Design/Team/Process

New Roles : Primaries & Secondaries

Each focus area will be assigned a Primary and a Secondary from Design, these are the designers who will be your primary contact for a project or feature area.

Primary — Invite the Primary to your standups and all meetings where design should have a presence. They will attempt to attend as many meetings that are relevant to design as possible. Invite Primaries to any project specific reviews and planning meetings, they will speak for design in these meeting. If they don't know the answer, they will find out. Primaries are responsible for working with PMs to define realistic schedules based on their own availability and that of the designers that will support them.

Secondary — Secondaries support Primaries when it comes to making the work happen. While each group will have one official Secondary, they may not be the only design support on a given feature. You should invite them to meetings where entire engineering teams are present. When a meeting needs to happen ASAP look to the Primary first, if they are not available the Secondary can represent design in their absence.

Focus, Explore, and Collaborate

Sometime designer work best when they are juggling 10 projects at once, sometimes they work best when they can focus on a single task with no interruptions.

Going forward the designers will block off one day of their calendar every week for Focus, and one for Explore. The remaining days will be for scheduled work and collaboration.

Ideally we would have every designer have the same schedule for Explore, Focus, and Collaborate but this might not be possible due to individual and project team schedules. Designers will block out Focus and Explore on their calendars so externally it will be obvious which days are reserved.

Focus
In order to give their full attention to a design problem without having to context switch between meetings, Focus is a day without structured meetings. During Focus, designer may be in the office or they may be working from home, or a park, or a cafe, or in the office. Please do not schedule meetings with designers during Focus, or expect them to attend standups or other recurring meetings on this day.

Explore
During Explore designers can explore areas that they aren't assigned to, focus on projects that are important to them, and devote time researching new project that could shape the future of the Foundation and its projects. Please do not schedule meetings with designers during Explore, or expect them to attend standups or other recurring meetings on this day. Monthly the design team will host a 1 hour brown bag "Explore Wikimedia Design" that is open to the Foundation to attend, to showcase what designers have spent their Explore days focusing on as well as increase visibility for other projects that they are working on.

Collaborate
Mostly the same fun times you're used to, schedule meetings, write on whiteboards, have working sessions, etc. desk time doing design work.

What does this mean to me as…

an Engineer? You should still feel free to bring designers into your discussions and brainstorms, approach them with your projects, and questions. In lieu of scheduling meetings with designers on Explore days, simply walk over (or ping on IM) and see if they are available to talk.

a Product Manager? When you're planning small meetings and projects make sure to invite your Primary, when planning larger meetings (quarterly kickoffs, roadmap planning) invite both your Primary and Secondary, communicate project needs and timelines directly with your Primary.

Everyone else? Come to Explore Wikimedia Design brownbag to get inspired, and understand what the Design team is working on.

Feature Areas and Project

Key:
Design area
Primary
Secondary

Analytics tools
Pau
Kaity

Core Features
May
Brandon

Growth
Pau
Vibha

Language Eng.
Pau
Kaity

Mobile
Kaity
Vibha

Multimedia
Vibha
Pau

Platform
May
Kaity

Visual Editor
Vibha
Kaity

Global Profiles
Brandon
Vibha

Affiliations/Groups/Campaigns
Brandon
Kaity