve (non-profits, interesting new businesses, etc) to help students build a good portfolio. Choose clients that will give students access to the end user where possible so students get the opportunity to research the problem before designing.

      1 point