How to Structure and Manage a UX Team in 2025? – Full Guide

The UX team structures that worked in 2023 are already showing cracks, and over the next 12 months, many will completely fail. Why? Because the integration of AI, remote collaboration, and cross-functional requirements is transforming how to structure a UX design team at a fundamental level.

I run a SaaS UX design agency myself, and based on my research, one thing is clear: there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to building a UX design team anymore. Organizations that’ve cracked the code are the ones building flexible team structures that prioritize both strategic alignment & rapid adaptation.

But how do you, as a product leader, build a UX design team with adaptability & scalability in mind? – And what are the steps you need to ensure their optimal performance?

This article will give you a step-by-step blueprint on how to structure and manage the perfect UX design team in 2025.

So let’s dive right in.

Understanding UX Team Structures in 2025

Your team structure determines everything. Get it wrong, and you’ll watch talented designers struggle with unclear responsibilities and conflicting priorities. Alternatively, doing it right will give you product development success that directly impacts your bottom line.

After talking to hundreds of companies over the last 18 months, three main UX team structures consistently deliver results. Each works for different situations.

Let’s break down when and why to use each one:

1.   Centralized UX team model

Picture this: all your UX professionals report to one dedicated UX manager who assigns them across projects. Some call it an “internal agency model” or “UX center of excellence” basically, your UX team becomes internal consultants.

The benefits are clear. You get organizational investment at the highest level, plus a robust talent pool with UX designers, researchers, information architects, and content strategists all working together. Team members gain experience across multiple projects, building broader organizational knowledge.

But there’s a catch. Other departments often forget to include UX in their workflows since your designers aren’t sitting with them daily. Projects need to budget specifically for UX collaboration.

When it works best: Medium to large companies needing consistency across products.

2.   Decentralized or embedded UX teams

This approach flips the script entirely. Your UX team gets distributed across the organization, embedded directly within product teams. Each designer reports to their product team’s lead instead of a UX manager.

The advantage? Deep integration with product development. UX professionals work with the same team continuously, building stronger trust and relationships.

They sit in planning meetings with developers and product managers, ensuring UX considerations get addressed throughout the entire product lifecycle.

The downside hits when UX professionals find themselves outnumbered, spending more time educating colleagues about UX value than actually designing. Communication between UX staff across different teams becomes nearly impossible.

When it works best: Organizations with distinct product lines requiring deep domain expertise.

3.   Matrix UX team structure

The hybrid approach combines both models. UX professionals maintain dual reporting to both a central UX manager and their product team lead.

Here’s how it breaks down: the UX manager handles standards, career development, and craft quality. The product team’s lead directs daily priorities and project goals. You get deep product knowledge plus strong discipline expertise while maintaining consistency across products.

The challenge? The “two bosses dilemma” many UX professionals face is conflicting priorities from their two managers. This confusion requires excellent communication and strong alignment between functional UX and product managers.

When it works best: Growing organizations transitioning between models.

When to use each structure? – A Closer Look

The choice of the ideal UX team structure comes down to 3 main factors:

1. Centralized teams work for smaller organizations or those just building UX capability. Use this when consistency across products matters most.

2. Decentralized teams excel when you have distinct product lines requiring deep domain expertise. This only works when UX is already valued and understood by product teams.

3. Matrix structures emerge in growing organizations transitioning between models. Choose this when you need both specialized expertise and product-specific knowledge.

You need to consider your organization’s size, existing processes & the level of UX maturity it currently possesses. It must, however, be noted that no perfect model exists – and the best approach aligns with your specific organizational context & evolves as your needs change.

Key Roles in a UX Design Team

What’s the biggest mistake companies make when building UX teams? They hire based on job titles instead of understanding what each role actually delivers.

After working with over 2 dozen product & UX teams, we’ve seen a recurring pattern: successful teams know exactly what each specialist contributes and when to bring them in. The wrong hire at the wrong time wastes months.

The right person in the right role? They can single-handedly improve user-friendly products & drive measurable business results.

