This presentation describes the philosophy and strategy I (Amir Ansari) have been using to help product organisations raise their design maturity.

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@amir_ansari @iress @product_anon
Teaching product
teams to ‘fish for
themselves’.
Strategies to raise design
maturity within your
product teams.
@amir_ansari
@iress
@product_anon

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@amir_ansari @iress @product_anon
I acknowledge that we are all on traditional land.
Tonight, in Melbourne, Australia, we are on the lands of
the Woi Wurrung and Boon Wurrung language groups
of the greater South Central and Eastern Kulin Nations.
I pay respects to their elders – past, present and
importantly the emerging leaders – as well as any
other First Nations people present today.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY

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

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Industrial Design
25 years in design
17 years as a Leader
Build & grow design capability
2000 employees
5 continents
500k+ users

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Audience poll

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Audience poll

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Audience poll

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In 4 years
From 6 to 106
Design practitioners
In 1 years
From 10 to 65
Design practitioners

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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
Design to developer ratio

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March 2023
~ 1:35!

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Surely…there’s got to be a
better / scalable way!

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Surely…there’s got to be a
better / scalable way!

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Surely…there’s got to be a
better / scalable way!

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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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HMW increase design maturity within our company
without unrealistically increasing UX headcount?
?

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Guiding principles Strategies Traps
Principles that have
helped guide product
teams
Strategies I’ve employed
to effectively scale
design maturity.
Challenges I’ve faced
and things I’ve learnt
(bumps on the road)

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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
● Design scale ≠ headcount
● Design courage & Empowerment
● UX leadership (not ownership)
● Humility & Pragmatism - Good, better, best
● Get your hands dirty *
* Especially for startups or companies early in their design journey

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“She’s the creative one – she’ll spin
her magic.”
the director speaking to the delivery manager pointing at the UXer!
“But I’m not the UX lead – they know
I have no authority on UX.”
the tech lead at an inception kick-off

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Strategies

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Strategies for practicing product design
● Educate, coach, train anyone who shows interest
● Promote ‘DIY’ where feasible
● Product design principles - agreed and followed
● Create ‘champions’
● Bake into existing processes
● Make it a team sport
● Ultimately, create demand in product design and UX

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Slack communities Involvement in UX activities

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Playbook topic skeleton
What is it?
Why should you do it?
When should you do it?
How to do it?
Resources and templates
Skill level required (coming soon)
Typical duration (coming soon)

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Playbook engagement

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https://www.nngroup.com/videos/limited-usability-testing-business-decisions/
Pragmatism

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Iress Product Design Principles
Human Simple Holistic
Consistent Efficient Evidenced
The Iress Design Principles are 6 principles that anyone can apply during
the design and delivery of new value within our products.

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Principle Checklist
Human
Simple
Holistic
Consistent
Efficient
Evidenced
Evidenced
Constantly validate you are solving the right problems and in the right way.
Do user and client research. Remove your own biases.
Understand the data. Show clients designs early. Test with people often.
Don’t be precious. Design small and valuable increments.
Measure & learn fast. Iterate often.
Research
Have we regularly met with clients and end users to understand their needs?
Testing
Have we regularly tested with end users to ensure our product is as usable as it can be?
Analytics
Have we utilised the available analytics data in our decision making?
Bias
Are we confident that we've removed our own personal bias?
Success
Have we understood and implemented how success will be measured?
Iress Design Principles

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I felt it was run very well. Very well
facilitated by Anita and a very
good representation of POs, Devs,
Designers and BAs. The whole
enchilada. What I noticed and what my
challenge will be is to balance a
script, really listening and be able
to be sincere and engage (not just
do a task) - so exposure and
practice of this is the way. See
one, do one, teach one.
Would like to learn a bit more
about how to do a better usability
testing.

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Design system

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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
● If you build it, they will come
● Hiring juniors too early to build capability
● Undervaluing the craft of UX
● The ‘telstra’ effect!

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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 UX and
design.
Trap
Set and forget, without
any oversight and
governance to ensure
what has been learnt is
being applied correctly.
Dunning-Kruger effect
will happen.
Summary

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Thank you
(and let’s go teach 🐠 !)
@amir_ansari
@iress
@prod_anon
“UXers are
facilitators of
the UX
process, not
the owners of
the design.”