Partnership by Design

Teacher problems aren’t solved through technology or in isolation — designing for educators requires a partnership with a diverse range of people who all measure their work by outcomes and engagement. Our Design Team at Teachers Pay Teachers is known for partnering with our educator communities to solve complex problems in their classrooms and schools. 

Over the past four years I've been building and managing a cross-disciplinary team of Product Designers, Brand Designers, Systems Designers, and User Experience Researchers. Our focus has been executing against our educator empowerment mission. As the senior-most designer in the company I've been able to: 

• Scale the team

• Operationalize the function

• Shape our vision

• Align with other functional leaders

• Introduce design thinking

• Inspire creativity

I'm most proud of the design program we've built around our core belief — we put teachers at the heart of everything we do. 

Org Design

We are a decentralized team. We embed UX within cross-functional product teams. Our brand designers are also distributed amongst different marketing pods. Our UER and Systems Designers work more like design operations — they work across all our product teams.  

In addition our brand and product designers are tightly integrated. We're a relatively small team so this still works for us. Our emphasis on collaboration between brand and product, combined with our collective respect for TpT's 12-year history, helps ensure a consistent expereince 

We Also Design Partnership Into How We Operate Within TpT

In a recent team offsite we talked about how we'd like our peers at TpT to feel about working with us. As part of a larger team branding platform exercise we aligned on two sets of benefits: Functional and Emotional. We include these attributes in all our onboarding materials and we hold ourselves accountable to inspiring partnership across the organization. 

Functional Benefits of Collaborating with Designers at TpT:

"I feel more confident in my work."

"I feel closer to our educator communities."

"I feel like my work is better.

Emotional Benefits of Collaborating with Designers at TpT:

"They make me feel heard."

"They make me feel energized."

"They make me feel like my work is making a difference in education."

Let’s Talk

I have a lot to share (and humble brag) about our design team at TpT. Please reach out if you have any questions or would like to learn more.

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