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.
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 …
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?