Product Tribes AMA — Alissa Briggs

This is the transcript of Ask Me Anything Session with Alissa Briggs on Product Tribes community, September 5, 2019. This was originally posted on the Product Tribes website.

Image by Product Tribes

Intro

Alissa Briggs is Director of Design at Autodesk. She’s a strategic and energetic leader, speaker, and coach with a successful track record of scaling top-notch design, research, and content organizations. As Head of Design at PlanGrid, Alissa scaled the department 4x and led the team through a successful acquisition. Previously, she was Director of User Experience at Brigade, the world’s first network for voters. She also led design teams at Intuit that supported 15+ product lines powering prosperity around the world.

As an active member of the design community, Alissa has spoken at Enterprise UX, UXPA, EuroIA, SXSW, and other top conferences around the world. She has been featured by FastCo.Design, O’Reilly Media, and other industry publications.

Alissa holds advanced degrees in Human-Computer Interaction and Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. In her free time, you can find her tweeting @alissadesigns, designing wearable electronics, and exploring the great outdoors.

Alissa, I am super happy to have you here. Have you ever done an AMA session before?

I have not. Looking forward to joining you all here!

Though to be honest, I just did a live lightning-round AMA with my team at my last team meeting and it was really fun.

So my first question is quite obvious. What does the work of design director look like?

My role is really around empowering our XD team to do amazing work that results in awesome user experience for our customers.

That takes a lot of forms, and every day feels different. But I spend a lot of time thinking about organizational systems, operations, strategy, and most importantly supporting the people on my team!

How is it different than creative direction?

I see creative direction as focusing on the work itself and guiding that. There’s a certain degree to which I do that at a very high level, but primarily I try to systematize and operationalize high quality and cohesive user experiences through systemic means, e.g. investing in design system, processes for critique, putting leaders in place who can coach people on creative direction.

Are there books, or any resources you used to cultivate this type of strategic/broad thinking?

I’d recommend picking up “Org Design for Design Orgs” by Peter Merholz & Kristin Skinner which is a great intro to organizational design and thinking about how to structure design teams to be successful.

I also wrote a blog post a few years ago about various responsibilities of design managers, which touches a bit on the difference between general manager tasks and creative direction etc.

How did you become design director and what tips would you share with anyone who wants to become a design manager?

I started out my career as an interaction designer (back before “product designer” was a title!) and always found myself wanting to “do all the things” and go beyond just interaction design. I was fortunate to have amazing mentors across the various design-related disciplines who helped me expand my skillset and start to take on broader scoped projects and move into a principal/lead role. Then I found myself in the right place at the right time — my amazing manager & mentor at the time (Amy Hedrick, she is awesome and runs Luma now — they do design thinking training) was starting to build out her leadership team and encouraged me to be considered for a management role. At first, I was hesitant because I loved doing individual contributor work, but after giving it more thought decided to give it a try. What’s the worst that could happen?

So that was my first intro to design management. I was incredibly fortunate to have Amy’s support and mentorship along the way. She was also one of the most inspiring managers I’ve ever had, and I learned a ton just from observing how she supported me and other people on the team. Her approach to coaching managers is something I strive to embody when I think about supporting and coaching the managers who report to me (and other members of our team who are developing their leadership skills).

From there, I’ve had the opportunity to manage all sorts of different teams in various contexts, and have learned a ton along the way! Now, as a director at Autodesk, my job is very different from what it was when I was director at PlanGrid because the nature of the challenges we’re dealing with every day are different. It’s really fun to be able to come to work every day and figure out what it means to support the team here, in this moment, so we can help build great tools that our users love!

How do you implement a UX process in an environment overrun by visual designers and marketing teams? For some context, I’m the only UX Designer at a fashion retail company and I’m looking to bridge the gap between our teams and strengthen our process / output.

It can certainly be frustrating to be the lone UX person and balancing doing your work + trying to change hearts and minds along the way. Without knowing the specifics of your situation, I’d suggest a multi-prong approach:

- inspire through action, e.g. demonstrate the approach by actually doing it, and explain to people what you’re doing along the way

- identify what the biggest problems / frustrations are internally (note: it may have nothing to do with design!) and see if there are ways you can leverage UX process to solve those problems

- identify if there are people who you work with who don’t necessarily have the same title, but are aligned with your views and could be collaborators (these people pop up in many places — sometimes even places like sales, support, product, etc.!)

Leah Buley also has a terrific book about navigating the org as a UX Team of One which I’d recommend.

Your bio says that you scaled the UX department 4x at PlanGrid. What were some of the most foundational elements needed (or that you had to advocate for) to get that support and overall investment? I find that is a hard sell at my current company, despite our team being very involved in multiple product lines. We’re a small team of 4 with third-party contractors as needed.

When I joined PlanGrid, the team was small — I think it was 5 people at the time, and was only designers (primarily with a visual design slant). To be honest, when I joined the design team was in some rough straits — they weren’t well known, weren’t respected / included, and were kind of treated like the “make it pretty the night before launch” team. It was sad for me to see because clearly there were a lot of SUPER talented people on the team, but that talent was going to waste… what was going on here?! So I spent a bunch of time interviewing people around the company to start to put together a picture of how things were running, how decisions were made, etc. That helped me to identify a few key problems:

- No clear org structure or operating model

- Unclear product roadmap and planning processes

- Design generally not seen as strategic or relevant to include in decisions

So a lot of what I focused on in the early days was starting to address each of these points. There’s a lot we did around these (and I was fortunate to be able to work with the designers themselves to be able to tackle these problems!) here are just a few examples:

- Worked with the leadership team to create a clearer org structure and got buy-in on trifecta operating model (e.g. Prod/Eng/Des shared ownership)

- Used this to create headcount/hiring plans (trifecta model implies 1:1:1 hiring ratio, and we were way off in design!)

- Started inviting myself to strategic meetings — literally was calendar stalking and just would walk in and sit down and start asking questions and contributing

These are just some ways we were able to shift the overall perception of design and start to build more influence in the organization, hire in additional much-needed help. Naturally, this led to happier cross-functional teams (let’s be honest designers are just fun to hang out with!), better products, happier customers, and $$$$.

I just watched a really interesting presentation from Mark Boulton about design systems — he mentioned that building design system is tough, long and require a lot of resources. Do you think every company needs to develop their own design system? How does it help designers?

Every company should be thinking about how important consistent, cohesive user experiences are to their business success, and understand what stands in their way to create consistent, cohesive user experiences.

If you’re a scrappy 3 person startup working on your MVP launch, Design Systems should be the last thing on your mind. But if you’re finding your design team is now at a scale where it’s taking a lot of time for designers to make UI design decisions because they need to coordinate with others, or that engineers are rebuilding / reskinning the same components over and over, then it’s likely worth it to start doing the ROI calculation on Design System investment

Check out this awesome resource to help with calculating ROI.

I’m literally using this right now in headcount planning discussions, and by our last calculation, we estimate our Design System to be reducing costs by $3.7M. It would frankly be CRAZY not to continue to hire people to make it successful! <Update: We secured funding to bring 2 additional designers on board to support the Design System by using this rationale!>

I have been working as a team of one for almost a year at my current firm. I have always worked as a contributor and I liked it. However, teams of this company are looking for me to lead (out of necessity). Due to the nature of the business and budget, I often don’t have access to the users. Without conducting usability testing, what is your advice on delivering great UX deliverables with confidence based on UX best practices and heuristics?

First of all, congrats on your team trusting and respecting your leadership! Now, time to leverage their respect and faith in you by asking for what you need to do your best work.

One avenue that might help is showing how a little lightweight user feedback can go a long way. Have you considered trying some guerilla research (e.g. go out to a shopping mall etc.) and ask for a few moments of people’s time to get their feedback on things? If you go, bring an engineer or PM who can experience it with you — no doubt they’ll come back raving about how valuable it was! Or try out a tool like usertesting.com to get some async feedback.

