0:01

I think that there's this stall

0:04

out that kind of happens mid career where

0:07

that the stakeholder management,

0:09

the communication skills, the storytelling,

0:11

and the MBA

0:14

level business understanding and business skills

0:16

become really, really relevant if you want

0:18

to either participate more holistically

0:20

as an IC or become a leader.

0:23

And so my theory is

0:25

that there's not enough resources to

0:27

help people bridge that gap.

0:42

The discipline of design is now key to

0:44

building great products. More and more

0:46

companies are making space for it at the higher levels.

0:48

More people than ever want to become designers.

0:51

And most of us who already do the job wants

0:54

to find ways to have just a little bit more impact

0:56

in our teams. Welcome

1:01

to design meets business. I'm Christian Vasile

1:03

and on this podcast, I bring you world class product

1:05

and design leaders who found ways to shape

1:07

products, companies and entire industries,

1:10

and who are now sharing what they know with you

1:12

and me. My hope is that we

1:14

all get to learn from the experiences, ideas,

1:16

and stories shared on this podcast.

1:18

I'll see you next time. In the process. Become better designers

1:22

on the show today. I'm chatting with Ryan Scott, the founder

1:24

of accelerate design company. Ryan

1:26

is helping designers develop business skills to do

1:29

more influential work and have more meaningful

1:31

careers. Before that, Ryan

1:33

worked for some of the biggest companies around, whether

1:35

that was leading the redesign of the booking

1:37

flow at Airbnb, bringing food photography

1:39

to DoorDash, or designing for Salesforce.

1:42

Ryan understood and always put an emphasis

1:44

on the importance of marrying design with

1:46

the business goals. In this episode, we're

1:48

talking about how to think of failed experiments,

1:50

how different companies think of design and why,

1:53

about why incremental optimization might not

1:55

always be the right approach, and about why

1:57

it's important to consider saying yes to work

1:59

that you might initially want to say no to.

2:02

I hope you're gonna enjoy my conversation with Ryan

2:04

Scott. Ryan,

2:08

welcome to design Based Business. Over the course of

2:10

your career, you've managed to work with some cool companies

2:12

and big projects uh, with big tangible

2:14

results, and some of your achievements at

2:17

Airbnb are worth spending hours

2:19

discussing. Unfortunately, we don't have hours, but

2:21

hopefully just enough time to scratch the surface.

2:24

Uh, You're also an avid design coach talking

2:26

about how to link design with business. So

2:28

it makes a lot of sense for you to be on a show. And

2:30

I'm really excited to have some of these conversations

2:32

before we go a bit deeper. Let's

2:34

begin with some cliff notes of

2:37

who you are and how did you start in design and where

2:39

you are right now?

2:39

Perfect. Firstly, thank you so much for having me. This is an exciting

2:42

topic to talk about, I think is becoming even

2:44

more necessary in the

2:46

industry with so much change

2:48

happening in the industry. So this is really good timing.

2:51

So a bit about me, I think a couple of things that make

2:53

my background unique are that

2:55

I've always been a designer and I've always

2:57

run a business. So I accidentally

3:00

tripped into design when I was in high school.

3:02

So this is, I don't want to date myself, this was years

3:04

ago but many years ago. But

3:07

I had a teacher that

3:09

really encouraged me, I took a graphic

3:11

design class, and I just liked it, so I just started

3:13

doing it. And I didn't know what

3:15

it would become, but I liked

3:18

it, so I kept doing it. At the same time,

3:20

I was about to go to university,

3:23

and university in the States is

3:25

extremely expensive, and I had no idea how

3:27

I was going to pay for it. And so I

3:29

just started doing freelance design and

3:31

running my own independent agency,

3:34

which I did throughout my entire

3:36

undergraduate university career

3:39

and managed to pay for that schooling

3:41

with debt free by just doing design work.

3:43

So for me starting design at

3:45

a very young age I think I realized I've been a designer

3:48

for about half my life now, so it's been

3:50

a minute. But it's always been tied to

3:52

running that business as a designer and

3:54

working with many businesses

3:57

As they are freelance consultants I think a couple

3:59

other things that have been different for me is that

4:01

I went in house in tech, but I've worked

4:03

at so many different types of organizations. So

4:05

I've worked at Seed Stage Startup,

4:07

Series A, DoorDash was Series

4:09

B through D while I was there. So very

4:12

early days. Airbnb was right,

4:14

it was a couple of years pre IPO and

4:16

Salesforce was already well public

4:19

by the time I was there. So I've seen design

4:21

teams operate at all of these different

4:23

stages of a business, which has really influenced

4:25

how I think about approaching design. And the

4:27

culture is that those businesses were also very

4:30

different. So some were sales led,

4:32

eng led, product led, and Airbnb was

4:34

design led. So I've also seen different

4:36

functions take point and

4:38

how does that then trickle back down to how

4:41

they use design and what they think about design.

4:43

Thank you for the intro. I think we'll definitely

4:46

go back to Airbnb being a

4:48

design led company and how design

4:50

is seen there and compared to some of the other

4:52

ones. But before that, I just want to real

4:54

quickly draw some sort of parallel

4:56

because I have, I didn't realize, but I have a very similar

4:58

story, I've also been running

5:00

my own business while I was studying design.

5:03

And I'm curious, how did you find

5:05

doing both at the same time? Because what

5:08

I found was that the curriculum

5:10

was a few years behind what

5:12

I was already practicing with some of my clients.

5:15

So school for me, for example,

5:17

design school wasn't really, this hasn't really

5:19

taught me so much from

5:22

a design perspective. It taught me more

5:24

around working with other people and, discipline

5:26

and sending things on time and all of

5:29

these things that school generally teaches you. But in terms

5:31

of design, it just hasn't taught me that

5:33

much because it was slightly backwards compared

5:35

to the industry. What were your Uh, What

5:37

was your experience there?

5:39

That's interesting. I think similar.

5:41

I still feel like I gained some technical

5:43

skills and some coaching that

5:45

I wouldn't have just working independently

5:48

with the clients. But I think the clients

5:50

really augmented what I was learning. One

5:52

of the tricks that I did while I was an undergrad was,

5:55

maybe I was a freshman or a junior,

5:57

so first couple of years. And I would

5:59

talk to the seniors about what they were learning,

6:02

and then I would go get a client to

6:04

go learn that thing. So by the time I got

6:06

into those courses a couple of years later,

6:08

I'd already done multiple branding projects or

6:10

multiple website projects. And so school

6:13

became a lot easier in some ways. My

6:15

professors were very gracious about me.

6:17

I think I did have actually a client at one

6:19

point in my senior year who was in England.

6:22

And so I'm like building this website for them and

6:24

we're having late night calls and I kept skipping

6:26

some of my classes. But my professors were really

6:29

gracious and understanding about that

6:31

because they wanted to encourage me to do the real world

6:33

work. I feel like they augmented each other,

6:36

but the schooling go

6:38

as far. In developing the skills

6:40

that I would actually need in a professional environment as

6:43

doing as much freelance.

6:44

So what was missing there when you said it didn't go as

6:46

far? What exactly did you think? Where was it falling

6:48

short?

6:50

I was just such a difference

6:52

between doing something hypothetically

6:54

and doing something for real in terms of

6:57

how many things can happen that you don't

6:59

anticipate. So I've taught, actually

7:01

I've given lectures at that university. I've

7:04

worked at bootcamps and taught design,

7:06

and a lot of that curriculum is teaching

7:09

these technical skills, and

7:11

you want to understand how a project might work

7:13

end to end, you want to understand when

7:15

to do user research, you want to understand how Figma

7:17

works, and all of these technical things it's

7:20

really hard to simulate What happens

7:22

if the client doesn't like it? What

7:24

happens if the client's wife doesn't like it? Okay

7:27

like, you're not trained to handle these totally

7:29

crazy and absolutely realistic

7:31

curveballs that might happen. In UX,

7:34

it might be this test fails. And

7:36

the change we thought was going to be really successful

7:39

Wasn't in the way we thought. What's

7:41

the next step because now the ceo is looking

7:43

at us Like you guys just wasted a bunch of time.

