Design Strategy in action
Talk: small "s" strategy throughout the design process
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I’ve worked at both ends of the design spectrum: doing the ethnographic research to deeply understand user needs and identify latent needs a company can serve (to a great business outcome), and wrangling the dev gods to make our intended interaction work the way we were hoping it would.
Here my workshop on how to keep your spirits up throughout the design process, like you are staying in a bit of control (when you don’t always get to call the shots).
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Sketchnotes: nycxdesign 2024 - Neue House panel
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Topic was “Design + Mind: Making Tomorrow Irresistable”
Hosted at Neue House for 2024’s nycxdesign events hosted by IDSA
Highlights:
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Keeping finances in order
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Last time I dug into how I think about finances, I was in need for a set of 101 step-by-step definitions. (Take a look here). Once the major pieces are in place, I’m finding that it’s more about handling things at a glance over months, with opportunities to reflect on whether I’m hitting my goals and intentions I can set (and meet) for myself over time.
Take a look at how I give myself peace of mind. The images below are mock-ups I made of the app I wish I had the time to build out for myself. Instead, I created a Google sheet template I use and share with others on this journey and curious.
Am I living within my means?
Rules of thumb are helpful guides - for example, 50-30-20 split recurring, fun, and savings. For months when I have a big trip or expense coming, it helps to put it all in perspective and see that on average, I am hitting my budget. And where I’m over in one area, it’s good to know where that money went.
How can I make progress towards savings feel real?
The adage “every dollar has a job” feels most real to me when I look at money left over after expenses, and instead of purchasing that splurge item, earmark it for a specific goal.
The danger is of course over complicating things (this is money not spent yet), but as a rough measure of assets accessible, it helps.
How can I make something that’s decades off feel real?
Long term goals are, by definition, a ways off. Being able to reassure myself that what I’m doing now is keeping me on track (and if I’m off, how much I’d need to get that compounding to work in my favor again) makes financial decisions clearer and more intentional.
What does this look like in practice?
The app snapshots above doesn’t exist (yet). For now, I’ve created an overview for myself that shows me the numbers I’d love to see at a glance and an easy way to plug in the category spends from my bank’s app.
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Talk: Synthesis & Storytelling
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Ladies Who Strategize is a thriving, private online community for female identifying and non-binary strategists of all stripes and industry persuasions. It’s a mix of brand, marketing, agency, in-house, and design strategists at the beginning middle and top of their game.
Annually, we have the opportunity to gather at a retreat and share meals and mindmeld on things while stepping out of our collective crazy days.
In 2024 I had the great opportunity to contribute to the retreat agenda, and led a workshop on all things Synthesis & Storytelling. Session discussion and where I led more of an introduction to a topic or where we dove into the nuances organically emerged based on the make-up of who was in the room. This was an interactive session, with participants picking out specific synthesis methods and shared their own experience grappling with ethics and rigor.
The TLDR:
Workshop on design synthesis methods (of synthesis itself, and sharing out synthesis with partners/stakeholders)
How to think about the differences between synthesis methods
Synthesis & the human condition: considering ethics / our now-hopefully-better recognition of bias and what to do with it
Sstorytelling your synthesis (your objective in sharing and how that shapes your narrative)
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Recipes
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I… do not cook. Much. At all.
Generally not even allowed to chop to contribute.
But here are a couple recipes presented in a way that has made it easier for me to think about prepping for and understanding what I’m supposed to do with the ingredients.
We’ll see how much gets added here over time…
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New Orleans, LA
Rome & Naples, Italy
Berlin, Germany
Hawaii islands
Talk: Adapting Tools for the Future
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Angela Yeh founded Yeh Ideology to help employers and design professionals gear up for success in this changing world of design.
Towards that end, she runs a summit every year to bring together individuals she has worked with from both her career coaching and her recruiting side of the business.
Angela and I crossed paths - she was headhunting, and I got to share a bit about my story. Even though that one particular opportunity was not quite a match, we stayed in touch.
I was delighted to be invited to speak at her summit, especially given the theme “Metamorphosis” and the day’s talks ranging from what it means to design far out into the future to how to level up your own personal career journey.
The half hour I spent going over various ways we designers need to adapt the tools of our trade flew by - take a look below.
Skim the slides here, although note that speaker notes no longer appear in Slideshare captions (a shame!)
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Talk: Designing in-house
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Gave a lunchtime seminar at MIT’s IDM program (Integrated Design & Management, a fantastic masters program on the intersection of design & business) on working in-house as a designer. The focus was on the ways that design scales, and how my focus shifts accordingly.