Also — inviting stakeholders along to hear from customers goes a long way. I don’t think I’ve ever brought a stakeholder to a research session and not seen their eyes light up and become a user research convert. Perhaps you can get a small budget for 1 study, give it a go, and demonstrate the value from there!

In one of your answers, you mentioned that it is crucial to find a mentor who will help you grow. How to spot the right one? Or maybe you know about some mentorship program that you could recommend to other designers?

I often hear people giving advice like “go find your one true mentor and formally ask them to mentor you” and while that may work for some, that has never been my personal experience. My approach is to, whenever I meet / work with someone, ask myself “Hm what do I respect and like about this person? What can I learn from them?” Later when I have a problem that I need help with, I think about who might be good at helping me with that problem and ask for their help. And if their advice helps… then I go back and thank them, and let them know how their advice has had a positive impact on me or others. So I guess the summary here is that I never limited myself to one mentor. I look for people who are insanely talented and inspiring, who I can learn from, and who help me learn, grow, and do my best work. Note that a lot of these people aren’t wise Yoda types… I consider many people who technically report to me to be my mentors. Same for many of my peers, and even friends outside of work. I feel very lucky to have so many wonderful and supportive people around me.

I’m now currently on the lookout for a new opportunity with a larger company, but I don’t have some of the formal stuff on paper that makes me really stick out to potential employers (such as familiarity with certain lingo or experience with certain processes). What would you say is the #1 UX thing that I should focus on learning/improving/emphasizing to be more valuable to a potential new employer?

It sounds like you have a ton of amazing skills and experience already, and the biggest thing you’re tackling here is how to talk about your work in a way that resonates with potential employers. One thing you might consider is finding a friend who works at one of these large companies to give you feedback (doesn’t even have to be a designer — an eng/product person who works closely with designers could also be great!). Talk them through your work in your own language, then asking them to share what they took away in the language that’s used in their office.

The reality is every company works differently, uses different terminology, uses different processes… and at large companies the variances are also great within teams. You can name drop all sorts of keywords like “design sprints” or whatever but you’ll have more success if you know what key words that organization or hiring manager has in mind when they’re reviewing resumes.

As a director, do you feel it is important to have that representation (ux/product design) at the highest levels and in the C-suite? Alternately, if that’s not the case, do you think it is more important to have a strong product team structure/viewpoint/approach in place? Something that allows the team to be respected and included appropriately.

While I think it’s great when design is represented at the highest levels / in the C-Suite, I think it’s not a requirement for having an amazing design culture or a company that values design. It really depends on the organization and how it operates — for example many organizations don’t have functional leadership in the C-Suite.

What IS important is having people in the room for critical business decisions who can effectively advocate for the user experience. While org chart can be a signal that this is happening, many organizations actually make decisions with little regard for the org chart.

I think it’s more meaningful to ask — “how is this organization set up in such a way as to incentivize everyone to work toward delivering amazing user experiences?” Yes formal reporting lines and “formal authority” play a role, but so do things like decision making approaches, processes, incentive systems, where the business is investing, who is being rewarded and for what, what language and ideas are being repeated regularly by leadership, etc.

When the system is structured in such a way to empower and incentivize people to do what’s right for customers, great things will naturally happen. I do believe most people want to come to work to build something great that helps people, that they feel proud of. So it’s the responsibility of the leadership team to set up the system to clear our roadblocks and make it easy for people to build great things!

I’ll stick to the question about design systems, because it is a really popular and an important topic. A lot of design teams I talk to ask how to start work on the design system — what would be your advice?

Short answer: start small and simple, show quick wins, and then build from there.

We published an article about this recently.

What inspires you as a designer?

People. I am infinitely curious about humans: why we do what we do? how can we help each other in more meaningful ways? Every time I go on a customer visit (going to construction sites is way too much fun by the way!) I come away feeling so moved and inspired by what they do, and motivated to help them. Yes, that means helping them do their jobs better, but more importantly, I want to help them get the tedious work off their plates so they can focus on the stuff they care about and live better lives. The same goes for designing teams — I get super inspired by talking with my teammates about their hopes, dreams, the things that they’re passionate about both professionally and personally. It makes me want to work harder to help them achieve personal and professional success!

What skills are you currently working on?

Wow, where to start… I’m kind of a personal growth junkie, and I’m fortunate to be in a role that challenges me to be the best version of myself (so I can better support others) while also being surrounded by amazing people who inspire me and who I want to learn from! One of the skills that I feel like I’m a lifelong learner on is around communication. Just within the past week, I’ve been practicing my skills around things like:

- evangelizing a really big project we’re working on that touches hundreds of stakeholders (eek!) It’s been an exciting challenge to figure out how to enlist members of my team to assist with getting so many people on board. In short, we’re figuring out how to scale evangelization

- having difficult conversations with people in a way that is kind and productive

- coaching and supporting people on my team… and helping them to more effectively coach others

Always a work in progress here. I feel fortunate that we have an open culture that is all about giving/receiving feedback. I’ve also really appreciated having trusted teammates who help me hone these skills.

I will also mention that we’ve had a great experience as an organization working with Chris Holmberg at Middle Path. He’s run a bunch of communication trainings with our R&D team which has really improved how we communicate across the organization. I’d definitely recommend him if you’re in the SF area!

What is the biggest challenge designers and design world are currently struggling with?

I used to ask people this question a lot, and generally the answer I would get was something along the lines of “how do we get design a seat at the table?” I think we’ve made a lot of progress on this as an industry, but clearly there’s still much to do here.

I’ve now started asking people a different question: what is YOUR biggest challenge? And I find that the answers typically have surprisingly little to do with design. I hear designers wrestling with questions like, “am I doing enough to help others? am I working in a way that aligns with my values and ethics? did I handle that difficult conversation with clarity and kindness? am I showing up as a leader that I would want to follow?”

I appreciate and am humbled by the thoughtfulness in which designers approach their profession. The reality is that you don’t get into or stay in a career in design unless you actually care about people. And so it makes sense that as an industry, we find ourselves struggling with what it means to be a good person who helps others. I really admire that about designers. It’s inspiring to be able to spend time with people who work hard every day to have a positive impact on the world.

So time for the last question. What would be one thing you would like to share with fellow designers on Product Tribes?

Be good to each other and lift each other up.

Also — if you’ve been looking for a design leadership coach, I’d be happy to share more about my approach — just send me a note.

I’m on Product Tribes Slack, on Twitter as @alissadesigns, or you can email me at hello@alissabriggs.com.

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Building a design system one brick at a time

This article was originally posted on Design Systems by Figma.

At PlanGrid, the key to creating a successful design system was to move in small steps that demonstrated value and motivated institutional change. This allowed us to get the right people involved and gain executive buy-in, all while building a strong partnership between design and engineering.

Start small and show the benefits

We didn’t start by trying to build a full-fledged design system right out of the gate. Instead, we started with lightweight elements that would have real customer benefits. The low-hanging fruit we identified were fonts, colors, and icons.

At the time, our web app used several custom-hosted web fonts, which we replaced with a set of default system fonts. It was a minor change, but one that had a major effect for users — it reduced page weight by 53%, vastly speeding up our load times.

We were also using over 120 hardcoded, difficult-to-read colors in our web app UI. We reduced this to 34 colors, and our engineering team transitioned us from hardcoded colors to systematic color variables. This was a relatively lightweight effort that created a more customer-friendly product and improved engineer speed and consistency.

Finally, we consolidated and redrew our icons. Previously, our icons varied widely across platforms, creating a lot of confusion for users.

We were running off of an image spreadsheet and using CSS to map to icons. It turned out to be a fairly minor engineering task to swap the old icons for the new ones. We immediately got positive feedback from our support and consulting teams, who were grateful to no longer have to explain icon inconsistencies to customers.

Our engineers also loved having a cleaned up icon repository which made it easier for them to quickly assemble new pages. Eventually we developed this implementation further to use inline SVGs, bundled with our JavaScript, but at the time it was easiest to just swap out the image assets.

These were manageable steps that improved consistency across the product and sped up design and development time. We were seeing great outcomes from small changes and wanted to sustain that momentum with the new design system. That meant finding ways to devote more resources to the work.

