We receive a lot of great questions from all the people we meet. Here are answers to some of the top questions most often asked. 

 
  • How is the team organized
  • What skills are we looking for?
  • How many designers, writers, or researchers are on a typical project?
  • How many design problems are tackled by a designer at a time?
  • Do researchers do all of the user research?
  • How long do projects last?
  • What is a day in the life of a designer like?
  • What tools do the designers use?
  • Mac or PC?
  • Where are you located?

How is the team organized?

Hello, World!

Our designers, writers, and researchers are all part of the same UX organization. The team is supported by several managers who report to the Director of UX. 

We take this approach for several reasons: 

  • Ensure the team feels part of a larger design community and culture.
  • Sharing work across the team leads to creating more efficient, seamless experiences throughout our omnichannel approach (web, native apps, tools, and store).
  • Our team can focus and dive deep on work, yet still have flexibility to try new things.
  • The team has clear lines of leadership and feels supported personally and in their career development.

What skills are we looking for?

What we look for in all team members:

  • Strong communication and collaboration skills
  • Transparent with your work and process
  • Receptive to feedback
  • Passionate 

For designers, we look for experience working with user research, facilitating collaborative exercises, defining user scenarios and customer journeys, sketching, defining information architecture, as well as prototyping, interaction, and visual design. 

For researchers, we look for experience working with designers, writers and technology partners, facilitating both in-person and remote studies, and communicating study findings and recommendations based upon them.

For writers, we look for deep interest in the customer journey and curiosity about what the user needs to know when, a conversational approach and attention to detail paired with bigger picture, system-level thinking.

How many designers, writers, or researchers are on a typical project?

Projects can vary in size and complexity, so staffing can range from one designer and/or writer to a small team of 1-3 designers, a writer, and researcher. We evaluate each project to determine how many members and which roles best fit its needs.

How many design problems are tackled by a designer at a time?

Designers can tackle one to several projects at a time. Some designers focus on single, complex problem spaces containing numerous challenges. In these projects, designers work closely with their business and technology partners to drive understanding and solutions while helping prioritize work. Alternatively, there are designers working on solutions for several different areas that hold their own levels of complexity. Regardless, designers who tackle one problem area or many have the same influence and form the same underlying partnerships.

Do researchers do all of the user research?

Yes, our UX researchers are responsible for all research activities for customer-facing products and internal tools. They conduct qualitative research with users throughout the project life-cycle, ranging from discovery research—such as interviews, heuristic evaluations, card sorts, competitor testing—to iterative research like prototype testing and usability testing. They also conduct validation research with intercepts and live site benchmarks. Research is conducted in-lab, online or in the field depending on the need. Researchers partner closely with designers and writers to define what to research and how we want to research it.

How long do projects last?

Projects range in duration. Some changes take only days or even minutes, while some larger scale opportunities require months of work.

What is a day in the life of a designer like?

From Oscar:

Each day is different and varying for me. During a typical day, I am usually thinking, creating, or in meetings. I usually start out my morning going through my emails and taking a look at my calendar to see what is in store for the rest of the day and how I should utilize the time in which I am not in meetings. The meetings that I am involved in consist of stand ups (short syncs with project team members to give an update on where you are, what you are going to work on next, etc.), war rooms (weekly meetings in which I get to present designs to project stakeholders, conduct brainstorms, and much more), peer reviews (opportunity to get design feedback from fellow designers, writers, and researchers), or coffee chats (Nordstrom is a very relationship-oriented culture in which it's encouraged to go and meet others). When I'm not in meetings, how I spend my time depends a lot on the project that I'm on and where I am in that project. For example if I am early on in the project, I may be going through sticky notes from a question brainstorm that I just conducted or perusing through different mobile apps for a competitive analysis. I might also be in a stage of my project in which I am designing various concepts around the problem space that I am working on. Or I might be at a point in which I just received usability study results from my researcher and I am analyzing what worked and what didn't in a prototype that we just tested with real customers.

From Claire:

As a UX designer my day-to-day is heavily dependent on where I am in a project…

  • In discovery-mode, I’m attending lots of meetings with people across the business to understand the problem we’re trying to solve and to help shape our goals for the project. I’m also looking at competitors to see if/how they’re tackling the same problem.
  • In design-mode, I’m heads down coming up with lots of ideas fast (on paper and in Sketch), grabbing my peers for feedback, and partnering closely with researchers to test iterations of the experience with users. This is often where a prototype comes in (we use Marvel, Proto.io, and Principle, depending on the level of fidelity needed).
  • In dev-mode, I’m collaborating closely with my development partners to ensure our users the best possible experience. Zeplin and Slack have played a huge role in making this collaboration easier.
  • In delivery-mode, I’m supporting the project team with whatever is needed (usually logging bugs, assisting with training documentation, prioritizing future features, etc.).

Regardless of where I am in a project, there are a few things that remain consistent: I have weekly peer reviews and project team checkins, I usually have a few coffee connects throughout the week, I eat out for lunch a few times per week, (you’ll probably find me near Pike Place during the 12:00 hour from June-September).

What tools do the designers use?

We use a combination of design tools to accomplish our work. When creating designs, we use Adobe Creative Cloud, Sketch, Craft, and Zeplin. When prototyping we use Axure, Proto.io, Principle, Marvel, real working code, or plain old paper. Which tools we use depends on our goals, and having this flexibility also ensures we can do our work as efficiently as possible. 

Mac or PC?

Our designers and writers use Macs. Our research team use PC's. That difference is driven by the tools needed by each team to do their best work.

Where are you located?

The Nordstrom UX team is located in the CenturyLink Plaza building of downtown Seattle.