viv.i.am
Mapping UX Talent to Drive Team Growth
Service
Organizational Transformation, Service Design, ResearchOps
Client
Entel
Agency
Multiplica, 2025
Agency
Multiplica, 2025
Client
Entel
Service
Organizational Transformation, Service Design, ResearchOps
One of Entel’s teams was in the process of strengthening its internal UX team and needed to assess the skills, potential, and role fit of multiple designers. The team was diverse in seniority and background, and leadership required a consistent, evidence-based framework to guide hiring decisions, mentoring strategies, and long-term career development planning.
The Challenge
Traditional evaluation methods—based on job titles, years of experience, or subjective impressions—were no longer sufficient. The organization needed to understand where each designer stood in terms of hard and soft skills, maturity level, and readiness to take on specific responsibilities within strategic projects. The goal was to map real capabilities to future team needs with clarity and objectivity.
I led the design and implementation of a UX skills assessment system grounded in Jason Mesuth’s UX Spectrum framework.
To ensure clear evaluation criteria, I created tailored rubrics for each core UX discipline. The assessment was applied through two asynchronous challenges, supported by:
Live interviews.
Practical design exercises.
Self-assessment inputs.
I synthesized all findings into individual feedback reports, outlining:
Strengths.
Growth areas.
Actionable recommendations.
Throughout the process, I collaborated with the design leadership team and supported each participant to ensure transparency, trust, and clarity of expectations.
Timeline
The project lasted four weeks and was implemented as part of a live hiring and team development initiative. It included interviews, practical challenges, self-assessments, and calibration sessions with leadership.
Research statement and goals
To identify each designer’s skill level, growth potential, and role fit within the UX team—based on observable evidence, not perception—supporting better hiring, mentoring, and allocation decisions.
Success criteria
Provide a structured, replicable evaluation process
Reduce bias in decision-making
Generate individual development insights and team-wide visibility
Align assessment outcomes with real project and business needs
Research methodology
In-depth interviews guided by a structured framework, focusing on decision-making, communication style, and design approach.
Practical exercises evaluating competencies in user research, product strategy, interaction design (IxD), information architecture, and content strategy.
Self-assessment using a soft skills radar combined with qualitative reflection prompts.
Triangulation of interview performance, exercise outcomes, and self-perception for a holistic evaluation.
Recruitment criteria and process
Participants included seven internal members of the design team, spanning a range of roles from junior to lead level—including the current Design Lead. The evaluation was framed as a growth opportunity and conducted in a supportive environment to minimize stress or defensiveness.
Sharing and activation
Findings were synthesized in a central evaluation dashboard, allowing design leadership to compare individual profiles using consistent criteria. Each participant received personalized feedback, including strengths, growth opportunities, and development recommendations.
The system was designed to be reusable for future assessments across teams, provided it is facilitated by someone with expertise in strategic design and experience design evaluation.
Approach
Outputs & deliverables
UX Skills Evaluation Report, which included:
A detailed team diagnosis across all evaluated UX dimensions.
An individual mapping of each participant within a UX maturity scale / professional level.
A set of basic recommendations to strengthen UX capabilities within the team.
These outputs enabled:
Identification of individual strengths and growth opportunities, considering both technical competencies and professional mindset.
Understanding each team member’s motivation and career projection, including their interest in continuing to grow within the experience design field.
O3
Teams benefit from role-clarity and growth mapping
Having a shared language to define levels of UX maturity enabled more intentional team planning, mentoring, and hiring discussions
O2
Strategic maturity was the clearest differentiator
What set designers apart was not just visual or research skills, but their ability to frame problems, define hypotheses, and connect their work to business impact.
O1
Skill perception often diverges from performance
Several participants over- or under-estimated their abilities, particularly in areas like communication or strategy. The structured process helped align self-perception with real evidence.
Key findings
Business Value
Impact
The organization gained a consistent and objective system to evaluate current and future design talent. It supported fairer hiring decisions, more focused mentoring conversations, and team-level visibility that hadn’t existed before. The framework now serves as the foundation for career development and internal capability mapping.
Reflections
This project confirmed that evaluating UX talent goes beyond portfolios—it requires structured conversations, contextualized challenges, and honest alignment between perception and evidence. It also reinforced the value of transparency and care in turning evaluation into a tool for growth, not judgment.