Here’s what each essential role actually does and why your team needs them:

1. UX Researcher

UX researchers are your secret weapon for making decisions based on data instead of opinions. While everyone else argues about what users want, researchers actually go talk to them.

Their job involves both qualitative work (interviews, observations, field studies) and quantitative analysis (surveys, card sorting) to understand user behaviors and preferences. 

UX researchers are also tasked with creating research reports, user personas & compiling usability testing results that guide every design decision.

The best UX researchers eventually become user advocates, ensuring actual user needs drive design rather than internal politics or personal preferences.

2. UX Designer

UX designers handle the entire design journey – from spotting problems to shipping solutions. Unlike specialists who focus on one area, UX design specialists see the big picture and connect all the dots.

Your responsibilities span user research, problem analysis, ideation, prototyping, and testing with real users. You produce wireframes, mockups, user journey maps, and design pattern libraries that become the foundation for great products.

You need to hire someone who is adept at both analytical thinking and creative problem-solving, and who can seamlessly switch between information architecture and user psychology.

3. UI Designer

UI designers take wireframes and turn them into interfaces people actually want to use. While UX designers figure out what to build, UI designers make it look and feel incredible.

Their expertise centers on visual design – color, typography, layout, interactive elements, creating interfaces that match brand guidelines while enhancing user experience.

That being said, great UI designers understand that aesthetics aren’t enough – every visual choice needs to guide users toward their goals while maintaining usability principles.

4. Information Architect

Information architects build the invisible structure that makes everything work. They organize content and navigation so users can find what they need without overthinking.

In mature companies, dedicated information architects own the product structure from day one. In smaller teams, UX designers often handle this work alongside UI designers and product managers.

The role typically starts during early development but continues throughout the product lifecycle

5. UX Writer

UX writing is a critical part of the UX design process, helping you connect users to your products. Poor interface text can derail even the best designs, and that’s exactly where UX writers come into the picture.

UX writers are responsible for every word a user sees on an app or website – right from buttons & headings to error messages and navigation points.

Even then, most companies underestimate the importance of this role until they realize bad copy is a conversion-killer that leads users to drop off.

Having a skilled UX writer on your UX team helps build trust, making products accessible through easy, non-technical language.

How to Structure a UX Team for Scalability?

Building a scalable UX team structure goes way beyond just adding more designers. The teams that scale successfully can adapt to product changes while maintaining quality under pressure.

1. Aligning team structure with product goals

Your team structure has to mirror what you’re actually building. We’ve seen this pattern across dozens of projects: early-stage startups thrive with flat structures and generalist designers who can handle rapid iteration. But as products mature, the structure needs to evolve.

Single-product companies usually benefit from function-based teams: research, design, and content working together. Multi-product organizations? They need product-aligned teams where each squad owns specific user experiences.

Product complexity determines everything. Complex products with multiple user types require specialized designers for each segment.

Alternatively, simpler products work fine with streamlined teams focused on core user flows.

2.   Balancing generalists vs. specialists

Here’s what we’ve learned from scaling teams: the generalist-specialist mix changes as you grow.

Start with generalists. These versatile designers handle research, wireframing, and visual design efficiently when you’re small. They understand the full design process and can pivot quickly.

As you scale, introduce specialists who excel in specific domains: research, interaction design, visual design, prototyping. The winning formula?

A core of experienced generalists backed by specialists who tackle complex challenges in their areas of expertise.

3. Creating cross-functional pods

Cross-functional pods solve the scaling problem better than any other structure we’ve seen. These small, self-contained units typically include:

• A UX designer handling user flows and wireframes
• A visual designer managing interface aesthetics
• A researcher providing user insights
• A content strategist owns microcopy and messaging

Each pod owns specific product areas or features. They collaborate closely with developers and product managers while maintaining design consistency through shared principles and systems.

This approach allows parallel work streams without chaos, and multiple teams can move fast without stepping on each other.

