How do you train someone to be a user researcher or designer? In most cases it starts with formal education. Professors usually do a good job teaching information architecture, design, and user research principles. But in the end, that’s all theory. In reality, much of what we do cannot be learned in school. Success in the user experience field depends on understanding subtleties and perspectives that are very hard to teach, yet make the difference between a good researcher and a great one. At times researchers may do something in a way that goes against personal logic, but makes sense with an understanding of overriding priorities, the client’s greater objectives, or our relationship with the client. The challenge comes in figuring out how to teach those nuances to individuals on a team. This is why we have implemented a mentoring/apprenticeship model.

When a person joins our team, he or she is assigned a mentor. The mentor’s first role is showing the ropes to a new person, answering administrative questions, and generally helping that individual become acclimated. As the new person begins working alongside a mentor on projects, he or she begins picking up on the important subtleties of user research. The mentor provides anything from general guidance to help with specific tasks, and may give input regarding performance and career advancement. The mentor pairs have quarterly lunches to talk about progress and personal development. The mentor also gives feedback to management, so we’re aware of where consultants may need help, and can determine how to place consultants on projects where they need more experience (or have a special area of interest).

Most mentor relationships continue for at least a year, and mentors may change on a yearly basis. But our feeling is that no one ever really outgrows the need for a mentor. Even our senior people have said they need mentors to keep growing. This tells me the system works, and is valuable. Forging these kinds of cooperative relationships with the support of upper management strengthens the whole team. Everyone becomes better in an environment where they can openly share their expertise and readily learn from others. Mentorship fosters just this kind of cooperative interaction and continuing growth.

The mentoring program is also an attractive selling point in recruiting new researchers and designers. I emphasize to applicants that we don’t expect them to know everything. We want them to come in with a willingness to learn how to apply what they already know, and to fill in gaps in their knowledge as they work alongside more experienced consultants. This fosters organic growth, which is always best in an organization. When you can bring people in with the right background, then give them the growth opportunities they need, the whole organization will be stronger as they take more responsibility and move forward in their careers. Mentorship is one of the keys to making this happen.

Organic growth is also made possible through internships and apprenticeships. Many of our senior and management staff began as interns or apprentices. Bringing someone in for a three-month commitment enables us to learn whether they have the intellect and the capacity to do what we need them to do. In turn, they can learn about our work and whether they like it here. If it’s a mutually good fit, we may hire them. We’ve found great success with this model; half of our company has been built on organic growth. Some people who’ve come in through internships during graduate school have risen to director positions within ten years.

However, there are only certain economies that will support apprenticeships and internships. When the market is booming and demand is high, people may not want to take the risk of quitting one job to take a three-month contract. On the other hand, when the market is poor and there is less opportunity, there’s much less risk involved and short-term opportunities become more attractive. There are times and places for different practices. Often, we find ourselves locked into a practice. Adapting to the changing workplace will ensure that you have the most appropriate positions to secure top talent.

Finding and training the right people is never easy, but internships, apprenticeships, and a good mentor program have made a big difference for our company. We’re able to hire the right people, train them in more effective ways, and enable everyone to benefit as they learn from each other’s strengths and grow together.

My company was founded in 2003 when there was still no usability market in Russia. One of the main problems we faced was that nobody knew what usability was and why customers would need our services. We have carried out a major effort to establish the market, to educate it and to move it forward. Eventually, when the business started to grow, we encountered another problem that was even more difficult to solve. There were no trained professionals around. Today there are still no educational programs in usability, user experience, user centered or interactive design in Russia. Lacking qualified resources is even more painful because the market is growing.

The only solution is training the staff ourselves. My story will look very familiar to companies in young UX markets. Mature markets have similar issues. Our discipline is complex, dynamic and developing. A good UX consultant should be equipped with knowledge, experience and skills related to how technology works, and how to talk to users and elicit requirements. This person has to know user research techniques and when each of them is to be applied. He or she needs to have a good grasp of visual design, as well as decent communication and prototyping skills. They should be a broad-minded person who can consult onsite. Today UX services come together with search engine optimization, marketing, web analytics and other areas. How do you obtain these “golden” brains and hands?

We started training and teaching in 2004, when we decided to assign a mentor to every new employee in the project. The particular feature of this method is that the mentors assign tasks and then do not leave the trainees alone for a long time. The trainees are supposed to work under the direction of their mentors in order to learn how the professionals deal with different issues. To track the progress in mastering new skills and acquiring experience, it is good to have a list of personal competencies for every trainee, and to regularly update the record with the types of projects and work completed. Learning from a user experience mentor reminds me of other professional fields where creativity plays a significant role, like painting, cooking or any other art or handicraft. To obtain the full skills of a chef, an apprentice has to observe the master’s work for a long time. That is how a new master can be created.