7:45

I don't think the educational program really

7:48

Prepares you for that stakeholder

7:50

management and to expect the unexpected

7:53

I also don't think most educational programs

7:56

talk nearly enough about the business

7:58

side of design, which is a

8:00

huge failing, I think in academia.

8:03

Let's talk about that because you are putting

8:05

together a course for which the tagline

8:08

is describing the ROI of design master

8:10

the business fundamentals to persuade stakeholders,

8:12

gain influence and level up your design career. And

8:14

only from that tagline, I think we can

8:16

have a conversation for a few good hours.

8:19

So tell me how this idea of

8:21

coaching designers came, how the idea of the course

8:23

came. And then how did you end up actually

8:25

building this curriculum that I assume

8:27

you see as a better fit for someone who

8:30

might want to level up?

8:31

Yeah, so I think we have to go further

8:33

back and a lot of it's rooted in that

8:35

running a business while running

8:38

a design business while learning design

8:40

and realizing where there were some gaps. And then

8:42

going into the industry and

8:44

realizing that I didn't feel always

8:47

very equipped to have

8:49

influence, change the roadmap, or

8:51

even understand why am I

8:53

working on this project when I am? What's

8:55

the timing? What's the goal? I

8:57

maybe have some sense of, oh well, the PM

8:59

wants to hit this metric. But why?

9:02

If you think about putting on your user research

9:04

hat and asking five whys, I

9:06

realized I could only answer maybe the first

9:08

one or two whys. Because my PM wants it

9:10

because they want to hit this metric. But what's their motivation?

9:13

Who's their boss? What does that person need?

9:15

What does the business need? Where are these things coming

9:17

from? And why now? And why me?

9:19

And what am I really trying to solve?

9:21

And so I felt like

9:24

I was not going to be able to be a very successful

9:26

leader in design without having

9:28

a deeper understanding of those fundamentals. The

9:31

kind of framework that's guided a lot of my thinking

9:33

is, I think you have art on

9:35

one side of the spectrum and you have pure business

9:37

on the other, and design is in the middle.

9:40

A lot of people think that design is

9:42

art, and I think that's wrong where

9:44

art is really about, self expression and communicating

9:46

a feeling, but there's no like, business

9:48

objective to that. Design is a lot

9:50

of the same compositional features.

9:53

You're thinking about layout, color, typography,

9:55

illustration, iconography, a lot of these

9:58

types of things. And that's on the artsy

10:00

side of design. And it's,

10:02

those things are often the visual things that

10:04

a non designer can interpret and see

10:06

and understand. And so a lot of people think that's

10:09

what design is, are these visual things. But

10:11

design is always applied to a business

10:14

and that's what makes it design. On

10:16

the opposite end of that spectrum, you have

10:18

like PMs or marketing people where

10:20

it's all about business strategy, but there's no

10:22

visual execution necessarily

10:24

to that, to make it real. And

10:27

so design exists within this spectrum

10:29

and as a designer, you can totally have a fulfilling

10:31

career as a person who does icons

10:34

or a person. I think there being be

10:36

hired someone who just specialized in gradients

10:38

at one point. So you can absolutely specialize

10:41

in these areas, but a lot of designers

10:43

want to move up in their career and

10:45

get more businessy and

10:47

start to have more influence and either

10:50

ask those deeper questions or start

10:52

to influence the answers to those questions.

10:55

But designers are not taught business.

10:57

We kind of learn it through osmosis

10:59

by just being in the environment and working

11:01

with stakeholders. And that's

11:03

very inefficient. You're doing like bumping

11:06

around in the dark, trial and error as

11:08

a way of learning. And your career is sometimes

11:10

on the line. If you make a mistake, it's a great

11:12

learning experience, but stakeholders

11:14

don't want to work with you now, or you lost your job

11:17

or, some other kind of consequence,

11:19

maybe not that dire, but those things

11:21

do happen. So for me wanting

11:23

to understand business led me

11:25

to get my MBA. And in doing that

11:27

for three years at UC Berkeley,

11:29

I realized designers are

11:32

missing a huge amount of context and the

11:34

people that I'm working with on the business side have

11:36

no idea what design is

11:38

or how to leverage it. And I think a

11:40

really good case study of that

11:42

is during my first year at Haas

11:45

design thinking was a required course. But

11:47

our year was the last year the design thinking

11:50

was required, because so many people

11:52

complained about it being quote fluffy

11:54

and Unnecessary that

11:56

the university had to back off and make

11:58

an elective. So the business people

12:00

aren't learning about design and aren't really understanding

12:03

it are actually starting to push back against it,

12:05

and designers aren't getting that, So I

12:07

wanted to with this course in

12:10

describing the ROI design bridge

12:12

that gap and give designers

12:14

a very specific curriculum

12:17

of just the things that I learned from

12:19

all of these courses that would be

12:22

necessary for a designer to move

12:24

the needle at their organization.

12:26

Do you think it's enough that just half

12:28

of the room does the work. If designers

12:31

become really good at talking about the value

12:33

of design, but as you said earlier, the other

12:35

side in the room, they might not be

12:37

interested in it. They might not understand it. They might push back

12:40

against it. Is it then enough that design

12:42

can do a better job and try to persuade

12:44

the other ones? Or is it also a matter of

12:46

perhaps trying to educate the other, perhaps the

12:48

other people also trying to educate themselves on what

12:50

design can do?

12:52

that's a great question. I think there's the

12:54

ideal answer and there's the realistic

12:57

answer. And the ideal answer is

12:59

that business people are looking at

13:01

these industry leaders like Airbnb

13:03

and Tesla and Apple, which is

13:05

the most valuable company on the planet

13:08

and saying design is a core part

13:10

of all of those companies DNA from

13:12

like the most foundational level design

13:14

has been very successfully leveraged

13:17

to create value for these companies.

13:19

We should know more about that. We

13:21

want to do that too. Ideally,

13:24

every business leader would come to that conclusion

13:26

by looking at these case studies. But

13:28

for whatever reason, they're not. And so

13:30

I do think it often falls on designers

13:32

to have to articulate

13:35

the value in a way that resonates

13:37

with them. So they are become open minded

13:40

to, okay, this is actually something I can see

13:42

this. I understand what it specifically

13:44

means to my business. It's not just, Apple

13:47

does a lot of great design work. We should too.

13:49

But how does that play out for us on

13:51

the ground making decisions? Operationally,

13:54

I understand what that means and I'm

13:56

excited about trying it out and seeing what the

13:58

value is to our business. So I do think

14:00

it falls on design more often than not, which

14:03

is why I started creating a course for designers

14:05

to articulate and not trying to train the business

14:07

people yet.

14:08

Yeah. I also think something else plays in here,

14:11

which is uh, you can only focus

14:13

on what you can control. The fact of the matter is that

14:15

you can't control what the other people know,

14:17

but what you can control is how you can try to persuade

14:19

them with the knowledge that you have. So perhaps it

14:21

makes sense that's where you should focus on and be a bit less

14:24

concerned about what the other people do and more concerned

14:26

about how you can bring design in

14:28

the highlight design in the room. With

14:30

that being said, I was taking a look at the syllabus

14:32

for your course beforehand, and I've

14:35

if that's okay with you, I'd like to dive in a little

14:37

bit deeper into some of these because first of all, I'm

14:39

interested. And why you think all of

14:41

these four are the important ones that

14:43

that you want to teach people for the course, but also

14:46

for each one of them, because some of them might seem a bit

14:48

fluffy, as you said earlier. And I think it would be interesting to

14:50

bring them down to earth a little bit and understand how does

14:52

this translate into what I do as a designer

14:54

on a daily basis with my team. So the first

14:56

one is gain credibility by connecting

14:59

design value to business metrics and financial

15:01

outcomes. What is this all about?

