Design approach
Design
Research and metrics
In both my personal design work, and for the design teams I've managed, maximizing contact with end-users through a wide variety of design research methods is key to good design. Whether there is a dedicated design research team that can dive into more in-depth studies, or the UX team needs to account for it in their own work, a healthy mix of qualitative and quantitative research activities, throughout the development lifecycle, can increase our understanding of users and reduce product risk. Careful use of current AI tools help can help with qualitative data analysis and help process information from a broader sampling of users.
Design for and with AI
AI tools for improving our design deliverables and our product results continue to change on a weekly basis. As leaders we need to plan time for discovery and learning while honestly evaluating any gains against financial, ethical and human costs to our teams and society (just like any other tool or technology).
My experience through multiple waves of AI and automation, from optimization, autonomic, predictive analytics, early chatbots and now LLMs and agentic AI, provide a seasoned lens on both their seemingly magic capabilities and the design challenges they bring to the end-user experience. Finding the right balance of transparency and explainability can help internal teams and our end users establish an appropriate level of trust with our AI technology.
Design methods
Systems design, design thinking and user-centered design approaches and frameworks have ebbed and flowed in popularity and success, depending on the organizational culture and the product type.
Successful design involves problem definition, business goals, user understanding, and the technical assumptions or constraints.
Business goals and domain knowledge
As designers mature in their practices, an increasing understanding of their employer's business model and business goals becomes critical to their success. It helps to frame the context for our design work and help us understand the higher level success metrics and how they correspond to our end-users' success.
As part of any designers skills assessment and learning plan, they need to
Product development
Design team success hinges on successful product deliver and adoption, which doesn't happen without great collaboration with the rest of the product development team.
As a design manager, I've collaborated with product management and development leadership to continuously refine product development process and ceremonies to align large teams (30+ designers, 40+ product managers, 100+ developers), keep it rigorous enough to drive better overall product quality and keep it lightweight enough to minimize overhead and be flexible for different types of product objectives and streams.
I've worked on teams large and small, from waterfall through agile, working to keep the UX team involved in early discovery and strategy, and using business and user metrics to inform product and design decisions.
Tight collaboration with the development teams early in the process, helps drive scoping and maximizes use and development of design systems and component reuse. It helps drive quick iterations on designs and solutions that make development more efficient and throughout the delivery cycle, finding and fixing usability issues.
Using my business and technical acumen to step-in where needed to help product managers and development leaders, welcoming those that have a usability mindset and helping to inform and train those that are curious to learn more.
