Training is one of the most essential factors for growth, evolution and effective collaboration for any UX design team. Design is an ever-changing industry, and there is always something new to learn even for the most experienced professionals. The reality is, not all companies take training seriously, whether the reason is a low budget, lack of time or just not realising its necessity. Meanwhile, investing in training not only boosts the quality of work, but also helps find ways to find easier solutions, work faster and optimize the whole process. Let’s discuss some tips that might help you provide effective and fruitful training for your design team without spending extra budget or wasting time on some questionable training methods.
Train the team together
The team that works together, should train together. Even though it might seem that individual lessons are always more effective, your goal here is to upgrade the team work. This doesn’t negate the necessity for each professional to study on their own, but mutual training sessions are also a must. New mutually acquired knowledge leads to new shared experience, mutual working methods, elevated communication skills.
Devote enough time to training
Having a desire to cut budget expenses and save time, team leaders sometimes choose “DIY internal training”, which implies senior team members sharing their knowledge with juniors over spare time like lunch breaks. Even though this method might be useful in general, it definitely can’t replace actual training sessions. Normal training should embrace the whole team in the form of structural, high-quality sessions a couple of hours each.
Treat training as a part of work
Training should correspond to the actual problems and goals your team currently has. In other words, it should serve a certain purpose and result in making the working process more efficient. Training sessions on generic topics will only waste your team’s time or give them superficial knowledge at best.
Hold training sessions regularly
The only way to always evolve as a professional is through continuous learning – that’s why training sessions should be held regularly instead of being treated like a one-time event. Of course it’s also not necessary to integrate too much training into the team's schedule, getting in the way of the everyday work process. Try to find the ideal frequency of sessions depending on your team’s work pace and keep it steady.
Make your team apply new knowledge in work
The only thing that can help consolidate new knowledge is reinforcement, which means your team should apply new skills in work – the sooner, the better. Implement whatever they learn into the actual working process: for example, if your team gets a training session on how to communicate with clients more effectively, schedule meetings with clients the following days, so that the team could practice new skills in real-life situation. Without practice and reinforcement, our brains are most likely to forget new knowledge within a couple days.
Don’t waste money on online courses
Online courses are a very hyped up way of professional training, but the truth is, they’re often not as effective as people think they are. A lot of people start learning online with enthusiasm, and then fall behind, thinking they’ll finish it “later”. As a result, the completion rate for such courses is quite low, and students get scattered knowledge because they’re learning inconsistently. Offline training with interactive materials, real-life discussions and immediate training is much more effective.
Take initiative in offering training to your employees
Don’t wait for your employees to ask you for a training session or even do additional learning on their own. Take initiative, invest in hiring professional coaches and organise training: it will not only do benefit for the workflow, but also help retain employees, since there is always a great demand for professional growth among design teams, but they can not always afford getting additional education without the company’s help.
Training provides a lot of benefits both for the team as a whole, and for each employee personally. Here are some ways how training can make a positive impact on anyone involved:
Broadening skills range
Design, as any part of the tech world, is changing rapidly these years, which leads to a lot of professional skills becoming obsolete quickly. Regular training helps fill in those skills gaps and generally broaden designers' knowledge and awareness on current design trends, tools and innovations.
Improving communication in the team
A lot of designers either work remotely, or spend the majority of work time behind their PCs, which often results in the lack of communication between the team members. Training sessions make colleagues bond while learning, providing space to communicate, share opinions and find mutual solutions to design problems.
Boosting designers' confidence
The more skills you learn and the more experience you have, the more confident you feel as a professional. Additional training provides UX designers with not only new skills, but also new qualifications and certificates that increase their professional value on the market and add a few points to their CVs.
Retaining team members
As we've mentioned earlier, regular training helps companies retain their employees, as the majority of professionals would choose a company that invests in their career growth and development over the one that leaves that to themselves.
Providing space for design experiments
In the everyday working process, designers rarely have time and space to let their creativity take the lead and experiment with design to their taste, as they have to stick to their clients requests. Training, on the other hand, provides conditions where you can experiment with design without having to worry about being judged or violating agreements with clients, getting valuable feedback from experienced design masters instead.
Conclusion
Training is a vital component for the constant professional development of a UX design team. It should be smoothly integrated into the working process and help the team work faster and in a more effective manner. Investing in training gives its benefits in the long run, providing more experienced employees, optimized workflow, and, as a result, a better product for the clients. At the same time, it’s important not to overload the team with too much unnecessary courses, but rather keep the balance and provide training sessions whenever there is a demand for new skills or a new way to solve design problems.