15:03

Sure. So this is really

15:06

where designers focus

15:08

often, but I think there's a different way of thinking

15:11

about it. I think there's different levels and I teach this

15:13

framework where you've got a design outcome,

15:15

which is the work you did, like we launched

15:17

a component library or something

15:19

like that, right? And you have the customer outcome,

15:22

which is maybe this reduces cognitive load because

15:24

we've created more consistency. And so

15:26

I think designers feel very comfortable talking

15:28

about their work in the customer

15:30

outcome lens. And I think that's right. Someone

15:33

needs to do that and always root their

15:35

value and the work they're doing in that customer

15:37

lens. And I do think that a lot of business folks

15:40

don't go deep enough and always

15:42

read things back to the customer. From that

15:44

it can be difficult for business

15:46

minded folks. Or executives

15:49

to understand, okay, you reduced cognitive

15:51

load, which is a very designer

15:53

way of thinking about a solution or

15:55

an outcome. But what does that mean to our business?

15:58

How does that actually level up to something

16:00

that I can measure? And I can say to my

16:03

board, this is valuable

16:05

to us. That's why you spent time and money

16:07

doing this. And so I think the next steps we

16:09

go from kind of the design outcome, which is the project,

16:11

the customer outcome, which we talk a lot about

16:13

as designers. To the business outcomes,

16:16

and then ultimately have to connect that up to the financial

16:18

outcome. And so a lot of

16:21

executives are going to be thinking about that financial

16:23

outcome level. A lot of teams

16:26

will work with like marketing or sales are

16:28

gonna be thinking about their business outcomes. And designers

16:30

think about the customer outcomes. So if you can tie

16:32

all those things together and say we

16:34

reduce cognitive load, which increased

16:37

conversion, which increased sales,

16:39

it creates this really strong narrative

16:41

where everyone at every level of the business,

16:44

regardless of their Different

16:46

interests or goals can

16:49

understand how these things connect to

16:51

each other. So I think designers often

16:53

don't go far enough into saying this is the

16:55

relationship between cognitive load

16:57

and conversion and then everyone should have a pretty

16:59

good understanding on the business side of the relationship between

17:01

conversion and sales. So if you can start

17:03

bridging those gaps for people, it

17:05

helps frame things in a language

17:07

or connect things to the language that

17:10

the business stakeholders understand.

17:12

So I think in theory, a lot of people

17:14

would listen to this and would nod their

17:16

heads and say, yeah, this fully makes sense. I think

17:19

in practice, sometimes when you sit in your

17:21

design team on a daily basis and the PM

17:23

prioritizes your work and you're just being given

17:25

here's the next piece of work. Here's what we're working on next. And

17:28

you as a designer don't seem to have that

17:30

much influence, you're just doing what

17:32

you're being told. How do you bridge that gap

17:34

between what you've said, which is the ideal

17:36

state and what I've presented,

17:38

which is what I think a lot of people are struggling,

17:40

not struggling with, but that's the reality of a lot of people

17:42

on a daily basis.

17:44

Yeah, I think what you're describing is such an

17:46

interesting and pretty typical relationship

17:48

between product and design, which is unfortunate,

17:50

which is design as this service of

17:53

product, you see a lot of design teams report into

17:55

product teams, which is strange because

17:57

it would be weird if product reported to

18:00

design and it's uncommon for

18:02

engineering to report the product or product report

18:04

to engineering, but it design reports the product

18:06

everyone's fine with that. It's this strange

18:09

relationship, this kind of sometimes

18:11

subservient relationship of design

18:13

as a function that hits metrics. And

18:15

I think that's true in some sense, and

18:17

that is part of the value that design

18:19

creates. And that's why I start my course with

18:22

that module, is because that

18:24

is the reality, and you are going to have to tell

18:26

the story about hitting

18:28

certain product metrics, and that

18:30

is realistically probably the thing you're gold

18:32

upon. However, the kind of

18:34

next thing that I talk about is we

18:36

should zoom out and think about the value that

18:38

design creates to the business more

18:40

holistically. Yes, you contribute

18:42

to product value, but what else?

18:45

I teach a framework that we look at from the market

18:47

level to a company function, product,

18:50

team, and individual level. What

18:52

is the potential value to the business

18:54

in a project that you're doing? So

18:57

if you create a completely new paradigm

18:59

or convention. You've potentially added

19:01

value to the entire market and now suddenly everyone's

19:03

using the hashtag. For example

19:05

at a company level, you can create

19:08

all kinds of value that is specific

19:10

to your business in terms of making it more competitive

19:13

or increasing certain financial

19:15

outcomes. You might make engineering

19:17

work faster or easier if you have

19:20

a design system. And so there's other

19:22

elevations in which you can talk about the value

19:24

of design. And that can change the

19:27

level of influence you have. The

19:29

case study I like to talk about

19:31

in thinking bigger is when I was

19:33

at DoorDash. So I started at DoorDash and there

19:35

were eight engineers and no PMs and four designers.

19:38

The company as a whole was

19:40

under a hundred people. And so it was very

19:42

early days. We worked in an animal hospital

19:44

in Palo Alto. And one of the projects

19:47

I had was to bring food photography to

19:49

the app. And if you look at the app today, there's

19:51

food photos everywhere. But in circa

19:53

2015, that wasn't the case, and

19:55

we were the only ones without it. And so I

19:57

was tasked with bringing food photography to

20:00

the app, including all the operational

20:02

aspects of that in terms of hiring

20:04

photographers, signing up merchants,

20:06

getting those people connected, getting

20:08

the photos, editing the photos, getting the photos

20:10

uploaded into the product and creating that end-to-end

20:13

flow, in addition to thinking about

20:16

where should photography be in

20:18

the app and how should it look

20:20

and all the kind of traditional designery aspects

20:22

of it. One of the first experiments we

20:24

did was negative and

20:27

we were questioning, is this something

20:29

that's actually valuable? And so we were

20:31

able to look at other metrics to

20:33

determine this. It didn't move the metric we thought

20:35

it would at first in that first experiment, but

20:37

it did create impact in the product in other

20:39

ways. And then by starting

20:41

to ask that question and pulling that thread

20:44

of. What other types of value might this

20:46

be creating? We realized that, oh,

20:48

the marketing team is very excited about having

20:50

hyperlocal photography for all of its marketing

20:52

campaigns. The business development team is really

20:54

excited because they can go to some of these national

20:56

partners and offer this as a service to

20:58

them. And those national partners are really excited

21:01

to sign with us if we can provide this value

21:03

to them. So thinking outside of

21:05

just the product metric

21:07

that we wanted to hit, we really realized

21:10

this had so much more value to the business holistically

21:13

that it allowed us to continue on the project

21:15

and figure out how to refine our execution

21:18

so that the product metrics aligned. But

21:20

we were able to keep up that momentum because

21:22

we assessed that it had value in many different ways.

21:25

And those secondary metrics. that you've

21:28

managed to hit? Were those something that you were

21:30

actually tracking from the beginning or when the

21:32

first metric looked like it didn't really hit

21:34

the mark you then started looking at is

21:36

there any other impact we're doing? Who, how

21:38

did you start looking at those secondary metrics and when?

21:40

Yeah, that's a great question. So we tracked a

21:42

wide variety of things, but the team was pretty

21:45

focused on just conversion, right?

21:47

Is this increasing our revenue? And I think we

21:49

were probably really hyper focused on that.

21:51

And so when we didn't hit that

21:53

number that we wanted to, it created this conversation

21:56

of is this still worth doing? Do we

21:58

still believe in this? As a designer,

22:00

I was like, yeah, of course this is an industry convention.

22:03

It's pretty standard for any e commerce

22:05

thing. And as a designer, I'm looking at

22:07

the kind of human evolution lens

22:09

of this. You're about to eat something. You're about to

22:11

put it in your body and consume it. If

22:13

it looks bad, it could kill you.

22:15

We assess everything we eat

22:18

as to, I don't know, is this safe or not?

22:20

And that's baked into our biology.

22:22

So as a designer, I just felt like there was this intrinsic

22:25

value, but we did have

22:27

to still make that argument back up

22:29

to the business. And so when

22:32

that experiment, didn't deliver the value that we

22:34

thought, the next question was, okay,

22:36

but we still believe this has value, so where

22:38

might that value be? And we realized

22:40

that it was affecting a different piece of

22:42

conversion in a different part of the funnel than we were expecting.

