Download - Design Upstream

Design Upstream Advancing Strategic Design Without Going Against the Current

Chris Avore @erova

April 2, 2015 Boston MA

Today’s Agenda

• Assessing your current state

• Advancing your org’s design awareness

• How non-designer managers can help

• What you can do tomorrow

• Q & A

3 bullet bio

• Grown, lead a 25 person product design & research team at Nasdaq

• Design digital mobile & desktop products for corporate customers

• Primarily responsible for product strategy, new design opportunities

So why bother?So why bother?

Solve better problems

Design better products

Right people

Right room

Right questions

If they want you to cook the dinner, at least they ought to let you shop for some of the groceries.“

Let’s look at where we are todayLet’s look at where we are today

Is your own house in order?

Look in, not up (yet)

• Intra-team survey to uncover risks

• Evaluate the evaluation

• Charter or vision: your team’s meaningful common purpose

• Right leadership in place to scale and grow

• Are you prepared to change too?

Hub & Spoke or Embedded

Project 1

Project 2

Project 3

Project 1Project 2

Project 3

Embedded Designers

Hub

Reporting line!

• Information Technology / Engineering

• Product Development

• Creative or Marketing

!

• Research & Development

• Center of Excellence model

• Outsourced/Agency/Specialists

What’s happening outside?

https://www.forrester.com/Modernizing+User+Experience+In+Your+Firm/-/E-WEB18803


“What barriers prevent UX from having a greater impact?”

LACK OF LEADERSHIP 11%

OVERALL FIRM CULTURE 9%



• Overall firm culture

• Lack of leadership

• Partial implementation

• Lack of understanding

• Silos and politics

• Resource contraints

} Perception

problem







} Trust

problem







} Influence

problem







} Visibility

problem







} Design

problem

What are the attributes of an organization that enables good design process, strategy,

and delivery?

Limited to feature implementation

Design informs product strategy, opportunity, innovation

Strategy

PROGRESSING / TACTICAL MODERN / STRATEGIC

Build solutions based on requirements, user stories, etc

• Address problems first • Establishes standards,

patterns, priorities

Design

Tactical usability testing, light discovery work (validate features)

• Beyond screens, dept • Hypothesis-based • Quant and Qual

Research

Design should be something that permeates a company…These days, it's popular for companies to say they 'want' design, but that's not what it is. !

It's when everyone at a company is thinking about design—the writers, the engineers, even the people selling the ads—not just the designers.

“http://www.fastcodesign.com/3040416/buzzfeed-tries-to-get-serious-about-design

So how do we do that?

Feature designers, products in corporate wide events

Reference design in cross-organization communication

In my career at both Thomson Reuters and Nasdaq, I’ve never seen

us build a solution that looks as clean and solid as this one

This is light years ahead of what we saw last time and it looks amazing.

usIn my career at both Thomson Reuters and Nasdaq, I’ve never seen

build a solution that looks as clean and solid as this one

The salesforce promotes attributes of good design

Our product development process was too incremental and focused on features and ease of task completion. !

We needed an awakening and more of a grand vision. !

We needed all our people to understand that designing great products and user experiences is a team sport that includes not just designers and product managers but everybody else—even the CEO

“https://hbr.org/2015/01/intuits-ceo-on-building-a-design-driven-company

https://hbr.org/2015/01/intuits-ceo-on-building-a-design-driven-company

THAT’S where you want to be

Turning UpstreamTurning Upstream

Focus on the good of the enterprise.

Deliver the goods

To become that trusted partner, there is no substitute for demonstrated competence.“

http://boxesandarrows.com/recruiting-your-army-creating-the-in-house-design-agency/

Find an Advocate

Find that Advocate• Articulate three business goals you plan to achieve this year.

• List the people who could help you reach these goals—and how.

• Expertise?

• Control over resources?

• Political support?

Learn about the silos

On silos (or closed, tight networks)• Nonaligned and unshared priorities

• Lack of information flow

• Lack of coordinated decision making across silos

• Groupthink / overconfidence of decisions / confirmation bias

• Few new ideas

• No incentive to share knowledge

Building those bridges

Collaborative workshops • design studio • gamestorming activities

• pre-mortem • design-the-box • magazine cover

Promote & Publish • shared vision, north stars • useful, reusable assets

• personas • successes • research findings

It’s easier said than done.

How managers can helpHow managers can help

Facilitate introductions & conversations

Best person may not be best designer

Provide a strong team

Deploy design research beyond usability testing

Embrace the unknowns

Hire the best you can.

Do it tomorrowDo it tomorrow

• Look in, not up

• Invite the weak ties—not weak links—to design events

• Share their participation with their leadership

• Publish & promote research and deliverables

• Consider a design team portfolio to share with execs

• Skunkworks: align with your dept’s goals, then partner out

• Connect to the big picture.

Wrapping upWrapping up

Projects endAllies move on

Market conditions changePriorities shift

Competitors evolve

Teammates quit

Such Disruption

Don’t atrophy

Don’t stagnate

Don’t stand still

Persuasion is a process not an event

Delivery is your currency

Credibility is your social capital

Your vision is your access

THANK YOU Chris Avore / [email protected] / @erova

Download - Design Upstream

Top Related