Though practice means a lot, it is not enough. Practice should be supported by the theory. There are several ways to train professional skills and advance knowledge. They should be offered in an appropriate combination for the individual (defined by a mentor depending on a trainee’s personality):

The careful application of these activities gives an opportunity not only to learn, but also to discuss and exchange opinions with colleagues. It helps them to develop a personal opinion on different issues and to broaden their horizons. This is crucial for a mature consultant. Besides professional knowledge and experience, working in the user experience field requires accuracy, curiosity, self-discipline, creativity and many others. Some of them, such as creativity, are possible to train, but it takes a lot of time. I belong to those who believe that creativity is a skill and is not simply an inborn talent. Everybody can become a creative thinker when trained using techniques such as brainstorming, brain writing, mind mapping, and storyboarding.

If a team is going to be highly productive and functional, leaders need to understand the dynamic presented by having different generations working alongside one another. Even though our company’s two principles are a Baby Boomer and a Generation X-er, our company was recently named one of the Top 50 Generation Y Employers in Chicago. Why? We recognize that Generation Y has different needs, and we try to understand and adapt to them, rather than succumbing to the irritation and aggravation that can prevail in multigenerational work environments.

One way to understand the differences in these groups is by looking at advancement. Baby Boomers came of age in a work environment where if you stayed with a company a certain length of time, you would be promoted. This was accepted, and even if someone excelled at work, there was an understanding of “doing one’s time.” The Boomer generation shared a set of ideals, rules formed around those ideals, and people followed the rules.

Generation X came along, and while they focused more on relationships and their personal rights and skills in the workplace, they understood the legacy of the Baby Boomers. The ideals and rules, while not embraced by the Gen X-ers, were (perhaps grudgingly) accepted. This group was more individualistic, and while they might have looked for ways to have more control over their career advancement, they still played by the rules the Boomers had laid out.

Generation Y, on the other hand, grew up in a high-tech world, and they expect things to happen at a different pace than the Boomers or Gen X. Short attention spans may have started with Generation X, but they became a given with Gen Y. The Boomers’ mentality of “Wait seven years and something good will happen” will not fly with Gen Y. They need something happening — whether it’s advancement, a title change, or some kind of ego boost — every 18 months. Gen Y-ers also feel entitled to praise — they were, after all, raised in an era where everyone on a team got a trophy. They need to feel valued and sense that they’re moving forward. Rather than facing this as a frustration, the wise employer will recognize that Generation Y is a smart, technology wise, and flexible generation. If we’re willing to re-tool our approach, we can better capitalize on their strengths.

Successfully working with Generation Y also requires a different way of communicating than Boomers and Gen X-ers are used to. Gen Y individuals need to be given very explicit directions and descriptions. Here’s an example (which actually happened at our company): An urgent matter arose late one afternoon, and the Baby Boomer said, “I need help with this; it needs to be done as soon as possible.” The Generation X employee buckled down immediately and worked late. The Generation Y employee left at 5:00 p.m., without notifying anyone. He had plans that night, and figured that getting the project done in the morning would be “as soon as possible.” This wasn’t negligence, but rather was a reflection of the Gen Y employee’s need for a clear definition of the time frame. (He also needed to be told to check in before leaving, something a Boomer would think was second nature. Not so with Generation Y.)

Generation Y doesn’t understand the definitions and principles and ideals that Boomers take for granted (and Generation X picked up on due to proximity). This doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with any of these groups. They just work and communicate differently, with different expectations. Managers need to recognize this fact and adapt to it, because it’s reality. Struggling with it will cause unnecessary frustration, but handling the differences with wisdom and understanding can catapult a team to new levels of productivity and success.

I like to think of the “stuff” my teams create as a by-product of good communication between members. The real product of a team is communication; anything else the team creates — like a new interface design or a research study — is just gravy. So if communication is the sine qua non of team building, then my job as a team manager is creating the conditions that allow members to communicate with each other as successfully as possible. However, the problem with a new team or a new member on a team is that people have different communication needs and different styles of communicating, and when new members don’t understand those needs or styles, miscommunication, misunderstandings, and dissention can occur.