22:45

And that was able to influence our overall product strategy

22:47

and keep going.

22:48

I love that. The reason I asked that secondary question

22:50

is because I think this is very important.

22:52

Not always the experiments that you run

22:55

will be successful, but that shouldn't stop

22:57

you from digging a bit deeper and seeing whether

22:59

although it technically failed from the perspective

23:01

of what we aim to do in the first place, Perhaps

23:04

this helped us succeed somewhere else. And

23:06

I think digging a bit deeper into data and analytics

23:08

and all of these is also valuable

23:10

despite an experiment failing, so I

23:12

like that you came up with that example.

23:14

If I can add to that, I think it's really important how you define

23:17

fails, right? So we had a specific

23:19

hypothesis and we had a specific goal

23:21

and we didn't meet that specific goal, but

23:24

was that the appropriate goal to

23:26

begin with? I would argue maybe not,

23:28

I think that you should start with a

23:30

hypothesis and you should start with a goal, but

23:32

be open minded to potentially

23:35

an experiment delivering some kind of insight

23:37

or value to the business in a way that you

23:39

weren't expecting or weren't necessarily incentivized

23:42

to hit because, you know, you

23:44

want to deliver value to the business holistically,

23:46

right? And so I think you have a pretty

23:48

compelling argument. And we had to do this

23:50

to go to the CEO and say, look, it didn't

23:53

do this, but it did this and this and this.

23:55

We still feel like it's valuable, worth investing

23:57

in, let's continue. So I think

24:00

it's worth saying this didn't do what we

24:02

expected. I don't know that's failure

24:04

because we learned so many different things

24:07

that did produce value to the business.

24:09

And so as long as it's producing value to the business,

24:12

I would consider it a success.

24:14

You've covered the first two parts of the syllabus. Let's

24:16

move on. Next one is tailor tactics

24:18

to be successful within your specific environment.

24:21

What does this mean?

24:22

So I think this is about being

24:24

sensitive to the needs of the business

24:26

and developing a greater awareness out

24:28

of the needs of the business. And I do think that

24:31

designers, like I said, develop business

24:33

awareness through osmosis, but they're not getting

24:35

structured kind of formal training on this. And

24:37

so this whole section is just

24:39

about looking at the things

24:41

your business is going through and the way

24:43

your business is going to approach things given different

24:45

variables so you can adapt and

24:47

be successful. When I've done

24:50

a standard approach to design,

24:52

for example, it may or may not be

24:54

successful, because I've just taken

24:56

this one approach like this is the way I think design should

24:58

operate in a business because

25:00

that's what I learned in school or that's just my

25:02

belief. You might get lucky and there might

25:04

be this natural alignment between the business

25:07

having the same philosophies or operating

25:09

in the same way or being at the stage

25:11

of its growth cycle that's an appropriate

25:14

way to operate. But if

25:16

you're not aligned, there's no one size

25:18

fits all to design and so you're not

25:20

going to be very successful in your business if you're not aligning

25:22

to some of those deeper needs.

25:24

And the last one is go to market with changes

25:26

that will help design succeed in your business.

25:29

Yeah. So that is all about you

25:31

want to adapt to the business,

25:33

but you also will probably need the business to

25:35

adapt to design. And so this is about

25:38

creating change in your organization

25:40

to help design have

25:42

more influence. And really what we

25:45

teach in this is like a go to market strategy

25:47

in terms of how do you identify

25:49

early adopters of a change you want to

25:51

make and get them on board

25:53

with instituting that change, whether it's

25:55

we should have more user

25:57

research and listen to customers more, or we should

26:00

do more cross functional brainstorms and have

26:02

more collaboration between functions.

26:04

Whatever that change is what's your

26:06

backlog of changes as a designer

26:09

that you want to make to make the

26:11

business more design friendly? How

26:13

does that backlog intersect with

26:15

the needs of the business so you can identify

26:18

what's most likely to succeed as you

26:20

bring this change or idea to market? And

26:22

then how do you find those people that are going to help you

26:25

drive adoption?

26:26

I think this is such a key point and

26:28

I'd like to dive a little bit deeper, because

26:31

oftentimes we sit in businesses and we think I

26:33

want to make this change or I want to make that change or, and

26:36

you can't make it happen on your own as a designer,

26:38

it's much harder than some other cross

26:40

functional partners that we might have. So then

26:43

what you've just said there is so key: how

26:45

can you find some early adopters or some allies

26:47

in the company that could help you on the way to

26:49

making that change? Let's talk a bit about that.

26:51

How do you find those people?

26:53

So I think that's a great question. There's a couple

26:55

different dimensions to identifying

26:58

those people. There's a model in

27:00

marketing called the diffusion of innovations,

27:03

and it's where the language like

27:05

early adopters or laggards come

27:07

from. And I think what's important

27:10

takeaway from that model is you're

27:12

looking for early adopters and

27:14

that's a minority of people. You

27:16

shouldn't be trying to sell your idea

27:18

to everyone in the organization. You should

27:20

find the people that are going to be

27:23

most likely to adopt something

27:25

when it's not fully fleshed out yet. And

27:27

this group is technically called like the visionaries.

27:30

They're people who are excited to try new things.

27:32

But you don't have all the answers yet,

27:34

but they're gonna want to collaborate and

27:36

run a pilot and find out. I would

27:38

look for people who are, like, highly collaborative

27:41

excited by new ideas, have this,

27:43

like, how might we attitude in a

27:45

kind of more tactical way. As anyone who's proactively

27:48

including you as a designer or asking for your opinion

27:50

already. It's someone who might be an ally

27:52

that you can, bounce ideas off of and

27:55

is more likely to get on board with

27:57

trying something out. And once you

27:59

have that person who's willing to help you

28:01

run a pilot or ask more questions or connect

28:04

you to more people or just be an advocate

28:06

for that thing, that's a little

28:08

bit of traction you need to help get

28:10

the next group of people on board who are a

28:12

little more skeptical and they need a little more

28:15

traction and a little more evidence that this is a good

28:17

idea. And then those people get on board

28:19

and then the next group gets on board and the next group gets on board.

28:22

So I think trying to find those people who you have a

28:24

strong relationship with who are highly collaborative

28:26

and willing to try new things is an excellent place

28:28

to start.

28:28

If I may add something there, I think oftentimes it's

28:30

much easier to persuade people who

28:33

you already have a good relationship with. And you've

28:35

already mentioned there. And something that I believe

28:37

in is whenever you join the team, you should try

28:40

as much as possible to find the people who think

28:42

like you and create connections and relationships

28:44

in that business with some of these people who

28:47

might not necessarily be designers. They could be product people,

28:49

they could be engineers, they could be in marketing. And

28:51

then I think it makes much easier

28:53

this whole idea of persuading

28:55

or trying to change minds or saying, Hey,

28:57

I've got this idea. What do you think about? It's much easier to

28:59

have the conversation with someone you have a good relationship

29:02

with than with someone you don't. So

29:04

first of all, is that something you agree with? And

29:07

if it is, how do you as a designer

29:09

build better relationships with your cross

29:11

functional partners?

29:12

I mean, I Definitely think that's fundamentally true. If you have

29:14

a good relationship with someone, then

29:16

things are going to be a lot easier than if

29:18

you have a bad relationship or no relationship at

29:20

all. I think one of the things that,

29:23

you know, building those relationships with cross functional

29:25

teams, there's so many variables to

29:27

consider. So I think it really depends on the

29:29

culture. It depends on the individual but

29:31

I do believe that kind of the designers

29:34

have the key skills to develop

29:36

these relationships. And I think a lot of those

29:38

key skills come from things like user research.

29:41

It's about active listening and trying

29:43

to understand what that person

29:45

cares about. In negotiation,

29:47

you learn about the difference between positions

29:49

and interests. A position might

29:52

be, in a negotiation, the thing that someone

29:54

says they want or need

29:56

and the interest is the motivation behind it.

