Our full-time staff and our student designers, current and former, put real effort into this, and it is wonderful to get to share this moment with them. We sustained accessibility scores for our core website above the industry benchmark in 35 of 37 monthly measurements over three years. During that time, scores fluctuated and individual issues got resolved as new ones appeared.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Winning an award that recognizes\u00a0sustained performance over time\u00a0feels special. I love the idea that this ongoing, team-based, and genuinely \u201cnever finished\u201d kind of work is considered and celebrated for awards like this.\u00a0I think it\u00a0recognizes the ways in which so much work happens in a slow and sustained way, and that progress comes through ongoing care and craft.<\/p>\n
What did you learn from this experience that you can share with other UC teams?<\/p>\n
The first\u00a0takeaway\u00a0is that sustained quality requires both shared values and structural solutions that put those values into practice. Everyone needs structures that support individual and team-based craft and creative\u00a0processes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If you haven\u2019t done it already, every team can start with the values you already hold, write them down together, and then ask:\u00a0What meeting pattern, what recurring practice, what communication norm would express and strengthen those values in daily work?<\/p>\n
Another\u00a0takeaway\u00a0is that teams can hire students into real work and co-create team values and practices with them.\u00a0The learning\u00a0travels in both directions.<\/p>\n
We have an email list going, where we share our community events, job opportunities and a glimpse into the job. The Student Design Team creates a little slideshow about what they do and what they like about what they do. People who are interested in the job can get this first-hand look from their peers about what\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0like to have the job. This leads to interest in the\u00a0job and\u00a0allows us to stay engaged\u00a0with\u00a0a growing community.<\/p>\n
During interview rounds, we ask very experiential, scenario-based questions, like:\u00a0What would you do in a situation like this? Walk us through this. Show us how you would approach this challenge.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll\u00a0have a large pool of candidates with technical skills, so we found that the most successful students are those who bring qualities like ambiguity tolerance, love of iteration, ability to receive feedback, desire to ask questions, and service orientation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So far,\u00a0we\u2019ve\u00a0had 16 early-career designers come through our team.\u00a0They\u2019ve\u00a0gone on to UX and design roles, carrying inclusive design and accessibility practices with them. In some ways, the biggest impact of the work we do together will happen out there in the world, when our student employees graduate and bring their experiences with them.<\/p>\n