As design gets traction and the spotlight it deserves, practitioners and leaders are taking the opportunity to grow their practice. Yet as many know, there are many hurdles to jump and success isn’t always guaranteed. Amir will share his experience building and growing design practices across both the corporate and agency world. He’ll share his recipe for what has worked and what hasn’t. Regardless if you’re a practitioner or design leader, you’ll hopefully walk away with some useful tips and pave the way to grow your design practice within your organisation. And during his talk, Amir will pose a controversial question for you to ponder!

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@amir_ansari @iress
What does Fishing
and Design have in
common?
Scaling design within
organisations
@amir_ansari
@iress

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@amir_ansari @iress
Fishing image
Can’t believe they
call this a sport!!

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In 4 years
6 - 106
In 1 years
10 - 65
1600%
(16x)
550%
(5.5x)

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@amir_ansari @iress
In 4 years
6 - 106
In 1 years
10 - 65
1600%
(16x)
550%
(5.5x)

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Source: https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/31/here-are-some-reasons-behind-techs-design-shortage/? June 2017

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Source: https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/31/here-are-some-reasons-behind-techs-design-shortage/? June 2017

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May 2021
1:90!!!
Currently 1:55!!!

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Sure…there’s a
better / scalable way!

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Sure…there’s a
better / scalable way!

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Industrial Design
24 years in design
13 years as a Leader
Built & grew two design practices
(third one on the way)
2000 employees
5 continents
500k+ users

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1999
Manager
2001 - 2004
2021
My journey
2005 2017
Principal / Ops mgr’
2010 - 2012
Head of
2017 - 2021
2013
Head of
2013 - 2017
Global Head of
2021 -

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Who's in the audience?
ⓘ Start presenting to display the poll results on this slide.

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Scaling Design - what do I mean? What this talk won’t cover

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Guiding principles Strategies Traps
Principles that have
helped guide my
approach to scaling
design.
Strategies I’ve employed
to effectively scale
design.
Challenges I’ve faced
and things I’ve learnt
(bumps on the road) that
have impacted my ability
to scale design.

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Guiding
principles

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Give a man a fish and you feed him for a
day. Teach him how to fish and you feed
him for his life time.
Origin: highly contested

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Guiding principles
● Teach people to fish practice design (It’s not rocket science)
● Design scale ≠ headcount
● Pragmatism - Good, better, best
● Demand first, not supply
● The squeaky wheel gets the grease
● Top down / bottom up
● The long game
● Measure the right stuff (not maturity, ratios, but outcomes)

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Strategies

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Slack communities Involvement in UX activities
Playbook engagement

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Strategies for scaling design
● Democratise - Educate, coach, train anyone who shows interest
● Quick wins = wet appetite / build cred and show value
● Create ‘champions’
● Bake into existing processes
● Sell sell sell! (figuratively and literally!) - find opportunities to present
● Raise individual designers’ brand / profile
● Ultimately, create demand in what we do

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Traps

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A cognitive bias
whereby people
with low ability at
a task
overestimate their
ability.
https://en.wikipedia.org/

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Traps
● Novices feeling they are experts
● Assuming what worked in one company works in another
● Assuming if you’re in-house, you don’t have to sell!
● Big bang approach (to head count)
● Out of sight, out of mind (do once ≠ job done)
● Hiring juniors too early to build capability
● Perception of value = billable utilisation (agency world)

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Guiding principle
Democratise the
practice. Not about head
count!
Strategy
Teach any and all. This
will lead to advocacy for
practice, better coverage
and overtime, increase
demand for the craft.
Trap
Set and forget, without
any oversight and
governance to ensure
what has been learnt is
being applied correctly.
Dunning-Kruger effect
will happen.
Main takeaway

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https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-developer-ratio/

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https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-developer-ratio/

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Thank you
(and let’s go teach 🐠 !)
Amir Ansari
@amir_ansari
@iress