4. Avoid overlap & confusion

Role clarity becomes critical as teams grow. We create visual responsibility matrices showing who owns what from research planning to final implementation. No ambiguity about decision-making authority.

Establish clear handoff procedures between roles. Nothing should fall through cracks during transitions.

Regular team-wide standups help spot potential overlaps before they become problems

5. Mapping responsibilities to outcomes

Connect every UX role directly to measurable outcomes. Skip focusing solely on deliverables like wireframes and prototypes. Instead, tie responsibilities to specific users and business metrics.

This outcomes-based approach helps team members understand how their work drives larger goals. It provides clear criteria for evaluating performance as the team scales.

Regular reviews of this responsibility-outcome mapping ensure your structure evolves with changing product priorities. That’s the real hallmark of scalability.

How to Build a Collaborative & Inclusive Team Culture?

Structure alone won’t make your UX team successful. What makes the real difference is the cultural foundation you create.

When we work with companies building UX teams, the first thing we identify is this: the best-structured teams fail without the right culture. Collaborative environments directly impact innovation, productivity, and satisfaction, which is why you need to focus on building a robust team culture.

Based on our observations, here are a few tips to build a more collaborative & inclusive UX team:

1. Creating psychological safety

Google’s Project Aristotle found something interesting. The single most important factor in team success wasn’t seniority or individual performance; it was psychological safety. This shared perception allows team members to propose ideas, voice concerns, and acknowledge mistakes without fear of negative consequences.

Here’s how we build this:

• Start meetings with emotional check-ins (“How is everyone feeling?”)
• Demonstrate authenticity by sharing your own concerns and questions
• Respond immediately to issues that arise
• Balance seriousness with appropriate team-building activities

The numbers prove this works: Employees at organizations promoting trust report being 76% more engaged, 50% more productive, and 40% less burned out than those at low-trust companies.

2. Encouraging cross-functional collaboration

Cross-functional collaboration accelerates the delivery of better outcomes for users. Many teams have shifted away from handoff-oriented workflows toward more integrated approaches.

Effective collaboration requires:

• Breaking down silos between design, business, and technology teams
• Creating structured opportunities for teamwork through brainstorming sessions, design critiques, and collaborative planning meetings
• Defining clear roles and responsibilities at the project outset
• Using collaborative tools that allow real-time feedback and iteration

Something we found interesting: At Monzo, employees complete a “working with me” document linked to their Slack profile expressing how they prefer to collaborate with others. Simple, but it works.

3. Promoting diversity in design thinking

Diversity goes beyond ethnicity or gender: it includes varied perspectives, experiences, and thinking styles. Creating an inclusive environment where diverse viewpoints thrive leads to more innovative solutions.

In my opinion, here’s how you can promote diversity in design thinking amongst your UX team:

• Hire outside your social circles to increase exposure to different opinions
• Establish employee resource groups for underrepresented communities
• Examine how meetings are run, decisions made, and feedback given
• Create spaces where team members feel safe, valued, and empowered

Diverse teams avoid groupthink and produce more innovative results that satisfy everyone.

Build a culture that values psychological safety, cross-functional collaboration, and diverse perspectives, and you’ll create a UX team structure that thrives on creativity and delivers exceptional user experiences.

How to Hire and Onboard the Right UX Talent? – A Blueprint

Once you’ve built your team structure, everything comes down to one thing: getting the right people in the right seats.

The way you hire and onboard directly determines whether your UX team delivers results or just creates pretty wireframes that nobody uses.

Given below is a stepwise blueprint to hire & onboard high-quality UX talent:

1. Skills-based hiring vs. experience-based hiring

Most companies still hire incorrectly. They get impressed by fancy degrees and years of experience at big-name companies. But here’s what the data shows: hiring for skills is 5 times more predictive of job performance than hiring for education and more than twice as predictive as hiring for work experience.

Skills-based hiring means you test what people can actually do, not where they went to school.