29:58

Someone might say, we need to run A B tests,

30:01

and they need to be statistically significant, otherwise

30:03

we can't make any decisions. That might be what they're

30:05

saying. What they might mean is

30:07

I don't want to be wrong and I need

30:10

a greater degree of validation so I don't

30:12

make a mistake and look silly

30:14

or lose my promotion. And so I think if

30:16

you put on this kind of user research hat and you

30:18

actively listen and you talk to those people

30:20

you're going to understand what's really driving

30:23

their positions and driving motivations

30:26

for the decisions that they're making. I think

30:28

the other benefit of like really taking

30:31

this user research and active listening approach

30:33

is. You're going to have a better understanding

30:36

and you're just openness to

30:38

a better understanding of their position leads

30:40

to trust. And then that trust becomes the foundation

30:43

of that relationship that leads to influence.

30:45

Let's switch gears a little bit touch upon

30:47

something you've mentioned all the way in the beginning

30:50

where you've said you've worked for all these different companies,

30:52

different organizations of different size at different

30:54

points in the journey of the organization.

30:57

How have you seen design work

31:00

at different companies, whether that was

31:03

Airbnb pre IPO, whether that was

31:05

DoorDash very early on, how

31:07

is design treated and how did it work at some

31:09

of these different companies?

31:10

That's a great question. And it actually, I've

31:13

reflected a lot on how these teams

31:15

operated and why they operate in different ways.

31:17

And the thing I found to

31:19

be the most highly correlated with

31:21

how design is used is. Typically

31:23

the background and expertise of the founders.

31:26

You look at people that I've worked for, like

31:28

Mark Benioff or Tony shoe or Brian

31:30

Chesky, they all have extremely different

31:32

backgrounds and that changes the way

31:34

that they run their business, which then in

31:36

turn changes the way that they use

31:39

design. So I do think if

31:41

there's a reason that Google is a very engineering

31:43

led organization is because Larry Page has

31:46

a BS in computer science. He's a

31:48

computer scientist. So his values,

31:50

interests, his awareness of computer science

31:53

is deeper. His preference for solving

31:55

things in that way is deeper. And

31:57

he's got some skills to assess people that he's hiring.

31:59

And so he's going to hire this world class engineering

32:01

team and they're going to solve world class engineering problems.

32:04

So they're going to use design very differently.

32:06

Then Mark Benioff, who has a BS

32:09

in business administration and

32:11

is very, I'd say Salesforce is a very sales

32:13

led organization. So that

32:15

approach I find to be the most

32:17

correlated is that background. In,

32:20

at Salesforce, I'm going to generalize, but my

32:22

feeling at Salesforce was design being

32:24

something that brings things to life so we can

32:26

get it in front of people and get them excited about it

32:28

and we can sell as much as possible

32:30

and the sales function of Salesforce

32:32

is really prominent. At DoorDash,

32:35

Tony's background being operations, the

32:37

way he would approach many business problems

32:40

is with that operational lens. How

32:42

can we very quickly, very

32:44

manually, if necessary, Test

32:46

something out, try it, and see,

32:48

and then maybe we'll build a product around

32:51

it. And then we're going to use design, in

32:53

some ways if we need to increase the quality

32:55

of that product. But there is a large bias

32:57

towards like moving very quickly and doing things without

32:59

building something very robust.

33:02

And then Brian's background is in industrial

33:04

design, and so his focus is going to be, we

33:06

want design at the beginning of the conversation, we

33:08

want to involve them as strategically as possible.

33:11

We're not just using them as a function to

33:13

make things pretty, we want them as thought

33:15

leaders where we can bring

33:17

in the human element and bring in the customer element to

33:19

every conversation. And it

33:21

would feel weird if you had a meeting

33:23

without a designer in the room. So I do think

33:25

that the way those founders run their businesses

33:28

then translates into the way design can be used

33:30

and where they feel like design

33:32

has the most value.

33:33

And the culture of the company oftentimes comes

33:36

from the CEO, which is what you've talked

33:38

about. So probably if you want to work

33:40

in a company where design is being seen as

33:42

a more important function, you might want to look

33:44

for a company that is not necessarily where the CEO

33:46

is a designer, there's not a lot of those, but where

33:48

someone high up in the leadership is

33:50

a designer with influence that can then push

33:53

for design and for the capability of design

33:55

and all of that. So I think sometimes

33:57

we as designers tend to get a bit

33:59

deflated and disappointed when we end up

34:01

working, let's say engineering driven organization

34:04

or sales driven organizations and then we don't really understand

34:06

why is design not getting that seat

34:08

at the table, a proverbial seat at the table.

34:11

And I think what you're saying here it is very accurate

34:13

because the culture is not design driven and

34:16

there's perhaps not so much you can do about that.

34:18

Is there?

34:18

My whole course is about trying to move that needle

34:21

on that. So I hope there's something you

34:23

can do about that. And I think it

34:25

comes back to that aligning to the interests,

34:27

right? And demonstrating value where

34:30

that person wants to see value first,

34:32

and then when you can do that, you can

34:34

start to broaden the conversation.

34:37

And what you're saying is exactly why I went to Airbnb.

34:39

I did Salesforce, then DoorDash, then Airbnb.

34:42

And I saw how we operated in a sales led

34:44

environment and an ops led environment. And

34:46

it was really challenging in some ways and

34:48

didn't meet certain expectations that I had,

34:50

which some of those might've been unrealistic. But

34:53

I wanted to go to a design led organization

34:55

and just feel how that would be different and

34:57

it was a totally different environment because people

34:59

just intrinsically understood what I did and

35:01

intrinsically understood the value of it and I didn't have

35:03

to advocate for it as heavily. So

35:05

I felt like Airbnb is this pinnacle in some

35:08

ways where I could just say,

35:10

I think we should do this because of this and people

35:12

were like, yeah, okay, that makes sense. Go

35:14

do it. Make it happen. Uh, You don't have to advocate

35:16

as intensely, but what I

35:18

appreciated from especially DoorDash was

35:21

I got more rigorous about advocating

35:23

for my work and aligning it to

35:26

different interests and not just saying,

35:28

look, design is valuable because it's valuable.

35:30

We should do it because we should do it. Airbnbs,

35:32

everyone says, okay at DoorDash Tony

35:35

says, show me how like, show me what

35:37

that means, show me the value and explain

35:39

to me. I think as long as they're open minded

35:41

to that, that's great. And as long as you have a culture

35:43

that's willing to learn and adapt that's

35:45

what you need. But you're going to have to

35:47

align to certain things and then push in certain

35:49

ways in different types of cultures. And that's just

35:52

part of the job.

35:53

Yeah. And I think that also teaches you different

35:55

things. So at Salesforce, you've learned something about

35:57

how to do design that was different than what you've

35:59

learned at Airbnb, where design was seen

36:02

in a different light. If you probably,

36:04

if you just work in organizations where design is being

36:06

already seen as super valuable, you

36:08

might not learn to manage stakeholders as well,

36:10

or persuasion or storytelling or all

36:12

of that. So I guess there's always something you can learn

36:15

regardless of where you work, but perhaps the

36:17

job is, I don't think it's necessarily easier, but

36:19

it's a bit different, as you said, in a company

36:21

like Airbnb versus Salesforce or

36:23

DoorDash. talkin talking about this, you wrote a post some time

36:25

ago about this idea of having to sometimes

36:27

justify why you're in the room,

36:30

and I assume that doesn't happen very often

36:32

at a company like Airbnb, but it might happen in other

36:34

companies, which might be more similar to

36:36

someone listening might be working at a, in an engineering

36:39

led company and sometimes they might have

36:41

to justify themselves about why

36:43

they're in the room. What are your thoughts about that?

36:45

Yeah. It's not a great position

36:47

to be in as a designer, and it's a sign of

36:49

kind of immaturity on the lack

36:51

of the other stakeholders or

36:53

the company as a whole to, and

36:55

in that example too, it felt a little hostile. Like

36:58

why are you here Like

37:00

we have a bunch of engineers in the room. Why are you necessary?

37:03

And it's a pretty extreme example of someone

37:05

being very assertive about that opinion.