To gain executive buy-in, it was important to show the tangible benefits from the work we’d done to that point. We made the product experience more consistent, but that had to be put into more concrete terms. We enlisted the help of our Sales and Customer Support teams, who provided us with customer feedback and quotes about our improved usability. Our VP of regional sales praised the “improved ease-of-use for us in demoing” because of the improved navigation and consistent iconography. The director of our Consulting team thanked us for getting rid of the icons that proved particularly confusing to users. In both cases, people interacting directly with our customers and training them on our product were seeing tangible benefits from relatively simple changes.

We made the case that we were moving faster on the design and development side, all while making the product easier to sell and fielding fewer customer support problems. Using the hard data we’d collected, we successfully won over our executives. Their approval meant a full-time engineer working on the design system, and additional time and resources to expand from web to all the platforms we serve.

Gain institutional traction

With an engineer fully dedicated to the design system, we were able to think more carefully about how to approach our components. PlanGrid’s web platform uses React for UI development work across all web features. This allowed our design system engineer to focus solely on building React components rather than making components work across multiple frameworks.

The goal was to give engineers components with all UI interaction details built in while providing escape hatches for them to swap out chunks of the components with their own implementations if any part fails to meet their needs. For instance, in our dropdown menu, the default case shows a vertical list of items with text labels. In one exception, we have a dropdown menu that displays a grid of colors to serve as a color picker. Instead of merging the implementation details of the color picker with the vertical list of text labels, we set a default and allow app engineers to simply replace the default implementation with their own.

Engineers only have to worry about the interaction details that directly impact the functionality they own. This flexibility is especially valuable for a design system in its early stages, as its set of built-in UI interactions may not be complete.

As a simplified example, let’s take a look at a component that displays an image with a caption. We can draw a natural boundary around both the image and caption. The component provides its own defaults for both pieces, but each, or both, can be swapped out with an implementation provided externally.

While this is not the most direct way to create this component, a design system engineer will build on this component like they would if they were an engineer on a feature team. The only difference is that the design system engineer’s implementation is set as the default. Everyone at PlanGrid can choose to write their own implementations, but typically feature engineers will rely on the defaults provided by the library. This doesn’t apply to simple components, but the approach has proven to be quite valuable when architecting components with multiple parts, like dropdowns and tables.

We went from a situation where engineers were complaining about components being overly specific to one where they enjoyed functional components with a great deal of flexibility. We found that this created a feedback loop: the more benefits our engineers experienced from design system components, the more likely they were to contribute to the design system effort.

In addition, the use of escape hatches clearly outlines how each component instance deviates from the default. Each deviation serves as an example of how to officially pre-bundle those interactions in future versions of the library.

The escape-hatch implementation was an important selling point for the engineering team, and a similar feedback loop happened on the design side as well, with designers experiencing benefits and becoming more likely to contribute. As a result, we implemented a design system council to bring together designers and engineers and implement a joint decision-making process that helped everyone become more invested in the project. Putting this more formalized structure in place made it easy for design and engineering to come together in a productive way that would make implementation easier for everyone involved.

The council consists of leads from the design team, engineering representatives from each platform (web, iOS, Android, and Windows), and any other designers interested in the standardization of components. Anyone can bring a proposal in front of the council, which is then evaluated based on our shared experience principles. Before getting implemented, proposals get sign-off from representatives of the design teams that work on each platform.

As part of an effort to codify design system implementation, we built out our design system website. In addition to centralizing documentation, it also houses our experience principles, illustrations, and copy style. In effect, the design system website has become a repository for how we work effectively as designers and engineers.

Where we are now

We decided to name our design system Arc as a nod to design elements — the arc of a circle — and our role in the construction industry — an electrical arc. It’s allowed us to build a more consistent, user-friendly product across multiple platforms. And it’s also an ongoing project, one that helps bring design and engineering together to move more quickly and efficiently.

We now have a full-featured design system that was built in manageable chunks to meet the problems we were encountering at any given time. Now it’s an integral part of the PlanGrid Research and Development organization and a vital aspect of our feature development. The benefits have been immense: it helps us onboard new designers and engineers, speeds up design and development, and increases product quality by becoming a key resource for quality assurance.

At PlanGrid, starting small allowed us to quickly demonstrate the value of a design system, which made it easier to get everyone on board to start tackling bigger problems. The results have gone far beyond feature development. PlanGrid was recently acquired by Autodesk, and a crucial aspect of the sale was PlanGrid’s ease-of-use for workers in the field. During the acquisition, the design system was specifically called out as one of the strengths of PlanGrid’s Research and Development organization. Arc was seen as a key indicator of PlanGrid’s strong design vision and our ability to deliver experiences that users love in an operationally efficient way.

We’re particularly proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish with Arc, from creating a stronger user experience, to forming a closer partnership between design and engineering, to having our work highlighted during our acquisition. We think other companies can see the same benefits as they pursue their own design system work.

Thanks to Michael Woloszuk and Peter Zogas for contributing to this story.

Design at PlanGrid

The design team at PlanGrid is on a big mission, and we invite you to join us. We’ve grown from 5 to 20 people in the past 2.5 years, and will be continuing to bring more talented people onto the team over the coming year!

We know that choosing where to invest your skills and energy is an important decision, so we wrote a document that addresses questions we frequently hear about PlanGrid’s design team, organization, and business. We look forward to getting to know you.

Rolling out the welcome mat for your new designer

Design Managers: set your new hire up for success

So you just hired a new designer. Congratulations!

As a manager, your mission is to help your teammate be successful as quickly as possible. Don’t just throw them on the most burning problem and see what happens. Take the time to set them up for success: help them gain knowledge, build relationships, and deliver on their first project.

Here’s how we onboard new designers at PlanGrid:

1. Gain knowledge

Designers need lots of information and context to be successful. What are your business goals? What is the strategic role of design? Who are your users and what makes them tick? Where does your product succeed or fall short?

These are complex questions that can’t be answered in a day. Focus on providing the right introduction, scaffolding, and resources so your employee can learn and grow at their own pace.

Company training

PlanGrid offers a week-long training for all new hires that covers everything from getting your computer and software set up, to selecting your health insurance, to learning more about our customers and products. It also provides an overview of the business and various departments. Since there’s often “information overload,” we also share training decks and points of contact so employees can follow up later.

New hires love our “Design at PlanGrid” training.

Team training

For each new designer, I create a personalized “Welcome Guide” and email it to them on their first day. I also print a copy for us to review together at our first meeting. It includes some suggested tasks for their first month, a list of people they may want to meet with, and links to useful tools and resources. You are welcome to adapt this sample for your own use.

Sample New Hire Welcome Guide

I book an hour with them on their first day to provide some basic team training. We cover topics like:

• Our team vision and strategy, and where they fit in
• How we’re organized, and who’s working on what
• Common processes and tools
• Expectations for their first 90 days

I also make sure to schedule weekly one-on-one meetings from that point forward to continue the conversation and encourage them to reach out proactively when they have questions. I reiterate that during their first month I’m not expecting them to deliver a bunch of work; rather, I’m expecting them to build a strong foundation for future success.

2. Build relationships

It’s tough being the new person— you don’t yet feel part of the community, you’re unaware of the company’s unique social norms, and it’s not always clear where to go for help.

Here are a few tactics to help your teammate build strong working relationships right from the beginning:

Give them a buddy

At PlanGrid, new employees get a “buddy” — a peer that helps them get up to speed, shows them around the office and answers their questions. We rotate this responsibility around the team whenever someone new joins.

Introduce them around

We want to make sure everyone knows our new teammate is joining and is as excited as we are to have them here. Before the new hire’s first day, I email them asking for a photo and short bio. On their first day, I email this out to the broader organization with a few words introducing them and what they’ll be working on. I also try to introduce them to people around the office to help “break the ice.”

Send an intro email to your organization

Include them

Too often new hires are accidentally left out of standing team meetings or offsites that were planned months ago. Now when someone new joins, I make sure to add them to all the right calendar invites and chat channels so they never feel excluded.

