How are we going to grow CX/UX design teams when there's a shortage of Designers?

Being out of the market for 7 x months after the arrival of my baby boy meant coming back to work with very little market knowledge. After spending a couple of weeks reconnecting with my network it's clear times have changed and teams are scaling. But with lockdowns and border closures preventing design talent from moving states and no international travel preventing new talent from entering the country, how we going to grow these teams and our UX/CX capability in Brisbane?

Although Brisbane likes to do things it's own way, there is a lot than can be taken from Sydney and how teams were scaled 8 x years ago when there weren't enough UX Designers for the demand.

Not putting too much emphasis on job title is a good start. Identifying skill sets which easily transfer and use critical thinking to understand the customer. Many other types of Designers conduct in depth research to uncover customer pain points and use design to solve those problems. People who love to sketch out their ideas is a skill that's starting to be lost as new technology replaces the need to use our hands. Technology is great but there's something free and imperfect about the ability to communicate via sketching when at times ideas are lost in translation.

The Brisbane market is currently top heavy with experienced practitioners looking for their next leadership opportunity. My advice to any organisation looking for a design leader is find the person who not only knows how to engage the business and manage up but also see the potential in people and nurture a design team from a wide variety of backgrounds. Any leader who can attract and develop design talent in a candidate short market, is worth their weight in gold. The more diverse the team, the more diverse the views & ideas. Experience Design feels like its lost its way a little, not looking at the negatives enough or usability outside of the digital product space.

I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of the year brings, with diversity comes opportunity and a chance for organisations to genuinly balance the customer with the business needs, not manipulate the customer to what the business wants.