37:07

But there is this kind of undercurrent

37:09

vibe of needing to explain

37:12

why design exists and explain why

37:14

design's valuable and that perspective

37:16

is valuable. And that's really what

37:18

kind of the first two modules of my class are about

37:20

are, Okay, design is moving

37:22

metrics. We are seeing things from a different perspective.

37:25

And we're contributing value in

37:28

a much more diverse way and

37:30

holistic way than just hitting the product

37:32

metrics that PMs want us to hit.

37:35

So I think that attaching value

37:37

to something that's a little bit broader

37:39

is a tactic that works really well for

37:41

people who are hesitant and aligning to

37:43

those interests and those priorities and

37:45

framing things in a way that

37:47

they understand as business stakeholders. I

37:49

also think it's important to articulate why

37:52

design is different, that it's Not an operations

37:54

function. You can't just put inputs in

37:56

and get outputs. If you design a machine

37:58

and you put in certain amount of. I earned,

38:00

you're going to get a certain amount of nails out of it, right?

38:02

And that's just not how design works. And, but

38:04

that's how you teach operations. Or,

38:07

if you have a formula in math, you put in these

38:09

numbers and you get those numbers out. And

38:11

if you don't get the numbers out, it's wrong

38:13

and you need to go back. And there's a certain way of

38:15

thinking about business problems in

38:18

statistics or in maybe

38:20

marketing or definitely operations in

38:22

that kind of linear way. And so

38:25

I think we need to understand that's how some functions

38:27

work and think and that we need

38:29

to educate the design is different.

38:31

It's often non linear. We don't know

38:33

the answer until we throw a bunch of

38:36

things at the wall and test it out and try.

38:38

And sometimes that iteration

38:40

and that process can feel a little um, unfamiliar

38:43

to people. So I think there's a

38:45

good amount of alignment that has to be done, but then

38:47

also a good amount of pushing on why

38:49

we're there and why we think differently and why we operate

38:51

differently and how that's valuable

38:53

to have that diversified opinion

38:56

and diversified approach to all the other

38:58

functions that exist.

38:59

Yeah. Talking about how we operate a

39:01

bit differently. Let's unpack a little bit, this

39:04

idea of that sometimes it's okay

39:06

to scrap incremental testing. And

39:08

to go for something completely different, you, there's another post

39:10

that you wrote you were talking about the Airbnbs booking

39:12

flow and how incremental testing

39:14

didn't do so much and um,

39:16

you've just changed strategy and did something completely

39:19

different, operated completely different than how

39:21

normally you would. Tell us a little story

39:23

there and what the learning is from it.

39:25

Yeah, this is a great case study that

39:28

touches on a few things that we've spoken about today.

39:30

Yeah. So the background of this

39:32

is I was on a team that

39:34

operated outside of kind of Airbnb's

39:36

normal operating mode. It was a little tiger

39:38

team that got to redesign the entire mobile

39:41

website from the ground up. And so traditionally

39:43

the business had these silos and you've got the booking

39:45

team and they own Android and desktop

39:48

and iOS and all these platforms.

39:50

And so every team owned vertically all

39:52

these different platforms. And so we spun

39:54

up this team to say, we need to redo the entire

39:56

mobile website and we're going to work horizontally.

39:59

We get to own the mobile website platform

40:01

and we just own every surface on that.

40:03

And so it gave us the ability to ask,

40:06

are all of these individual surfaces that people

40:08

have been optimizing? Are they working well

40:10

horizontally? Do we need to change

40:12

anything? And we got to kind of go back

40:15

to every piece of Airbnb

40:17

and say, could this be better? What

40:19

should we do? And so I started digging

40:21

into the booking flow and realizing that there was

40:23

a lot of optimization that we

40:26

had the potential to do. And so this

40:28

is a good example of kind of building stakeholder

40:30

consensus incrementally. I

40:33

gathered an initial group of people who

40:35

were interested in having that conversation

40:37

from each of these different teams that

40:39

own parts of this very long

40:41

booking flow experience and just asking

40:44

the questions and doing that active listening

40:46

and starting to understand what they cared about and

40:48

why and what their world was like. But

40:50

I got to be in the position of that facilitator

40:53

who's having all these individual conversations horizontally

40:56

that weren't happening already organically.

40:58

From there we were saying, okay, let's do a little

41:01

sprint and come up with some new ideas. And

41:03

just asking some of those questions generated

41:05

enough excitement that more people started

41:08

paying attention and we're like, okay, that is a good

41:10

point. Yeah, we could do that better. What happened

41:12

was then Alex Schleifer got involved

41:14

and got on board and got really excited about, okay,

41:16

this could be better. We could do something that's

41:18

more of a step function improvement. Then

41:21

more people got on board and then we had Brian Chesky

41:23

up at all hands saying booking is one of

41:25

the most important things we can do this year. And

41:28

so then everyone was on board with this vision

41:30

that we were creating. Through that process

41:32

underneath, we were always iterating

41:34

and doing research and doing some initial

41:36

tests to see where things were landing. And

41:39

a lot of these incremental tests weren't

41:41

coming back dramatically positive.

41:44

One of the nice things

41:46

about Airbnb was. We

41:48

could say, look, we just know what feels better

41:50

as a designer. And we could try to

41:52

incrementally test this to

41:55

a step function level improvement, but

41:57

it's really difficult. And sometimes you just need to

41:59

hit the reset button. And even

42:01

just from a thought exercise, think of what

42:03

if we blew this whole thing up and started

42:05

over, would we arrive at the

42:07

same place we are today? And the answer was

42:09

no. And so what started out as

42:11

a thought exercise started to become the reality

42:14

of, we should just start over. And

42:16

just because we didn't incrementally test

42:18

this every little change A, B

42:20

tested to statistical significance

42:22

rigorously, doesn't mean we didn't validate

42:25

the things we were doing. We were always talking

42:27

to customers. We were always looking at new

42:29

paradigms in the industry that we could borrow

42:32

that were proven. So we're always

42:34

doing things that were backed in

42:37

data, even if it wasn't like

42:39

testing so rigorously and we still

42:41

test it. We still launch, but we launched bigger

42:43

things that we felt more comfortable

42:45

about because we had spoken to so many customers.

42:48

And when we did this larger release,

42:50

it was very positive because we had

42:52

taken that time to back all the way

42:54

up. And instead of coming up with what initially

42:57

was this like very robust experimentation

42:59

plan, and largely that experimentation

43:02

plan was created to get executives on board,

43:04

once they got on board and said, Let's

43:06

just do this. Go make it better.

43:09

We were like, great. And we got to kind of remove

43:11

ourselves from that having to craft this like

43:13

Uh, the thorough narrative to

43:16

let's think a lot bigger. And it was a really successful

43:18

project and a lot of fun to work on.

43:20

Yeah, I bet. I know you talk a lot about

43:22

the quality of the team around you. As a designer,

43:25

you oftentimes are judged

43:27

by some of the work that you don't do yourself

43:30

necessarily, whether that's engineering work, whether

43:32

that's, a PM product, marketing, whatever it may be.

43:34

And I'm wondering what are your thoughts

43:36

around, how do you assess

43:38

the quality of the team that's around you as

43:40

a designer, whether that's before you join a company

43:42

or perhaps when you're in the company, or is that

43:45

too late already?

43:46

That's such a good question. This is a

43:48

struggle. This is a challenge. But to

43:50

start, you're absolutely right in that, and

43:53

I've experienced this where you might have the best user experience,

43:55

you might have the best design, you might have

43:57

validated it with customers. But the back

43:59

end isn't set up correctly, and it's impossible

44:02

to build, or impossible to build in

44:04

a certain reasonable time frame, or

44:06

it costs too much money. If the PMs,

44:08

so many times I've realized the

44:10

user experience is really dependent upon that

44:12

experimentation cycle and what's getting prioritized.

44:15

You could prioritize of

44:18

a function part of a feature or

44:20

draw the MVP line too low,

44:23

and it's not really MVP from a design

44:25

perspective, from a customer perspective, but

44:27

it's feasible to launch in a two week sprint.

44:29

All of those things that other teams

44:32

have control over change your ability

44:34

to do good work, change your ability to ship bigger

44:37

things, change your ability to ask bigger questions.