Set up one-on-ones

One of the most important relationships an employee will have is with their manager — that means you. Get your relationship off on the right foot by setting up recurring one-on-one meetings. I typically start with 60 minutes once a week, then reduce to 30 minutes once they’re up to speed.

Your new hire will thank you for helping them get connected more quickly. You’ll also be thanking yourself: when your new hire has a bigger network to help answer questions, your job becomes easier.

3. Deliver on their first project

New hires want to show what they can do and make a big impact right away. Take the time to define the right first project: one where they can deliver positive outcomes quickly.

Here are a few things to consider:

• Is the project well matched to their expertise?
• Can you pair them with someone to help them learn?
• Is success dependent upon deep user or product knowledge? If so, does the timeline account for this?
• If things don’t go well, do you have a backup plan?

I typically give someone a “starter” project that is smaller or less complex than the type of work they’ll be doing longer term. That’s because I know they’ll need to spend time learning more about the users, product, and their team.

I also work with them to create a New Hire Blueprint. This tool helps them plan their first three months and stay focused on the most important things.

Sample New Hire Blueprint

Throughout their first project, I make sure to check in regularly. This can take a couple forms:

• Weekly one-on-one meetings
• Casual hallway conversations
• Team design critiques

I make a point to ask lots of questions, provide constructive feedback, and recommend other people or projects that might be relevant to their work.

At the end of their first project I ask what went well about the project and what they’d do differently next time. This can lead into future conversations about growth and development.

Summary

We’ve seen great results with this approach to bringing new hires aboard. The knowledge they gain is invaluable, and getting an early win helps them quickly build trust with their team. Your new hire will appreciate the work you’ve done to set them up for success.

Do you have other suggestions for welcoming in your new hires?

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The New Hire Blueprint: how to succeed at your new design job

You’ve got three months to make an impression. Here’s how.

So you just took a new design role. Congratulations! 

Whether this is your first design job or your fiftieth, the next few months are going to be incredibly exciting and challenging. You’ll be meeting lots of new people and drinking from the firehose of knowledge. It will be a lot of fun but also very overwhelming.

Whenever a new designer joins our team, I tell them:

Your first three months will set the tone for the next three years.

Over the course of your time at a job, you will no doubt learn, grow, and change a lot. But those first three months are a critical period to learn as much as you can (you can only play the “new person” card for so long) and to form that first impression of who you are and how you’ll fit into the team.

While this may sound stressful, it doesn’t have to be. With a little bit of planning, you’ll be able to get up to speed, build relationships, deliver results, and demonstrate that you’re a valuable member of the team.

Blueprints are essential to building for success.

The New Hire Blueprint

On the PlanGrid design team, we use a tool called the New Hire Blueprint to help new teammates build a solid foundation in their first three months.

Sample New Hire Blueprint

It’s broken into areas of focus and divided up by month. Each cell contains specific tasks to be completed in that month. The status of each task is tracked using color-coding.

Each new designer works with her manager to make sure the blueprint is specific to her specific role and goals. This ensures the designer and manager are both aligned on expectations. It also helps the designer to feel confident that the work she’s doing at any given time is part of a bigger plan to ensure success.

In those moments where there are a hundred things you could be doing, it’s helpful to have a reminder of what you really should be doing. Taking the time to think through the bigger picture of the knowledge, customer empathy, and relationships you need to build early on in your new job will help you get fully onboard before getting sucked into delivering tactically.

Key themes for designers

When it comes to filling out the New Hire Blueprint, I encourage people to think about their first three months as building the foundation for their future success. What must they learn or accomplish in order to be successful going forward? 

There is no single definitive list. In order to be successful, a senior user researcher at a 8,000 person global company will have a different plan from a junior designer at a 20-person startup. However I recommend starting with these four themes:

• Company onboarding
• Building strong relationships
• Building customer empathy and understanding
• Your first project

Let’s dive into each of these.

1. Company onboarding

Many companies offer some sort of new hire training aimed at helping you quickly get up to speed in your new organization. For example, at PlanGrid we have a full week training that covers everything from getting your computer and software set up, to selecting your health insurance, to learning more about our customers and products. 

Not every company offers this, so you may need to do a little more work to get up to speed. Ask your manager for resources and training and ask your teammates what they wish they knew when they got started. If you come away having completed all your paperwork, know where the coffee is, and understand how the company talks about itself and its customers, you’re doing well. If you have a good understanding of the company strategy and design’s role in that strategy, you’re doing even better.

2. Building strong relationships

To be successful as a designer, you must have strong, healthy relationships with your teammates, including designers, product managers, engineers, QA, and more.

Plug into existing team mechanics. Ask people on your team to invite you to everything the team is involved in, even if you aren’t sure if you need to be there all the time. 

Get involved in team meetings, critiques, and events.

Here are a few examples of where to embed yourself:

• Working team meetings, e.g. daily standup, retrospectives, planning sessions
• Design team meetings and critiques
• Company meetings, events, and all-hands
• Email distribution lists and online chat channels
• Social occasions like lunch or happy hour

Show up, listen, and ask lots of questions. This will give you a better idea of what happens where, who’s involved, and where to focus your time as you’re getting up to speed. It will also communicate that you’re a team player and help people get to know you.

Meet one-on-one with coworkers. A boss once gave me this sage advice:

“Never underestimate the power of breaking bread together.”

Taking someone out for lunch, coffee, or a walk outside works wonders for building strong working relationships.

There are many people you’ll want to meet with, but focus first on the people you’ll work closest with. Then branch out to other teams and departments over time to understand how the broader organization works. 

Nothing brings people together like a good cup of coffee.

When you have your one-on-one meeting, make the most of your time together by preparing a few topics of conversation ahead of time. This is your chance to make a great first impression, learn more about your teammate, and lay the foundation for your relationship. 

Here are a few questions you might ask:

• What’s your career journey, and how did you get to where you are today?
• What’s your role on the team?
• How’s the team doing? What’s going well, and what’s frustrating?
• How have you worked with designers in the past? What did you like or dislike about working with them?
• How do you prefer to work, and what are some potential “triggers” that I should avoid?
• What should I make sure to learn or do over the next few weeks?

Make the conversation two-sided. Consider sharing the following about yourself:

• How you got to where you are today, and why you took this role
• How you’ve worked with [people in their role] in the past, and what you enjoyed about that
• What it’s like to work with you, both the good and the bad

By starting off your relationship from a place of genuine curiosity, sharing, and goodwill, you’ll establish a solid foundation of trust to build upon in the months ahead.

3. Build customer and product knowledge

As a designer, your work is only as good as your knowledge of the customer and the product. 

The PlanGrid team visits a construction site to build customer and product knowledge.

Here are a few suggestions for quickly building your customer and product knowledge:

• Do a heuristic evaluation of the current product. Note down your first impressions, where you got confused, what seems broken, what’s working really well. Then share this with your team and have a discussion. It’s a good way to start building product knowledge hear what your teammates think about the current experience.
• Attend training meant for customers. Many companies offer training for their customers. Ask if you can join the training to learn more about the domain, product, and how it’s explained to users. Say hello and ask lots of questions of customers in attendance.
• Attend your coworkers’ user research sessions. Even if the session isn’t directly related to your team’s projects, this will give you a chance to meet customers and learn about the work that’s currently in-flight. And of course you can run some sessions of your own.
• Visit customers. If your company doesn’t already organize customer site visits, set some up yourself and observe them using your product. Bonus points if you bring your team along.
• Shadow support and sales. Most support and sales reps will be happy to have you shadow them while they talk with customers. This is a great way to learn how your company talks about the value it provides and see first-hand what is exciting or confusing to users.
• Do your own research online. Do some googling, read app reviews, check out the latest PR, or read what people are saying on Twitter. You’ll learn a lot about how your brand is perceived and may even learn a few things that are new to others at the company.

Document all of the interesting and surprising things you learn. Consider sharing your insights with your team — they’ll appreciate you helping them see things through fresh eyes.