What this looks like in practice:

• Test real competencies instead of trusting resumes

• Open doors for candidates from non-traditional backgrounds
• Focus on collaboration and communication skills that transfer across projects

Nearly three-quarters of companies now use skills-based hiring to solve talent shortages and unlock new opportunities. The companies that don’t? They keep hiring the same type of people and wondering why their UX results stay flat.

2. Defining clear role responsibilities

Role confusion kills productivity fast. When your UX designer believes the researcher should handle usability testing, but the researcher assumes the designer is responsible, projects stall.

Create a responsibility-assignment matrix (RACI) that shows exactly who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed for each task.

This becomes critical when roles naturally overlap, like when UX designers and researchers collaborate on user testing, or when information architects and UX designers both shape site structure.

Clear boundaries also prevent the “I thought you were handling that” conversations that often derail timelines.

3. Onboarding for collaboration and culture fit

Effective onboarding goes way beyond handing someone a laptop and access badges. The goal is helping new UX hires understand their impact on business goals and start contributing quickly.

Structure your UX onboarding around these elements:

• Team workflows, documentation, and how decisions get made
• A designated “buddy” for questions and cultural navigation
• Regular check-ins throughout the first month
• Early project wins that build confidence and demonstrate value

4. Using design challenges and assessments

Design challenges reveal how candidates think through problems, not whether they know the “right” answer.

Structure them in two ways:

• ●  Whiteboard challenges (30-60 minutes): Real-time problem solving with your team, showing collaboration skills in action
• ●  Take-home challenges (3-6 hours): Deeper assignments that demonstrate end-to-end thinking and craft quality

The key? Make challenges reflect actual work they’d do on your team.

Don’t ask them to redesign Instagram if they’re working on B2B dashboard interfaces.

5. Hiring for mindset and adaptability

For your first UX hire, look for someone with at least 5 years of experience, strong communication skills, solid grasp of UX fundamentals, and the confidence to advocate for users when stakeholders push back. This person needs to grow into a leadership role as your team expands.

Beyond that, prioritize T-shaped designers who combine deep expertise in their specialty with broader knowledge in areas like business strategy or technical implementation.

These people understand how their design decisions connect to larger business outcomes, which is exactly what you need when UX teams are expected to drive measurable results.

How to Manage a Design Team Effectively?

Leadership determines whether your UX team delivers exceptional results or gets stuck in endless iterations.

We’ve worked with design teams across different stages of growth, and the difference between high-performing teams and struggling ones comes down to management approach.

Here are a few practical tips to manage a UX design team effectively:

1. Setting team OKRs and tracking progress

Most design teams fail because they can’t connect their work to business outcomes. Here’s what works: establish clear Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) that tie design decisions directly to metrics that matter to your company.

Start by aligning your design objectives with company-wide goals. Break these down into specific, measurable results your team can track. Then focus on progress through regular check-ins instead of micromanaging daily tasks.

We’ve seen teams increase their impact by 300% simply by connecting design work to conversion rates, user retention, and revenue growth.

2. Fostering open communication & trust

The best design teams we’ve worked with share one trait: psychological safety. Team members speak up about problems, share bold ideas, and admit when something isn’t working.

Build this through consistent one-on-ones that go beyond project updates. Talk about career development, creative challenges, and what’s blocking your team from doing their best work.

Create environments where designers feel comfortable sharing failures alongside successes. When someone admits a design isn’t working, treat it as valuable insight rather than a mistake.

3. Encouraging autonomy and ownership

Micromanagement kills creativity faster than anything else. Give your designers clear outcome expectations while letting them determine the approach.

Assign specific features or product ownership to build accountability. When designers own their work, they invest more deeply in the solution and take responsibility for the results.

The key balance: guide business goals while trusting your team to solve the design problems. Autonomy without direction leads to chaos. Direction without autonomy leads to uninspired work.

4. Handling conflicts and feedback loops

Design teams naturally generate friction from different perspectives on user needs, competing priorities, and conflicting feedback from stakeholders. Address these conflicts quickly through structured conversations focused on behaviors and outcomes, not personalities.

