Building a UX practice from zero

Situation

The portfolio was a set of enterprise cyber products with separate teams and separate roadmaps. Design showed up late or not at all. Seven net-new product teams were also moving through Studio, Mastercard’s gated process for new ventures.

What I did

I kept one map of the team: what each person owned, what they were the go-to for, and where they wanted to grow next. Hiring, assignments and the case for new roles all came from it. The team ended up as 3 direct reports and 5 matrixed leads, one per revenue product, each owning the design and research calls for their product and one specialty for the team.

Once a quarter, outside regular 1:1s, each person and I wrote their goals together against what the business needed. Then I assigned work against those goals, so the project that stretched someone was usually one the team needed done anyway. Weekly 1:1s were for judgment: when to say “not yet,” how to read a stuck partner team, which move to make next.

I handled all intake myself. Every request started as a conversation with the requesting team about the outcome, what we needed from each other and their dates. Designers got clear briefs, partners got timelines they could plan around, and a weekly roundtable and design review let the team decide what to improve and who led it.

Products without a designer got what we could give. When the business case spun up teams for new products, the SVP who owned new product initiatives already knew they’d need designers.

For the Studio teams I built an input framework: what each team needed to bring to a gate. I also picked up customer analytics and the desirability review on new ventures, because nobody owned them. Two of the other cases here are what came of those.

Outside the team, I sat on Mastercard’s global CX&D Guild board. With the global head of design I co-wrote recommendations on how team structure affects retention and work quality, and built the deck with input from him and two of his VPs. It went to several EVPs and the Chief Innovation Officer.

What changed

Design, research and customer analytics went from nothing to a team of eight. The team didn’t miss a deadline on its own deliverables while I was there. Time to the first Studio gate roughly halved for the seven new product teams. And design had a seat in the venture review, where before it got a slot after the decision.

What’s still hard

Matrix reporting means a lead’s manager and a lead’s customer are different people, and the lead feels both pulls. Looking back, I’d have pushed my two SVPs harder to bring UX into one reporting line, and spent less time on the company-wide structure work with the head of design. Our group could have been the proof of concept for it.