4. Your first project

If you’re like most new hires, you’re eager to jump in and start delivering right away. While that ambition is great, think about your first project less as, “design something amazing that completely transforms the user experience,” and more as “learn how to get work done here and put your first few points on the board.”

Getting specific with tasks, mapping them over time, and getting aligned with your manager and team will help. Here’s an example of how you might divide up your first project:

Here’s how you might divide up your first design project.

This may be different depending on your role, scope, and how your organization works. Try to be a bit conservative on your estimates because training, one-on-ones, and deepening your product/user knowledge will take up more time than you think.

Make sure to review this with your manager and working team to ensure everyone’s on the same page. You can also review this plan periodically to make sure everything’s on track and adjust if necessary.

Creating your own New Hire Blueprint

Ready to create your own New Hire Blueprint? Get started by copying this sample New Hire Blueprint and customizing to your specific situation.

A few more tips for getting started:

• Talk with your manager about goal setting — do they have a standard new hire goal setting process they prefer? If not, are they open to working with you on using this template? 
• Take a pass at filling out your New Hire Blueprint, then run it by your manager and team to make sure you’re all aligned.
• Review your plan regularly to make sure you’re on track and ask others for help where you need it. Check in at least monthly with your manager to give a progress update and ask for feedback.

At your three month anniversary, take some time to reflect. Do you feel like you have a solid understanding of how the company works, your product, and your customers? Did you have a successful first project, and do you have clarity around what’s up next? You can use this to inform future goal setting and areas of focus.

Learn more

For more about starting your new job off on the right foot, check out “The First 90 Days” by Michael D. Watkins. This book is primarily focused on new managers but has tips that are relevant to anyone taking on a new role.

Design Managers: In a future post, I’ll share how to use the New Hire Blueprint as one of several techniques to set your new hires up for success. Sign up to be notified when it’s available.

The not-so-dark art of design management

As a young designer, I thought managers were like Gandalf: mysterious wizards who spent their days orchestrating important matters in the shadows. Every now and then they’d pop by to check if I needed rescuing, but for the most part I’d slog along on my own.

So when I had the opportunity to take on a management role, I was baffled. What did managers even do? When I asked around, I mostly got vague descriptions like, “You’re unlocking the creative potential of the organization.” Inspiring? Maybe. Helpful? Not at all.

Having now managed design teams at multiple companies, I can confidently say that management is not a dark art. Rather, it’s a role with specific responsibilities.

What is a manager, anyway?

Picture a restaurant during rush hour. If we take a look in the kitchen, we’ll see a bunch of people chopping, stirring, and running about. The chef is the manager of the kitchen and her job is to make sure her crew makes the right food, quickly, with high quality. She does this by hiring the right people and helping them work together to deliver great results.

As Head of Design at PlanGrid, my job is similar to that of a chef. But rather than cooking the perfect meal, we’re crafting great user experiences.

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What types of work do managers do?

The work of a chef is different from the work of her crew. Each member of the crew is focused on specific projects, like chopping vegetables or cooking on the grill. The chef plays a different role — she’s hiring, delegating, checking quality, solving problems, and ensuring everything is running smoothly.

Similarly, the work of a design manager is very different from that of a designer. Here are five areas where I spend the most time:

1. Hiring

At the end of the day, I’m responsible for what our team delivers. When things go well, my team gets the credit — but when things go wrong, I’m the one who takes the blame. So it’s incredibly important to build the right team.

One of the first things I did at PlanGrid was to spend time with each team member; both to understand their strengths, and to find out where they wanted to grow. I also looked for broader gaps where we were missing critical skills. For example: I discovered that we didn’t have enough designers to cover all of our projects, and we didn’t have strong user research expertise on the team.

I used that information to create a hiring plan. I worked with my boss to get approval to open several Product Design roles and a UX Researcher role, wrote job descriptions, and trained our recruiting team to look for great candidates.

Today, I spend a lot of time meeting with people across the design community both formally and informally. I genuinely enjoy hearing about people’s journeys, what inspires them, and where they want to grow. One of the hardest things is that I meet so many wonderful and talented people, but they aren’t always the right fit for the current roles and gaps we have on the team. Even when there isn’t that perfect match, I try to help where I can by offering advice or making introductions. That’s not technically part of my job but I see it as part of being a good “design citizen.”

When we do find the right person for our role, I work closely with them and our finance teams to put together a compelling offer. Assuming all goes well, I partner with our HR team to make sure they have a great on-boarding experience and are set up for success from Day One.

2. Coaching

Great managers don’t just hire great people and then sit back and hope everything works out. They create the space and support for their team to succeed. Here are a few ways I approach coaching:

• Weekly “one-on-ones”: Every week I meet with each teammate for at least 30 minutes. This is a great opportunity to hear what’s on their mind, where they need help, share feedback, and more.
• Goal setting and growth plans: I’m a big believer in having teammates set their own goals and OKRs. I see goals as a commitment between employer and employee: if my teammate has a goal to speak at a conference this quarter, then she is going to do her darnedest to make that happen, and I’m going to do my darnedest to help support that. When your teammate is working hard to learn and grow, everyone wins.
• Performance feedback: Everyone, even the most amazingly talented person, has areas where they can grow. As a manager, it’s my responsibility to understand how my teammates are doing and have honest, frank conversations about their performance. Performance reviews are documents that get written a few times a year; performance feedback happens every single day.

In addition to working with teammates one-on-one, I also help to build skills across the team. This might look like bringing in a trainer to run a workshop, or sending people to a conference or class. My favorite approach is to ask a teammate to share their expertise about a topic with the rest of the team. For example, one of our teammates recently led a workshop about OKRs, and another gave a lesson on how to create Windows icons. There is so much that we can learn from one another, and this helps the “teacher” to grow their own coaching skills.

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The PlanGrid design team making dope art.

3. Strategy

What separates a good team from a great team is having the right strategy.

A good strategy is a carefully researched and well designed action plan designed to meet a challenge.

— Richard Rumelt, Good Strategy, Bad Strategy

Crafting this requires having organizational awareness, a deep understanding of the team’s strengths and opportunities, and an an inspiring vision of the future.

When I joined PlanGrid, I met with designers, members of other departments, and the leadership team to understand the current strategy and goals. Then we held a design offsite to talk about our team’s strengths, opportunities, and vision. This helped us create a set of initiatives to focus on throughout the year, and to ensure our work is aligned with the bigger picture. We continue to refine our plan as we encounter new challenges along the way.

4. Quality

Designers play a unique role in upholding the quality of the user experience, and as a design manager I am responsible for setting and articulating a certain bar of quality. Fortunately I have a great team to help me do that! Here are a number of things we’ve done at PlanGrid to raise the bar on design quality:

• Design critiques: The whole design team meets every week to share andcritique one another’s work. This helps each designer strengthen their craft and deliver great designs, while also creating a shared understanding of what we define as high quality.
• Design QA: When designers are involved in the development process, it helps to raise the quality of the experiences that we ship. At PlanGrid, we are experimenting with different ways to provide design input throughout the development process, from Lean UX to attending QA-led bug bashes.
• Design system: We are building a design system to help clarify our principles, style guides, components, and more. This makes it easier for us to design high quality experiences and is also a great tool for educating our non-design peers about quality and consistency.

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Creating a design system and component library to increase design quality.

As a manager, I also set clear expectations around quality:

Being a successful designer doesn’t just mean delivering great mockups — it means shipping great product.

This expectation is a two-way street. It means that a designer’s performance is tied to the quality of the work that their team ships. It also means that I’m there to support them if they’re pressured to ship 💩 to meet aggressive deadlines.

5. Communication

Communication is one of my most important responsibilities. I’m very much on the manager schedule where much of my day is spent in meetings, one-on-ones, and informal hallway conversations. That’s not time wasted; it’s time spent gathering information, synthesizing it, and using it to inform decisions.