One technique I’ve used successfully to deal with this is to use DISC profiling with new teams. Based on the work of William Moulton Marston and his 1928 book, The Emotions of Normal People, DISC was one of the earliest psychometric instruments created, and like the famous Myers-Briggs personality type indicator, DISC classifies people’s psychological traits using four different quadrants and scores them based on how people respond to a series of statements and word associations. DISC is an acronym that describes each quadrant.

The way I use DISC with new teams is to contract with Inscape Publishing or one of the several vendors who offer online versions of the DISC instrument and then have all the members take the test and obtain their reports. Then we meet as a group in a comfortable location and we talk about what we’ve each learned about our own communication styles and needs. In order to keep this from becoming too personal or to keep people from focusing entirely on the negative aspects of the different communication styles, we start off by having the team brainstorm about famous leaders who fit each category — Gandhi was probably an “S,” Jimmy Carter was probably an “I,” and so on. Basically, I try to generate a list of people the team respects who exemplify each DISC quadrant so that members recognize that each style offers value as well as limitations. However, asking the team to figure out whether Teddy Roosevelt was a D or an I makes it possible to talk about how people have elements of all four quadrants, and no one should be “pigeon-holed” as a D. This is an important point to make with your team because one of the dangers I’ve discovered with using this approach is that people will often try to use the information in their DISC profile reports to attempt to excuse inappropriate behaviors. They’ll say, for example, “You just have to deal with the fact that I’m a C, and we’re gonna play by the rules here.”

I try to teach my teams that they can’t allow themselves to make this sort of statement since, ultimately, the goal is to realize that “playing by the rules” is a blind spot for both Ss and Cs. It’s a crutch they use when they’re under pressure, but what they need to do in order to become more successful communicators is to find ways to build up their D and I qualities. Their DISC profile is not a clinical measure of who they are and always will be; rather, it’s merely a description of their particular communication tendencies at that moment. However, those tendencies can change.

I have to confess that I’ve had mixed success at getting everyone on a team to buy into the idea that they have blind spots and that they weren’t born a D and can’t change who they are. It’s also a technique that only works well one or two times since repeating the DISC profile with the same members gets stale after the third time. Nevertheless, I can report that using DISC with new teams certainly does get them sharing information about their communication styles and needs, and it does make them more tolerant of their differences. Naturally, they still get annoyed with one another, but they do communicate with each other faster and more effectively, and since my job is to facilitate that communication, that’s a positive result I can accept.

As the person who’s in charge of personnel at our small company, I noticed that many of our human resources policies — which are intended to solve or prevent problems — were actually causing more confusion. After our office manager would implement a new HR policy, I would end up spending an inordinate amount of time answering questions.

As a solution, we began issuing a statement of rationale along with each new human resources policy. Since every policy emerges because of some rationale, we decided it made sense to give people the rationale along with the policy. When given the reasons — from a business perspective — for a policy, most people understand the rationale and fall in line. Of course there will always be individuals who just don’t like rules, but even they do better with this system, because they get the thinking behind it, rather than just having a rule laid on them. If someone has ideas about approaching a matter differently, we’re open to their suggestions. We make it known that we’ll listen to anyone’s input as long as his or her proposed solution considers our rationale.

Since explaining the reason behind policy decisions is so important, we actually spend more time on the underlying principle than the rule when introducing a new policy. This is more difficult than it seems as it requires discipline to provide rationale as new employees come on board. Thus, documenting is essential. We also continue reminding people of the rationale as time goes on. This has alleviated many issues by empowering people to think through things themselves. When questions come up about defining sick time, working from home, etc., there’s no need to quote a rule. People who understand the rationale will make better judgments and come to sound conclusions on their own without being held to the rule of law. When coupled with a mentor or apprenticeship program as described [insert citation], communication can be extremely clear and create a community that supports policies.

As an example, let’s look at our Work From Home (WFH) policy. At User Centric, we recognize that the need for flexibility is paramount to having a well-functioning and productive team, but this is nothing new. Flexibility is different from a permanent WFH schedule that individual employees negotiate. This policy is for those instances where we need to support life’s everyday challenges or to make employees more productive while working on a specific project. So, we made a special WFH option to be used by request.

We thought this policy made sense. Employees found it to be very useful. We asked that employees e-mail at least 24 hours in advance to WFH and that they had sufficient work to do. In our history, we never turned a WFH request down, but then we started to get requests that appeared to be somewhat suspicious. In one example, one employee made a request in the late afternoon for WFH the following day. Basically, the workload to be performed at home was to catch up on e-mail and expenses. We thought that these activities tended to not fill a full business day, so we asked questions and quickly realized that the request was due to a lack of transportation that was known about a week prior.