Establish regular critique sessions where feedback becomes part of your team’s DNA. The goal isn’t to avoid criticism but to make constructive feedback feel normal and valuable.

Develop a culture where challenging ideas improve the work. When team members see feedback as a path to better results rather than personal attacks, your design quality improves dramatically.

How to Measure the Success of Your UX Team?

You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Even the best-structured UX teams need measurement systems to prove their effectiveness and spot problems before they kill product success.

Here’s how you can measure the success of your UX team-building effort:

1. Using behavioral and attitudinal UX metrics

The most effective measurement combines two approaches that tell entirely different stories. Behavioral metrics show what users actually do, such as task success rates, time on task, error rates, and abandonment rates.

Attitudinal metrics reveal what users think and feel through self-reported data.

Here’s why you need both:

• Behavioral metrics: Success rates, session length, error counts
• ●  Attitudinal metrics: Net Promoter Score (NPS), satisfaction ratings, user retention rate

What users say often contradicts what they do, making this dual approach essential for getting the real picture.

2. Using feedback loops to iterate

Feedback loops create cycles where user actions trigger system responses that shape future behavior. Your UX team can spot unintended consequences by tracking how users interact with your system over time.

We implement effective feedback loops this way:

• Collect user feedback through multiple channels
• Analyze patterns to find improvement areas
• Make targeted design changes
• Measure impact through satisfaction scores or behavior metrics

3. Benchmarking team performance over time

UX benchmarking evaluates your product’s experience against meaningful standards using quantitative data. Start by establishing baseline measurements, then compare future metrics against this foundation.

You can benchmark against four reference points:

• Earlier versions of your product
• Competitors
• Industry standards
• Stakeholder-determined goals

The real power? When you show stakeholders concrete results that prove UX impact and calculate actual return on investment. Numbers don’t lie, and neither should your measurement strategy.

How to Boost Your UX Team’s Performance? Proven Methods

Good structure and solid management get you started. But what separates high-performing UX teams from average ones?

The answer lies in systematic performance improvement that goes beyond daily operations.

Here are a few ways you can leverage:

1. Skill assessments and learning paths

Most UX teams have no idea where their knowledge gaps actually are. Start with quarterly self-evaluations where team members rate their proficiency across key competencies. But here’s the important part: match these assessments with personalized learning paths.

We’ve seen teams use resources like DesignBetter, Interaction Design Foundation, and Nielsen Norman Group’s courses to close specific skill gaps. The key is creating learning paths aligned with both individual career goals and what your organization actually needs.

2. Design sprints and focused workshops

Design sprints solve a specific problem by compressing months of work into focused sessions. The typical five-day format works like this: understand, ideate, decide, prototype, and test.

But here’s what most teams get wrong. They run sprints randomly instead of strategically. Schedule quarterly design sprints for major product initiatives, then supplement with monthly half-day workshops for smaller challenges.

This creates a rhythm that strengthens collaboration between UX specialists and stakeholders while delivering tangible results.

3. Performance indicators that actually matter

Establish clear performance indicators that connect UX work directly to business outcomes. Track both leading indicators (usability scores, time-on-task) and lagging indicators (conversion rates, customer retention).

Review these metrics during monthly retrospectives, but focus on celebrating wins and identifying areas needing support rather than just collecting data.

The goal is continuous improvement, not performance monitoring for its own sake.

Conclusion

Building your UX team structure isn’t rocket science, but it’s not simple either.

We’ve covered the 3 main approaches – centralized for consistency, decentralized for product expertise, and matrix for growing companies. Each works, but only when it matches your specific situation. The structure you choose determines whether your team delivers that 100-fold ROI or struggles to make an impact.

In an ideal scenario, start with any of the above frameworks and adapt them to your specific use case or situation as you go.

The most successful UX teams solve their unique challenges while delivering real value to users and the business –  make sure your team structure does the same.