My teammates also need to make informed decisions, so I err on the side of over-communicating. When I’m in meetings, I take copious notes and share highlights with teammates afterward as relevant. I also hold a weekly design team meeting where I share a well-prepared TL;DR of information I’ve collected throughout the week. I encourage people to ask questions, and when I don’t know the answer, I do my best to figure it out.

I also help people outside of the design team understand what we’re doing and why. This includes highlighting projects that we’re working on, talking about staffing, and explaining what designers do and how we fit into the broader organization. This also includes finding opportunities for designers to be able to share their work, such as inviting them to present to executives or at an all-hands event.

How do managers spend their time?

Every team is different

A manager’s areas of focus can vary across teams and organizations.

There have been times when I’ve managed small teams as a “player-coach”: spending part of my time managing, and the other part doing hands-on design work. Given the limited hours, I spent most of my management time on teammate check-ins and reviewing design work. My manager filled many of the gaps around hiring, strategy, and communication across the broader design team. My schedule looked something like this:

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A typical player-coach manager schedule

There have been other times where I’ve managed larger teams and spent 100% of my time managing, without personally doing any design delivery. At PlanGrid, my time look more like this:

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A typical full-time manager schedule.

As I learn more about my teammates, their skills, and where they want to grow, I also delegate certain responsibilities. For example, I’ve asked our Design Lead to run point on certain Quality projects. This plays to his strengths while giving me more time to focus on hiring and strategy.

Every day is different

The needs of my team are ever-changing, which means I’m constantly monitoring and adjusting my priorities to match. One day I might be focused on hiring and interviews, while another I’m dealing with a tricky HR situation. There’s a seasonality as well: performance reviews, roadmap planning, and budgeting all require attention at different times in the year.

Should I become a manager?

Design management could be for you if:

• You want to scale your impact beyond yourself
• You love helping people grow and do their best work
• You’re deeply empathetic and a strong communicator

Still not sure? Try working with your manager to take on a low-risk opportunity, such as managing an intern or contractor. This is a great way to learn the basics of management while allowing for a graceful exit if you find that managing just isn’t for you.

The reality is: you do give up certain things when you go into management. I haven’t touched Sketch in months, my notebook has more meeting minutes than wireframes, and I can’t remember the last time I ran a user test. However, I find so much joy in managing — helping people grow in their careers, do their best work, and accomplish big things together — that it makes it all worth it.

Learn more

Here are some management resources to help you on your way:

• It’s Okay to Be the Boss Bruce Tulgan
• The One Minute Manager Kenneth H. Blanchard
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Patrick Lencioni
• Manager Tools podcast Michael Auzenne & Mark Horstman

Want more? Sign up to be notified about new posts on design leadership.

Escaping the Manager-Hero Trap: How to Help Your Team Design Their Own Solutions

When Alice stomped into my office, I knew something was wrong.

“I can’t take it any more,” she fumed as she told me about the latest offense from Charles, the coworker who always “forgot” to include her in critical meetings. I could feel my blood pressure rising. He did what? He said what? No way, not to MY teammate! 

60 seconds later, I was on the phone with his manager, demanding that he give some harsh feedback to Charles.

“I could do that,” said the manager. “But wouldn’t that make Alice look like a tattletale?”

I flushed with embarrassment. In my haste to play the hero, I had almost made the situation worse.

The problem with trying to solve other people’s problems

Be honest with yourself. How many times have you tried to take ownership of someone else’s problem? Maybe it was that time you yelled at your friend’s ex for cheating on her, or the time you called your child’s math teacher to get that B+ changed to an A-.

In a leadership position, it can be even more tempting to take on your teammate’s problems. You may believe that you will be able to solve it more quickly and effectively because you have greater power, status, or experience. However, when you try to solve your teammate’s problem for her, this is what happens:

1. You aren’t fixing the problem; you’re deferring it. Most problems have underlying causes that run so deep that they can’t be solved in one go, especially by a third party.
2. You’re making yourself a bottleneck for problem-solving. Your teammate will start to feel like any time she has a problem, she needs to rely on you to solve it.
3. You’re implicitly telling your teammate you don’t trust her. Now she’s not only worried about solving her first problem; she’s also worried about how to earn back your trust and respect.
4. You’re probably making things worse. You risk making it seem like your teammate is incapable of solving her own problems. 

Help people design their own solutions

If I really wanted to help my teammate, I had to ditch the superhero cape and become an advisor and collaborator. I apologized to my teammate and suggested that we work together to address the problem.

The next time she walked into my office, it was with a big smile on her face. She’d had a productive conversation with her teammate and was already seeing improvements! 

I learned a valuable lesson that day: Being a leader isn’t about solving people’s problems for them; it’s about helping them design their own solutions.

Design process for problem solving

Many of the tools and techniques we traditionally use for solving design problems can be repurposed for “people” problems. Here’s the process I use to help teammates design their own solutions:

1. Acknowledge the problem. Many people struggle with asking for help because it requires them to acknowledge their weaknesses and failures. When your teammate raises a problem, thank her for trusting you enough to share and let her know you’re there to help.
2. Clarify the situation. Put on your Researcher hat and ask open ended questions about the situation. Use the “5 whys” to identify the root cause. It may be useful to capture your insights on a whiteboard; for example, drawing a quick stakeholder map can help you quickly identify breakdowns and opportunities.
3. Brainstorm approaches to problem solving. Pull out your post-it notes and work together to brainstorm different possible solutions to the problems you’ve identified. Push for quantity of ideas over quality; ideas that seem silly at first glance may in fact have some merit.
4. Narrow to the top ideas. Encourage your teammate to decide which ideas to try first. If she’s struggling to prioritize, suggest that she order them by risk, effort, or potential for success. If she seems to be picking ideas that you don’t agree with, ask her to explain her rationale before providing your own input.
5. Execute the plan. Check in with your teammate and hold her accountable to the plan. If she seems to be putting it off, ask why and help her adjust accordingly. Also hold yourself accountable and report back about any actions you took on her behalf.
6. Reflect on the outcomes. Ask your teammate what happened when she put the plan into action and how she feels about the outcomes. Celebrate her successes, help her unpack problems, and encourage her to reflect on her learning and growth.
7. Iterate. A designer’s work is rarely done. If the problem hasn’t been resolved or new problems have emerged, return to Step 1 and repeat.

A few exceptions

Here are a few exceptions that may require a different approach:

HR Violations
Problems related to harassment, bullying, criminal activity, or other HR violations need to be dealt with immediately and professionally. Your organization likely has clear policies related to this. If in doubt, speak to your HR representative.

They aren’t ready to problem-solve
If your teammate comes to you in such an emotional state that he is not yet ready to move into “problem-solving” mode, that’s ok. Create a safe, non-judgmental space for him by using active listening. If you aren’t sure whether he’s ready to problem solve, ask, “How can I help?” Let him take the lead on whether to tackle the problem immediately or whether he’d prefer to go for a walk and cool down a bit first.

The problem just won’t go away
If your teammate keeps bringing up the same problem and doesn’t seem to be making any progress, it may be time to ramp up your involvement. Are there big cultural problems that need to be resolved? Is there something that could be solved through smarter staffing? Listen for trends in feedback from other employees and departments. You may discover deeper problems that should be addressed by yourself or others.

Conclusion

As a manager, it’s tempting to think of yourself as a hero. But if you really want to save the day, help your teammates design their own solutions and become their own heroes.

Webinar: How to Coach Design Experiments

Thanks to all who attended my webinar, How to Coach Design Experiments. The team at Invision wrote a nice Webinar Recap which includes a recording of the session.

Be sure to check out the Experiment Grid to help you plan your next experiment. I've included an editable Sketch file so you can adjust it to fit the needs of your team.

Happy experimenting!

Sketchnotes from Valiocon

Sketchnotes and memories from Valiocon 2014.

Speaker and fellow sketchnoter Lee Rubenstein of EatSleepDraw. Check out his take on Valiocon here.

Michael Flarup, of PixelResort and Robocat fame. 

Ryan Carson, co-founder and CEO of Treehouse. He gave a stellar talk on his approach to running a company devoid of management layers. You can read more about this on his blog.

