Russell Wilson has had a career spanning various roles in design and technology companies. His experiences have taught him that empathy, salesmanship, tenacity, integrity, accountability, team, top-down support, governance, and collaboration are key to success in design. He started companies, led design teams at large corporations, and advocates for design thinking processes like prototyping early ideas and building with user feedback.

1. Career Experiences
and how they’ve helped achieve more success in design
Russell Wilson
Partner, Head of Design
Microsoft Business Intelligence

2. 1984: Alston’s Produce

4. Empathy
Think like your customers to design great products
Think like your management to invest your resources wisely
Think like the people you manage to create an environment for
success
Think like your peers to collaborate for great outcomes

5. 1992: SAMRUS

7. $0 in bank with large debt
Alone in a warehouse full of wheels
6 weeks later  commitment for $1.4M contract
No call center experience
Hired two developers… then four more
Successfully delivered the ICC Project!

8. Salesmanship
You must learn how to sell your designs
You must learn how influence other roles
WIIFM? (salesmanship + empathy)
WIIFE? (“What’s in it for engineering?”)
WIIFPM? (“What’s in it for product management?”)

9. Tenacity
If you want something bad enough, you’ll find a way
Successful people overcome obstacles

10. 1993: ALVE

12. Great idea (UER™)  raised $2m seed
New BOD  “Need a grey hair CEO”
Options were slimy
Failed to raise $12M Series A anyway
Shutdown…

13. Integrity
First determine what your values are (Who do you admire?)
Then, don’t compromise them

14. 2005: NetQoS

15. CEO convinced me to run “Product Design”
30 people  300
4 designers
Awarded “Best in Class” for Customer Satisfaction
Sold to CA Technologies for $200M

16. Accountability
Own it
Formulate solutions to problems – Fix it
No excuses!

17. Team
Most important investment
Nurture
Focus on potential and culture
Can they do the job, do they want to do the job, can I work with them?
Do not tolerate brilliant jerks

19. 2009: CA Technologies

20. Started as VP of User Experience
Skunkworks project  Promotion to SVP
3 CEO’s and 9 bosses in 3 years

21. Top-down Support
Without it, you will not succeed
Align on design strategy and expectations: innovation? incremental?
Fund to achieve real goals

22. 2013: IBM

24. Head of Mobile Innovation Lab + First IBM Design
Executive
Represented IBM Design in IBM + Apple relationship
Head of Design for IBM’s largest software group
0  32 designers and engineers in 5 months
10 apps in 10mos
IBM Design Thinking

25. Stanford / IDEO
What we added
Hills
Playbacks
Sponsor Users

26. Governance
Easier to define process than to enforce – Governance
The right process for the right goals – innovation vs. incremental
Building in “time to think”

27. Collaboration
Easier for some than others  imperative in large organizations
Requires well-defined roles and responsibilities
Collaboration != Consensus

29. 2014: Microsoft

31. January to June: 7  38 staff
Creative + Prototyping + Research + Content Dev
Prototype as spec
Adopted concept of Hills
No engineering investment until design sign-off
PM owns what – Design owns how – Engineering makes it
real

32. Plan PM drives
Design provides input into objectives
Specify Hills and Release Plan
Design Design drives
Design Thinking process
Prototype as spec
Create HLD – key workflows / main intent
Build Engineering drives
Agile / iterative
Design works through detailed design and
changes

33. Role Breakdown
(within Design Studio)
Role Breakdown
(across BI org)

35. Empathy Salesmanship Tenacity
Integrity Accountability Team
Top down Governance Collaboration

36. http://linkedin.com/in/russwilson
http://twitter.com/russwilson