Wix's VP of User Experience explains how the company structures teams with designers embedded in product groups but connected to a central guild. This hybrid model lets designers partner with developers and product managers, improving quality and speed while keeping shared standards across the company.
Chapters
Hey there. Before we get started, I wanted to ask you a favor. If you've been enjoying this podcast, we have a super fast and easy way for you to support the show. Head over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and give us a five star rating. It takes literally a split second and will help us reach more listeners on those platforms. You can also leave us a review with suggested topics or just let us know what you love most about the show so we can bring you more of it. Okay, let's get started. Thanks so much for listening and for being here. Hi everyone and welcome to Ready for Takeoff, the new micro podcast series from wix all about Hypergrowth. I'm your host Rob Goodman, Executive producer for content at Wix. In each episode we go deep on one single topic in under 15 minutes, sharing insights and lessons learned from the leaders that built WIX as we talk about everything it takes to build a world class global organization. Today we have Vice president of user experience at Wix, Nir Hughes. Nir leads a team of more than 200 product designers in 40 different product groups around the world. NIR shares with us more about the matrix structure at WIX and the benefit it has in blending teams together to create better products. And you'll hear near describe Guilds which are the shared service organizations within wix like Design Writing and ux and companies which are how we describe our individual product units like Editor X Velo and E Commerce. Now let's hear from nir. And so what is the secret sauce in terms of keeping the work very high level, keeping the systems aligned for the UX guild while folks are embedded across the companies, how do you straddle that? They're really aligned and they're really honed in on the product and the companies they're working on but they still are connected and they're still driven in this centralized guild.
The secret thing is to find the fine line or the ultimate balance between the company and the guild because we are company first company. You know, people are always part of a company. They also have these disciplines that they relate to and I think first and before all as always is to, you know, bring the the best people around and the top professional that can do it and feel part of these two worlds. But you know, at the first two minutes when we discussed about this model I was really frightened and worried to tell you the truth because I thought how can I like keep enforce quality and consistency for far. But when you have strong people that are really act not as a service provider but as actual partners in the companies we have many things to gain from because then as UX designer by the way as many other disciplines you know more about this specific domain and you can specialize also in your discipline but also in this specific domain.
The surprising benefit that came out of this new structure Nir found that his designers became more like partners on the products they worked on and and less like service providers.
I think the two main benefits that we get back to the guilds from the companies are first and before all the ability to learn from other disciplines as well. You know when UX sit next to a front end developer so he knows more about the velocity and knows more about dev costs and when UX sits next to APM he knows more about the business same as front end developers and product managers that sits next to the X, care more about pixels, know more about user pains and care more about the quality. So again the company structure allow us to create those connections which is super important also on the professional level, but maybe even more on the personal side because you know UX and product and developers and other disciplines work together since day one, one goal all together they are seats together and they are going to drink together, they are going to parties together and I super important. So if the UX and the developer will work together since day one as it happened in weeks, so for sure they will care more about the pixel and for sure the UX will be more technical and understand better cost and optimize together the velocity and bring fast value to our users.
It was so great to hear from NIR about how blending teams and disciplines can lead to better relationships, better collaboration and ultimately better products for users too. Now is a great time to think about how you're going to bring down those walls within your organization to build something better. Ready for Takeoff is brought to you by WIX Now. If you don't know about wix, we're the all in one platform for running your business online. Trusted by over 210 million people around the world. With WIX you get incredible security, reliability, performance and SEO. No matter the kind of business you run or the size. With WIX anything is possible. So visit Wix.com to start building and growing your business today. Thanks so much for listening. You can find more episodes and information on our website@wix.com readyfortakeoff. Ready for Takeoff is hosted and produced by me, Rob Goodman at WIX with production by Lindsey Jean Thompson at wix. Audio engineering and editing is by Brian Paik at Pacific Audio. Music is composed and performed by Kimo Maraki. Our executive producers from WIX are Susan Kaplow and me, Rob Goodman. We'll see you next time.