Kim Wouters runs a design agency in Belgium.

Chloe Park of OpenTable shared a fascinating behind-the-scenes tour of her approach to tackling “un-shiny problems.” Her story was complemented by a stunning, hand-crafted presentation.

Amy Hood and Jennifer Hood shared their thoughts on the role of context in design, injected with personality and humor.

Sam Kallis, visual development artist at Paramount Pictures, is one of my new creative role models. I was inspired by her authenticity, philosophy, and courage. And her work is simply amazing!

Merek Davis of Mextures - helluva beard.

Also - some old-fashioned sketches to grace the Catamaran Resort notepads. These feature Keiran Flanigan, Jennet Liaw, Chuck Longanecker, and Hudson Peralta.

It was lovely meeting so many talented designers and makers. Onward!

Innovations in Biosensors & Nanomaterials

I attended the Emerging Wearable Technology Group’s first meetup which featured 2 speakers from the biosensor and nanomaterials industry.

Dr. KooHyoung Lee, NeuroSky

Dr. KooHyoung Lee is the CTO of NeuroSky (the EEG-sensor technology behind Necomimi - those furry cat ears that wiggle based on your level of mental concentration)

He spoke on the topic of creating value with wearables - how we can get beyond just creating wearable technology for technology’s sake, and actually apply user experience, product design, and business models to create real value.

He shared how wearables are already emerging in the market - not just to track information, but to up performance and function. For example, SolePower, a shoe insole that generates electricity as you walk.

He shared how Neurosky approached uniting powerful biosensors with simple usability. At the time they were getting started, there were other competitors on the market that were much more accurate and measured many different types of brainwaves (vs. Neurosky only detects EEG). However, the competitors were completely unusable - you needed to apply all sorts of gels and stick things all over your head in order to get the accurate readings.

What Neurosky did was design for simplicity - trade off having 100% accurate data and a bad user experience in favor of a no-setup device that reportedly “tested at 96% as accurate as that within research grade EEGs” (Wikipedia).

They’re exploring different ways to put this device in consumers’ hands: Necomimi supposedly made $10B in revenue (did I hear that correctly?). It’s also used for “neurotoys” - mind controlled games like Star Wars Force Trainer. Doctors are starting to recommend these for kids with ADD, and it’s been used to help the USA Olympic Archery team improve their game (Wikipedia).

The team released a Neurosky Developer Kit which looks incredibly cool. You can measure:

• Attention
• Meditation
• Eyeblinks
• Brainwave Bands
• Raw Output

Time to hack your own jedi mind tricks - here are some interesting Kickstarter projects to inspire you!

Jay Ha, Materials and System Inc.

The second talk was from Jay Ha, the CEO of Materials and System Inc. He shared his point of view on the future of wearables and the role that nanomaterials will play. He explained that while “wearables 1.0” is all about devices that you attach to yourself (think FitBit and Polar Heart Rate Monitor), “wearables 2.0” will be invisible and built into the world around you - your clothing and your environment.

He shared many inspiring examples the demonstrate the potential of nanomaterials:

• a suit that looks and feels like a high quality suit - but is bulletproof
• a patch that you apply to your skin that slowly releases drugs at a controlled rate
• a foldable, flexible, and rechargeable battery (developed at KAIST)
• integrated circuits printed on flexible polymers
• haptic feedback technology built into motorcycle handles to provide directions while you ride
• antivirus face mask with 20nm permeability
• thermoelectric material the thickness of paper that generates electricity

During the Q&A, a topic that came up was that one of nanotechnology’s major barriers is scale. For example, today there’s no machine that can quickly produce thousands of nanobots. However, many nanomaterials can now be produced at scale if you have a big enough demand and budget - did someone say “$40K bulletproof superhero outfit”?

---

Updated 4/6/14: A correction from Dr. Lee -

Other companies had good technology to detect EEG with multi-channels. However, practically, multi-channel EEG systems were complicated and hard to use for general consumers. The multi-channel systems also made errors frequently.

NeuroSky made single-channel EEG system for easy-to-use and low price. NeuroSky also developed algorithms which were easy-to-understand.

Although it is not perfect, it is still usable and enjoyable to general consumers. We are working to improve the technology and usability till everyone can use our technology.

Bay Area Girl Geek: Women in Design

I attended a Bay Area Girl Geek dinner which featured women designers at tech companies like DropBox, Yammer, and Airbnb.

Did you know that only 33% of designers (in the UK) are women? This surprised me because I work with so many talented women at Intuit (p.s. we’re hiring!). However, it’s a good reminder that when it comes to workplace diversity, we can do better.

The lightning talks featured a mix of new and experienced speakers which made for a well-paced and enjoyable evening. Here are my notes from the event:

Alice Lee, Product Designer, Dropbox

A reminder that all of us start as amateurs and that to overcome impostor syndrome, practice and find mentors.

Nina Mehta, Product Designer, Pivotal Labs

How to get design prioritized: build respect for your work and play nice with others.

Elle Luna, Designer & Artist

Even with “success”, is your work your job, your career, or your calling? An inspiring call to seek out the clues that lead to your life’s work.

Cindy Alvarez, Director of UX, Yammer

No one (but designers) care about delighting the user. Instead, focus your efforts higher up in the funnel, where decisions are made, and use the language of business.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to capture notes for all of the talks, so check out Twitter and the Bay Area Girl Geek website for more design goodness.

“

I went to my boss, Bode, one day and said, “Why did you ever become department head? Why didn’t you just be a good scientist?” He said, “Hamming, I had a vision of what mathematics should be in Bell Laboratories. And I saw if that vision was going to be realized, I had to make it happen; I had to be department head.”

When your vision of what you want to do is what you can do single-handedly, then you should pursue it. The day your vision, what you think needs to be done, is bigger than what you can do single-handedly, then you have to move toward management.

”

— Richard W. Hamming, You and Your Research

Interaction Tips: When to default your radio buttons

Question: I’m designing a page where a user needs to select between 2 radio button options. Should I default one of the radio buttons to be selected, or leave them all unselected?

Answer: There isn’t a catch-all answer to this one because it really depends on your intended design. There are several benefits to defaulting radio button selections, such as requiring less clicks and reducing cognitive load by suggesting a “correct” or “most common” answer. However, make sure to consider the potential risks of defaulting your radio buttons.

Here are some of the factors I like to consider when thinking through radio button defaults:

• Can we make an educated guess? If 90% of our users select option #1, then it probably makes sense to pre-select. Also consider leaving out the question altogether, perhaps through defaulting with a more subtle option to edit if needed.
• What are the risks of selecting the wrong thing? If a user misses this question because you aren’t asking them to pause and think, will this cause something cataclysmic to happen? If so, the risks may outweigh the benefits of defaulting.
• Does selecting a radio button trigger dynamic content? If so, consider what the impact is of showing the dynamic content when a user first arrives on this page. Does it fit in the conversational thread of their workflow? Does showing it obscure other radio button options? 
• Are there unintended implications of pre-selecting? For example, if you have a question asking if the user is male/female, defaulting to “male” could be offensive to female users. It could incorrectly imply that their behavior suggested to you that they’re male, or that you anticipate that the majority of your users are male. Be aware of the subtle messages that defaulting sends.

P.S. For more on great form design, I recommend Luke W’s fantastic book, Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks.

Awesome Web Typography @SXSW

Richard Rutter of fontdeck.com taught a class about web typography at SXSW'13. He showed us some great examples of when and how to tweak your typography with HTML and CSS.

A few things I learned:

• adjusting auto-hyphenation
• responsive web design - adjusting for line length, line breaks, etc. when on different sized screens
• how to handle multiple columns
• proportional/tabular/lining/old style
• how to choose font faces for the web
• options for loading custom fonts so that the experience is good even on slow internet connections

My notes:

Keynote - MakerBot's Bre Pettis @SXSW

Bre Pettis, CEO of the MakerBot 3D printer, delivered the opening keynote at SXSW'13.