44:39

So assessing when you go into

44:41

a company, I think a couple things, one, the

44:43

willingness to ask bigger questions, that's

44:46

where I've struggled is like, I'm going to be the person who comes

44:48

in and says, what if we blew the whole thing up and it's just started

44:50

over? I don't think that's a realistic

44:52

thing to do every time,

44:55

but it's a great question to ask just

44:57

to shake people out of kind

44:59

of their thinking. So are people

45:01

accepting of that or, you know,

45:03

is the PM saying no, no, no, like that is

45:05

not on the roadmap. We can't do that. Or

45:07

the engineer says that I've seen engineers

45:10

eyes just get wide with

45:12

that question and their faces just go blank.

45:15

So there's a little indicators and you might

45:17

not get a sense of this perfectly until you're in

45:19

a company of like how things are set up.

45:21

And every company I've worked at is like

45:23

more chaotic when you actually

45:25

get into the company. And you're like, Oh, like

45:28

I thought this was all really well figured out and

45:30

there's actually a lot of work to do, which can be

45:32

an opportunity to to, to change

45:34

things and make things better. But I think that assessment

45:36

comes down to is this a collaborative environment?

45:38

Are people okay with asking big

45:40

questions or are they afraid of asking

45:42

those questions? If we can make an argument

45:45

that says this is valuable to the business because

45:47

it's valuable to our customers, are

45:49

we willing to start? Even

45:51

if that starting point is not

45:54

as holistic as redo the whole thing, and

45:56

it is more incremental, are designers

45:58

is going to be involved in that process. One

46:00

question I would ask is what influence

46:03

does design have over the product

46:05

roadmap? Are you part of that conversation?

46:07

Are the PMs in a room by themselves deciding

46:09

the product roadmap? And then they give it to

46:11

you, or are you participating? The

46:14

two factors I would look for are that open mindedness

46:16

to collaboration and the willingness to ask

46:18

bigger questions, and the lack

46:20

of risk aversion in terms of at least just asking

46:23

the question.

46:24

I really liked that question of how involved

46:26

is design in deciding what's on the

46:28

roadmap. I think that oftentimes tells a lot

46:30

about how a company works and how it values design

46:33

more so than their mission statement

46:35

on the website or whatever else it may be. So I

46:37

really liked that one.

46:38

And what's interesting about that too, is everyone's going

46:40

to have an opinion about design, right?

46:43

Everyone is going to see a design and

46:45

they're going to have some thought on what you should do

46:47

differently, the PM, the engineers, the executives.

46:49

And so it should be fair that

46:51

design has an opinion on the roadmap or,

46:54

maybe if you're more technical, some

46:56

thoughts on the architecture and whether it's going to scale,

46:59

because we might want to move the product strategically

47:01

in this or that direction. So

47:03

I think it's fair if everyone has an opinion about design,

47:06

the design's also involved. And

47:08

when you get that asymmetry, that's where

47:10

you start to see there'd be issues with

47:12

the culture and it becomes a lot more challenging to be

47:14

a designer

47:15

Before we bring this one home, I really want to touch upon

47:17

accelerate design company, which is

47:19

your baby. And you have a really cool

47:21

mission of of helping mid career designers

47:24

develop their business skills to do more influential

47:26

work. It's really what we've been talking about today, but

47:28

I wanted to highlight that then ask a couple

47:31

of questions about it. You know, How are you doing

47:33

this? How are you coaching designers? Are they coming

47:35

to you with specific problems or are

47:37

you helping them figure out where they could

47:39

improve? How does that work on a daily basis? How do you

47:41

work with designers to help them grow?

47:43

Yeah, so there's a couple of different ways

47:45

and I'll start with kind of the thesis

47:47

for the business, which is there

47:49

are so many resources

47:52

for early stage designers. There's a million

47:54

boot camps, there's a million videos, everyone

47:56

will teach you how to use the tools, you can

47:58

take all kinds of workshops on Figma, but

48:00

designers, I think, hit a wall around

48:03

their mid career, where, we talked

48:05

about this spectrum of art to business

48:07

where they might want to be shifting to

48:09

be more strategically- involved or have

48:11

more impact or at least have more self

48:14

determination over the work they want to do

48:16

and more opinion on that road map,

48:18

what's coming down and do I agree

48:20

with that being something I want to work with?

48:22

So I think that there's this

48:25

stall out that kind of happens mid career

48:27

where the stakeholder management, the communication

48:30

skills, the storytelling, and

48:32

the MBA- level business

48:35

understanding and business skills become really relevant

48:37

if you want to either participate more holistically

48:40

as an IC or become a leader.

48:42

And so my theory is

48:44

that there's not enough resources to

48:46

help people bridge that gap. So

48:48

that's what's really driving this. The ways I

48:51

I'm expressing that so far and the

48:53

strategy I'm taking is one with courses

48:55

that I'm launching that are really hyper

48:57

targeted towards senior

48:59

lead staff, principal

49:01

level designers in bridging

49:04

some of those gaps and developing some of those skills.

49:06

So that's where describing the ROI of design

49:08

comes in. And what are the frameworks for us

49:10

to connect up to business value, understand

49:13

what businesses do. And then on coaching,

49:15

it's a lot more like a managerial relationship

49:18

where it's, you know, my, my theory is that

49:20

it should be very tailored toward the individual

49:22

and understanding what their needs are. And so

49:24

some people are going through job changes.

49:26

Some people have questions about their career

49:29

trajectory. Some people have a meeting with

49:31

the CTO coming up and they need to come up with

49:33

a narrative and be able to feel a little

49:35

more confident going into that meeting. And just having

49:37

a sounding board is really valuable to

49:39

them. And so I tailor all

49:41

of my sessions and tailor all

49:43

of my direction to that individual's

49:46

unique needs on that week, while

49:48

also trying to weave in what is your longer term

49:50

career goal and strategy. So we're we're

49:52

doing some short term work, but we're also

49:55

keeping an eye on that long term trajectory.

49:57

And if someone comes to you thinking, Ryan,

50:00

I need some help with X, what

50:02

could they then expect from you? Is

50:04

it a weekly relationship? Is it a monthly? Is

50:06

it a call? Is it? How does

50:08

that work?

50:09

Yeah., it varies per person. Usually

50:11

it's one to two calls a month. And

50:14

we'll hop on for about an hour people will

50:16

come prepared and then maybe send me in advance

50:18

a few notes on what they want to talk about, and

50:20

we'll see where the conversation goes

50:22

from there. Sometimes we uncover something

50:25

that they hadn't thought about before,

50:27

and we'll want to dig into some tactics, but

50:30

I try to bringing,

50:32

and we'll want And every month

50:35

or every two weeks, give them

50:37

something tactical that they can react

50:39

to. And I describe it as a very

50:41

iterative process. We're going to talk about

50:43

your goals. We're going to come up with some tactics. You're

50:45

going to take that back to work. And

50:48

you're going to try some of those things and then

50:50

see what happens. And did the company

50:52

receive it well? Does it match with your culture?

50:54

Did you get some pushback? Let's analyze

50:57

the results we got. Very. It's

50:59

very iterative and very experimental, and then

51:01

we'll pivot and adjust and dial things

51:03

in as we go from there. Meeting every two weeks

51:05

allows you to shorten that iteration cycle,

51:08

but once a month is also enough when people have these

51:10

big moments they can prioritize and say, I'm really

51:12

stuck on this, or I really need help with this. And

51:15

that, even just monthly, helps a lot

51:17

of people get through those things.

51:18

So tailored to you, tactical,

51:21

leave with something you can apply tomorrow

51:23

if you want to. And then in a couple of weeks come back and

51:25

let's discuss how that worked, whether it worked and

51:27

what if you had any pushback. So it's

51:29

a, it's this feed continuous feedback loop of

51:32

you feed in different. ideas

51:34

tactics, whatever it may be. And then people,

51:36

your coaching would go in and apply that in

51:38

and try to make it work.

51:40

The other benefit of coaching, I think, is that that

51:42

coach is not part of the political

51:44

scene in your company. So this is someone you can share

51:46

anything with and get feedback from

51:48

who's going to look at things from an outside perspective

51:51

and bring in new types of ideas.

