Design Management

I’ve been working as a Designer for 20 years now. In some of my previous jobs, I really felt like I got a seat a the table, either by virtue of my position as Design Manager, or because of my drive to influence and help teams better decisions.

And yet, there were too many occasions where user needs were not making their way into the my projects/products roadmaps. Teams start without a clear vision nor a clear focus of which problems to solve and for whom. I caught myself in the middle more projects that I wished asking people you work with, “why are we working on this?”

That’s when I realised I haven’t found the vocabulary and tools to frame users problems in a way that align with stakeholder business strategies. I needed better prepared to influence the business decisions and strategy that help create such advantage and superior value to the competition.

Design Strategy & Management

As design manager, I’ve engaged in several activities related to product definition, and design strategy. Currently I help teams drive Product Design vision of SAP SuccessFactors across our product line, ensuring cohesive product narratives, while documenting our strategies with guidelines, and establishing best practices and strategy principles

Product Definition and Requirements Prioritization

Assisting Product Manager using the Outcome-driven Innovation Framework

I’ve helped define and shape the Product Design vision, ensuring cohesive product narratives, while documenting our strategies with guidelines, and establishing best practices and strategy principles.

User Research

Different ethnographic research methods to inform Product Discovery

Since a lot of my recent work involved designing productivity-oriented applications, I’ve used several different ethnographic research methods for user research, including contextual inquiry studies to build up mental models and workflows

Data Visualization

Support to Decision Making

I have created various types of relationship, interaction diagrams and other data visualization techniques to communicate with different stakeholders

AutoCAD Map3D

Product requirements gathering processes

My responsibilities as design manager for the AutoCAD Map3D 2013 release project were:
Spearhead a product line-wide initiative to replace the traditional product requirements gathering process with a new User Centered approach of researching/validating user needs…

Personas & Scenarios

Creating shared understanding around user needs, goals, and pain points

I’ve created Personas & Scenarios to communicate the synthesis of User Research activities to different stakeholders and different purposes

AutoCAD Utility Design

Product Definition and Requirements Prioritization

My responsibilities as design manager for the AutoCAD Utility Design 2012 release project were:
Assist Product Management group with Product Definition …

Design Briefs

Establishing boundaries to design challenges, high level direction

I’ve authored, edited and reviewed several design briefs, which proved to be very useful for establishing some boundaries to the design challenge we are trying to address


Design Strategy Talks

In this section, you will learn about different trainings, talks and workshops on the topic of ‘Design Strategy’ that I presented on different events in which I’m trying to raise the awareness of the importance of designers to think more strategically about their own work. You can see the complete set of talks in the Talks & Workshops section.

Becoming a Design Strategist

The call to influence and translate strategy in ways that drive design vision forward

In this post I’ll reflect on some of the challenges that designers face in while designing in new and complex environments, raise the awareness about how unprepared designers are if they are not able to understand and influence strategy, advocate for a new role called Design Strategist, and propose a minimum set of skills required for becoming a Design Strategist.

Strategy and the Need of Facilitation

Support to Decision Making

In this post, I’ll argue for the Need of Facilitation in the sense that designers must become skilled facilitators that respond, prod, encourage, guide, coach and teach as they guide individuals and groups to make decisions that are critical in the business world though effective processes.

The Skills of a Strategist

Picking up skills to influence strategy

If designers want to influence and translate strategy in ways that drive their user experience vision forward, they must become both business-savvy analysts and synthesizers. What are the skills of a strategist designers need to become both business-savvy analysts and synthesisers?

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