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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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Topic was “Design + Mind: Making Tomorrow Irresistable”
Hosted at Neue House for 2024’s nycxdesign events hosted by IDSA
Highlights:
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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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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.
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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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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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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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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HCD for finding the right aha moments & needs to drive ideation
Lean for prototyping
Agile principles & documentation for team work / management
Behavioral economics (& psychology) design for successful iterating
Incl. both qualitative research outputs as well as operational metrics
Pattern recognition
Cross-functional work session design & facilitation
Freeform writing helps clear the mind. Figuring out what assumptions and preconceptions I have walking into a project helps shape my questions and early-stage prototyping. It’s important to test assumptions early on; what you discover may surprise and change the direction of a project. Working on a product you have very little personal experience with (say, a product for first-time parents of a toddler).
Stakeholders include the end-user, but also those channels a product must navigate to reach said end-user (such as, for instance, a parent in the case of a child). Working in Germany with a wooden toy maker gave me insight into how Ursula Wunsch reflected parents decision-making process in presenting her toys for children.
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.
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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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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.
an inspirational video by Ray & Charles Eames when they worked with IBM in 1977.
It is one of the most… engaging ways to highlight the interconnectedness of it all. That scale relates very strongly to systems / ecosystems.
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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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:
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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.
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.
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.
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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After living on my own for a couple years, I realized that a general sense of “check checking account, if it’s over a couple hundred, I’m doing well” and “when there’s extra, put it away” wasn’t giving me a clear enough picture of what I’m supposed to be keeping track of or considering when it comes to longer term financial decisions. Here are my learnings.
(Since I created this, I’ve taken another stab at looking at things at a higher overview and what it looks like to handle month to month budgeting - take a look here)
This breakdown roughly follows Brian Feroldi (who writes for The Motley Fool)’s recommended order of financial operations.
This is a collection of personal learnings, rather than a concrete set of advice to follow. I am not a certified financial advisor! Merely a civilian working towards financial literacy.
Invest for retirement (401k employer match)
Fill emergency fund
Max contributions (HSA, ROTH / trad. IRAs)
Invest in a diverse portfolio, other if applicable (eg 529 for childrens’ educ, gold, real estate)
Living within my means
My monthly spending:
To budget is to be clear about what you need to cover the inevitable, and what gap you have between that and what’s left. Initially, I set a goal to save up an emergency fund, and once I had that, to treat it as “untouchable”. Then I set goals for expanding the $$ I could save in the gap (spend less or make more).
What worked for me:
Taking advantage of my bank’s automated categorizing lowered the friction of documenting.
I tried out to various apps like Mint to see what worked best for me. Turns out, an excel where I tracked my bank’s categories + adding other ad-hoc items stuck better.
Looking over a couple months helped me determine which category of spending I would change, vs kicking myself for spending more one month on treats.
I set a clear goal for savings. A tangible thing to weigh against the Joys of Life.
How debt works
If I have a need for more money than I have, say for a car or a house, I can ask an institution to loan me that money. Now I have debt - meaning over time I am expected to pay back that amount, plus additional money that is the cost of the institution trusting me & giving me their money in the first place.
1.
When I apply for a loan, the institution will tell me what it will cost.
2.
Once I have received the money and used it, I begin to pay portions of the loan (called principal) + cost (the interest) back over that set amount of time.
3.
If I reach the set length of time, and still have portions of my principal to pay, institutions may charge an increased cost (expressed as an increase in interest).
Banks make the increase in % very high for each month credit card charges are past due - this can mean that from one month to the next the amount of money I have to pay back increases by a lot.
Note the actual charges are not always as linear / simple as depicted here.
When I apply for a credit card, loan, or submit an application to rent an apartment, institutions (and landlords) look at my credit score. The score is based on a look at my overall history with money:
Banks calculate your proportion of credit use at the end of the month - so if I see myself getting close to that 50%, I can pay my credit card balance mid-month
Every 6 months or so, I asked my bank to increase my credit limit - not to use more, but so that my proportion of use is lower. I did this until my use stayed below 50%.
