How to survive being the only Designer in a Tech team
When you work in a tech company being the only Product Designer surrounded by developers, businesses and marketers your challenges could be very different as a designer being part of a design team.
When you work in a design team, you don’t need to explain your design process to the rest of the designers. You can cry together because Adobe has bought Figma and that’s good. You can learn from other designers by asking for feedback, co-creating or just spending time with them. It can be very beneficial for your life and career.
On the other hand, being part of a tech company or a startup as the only designer is not easy because you need a broader approach. You should develop a 360º point of view where design is part of something bigger; the Company and the clients.
You have different challenges working in that way. Let’s see some of them:
Evangelism
They contracted you because they have listened to the benefits of UX, Design or something similar. But, they don’t really know what the design is about. They have no idea about the process, the duration, the value proposition or other related topics. Your role should be to explain the user-centric methodology to different members of the company. Besides, it is necessary to explain the importance of having a user-centric approach.
Speak different languages
You need to be able to speak different languages. During the week, you could talk with Business, Marketing and Engineering people, and you should adapt to their way of thinking and needs.
1- Business people
They think about the revenue, costs, KPIs and strategy of the company. They invest money in a designer because they have heard the benefits of Design in business. You should develop a strategic role and be able to think in the long term. Sometimes they don’t have a roadmap, and it would be good to help them define it. Maybe, they have thought about new features that look great and your role would be to convince them (with your research insights) that is not necessary to do it.
2- Engineers
You need to make life easier for the developers. The challenge would be to help to accelerate the building process with the proper deliveries. Before you start working together, you need to reach an agreement to define how are you going to work together and which are going to be the deliverables. You would need a UI Kit and documentation. Understanding their needs is important. They develop and put your designs into code and they don’t want to spend time trying to figure out what the interface could be. With the engineers, you could use technical language without any problem. Some developers have great ideas about Design and they know about user experience, usability, accessibility or UI design. Therefore, you have to listen to them and be open to learning from them.
3- Marketing
Marketing is an important part of the company too and they decide on the strategies for the acquisition of new users. Besides, they can have deep knowledge about users. Don’t forget that Marketing makes audience segmentations and they have thought about the users before you. Although on a day-to-day basis you have different goals, you would need to include this role in some moments of the designing process. You should listen to them too.
There could be other key roles in the company like customer support or journalist (content writers) that could be included in the process in some moments. Maybe they can externalize some processes and you should collect other companies’ material. Each company is different and has its own way of working.
Conclusion
Make people understand the value of Design for the company. Think about your different stakeholders as you think about your users. Know their way of thinking and needs and satisfy them. Not from the designer's mental model. Be empathetic which each stakeholder. It is a huge responsibility, but It can bring you a lot of satisfaction.