Hi Matthew! I work at Optimizely, and really love the way our design team is structured. We have four roles: product designer (responsible for the product and everything after you log in), communication designer (responsible for the marketing site, collateral, everything before you log in), user researcher, and UI engineer. Despite all sitting on the design team, we work in cross-functional groups divided by the different parts of our product. For example, I'm the designer on a team responsible for (among other things) Optimizely's visual editor, so I spend most of my time working with UI and front-end or full-stack engineers. The design team meets for crits and weekly team meetings to keep cohesive.

And, in case you're curious, you can read more about why we hire UI engineers on the design team here: https://medium.com/design-optimizely/why-we-hire-ui-engineers-on-optimizely-s-design-team-b2a789553b79

We have one art director (me) who's in charge of all general design directions and makes big picture decisions. I then have one 'crazy ideas' prototyper whose only job is to come up with the craziest and coolest stuff he can think of (ignoring UX and best practices). And then I have a "normal" designer who thinks more in practical terms for usability and such - basically she brings down the prototype to planet earth.

We all design in code, although the prototyper naturally uses a lot of animation software to create demos.

We function very much like a high end car design team where the initial sketches and prototypes look really cool but would never end up like that on the road after safety inspections and practical considerations.

At JotForm, we work in small cross functional teams. Each team has a designer. The teams are around 4 people and has engineers, a designer and a CSS developer. But some of our designers are also good at CSS, so in those cases, they are one and the same.

So, there is no separate "design team". A designer is part of a team such as Growth, Form Builder, Platform, Data or Widgets. But, all designers like to get together every week and discuss their work and how to be consistent with each other.

If you find cross functional teams interesting I have provided details on a Medium post: https://medium.com/jotform-form-builder/cross-functional-teams-10be612f40ea

Hi Mathew! We, at VentureDive, have different design roles but mostly we are focus on UX design in general. It ranges from Visual Design, UI Design, UX Design and Product Design.

We assign a designer to a project but we have another designer who overlook them or collaborate with them to get the desired results. Mostly the roles are just to define the diversity of the skills but a designer is responsible for all the above roles.

We closely work with Developers and the Clients so we can marry the solutions that will be feasible. We have daily or weekly feedbacks from clients and everyone collaborate.

Pros: - Better results and meet deadlines, - Agile design and development, - Less back and forth in design iterations

Cons: - Individual complying mostly all design roles

http://www.venturedive.com

We've always operated with a design lead on a project (could be me, could be another designer) that takes the reigns and leads the project from the start. This person is considered the design strategist, who eventually shares this will the team and is opened up to constructive critiques and an interactions phase. I like it most with 2 designers on a project so one can check the other.

It's less about title and more about "how can we do this the best possible" on our team, so the top-down directive is less of a thing. Of course, there are times when we need to make decisions once and for all, but the openness of any designer being able to lead a project is important for growth and for better understanding the project ecosystem.

In a nutshell: a small team for a project, led by the best fit, with everyone open to hearing about the best way forward visually.

Hi Matthew, At Onespacemedia we're mainly a digital company but we also assist our clients when they need cross-disciplinary design. We're a company of 12 and the design team of three tackles everything from digital to branding, exhibition work and print so all team members have to have a fundamental knowledge of all design mediums. We like to bring in and nurture internships (and that's how we've developed and grown the team so far). We are always looking to bring in more senior designers as well as people looking to gain experience so we get a stronger team that can nurture development of the less developed. http://www.onespacemedia.com/