Hello Beril, You ask an excellent question. I've managed several groups and also recently been on the end of the new person in design/usability positions. Here are some thoughts.
1. Consider getting the person into training on your products right away (the second week). This might be online training, formal training, or even better as I did 4 months ago, attend training with actual customers at a 3rd party training company where I got a chance to see how people perceived our product. Having some product training right away can help the new colleague become credible faster. 2. Think hard about what you tell people about others. This is a subtle thing but sometimes new colleagues are "warned" so much about particular people that their relationship be affected. There is a very fine balance here where you don't want to impose your relationship or beliefs about others too strongly on the new person. 3. Create a diagram of who the person should meet over the next month or so and facilitate some meetings with those people, but let the person also set up some meetings of introduction. Your diagram with notes about roles and projects could be quite useful. 4. Help new colleagues understand the unwritten rules of the organization so they don't commit any serious errors that will haunt them. 5. Provide a list of key resources and the URLs or directories where things can be found. This will be quite appreciated in these days of messy intranets and obscure SharePoint sites. Finding things in new organizations can be a Hellish thing and more experienced colleagues often, without realizing it, throw out references that they have memorized or bookmarked like "Oh, it's in the group design directory under the gorbleblick folder -- just scroll down a few pages and you'll see the link that is something like .....". 6. You mentioned getting a designer's first impressions of the product -- good idea though I've seen that backfire when the new person gets a bit overzealous and shows his/her 50 pages of problems or design flaws to the wrong person who happended to be the chief and highly respected designer or developer. I would ask the person to write down any design issues that he/she sees, and then engage in a discussion about the product and findings discreetly -- as part of training almost. I think that you asked a very good question since the first few weeks can often set the tone for the next few years with new colleagues. Chauncey 5. On Nov 16, 2007 3:46 PM, Beril Guvendik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I am looking for insight and best practices to how to help a new designer > get started with the team, company and the product. I haven't been in a > situation where I was responsible for this so I am slightly at a loss. > > How do you approach getting a new designer familiar with everything. What is > a good way to spend the first day? What is a good day to spend the first > week? Is there anything you ask them to do specifically to benefit from > their fresh status? For example, I wish to ask our new team-mate to record > her first impressions about the product she will be working on - before she > gets too familiar with processes, schedules and the products themselves. > > I am looking forward to the recommendations. > > Thanks! > Beril Guvendik > ________________________________________________________________ > *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* > February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA > Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
