From practical team dynamics to strategic vision-setting, we share fresh insights, test new approaches, and dig into the real challenges facing design leaders today.
For design leaders, reading the room is everything. While conventional wisdom suggests that positioning drives perception, the reality for design teams is often reversed: your ability to read and respond to shifting stakeholder perceptions should drive your positioning decisions.
There are limited returns when spending a significant amount of emotional energy trying to convert powerful skeptics into believers. There's a more practical, and dare I say it, more strategic way to deal with skeptics.
Strategy Maps are powerful tools that can help bridge this gap by visualizing the relationships between different business goals and the role of design in achieving them.
Four key elements to develop a comprehensive, winning plan to lead a design team.
The most effective design leaders I know leverage nuance to overcome self-doubt in five steps.
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For design leaders, reading the room is everything. While conventional wisdom suggests that positioning drives perception, the reality for design teams is often reversed: your ability to read and respond to shifting stakeholder perceptions should drive your positioning decisions.
Instead of thinking about partnerships as a separation of skills and responsibilities, think about them in a similar way that customers adopt new products and services. Some partners are early adopters, while there are others who adopt late – often begrudgingly.
There are limited returns when spending a significant amount of emotional energy trying to convert powerful skeptics into believers. There's a more practical, and dare I say it, more strategic way to deal with skeptics.
Two particularly powerful tools to validate your design choices and predict your impact are correlation and linear regression analysis.
Generally speaking, Empathy Maps are helpful to understand additional perspectives, but for many of us, it is difficult to be empathetic in the moment. Especially when we disagree with someone.
A simple matrix-like tool to simultaneously focus on eliminating and reducing the activities that aren’t producing the results you need so that you can raise and create the activities that are or will.
Strategy Maps are powerful tools that can help bridge this gap by visualizing the relationships between different business goals and the role of design in achieving them.
Many designers aspire to transition from individual contributors to design leaders. This shift comes with its own set of challenges and responsibilities.
5 lessons that have helped me amplify the value of design.
Four key elements to develop a comprehensive, winning plan to lead a design team.
Use neuroscience (and post-its) to hack your brain from negative thought loops
It's critical to find data, leverage it, and examine your own bias. Doing so means you'll be a better advocate for the value of design because I could anticipate how executives might react when I presented data like this.
The most effective design leaders I know leverage nuance to overcome self-doubt in five steps.
An “adoption first” strategy for an internal Design System at EA
I have never been in a position where I could declare culture change is going to happen. Here's how I've successfully introduced a culture of design anyway.