Our subsequent discussion focused on the fact that the transportation issue was known well in advance and the workload did not represent a full day’s work. The employee said that there was not much work to do, so working from home seemed to make sense. Our response was that had we been aware of the issue, we could have assigned work to be performed. The rationale behind the WFH policy is to allow flexibility but to also allow a full day’s work to be performed, or personal time if warranted. If there is nothing to do then we would like employees to speak up, as there are areas where more effort is needed or fellow team members could use support.

Issuing rationale statements also helps smooth the implementation of new policies by mitigating fears about something new. It may answer questions before they even arise, and assure staff that things are happening for good, well-thought-out reasons. Our intention is to provide for independence and allow for flexibility. We need to improve communication between HR management and individual work effort. While putting new human resource policies in place can be a minefield, we’ve found that simply being up front with a sound, clearly communicated rationale prevents problems, saves time answering unnecessary questions, and fosters better communication overall.

In the year 2000, when I founded SirValUse in Hamburg, Germany, it was my aim to build a small but effective UX research and testing company in 10 years with approximately 12 employees. This clearly failed. Since the beginning of 2010 the SirValUse-Group employs approximately 100 people, and is one of the largest UX research and testing companies in Europe, and I am more tied up in “managing” than anything else.

One of the biggest challenges in this growth process was, and still is, to maintain the quality of our work. Especially between the years 2003 to 2006, when we doubled our sales yearly, many new colleagues started to work at SirValUse with little experience in the relevant areas. This is all tied up with the fact that UX/UCD is a relatively young discipline in Germany and only a few universities offer a relevant education, especially in the fields of “research” and “testing.”

So in 2004 it was our task to incorporate as many new colleagues as fast as possible, but our clients expected our accustomed quality. “Quality” was and will be important to us on two different levels: on one hand it means “quality of process,” and on the other it means “quality of results.” An important aspect of process quality for us was to get the new colleagues familiarized with the standard processes so they would be able to carry out those standard processes independently. These processes concern all phases of a project, from preparing a screener for recruitement and the session guide and performing the session itself, to the analysis of data and the report. The quality of results build on the analysis of the test object and the contents of the screener and the session guide, as well as depth of analysis, arrangement and presentation of the report, and the development of recommendations.

In a first step to help as we added new colleagues, a group of experienced members of the team defined the standards and guidelines for process and performance quality. This process wasn’t that easy because of different practices even between teams. During many meetings and sometimes contentious debates we defined these standards and were finally able to document them in a binding agreement. This process took place from the end of 2003 until early 2004. Afterwards the team worked out a teaching and qualification plan to bring the new colleagues closer to the developed quality standards. The quality measures were coordinated with the management and the HR departments. To make this happen one of the most experienced colleagues was freed from project work to work exclusively on this task.

The training and qualification plan consisted of the following components:

Finally, internal qualification measures were completed with external quality guidelines. For example, at least once a year our external service providers run through a quality feedback. Within our international network UXa (user experience alliance; www.uxalliance.com) occurs mutual feedback after every project and our clients are asked for concrete project feedback regularly. All of the external feedback has in turn influenced internal qualification measures planned for next year.

I am pretty happy and proud in retrospect that we created this “quality offensive” from both direct and indirect acknowledgments from our clients. Also our colleagues are more motivated by the feedback and time the company provides for quality measures.

Teams have life cycles; like people, they go through stages of development. I’ve found that when members don’t understand those stages and then encounter misunderstandings and dissention the result is that the team shuts down and stops functioning. To avoid this problem, I train my teams to use Bruce Tuchman’s theory of team development to talk to each other about where they are as a team.

Tuchman was a social psychologist who worked for the U.S. Navy. His job was to try to identify what characteristics of small group dynamics would lead to successful unit performance. To investigate this question, Tuchman conducted a meta-analysis of 50 different research studies that psychoanalyzed small groups. His research identified four distinctive phases.

One of the things I try to communicate to my staff about Tuchman’s model is that it’s an iterative model, which is to say that a team can get knocked out of the performing stage and sent back to the storming phase at any time. A new team member, changes in upper management, funding reallocations, new technologies, and many other factors can require that a team renegotiate all of its understandings. More importantly, however, I try to help my staff understand that “storming” isn’t a bad thing and that they avoid storming at their peril. High-performing teams often need to go through long periods of storming to learn to trust each other and to become successful.