And a quick plug for Prezi’s in-video slide features - it made it easier to encourage an ongoing discussion across participants, as well as allow for my eyes to stay on the camera a bit better.
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Design Methods
METHODS | PROCESS
Applying design in the mess of the real world
Adapt the approach
Design is rarely a pre-set process. You drop in anywhere along the double diamond, iterate from there based on what’s needed at that point.
Flex the methods
Design is also not rigid. Depending on the constraints at hand, I choose the right-sized tool and method to move the work forward.
Collaborate with intent
We designers translate truths into meaningful actionable things to other individuals. Success is, therefore, bringing teams together effectively.
Sketchnotes: innovation labs
Sketchnotes: annual planning
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InVision’s Design Leadership Forum has been a source of ongoing inspiration, nudging, and education from peers across a variety of industries. It is of course fairly squarely digital product dev focused, given InVision’s products, but the themes are applicable in many instances across all design leadership scenarios I might find myself in. In particular, I’ve found it helpful to hear from members who are building out orgs in well-established (and not originally design or even customer-driven) companies, as the challenges there are closer to what I’ve been working on.
Recently, I found a thread on annual planning / design’s role in strategic roadmapping particularly insightful. Here my notes from it! Credit goes to the members who contributed the various nuggets.
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Talk: Designing at Scale
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I gave a talk in April 2020 on Pyjama Talks, a talk series hosted during the early surge of the pandemic by Stanford’s Knight-Hennessy Scholars program. They invited experts from around the globe to give 8-minute nuggets of information, inspiration, and delight from the comfort of their home. Wearing pyjamas encouraged!
For now, the video is still up on facebook - have a watch!
I’d prepared a couple “slides” to share, as I’d understood it to be a short presentation followed by Q & A- the format shifted a bit to more of an interview, and so the slides periodically pop up throughout, which worked out quite well in the end.
Here the full slate of slides I’d prepared: Giving a bit of my definition of scale, how to break problems down into chunks, and the broad strokes approach to creative problem solving that applies at all scales. The tricky part of course comes in applying it in real life, but we only had a couple minutes - so much more to dig into this topic, for sure.
And here a fun shot of my soft opener Q, answering “what is home”? (My answer that day: the feeling of walking out on a street in Berlin, Germany, and it just feeling familiar. The scents, navigating around)
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UXStrat 2020 - sketchnotes
Making sense of remote facilitation
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Ladies Who Strategize was my haven-find of the pandemic in 2020. Led by the inimitable Kim Mackenzie, it is a space for women to share tools, thoughts, and reflections on all things strategy. Strategy takes on many forms, and the diverse network that share their expertise on the Slack group is a celebration of that.
One of our sessions was sharing out best practices when it comes to remote facilitation. Similar to the workshop I led with Virginia Hamilton for Design at Business, it brought together some great nuggets for those both new to facilitating, and those who have been doing it for years but are looking for refreshers on what translates in what way best when facilitating virtually.
See here the recap of the session I captured in sketchnotes:
So you're planning a wedding...
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Where do you start?
Once we got engaged, we realized the expectation was we would have answers about the upcoming wedding. The reality was that we were both excited about the next chapter… without really having ever thought about the event itself. Here’s how we approached it, and made it not actually a terrible experience along the way.
1.
We picked 3 things that were important to us, things we cared about.
make it authentic to us
food
photography
The first helped create the a clear way to make our decisions on decoration & venue, and the other two were the items we felt good about spending money on. Everything else we committed to spending minimal time worrying about & not let ourselves get upsold on.
2.
I spent copious amounts of time perusing blogs and wedding site run downs, and am forever grateful to other wedding-aficionados that generously shared what they’d learned while planning their nuptials. It also helped get over the initial shock of what event planning in NYC costs. This enabled me to create an outline of it all:
What you’d spend $$ on (& therefore have to make a decision about)
When decisions needed to be made (who knew venues needed to be booked a year in advance?)
What questions to ask of potential vendors, to compare / contrast easily
The document also became the place where we jotted down ideas as they came to us - this lessened the pressure / sense of being overwhelmed at all the decisions. And it prevented us from retreading already-decided upon ground.
3.
As a visual person 🙋🏻♀️- laying out the timeline of the day helped us imagine the various moments we were designing. We could celebrate when we checked off items and anticipate the joy we’d have with family & friends. I chose specific small parts that felt within my wheel house to get craftsy. For a closer look at the fun I had making our website, Japanese foam clay wedding cake toppers , lasercut wood table numbers and more, check out my other post on it here.
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