Saving towards larger goals
Starting with the long view
It’s worth it to start with my retirement savings because of the magic that is compounding. Take a look at what happens from Year 1 to Year 2: (ref)
Year 2’s return is larger, because I started Year 2 with a bit more than 2k. That means the money I invested did “work” for me - making me more money than what I originally put in. Over time, this adds up - take a look at the example shown here: (ref)
I checked with my employer to see if they offer a “match” for contributions to a 401k. A match means that an employer pledges to contribute up to a certain % of what I take out of my paycheck to put in my 401k (so if say I put 4% out of my paycheck every month, they add that same amount to my 401k, effectively doubling the amount I’ve saved)
There are additional options for saving for the long-term: Traditional and Roth IRAs (individual retirement accounts). These are accounts that you invest in through brokerages like Vanguard, Charles Schwabb, etc. Once I’ve filled my emergency fund, I try to put in as much as I am allowed (federal limits are set every year).
The difference is I pay taxes upfront with a Roth vs pay taxes later with a Traditional IRA. My income early in my career is likely less than what I will be spending in retirement, but I also do not know what the tax rate will be way in the future - therefore it is good to have a mix of both. (ref)
Note there are income limits for contributing to both 401ks and Roth IRAs (ref).
Options for investing towards savings goals
Now I start to look towards the closer-horizon goals (trips I want to go on, big purchases like an apartment). Here too I am looking for ways to make my money work for me, and investing in the stock market is a way to do that. Many talk about an “average return” in the market. This is made up of the average across all companies who are publicly traded on the stock market. There are a number of different types of accounts you can choose: (ref)
Stocks
I invest $ in 1 company. I win when the company does, but I also lose when its stock price goes down
Mutual Funds
I invest $ in a set of many companies Wins & losses of companies even out. These are offered for a low fee by investment brokerages.
Index Funds
Type of mutual fund, where the set is focused on a sector (tech, energy). Lets me focus in areas I believe will do well, with less risk than trying to pick single companies
Bonds
A government or company’s IOU for their loans and payments. Does not fluctuate much, which means I don’t have the risk of losing value in a short amount of time (but also will not grow a lot in value).
When I open up accounts, I can set what proportion of my money is in how “risky” of a bucket (aka how comfortable am I waiting out the slumps in hopes of greater gains over time). As I get closer to when I will want to access the money (say, to purchase a home or as I get closer to retirement), I can shift the proportion of my investments from more volatile accounts to ones that do not fluctuate as much. This way, I have a greater change of predicting what amount of money will be available.
In addition to the brokerages already mentioned, Wealthfront, Betterment are examples of “robo-advisors” where you can transfer $ and they will invest in various funds for low fees. Robinhood lets you invest in individual stocks. There are more options such as cash-equivalent accounts (CDs), real estate, gold that help weather the fluctuations of the market.
Other financial learnings
Paying off debt vs investing in the market
When I look at the assets I have saved up, a question that pops up is whether I should pay off large loans (like student loans, car loans), vs invest that amount in the market.
If my loan interest is less than what I can make in investment earnings in the market, it is better use of my money to invest it in the market. That said, the % I have saved in interest fees is a sure-fire saving - the market return is not guaranteed.
Most articles you come across talk about returns on market investments as an “average” over years. (ref) But once you start taking money out, being mindful of the peaks and valleys take on significance. Financial advisors have a variety of strategies / approaches to this kind of thing - (such as investing in gold, which historically has retained value when the stock markets are down) definitely consult an expert for guidance! I first heard of this in a financial literacy workshop hosted by Fortis Lux’s Victoria Henning-Smejda.
The point of building up a “nest egg” is that you live off of the interest it generates every year, touching as little of the actual amount you put in as possible (this is how endowments work). The balancing act is in building up for the long-term while also saving towards the goals that pop up throughout the life we live pre-retirement.
That’s all for now - definitely download the full poster if this is of help to you. I find it easier to skim this in PDF vs scrolling down each section… but that’s just me.
I’m looking forward to learning more, and plan to share out as I go along - things like how life insurance works (and how some use it as an additional investment tool).
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