51:53

And I've had people say, I don't feel comfortable sharing this with my

51:55

manager, but can you give me some perspective

51:57

on how to deal with my manager? So I think that's

51:59

really beneficial. And then the other side

52:01

that's interesting about having a coach is that

52:03

person can transcend jobs.

52:06

And I've had managers who I worked really

52:08

well with that they leave or

52:10

I leave and you lose that rapport

52:12

and you lose that relationship. And maybe that person

52:14

you stay in touch with a little bit, but they're not

52:17

able to coach you on your next job and

52:19

so I think having that person that transcends

52:21

jobs and is able to see you from one job

52:24

to another and talk about it your overall

52:26

journey and, what can you learn from one

52:28

environment? I think someone talked to me about, I

52:30

need to figure out what my first 90 day plan is

52:33

on my new job. So how can someone transcend

52:35

those jobs and keep an eye on your overall,

52:37

like journey as a designer through your

52:39

career.

52:40

Awesome. That's great to hear. I love

52:42

this approach. I think it's also super important

52:44

for. designers, cause you said you're focusing

52:47

a lot on that mi d level where

52:49

these things start to become very important. But I think if

52:51

I can add something, I think mentorship

52:53

and coaching are important at every step of your career.

52:56

And it's, you can always learn something. You can always

52:58

learn from someone else. So whether that's by listening

53:00

to a customer actually working with someone like you,

53:02

I think these are all very valuable. We're all

53:04

we should all grow at all times. So

53:07

let's bring this one home. I always ask the same

53:09

two questions at the end of the podcast. I'm

53:11

curious to see how every single person

53:14

answers that same question differently. So

53:16

I'm going to ask you the same. If you would have to highlight

53:18

one action that you think led to your success

53:21

that in a way or another separated you from

53:23

some of your peers, what would you say that would

53:25

be for you?

53:26

So early career when

53:29

I'm in high school and I'm interested

53:31

in design, the thing that was different

53:33

was I took every single project I could

53:35

possibly get, and it didn't matter if it was

53:37

like a 20 business card

53:39

project redesign. I think I got paid

53:41

20 bucks to redesign a substitute teacher's

53:44

business card. I think there were classmates

53:46

who made fun of me, because I was like hired

53:48

to optimize web photos for

53:50

a website that sold GI Joes

53:52

to hobbyists. I took every single

53:55

job. And it had nothing to do with

53:57

like how glorious it was, but I was

53:59

learning graphic design, I was practicing

54:01

image optimization for web and photography.

54:03

I was getting all these little skills. And so,

54:06

um, you know, I've worked at some organizations where

54:08

I've given learning opportunities

54:10

to designers and they say, Oh,

54:12

I don't want to do that project because my advisor

54:14

said I need to learn this specific thing or have

54:16

this on my resume. So I'm not going to do that. And

54:19

they passed up this learning -opportunity, which

54:21

is okay. Like sometimes you don't have time or

54:23

sometimes it's not the right fit and you should

54:25

feel empowered to not take things that

54:27

are exploitive or not the right thing

54:29

for you. But I do feel like

54:32

you shouldn't over optimize. You shouldn't try

54:34

to like cherry pick the right experiences.

54:36

What I did was just take as much as I could possibly

54:38

get my hands on. And that gave

54:40

me a lot of kind of tangential

54:43

skills. So one, I'm learning all these

54:45

design skills because I'm so hands on so many

54:47

different things simultaneously. But I'm also

54:49

learning how to sell to all these

54:51

different clients. I'm learning how to manage

54:54

my time as a full time student while

54:56

managing 15 clients at

54:58

the same time. And so I think there

55:00

is a benefit to if you want to

55:02

do something, do as much of it as you possibly

55:05

can. And not over optimize

55:07

for what is quote, like the right experience

55:09

for your resume because that will result

55:12

in time.

55:12

I think it's also about not getting precious about

55:15

all the work you do at some point. Yeah,

55:17

perhaps you can, but at least in the beginning of your career,

55:19

I also find it very important to try to do as

55:21

many things as possible, because otherwise, how

55:23

will you find out what you like when you haven't

55:25

tried to do different types of design work?

55:28

So I think that goes hand in hand

55:30

with some of my experience as well, where I still

55:32

remember as you were talking, some of these projects

55:34

had flashbacks of websites

55:36

that I spent weeks on for 50

55:39

and things like that. But yeah, I

55:41

guess I am here now. So if something has worked

55:43

the last question is what are we not

55:45

talking about when it comes to design?

55:47

Thank you.

55:48

This is a big one. I think there needs to be

55:50

more formal business education

55:52

in the design industry and I think that starts at

55:54

even the academic level. So many

55:56

design departments, in universities

55:59

are rooted in art departments and I do

56:01

think that creates a misunderstanding

56:03

for the business folks who don't see

56:05

design and aren't connected to the art department

56:08

in any way. They're not

56:10

witnessing design and design's not talking

56:12

to the business folks. And it creates this misconception

56:15

the design is about art. And it deprives

56:18

designers from the understanding of the application

56:20

of their work. The expectation

56:22

is that you, as you grow in your

56:24

career, you'll impact the business more. And

56:27

you'll likely want to do that. You'll want

56:29

to have more influence and you'll want to move down

56:31

that spectrum. Like we talked about,

56:33

designers learn business through osmosis, but

56:35

that's really inefficient, and that trial and error

56:37

can be really costly to your career.

56:40

In your career, you only get so many at

56:42

bats. You can only have so many jobs and

56:44

then you retire and you can only make so

56:46

many quote mistakes on your resume. And

56:49

so you want to try

56:51

to learn those things in an efficient way as possible.

56:53

So I would love to see there be

56:55

more business curriculum

56:57

in every design department

57:00

in every university in the world. Short

57:02

of that, I think designers need to

57:04

go and educate themselves on

57:06

business more formally, whether that's through

57:09

classes like mine or, Khan

57:11

Academy or whatever, having a mentor that's on the

57:13

business side of the organization, not just design

57:15

mentors. I spoke to someone and they're considering

57:17

a master's. I said, don't go get your master's

57:20

in design. You've got that box checked,

57:22

diversify, go study

57:24

some business in whatever way makes sense

57:26

for you. But I do think more formal

57:29

business education is really valuable. I think

57:31

it's a key that's missing. I don't think a lot of

57:33

people have done it, so you won't hear many people

57:35

advocating for it. But having

57:37

done it myself, I think it's really critical

57:39

and will change your perspective.

57:41

Thank you for that, Ryan. What can people find more

57:43

about you, read what you write ,find the course,

57:46

where can they get in touch?

57:47

Yeah. I'm on LinkedIn and would love to chat and

57:49

then my course is currently being hosted on maven.

57:52

com in the design section. So

57:54

there's many, many great courses on Maven

57:56

and I've got a great relationship with them. So I

57:58

highly recommend also taking business

58:01

courses on Maven. Those are all great

58:03

places to connect and learn more and I am always

58:05

happy to chat with designers. The best

58:07

part of my job is talking to just

58:09

dozens of designers from around the world all

58:11

day long and always happy to continue the conversation.

58:14

That's awesome. We'll put all of this in the show notes so people can

58:16

easily find you. Ryan, this has been hour

58:19

that has passed by very quickly. So thank you for that.

58:21

I hope people have learned a lot and enjoyed it as much as

58:23

I did. And I hope you enjoyed it as

58:25

well. So thank you very much. And I will speak soon.

58:27

Thanks for having me. If

58:31

you've listened this far well, you've

58:34

made it to the end of season three. We've learned

58:36

so much from Alastair at

58:38

Dropbox walking us through his great framework to present

58:40

work. Maria Pentkovski telling us about

58:42

the importance of coaching Tom Scott shedding

58:44

light on what we can do to increase our chances of

58:46

getting a job. This has been such

58:49

an insights back 10 episodes, and this is

58:51

by far the best season of the podcast,

58:53

and I'm so excited to try to best it

58:55

once again with season four later

58:57

this year. Catch you all then.