UCD Capability: Hiring Specialists or Generalists?
Are you building a new product team?
This post is about how teams (in the NHS or gov) can mature their User-Centred Design (UCD) capability. It outlines some commons challenges, decisions and risks that should be considered when hiring staff to work in this context.
UCD in the NHS
The NHSE product strategy aims for all teams to follow User-Centred Design principles and approach (where applicable).
Understanding customers needs and designing with our users in mind is an effective way to deliver great service outcomes.
It is a great ambition and this approach supports delivering the recommendations from the Wade-Geary review.
Over the last six months I’ve hosted the User-Centred Design (UCD) Community of Practice. This has given me the chance to meet many teams and hear from colleagues about the challenges they face.
The User-Centred Design Maturity Model has also been a helpful tool for encouraging refection and debate in teams.
Topics such as team structure, roles, ways of working and collaboration were common. A more sensitive topic that came up several times is do teams have an appropriate mix of staff (specialists and generalists).
One of the biggest concerns we hear about is when teams are made up of only generalists. Any assurance or spend-review process (DHSC-DTAB / CDDO-GDS Service Standards) will identify this as a ‘Not Met’ (i.e. fail), due to the risks it introduces around not understanding user needs and designing inappropriate solutions.
What decisions do you need to make about the team structure and roles?
While we want to encourage and enable all teams to adopt UCD approaches and bring in UCD specialists, we have to be aware of team contexts and constraints.
To put forward a balanced view, not every team will need every specialist role and there are some trade-offs to decide around acceptable risks. I’ve tried to summarise these insights below:
Reasons for hiring generalists to deliver UCD work
Typical roles: UX Consultants, UX/UI’rs, UX Designers, Business Analysts, Product Managers
- Teams without budget for all the roles
- If you only have enough specialist work for a part-time role
- Where the team are not sure what they need - flexible
- If the project is simple and does not need specialist skills or knowledge
- Where you can safely outsource the specialist parts of the work
- Where you have training/resources/tools and can upskill staff on missing skills
- When quality is less of a concern (e.g. feels it may be quicker to “ship it” due to less handovers)
- Culture: “It is a team sport, everyone does everything”
Risks:
- Conformation bias when combining UR+design roles (marking your own homework)
- Generalists may not have up to date industry knowledge for all the specialisms
- Unclear roles and responsibilities - everyone needs to know about everything
- The team maybe overconfident in their abilities
- These teams might need more external perspectives / reflection and assurance of the work
- Higher risk of delivering the wrong thing. Getting it all wrong, lowering quality, or doing something dangerous
- Additional clinical risk and reputational damage
- Takes longer. Productivity stops when things need to be rebuilt again
Reasons for hiring specialists to deliver UCD work
Typical roles: User research, Content design, Interaction Design, Service Design, Accessibility and Inclusion, Performance Analysts, Research Operations
- When you need clear separation of roles (e.g. UR / design) to avoid conflict/bias in decision making
- Where you need subject matter expertise / technical knowledge / years of experience
- Where the work involved is complex, controversial or a top priority (e.g. new national service)
- Culture: “It is a team sport. Everyone involved as needed, but specialists lead/oversee the work”
- When it is good to have diverse views within a team - encourage debate around issues and priorities
- When the team are being assured to industry standards (CDDO/DHSC/etc)
- Where you know the work will be subject to external scrutiny (e.g. get a reputable researcher to lead it)
- Where you need peer/industry support/engagement or ethical approval to proceed (e.g. within the Community of Practice / Profession Head)
- Where budget allows - it will lead to better quality and outcomes
- Some roles may be safer to join in a single role if the skills complement each other (e.g. SD+IXD, Content+IXD, Quant UR+Performance Analytics, Inclusion+Accessibility, BA+PM),
Risks:
- Costs more
- Bigger team to manage - more interdependencies and moving parts
- Can take longer to reach higher quality standard. It may delay delivery (initially until the team is established), though in the long run better service design means less rework
- What to do if one area of the specialist work dries up - do you have flexible skills
- If combining two roles, need to be realistic about how much time spend on each part of role
Where can our team learn more?
A few recommendations:
- Ask about joining the NHSE or X-Gov UCD Maturity Community of Practice
- Arrange a chat with NHSE UCD Team about the UCD Maturity Framework
- Create a roles and responsibilities matrix for your team.
- Consider who is covering different areas such as user research, accessibility, inclusion, content design, etc. How much of the teams time is dedicated to each of these specialist activities?
- Join the professional Community of Practices for the specialist areas you need more expertise on
- Present your research/designs to the professional Community of Practices - seek internal feedback
- Generalists can learn more about UCD.
- There are loads of introductory courses which may be suitable
- e.g. on Pluralsight, Futurelearn, Civil Service Learning, YouTube
- It won’t make a generalist a specialist over-night, but helps with collaboration and understanding how roles complement each other
- Read the DDAT UCD Job Family
- Includes overview of specialist roles and the work required at each seniority level. (
- Review JDs - often there are several pages of technical skills/requirements for each UCD specialist role!
- Asking how do we hire more specialist staff for our team? Speak to your Profession Heads!
As always, any thoughts are massively appreciated! :)
Tom