My Takeaways:

• “The next Industrial Revolution will be printed in 3D”
• MakerBot got started as a quick & dirty experiment before launch, and now it’s helping others prototype more quickly so they can get their own “quick & dirty” launches out faster
• SXSW attendees love their booze - MakerBot originally launched at SXSW 2009 by opening for musicians and 3D printing shot glasses
• Big hurdle for 3D printing is the high level of skill needed to create digital models - but Thingiverse (crowd sourced templates for printing), simplified 3D rendering tools (AutoDesk 123D), and new MakerBot Digitizer are trying to lower the barrier to entry

Full notes below:

SXSW 2013 Reflection

SXSW. What a rush!

I arrived giddy and excited to spend my time amongst the people at the forefront of design and technology. I was not disappointed! There were many friendly faces from the Silicon Valley tech scene, and many more new people to meet.

What inspired me most about SXSW was seeing how deeply the passion for creativity and “making” runs in fields outside of my own (web & mobile app design).

I saw robots cracking jokes, musicians mixing the birth of electronic music, thermostats making a house a home, and designers taking us to the stars. I met bicycle rickshaw drivers, small business owners, marketers, and videographers who embrace design and technology. So many amazing people, looking to the future with big dreams and a sharpie/iPad/Makerbot in hand.

The future is here, and we’re the ones creating it.

Steve Blank: Customer Development and How to Fail Less

Notes from a talk by Steve Blank, father of Customer Development methodology that inspired the Lean Startup movement.

Steve shared how, through his experience founding and working with countless numbers of startups, he had the realization that big companies and startups are very different. Big companies are all about execution: the reason that they’re big is that they’ve identified a business model that works and they continue to execute on that model, increasing revenue each year. In contrast, startups are all about searching for the next big opportunity and proving that it’s valid.

In the “old days”, startups pitched to VCs by making business plans and forecasts for all the money they were going to bring in if their idea worked. The problem with that is when you’re working in a completely new space, on a completely new opportunity, there isn’t really anything to benchmark yourself against. This means that all those “forecasts” are really just blind guesses. Founders try to make better guesses by paying for expensive market research, but market research can only tell you about today, not inform you about tomorrow.

Tech has traditionally followed a waterfall software development approach - specifying everything up front and then building it out from start to finish before showing it to a customer. This was based on the assumption that we already know our customer’s problems and what sorts of product features are needed. This doesn’t work well for startups, though, where the customer has yet to be defined and the features are still TBD.

Steve observed that:

In thinking about how to increase the rate of success and minimize wasted resources and failure, he came up with Customer Development Process.

In considering the definition of a startup:

Startups are constantly searching for a way to create value for itself while delivering products or services for customers in a repeatable and scalable way.

The process Blank proposes is to start by filling out the Business Model Canvas with a series of hypotheses about what will work.

Next, the customer development team (founders from any discipline, without titles) work together to validate each hypothesis. The goal is to test each of these as quickly and scrappily as possible - for example using prototypes or wireframes - to maximize feedback with minimal cost. When hypotheses fail, this is an opportunity to reevaluate your guesses and tweak the business model.

More about customer development can be found in Blank’s books:

• Four Steps to the Epiphany
• The Startup Owner’s Manual

Reflection:

I was intrigued by how Blank defines the goals of big companies (“execute”) versus those of startups (“search”). There are many examples of big companies that excel at executing, but fade into irrelevance as times change. As time passes and the market shifts, how can large companies stay relevant? How best to balance the need to execute with the (arguably just as important) need to search?

During the Q&A I asked Blank whether he saw any ways to apply the Customer Development Methodology to large companies. He replied by telling a story about a GE executive who was given a new department and a large amount of funding to run with. The executive decided to reject the funding in the short-term, and instead ask for more time to identify and test the business model. It ended up being the right call– when they were ready to scale, the division was very successful. This showed how focusing on testing out a business model using a Customer Development approach can help large companies to make smart investments in future products and opportunities. 

Blank cautioned that for large companies to take a Customer Development approach, it really needs to “come from the tops down” because it’s a real mindset shift. This made me thankful to work at a company like Intuit which is actively adopting a “lean startup” philosophy across the organization. By shifting our mindset across the organization, we too can reduce “waste” and more quickly get to solving the right problems for our customers with the right products and services.

Researching Games with Kids

Notes from the BayCHI talk “Please Don’t Face-Plant Into the TV: Researching Games with Kids” given by Sarah Walter, user experience researcher and consultant with a focus on games.

Sarah shared several techniques for conducting user research with children. The first two techniques (usability and playtesting) are fairly standard techniques that are used throughout the games industry.

Although these techniques have been long-used for “hardcore gamers”, a target that is well understood, there was much to be learned about designing games for children. How do you know what’s “fun” or “engaging” for a 4 year old who can’t fill out your post-game survey? And how do you even find that 4 year old to play test with?

So her team came up with some “kid-friendly” ways to conduct user research for the younger audience:

Bringing kids into the lab on designated days…

Working directly with schools…

… and visiting families at home.

Since this was with children, they had to be extra diligent about explaining who they were, answering any questions, and ensuring a safe environment for their young play testers. 

Mentor Tribute

The Intuit Career Development team invited me to share a story for the launch of an internal mentoring website. Enjoy!

It’s 6:15pm on a Wednesday. 

She walks by my desk, looking tired and stressed. “Got some time to look at that project?”

“Sure,” I reply, grabbing my notebook as we walk to a team room.

“Sorry I’m so distracted,” she confides as the door closes. “I’m on 4 projects right now and new ones keep coming up. I’m kind of losing my mind." 

On a typical day, I’d feel guilty about not being able to help. But today, I find myself thinking, what would Stephen do?

Stephen Gay has been my mentor for the last five months thanks to the Intuit Loop Mentoring Program. Loop pairs XD mentors and mentees to "support the development and retention of great people, foster the design community, and cultivate a lasting competitive edge through mutually beneficial mentor/mentee relationships that are trusting, open and aspirational.” I’ve participated in the program as a mentee three times since joining Intuit, and I’ve found it to be incredibly helpful. In addition to meeting wonderful people, I’ve learned a lot about corporate culture, communication, design, and myself.

At this moment, I’m realizing that one of the things I haven’t learned is how my mentors work their special magic. If Stephen were here right now, what would he say?

I think back to the last time I told Stephen about a problem I was having at work. He didn’t just offer sympathy– he asked lots of thoughtful questions and reflected back what he’s hearing. This helped me to see the problem in a new light, and approach it in a more rational manner. After we identified the problem, he helped me own the solution, rather than just telling me what to do. We brainstormed some possible approaches, and he helped me gauge which was the most appropriate for my situation. By encouraging me to own both the problem and the solution, he gave me the confidence to deal with the problem successfully.

It feels a little uncomfortable, but I decide to give it a try: I start asking questions. As she describes her many projects, I jot them in my notebook. She finishes, and we both look at my notes.

She starts laughing. “Oh, wow. I didn’t really realize how crazy my life was!”

We walk through the notes together, grouping and circling related activities. Then we discuss where she’s been spending most of her time and energy, and how that’s different from her personal passions.

She observes, “Maybe it’s not just about having lots of projects. I need to think about this a little more.”

I tear the page out of my notebook and hand it to her as we walk back to our desks. I feel a little disappointed that I couldn’t make her problems disappear, but I assure her that I’m available if she’d like to continue the discussion.

- 

It’s 9:30am on a Monday.

She walks by my desk, a big smile on her face. “Just wanted to let you know I showed those notes to my manager. The conversation went really well and we came up with a few changes we’re going to make!”

I smile back and make a mental note to pass her thanks on to Stephen.

-

Many thanks to Stephen and all of the other wonderful mentors in my life.

“

Design for Delight is grounded in deep customer empathy, going broad with ideas then narrowing with possible solutions and finally, rapid experimentation with customers.

These principles were integral in a product we recently launched called Snap Payroll, a free, mobile application that allows small businesses on the go to calculate paychecks in minutes and determine how much to set aside for taxes.

”

— Intuit CEO Brad Smith in Forbes talking about Snap Payroll