Design Upstream: Advancing Strategic Design Without Going Against the Current Delivered at MadPow's Heathcare Refactored conference on April 2 2015 in Boston MA

1. Design Upstream
Advancing Strategic Design Without
Going Against the Current
Chris Avore
@erova
April 2, 2015
Boston MA

2. Today’s Agenda
• Assessing your current state
• Advancing your org’s design awareness
• How non-designer managers can help
• What you can do tomorrow
• Q & A

3. 3 bullet bio
• Grown, lead a 25 person product design & research team at Nasdaq
• Design digital mobile & desktop products for corporate customers
• Primarily responsible for product strategy, new design opportunities

8. So why bother?So why bother?

9. Solve better problems

10. Design better products

11. Right people

12. Right room

13. Right questions

14. If they want you to cook the dinner,
at least they ought to let you shop
for some of the groceries.
“

15. Let’s look at where we are todayLet’s look at where we are today

16. Is your own house in order?

17. Look in, not up (yet)
• Intra-team survey to uncover risks
• Evaluate the evaluation
• Charter or vision: your team’s meaningful common purpose
• Right leadership in place to scale and grow
• Are you prepared to change too?

18. Hub & Spoke or Embedded
Project 1
Project 2
Project 3
Project 1
Project 2
Project 3
Embedded Designers
Hub

19. Reporting line
!
• Information Technology /
Engineering
• Product Development
• Creative or Marketing
!
• Research & Development
• Center of Excellence model
• Outsourced/Agency/Specialists

20. What’s happening outside?

21. https://www.forrester.com/Modernizing+User+Experience+In+Your+Firm/-/E-WEB18803

22. “What barriers prevent UX from having
a greater impact?”
LACK OF
LEADERSHIP
11%
OVERALL FIRM
CULTURE
9%
https://www.forrester.com/Modernizing+User+Experience+In+Your+Firm/-/E-WEB18803

23. • Overall firm culture
• Lack of leadership
• Partial implementation
• Lack of understanding
• Silos and politics
• Resource contraints
} Perception
problem

24. • Overall firm culture
• Lack of leadership
• Partial implementation
• Lack of understanding
• Silos and politics
• Resource contraints
} Trust
problem

25. • Overall firm culture
• Lack of leadership
• Partial implementation
• Lack of understanding
• Silos and politics
• Resource contraints
} Influence
problem

26. • Overall firm culture
• Lack of leadership
• Partial implementation
• Lack of understanding
• Silos and politics
• Resource contraints
} Visibility
problem

27. • Overall firm culture
• Lack of leadership
• Partial implementation
• Lack of understanding
• Silos and politics
• Resource contraints
} Design
problem

28. What are the attributes of an organization
that enables good design process, strategy,
and delivery?

29. Limited to feature
implementation
Design informs product
strategy, opportunity,
innovation
Strategy
PROGRESSING / TACTICAL MODERN / STRATEGIC
Build solutions based on
requirements, user stories, etc
• Address problems first
• Establishes standards,
patterns, priorities
Design
Tactical usability testing,
light discovery work
(validate features)
• Beyond screens, dept
• Hypothesis-based
• Quant and Qual
Research

30. Design should be something that permeates
a company…These days, it's popular for
companies to say they 'want' design, but
that's not what it is.
!
It's when everyone at a company is thinking
about design—the writers, the engineers,
even the people selling the ads—not just the
designers.
“
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3040416/buzzfeed-tries-to-get-serious-about-design

31. So how do we do that?

32. Feature designers, products in
corporate wide events

33. Reference design in
cross-organization communication

34. In my career at both Thomson
Reuters and Nasdaq, I’ve never seen
us build a solution that looks as
clean and solid as this one
This is light years ahead of what we
saw last time and it looks amazing.

35. us
In my career at both Thomson Reuters and Nasdaq, I’ve never seen
build a solution that looks as clean and solid as this one

36. The salesforce promotes
attributes of good design

37. Our product development process was too incremental
and focused on features and ease of task completion.
!
We needed an awakening and more of a grand vision.
!
We needed all our people to understand that designing
great products and user experiences is a team sport
that includes not just designers and product managers but
everybody else—even the CEO
“
https://hbr.org/2015/01/intuits-ceo-on-building-a-design-driven-company

38. THAT’S
where you want to be

39. Turning UpstreamTurning Upstream

40. Focus on the good of the enterprise.

41. Deliver the goods

42. To become that trusted partner, there is no
substitute for demonstrated competence.
“http://boxesandarrows.com/recruiting-your-army-creating-the-in-house-design-agency/

43. Find an Advocate

44. Find that Advocate
• Articulate three business goals you plan to achieve this year.
• List the people who could help you reach these goals—and how.
• Expertise?
• Control over resources?
• Political support?

45. Learn about the silos

46. On silos (or closed, tight networks)
• Nonaligned and unshared priorities
• Lack of information flow
• Lack of coordinated decision making across silos
• Groupthink / overconfidence of decisions / confirmation bias
• Few new ideas
• No incentive to share knowledge

49. Building those bridges
Collaborative workshops
• design studio
• gamestorming activities
• pre-mortem
• design-the-box
• magazine cover
Promote & Publish
• shared vision, north stars
• useful, reusable assets
• personas
• successes
• research findings

50. It’s easier said than done.

51. How managers can helpHow managers can help

52. Facilitate introductions & conversations

53. Best person may not be best designer

54. Provide a strong team

55. Deploy design research
beyond usability testing

56. Embrace the unknowns

57. Hire the best you can.

58. Do it tomorrowDo it tomorrow

59. • Look in, not up
• Invite the weak ties—not weak links—to design events
• Share their participation with their leadership
• Publish & promote research and deliverables
• Consider a design team portfolio to share with execs
• Skunkworks: align with your dept’s goals, then partner out
• Connect to the big picture.

60. Wrapping upWrapping up

61. Projects end
Allies move on
Market conditions change
Priorities shift
Competitors evolve
Teammates quit
Such Disruption

62. Don’t atrophy

63. Don’t stagnate

64. Don’t stand still

65. Persuasion is a process not an event

66. Delivery is your currency

67. Credibility is your social capital

68. Your vision is your access

69. THANK YOU
Chris Avore / avore@erova.com / @erova