Yes, this entry is pretty much my way of promoting my talents & services. Notice that I didn’t make an effort to differentiate between being a freelance consultant, or working full-time for a company. Sure, under more ideal circumstances, I would love to offer my services and value as a full-time member of a front-end team. However, there is every possibility that it could take a few more years before hiring Experience Architects become a common thing. At the time of writing this, we are still in the very early days of introducing what and who Experience Architects are, as well as the kind of value they can bring to a team.
That said, regardless of whether I’m offering my services and value as a consultant or in a full-time capacity, I imagine that there would be THREE main reasons why your company might consider hiring/engaging an Experience Architect. This post aims to cover those scenarios.
Scenario #1: Someone to Lead the Overall Front-end Efforts
In the context of today’s design teams, 95% of companies still view design professionals with skills that fall within a narrow parameter. In most cases, you are either working as a UX designer, or a hybrid UX/UI role, or as a front-end developer. While the integration between UX design and agile management is becoming more common, there still lacks a way of coordinating the efforts between the different roles across the design and front-end teams.
In a slightly more managerial (more so as a leader) capacity, I believe that Experience Architects have a strong responsibility for making sure that the project stays close to the overall product design vision. An Experience Architect isn’t just able to maintain a bird’s eye view of the product design, but they would also be able to effectively communicate with team members working across the different fields. This very specialized individual will also be able to dynamically switch between keeping the bird’s eye view and being meticulous throughout the product’s lifecycle.
Scenario #2: Your Company/Team is Trying to Design a Product That Targets Multiple Platforms
To really qualify as a specialized Experience Architect, one of the most important pre-requisite includes having the experience and ability to champion the design vision across numerous platforms (i.e. outputs). These platforms could refer to a range of different mediums, operating systems and physical devices. These individuals would have created designs for applications that run on Android, Apple, Windows, Linux, macOS. They should also be familiar with the various design guidelines that applies to various smart devices ranging from smart phones to TVs, IoT touchscreens, in-car displays and so on.
In today’s context, many of the design teams are still in a semi-coordinated fashion. One team could be working with the design for mobile version of the product, and another team could be working on the web, and another on the desktop, and another for the Smart TV if that was the case. While it still works over time, the coordination effort between those teams is still not the most efficient way to get things done.
In the coming years, it’ll become more common for companies to want to hire someone that can perform the role of a central coordinator for the product design efforts across different platforms, operating systems and devices.
Scenario #3: Your Company Wants to Hire a Full-Stack Front-end Specialist
In the final scenario, I would imagine you would be considering this option because the team is still small in size (i.e. a start-up environment). Alternatively, your company is looking to start a new project and you’re in the midst of putting together a brand new product design team. Similar to the modern-day full-stack developers, Experience Architects can perform the same tasks, but on the front-end side of things.
For certain smaller firms, hiring a full-stacked front-end specialist might actually be more cost effective versus hiring individual professionals. It’s possible that the company might want to consider hiring individual UX/UI designers and then another front-end developer. Yes, hiring an Experience Architect is essentially an alternative. For the Experience Architects themselves, the pay will certainly be more attractive than usual (since they are doing the job of 2 or 3 professionals). For the company themselves, they will be reducing their overhead by hiring 1 specialist over 2-3 professionals.
Speaking from my past experiences, it is also possible for a start-up to want to engage an Experience Architect to help them with getting an product idea from conceptualization to prototyping stage. Those are the benefits of being equipped with skills across the various fields.
Closing Thoughts
Well, that’s about it. Are you looking for an Experience Architect? Whether you’re interested in my services as an external consultant, or if you’re hoping to bring me on full-time, you can reach me via my email: shermannatrix@gmail.com
Got any questions related to being an Experience Architect, just drop me a comment below and I’ll be happy to answer them.
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