Product & Design, Strategy & Leadership
Here are a few things that I have picked up that help keep the design process moving when you can’t be in the same room putting post-its on a whiteboard together. Set expectations with an agenda. Before you send out a meeting invite for any Design Thinking session, draft an agenda that FULLY explains the process, …
Continue reading “Collaboration tips for a remote work world”
Let me know if you’ve worked on a project like this. Think of a product team that’s working on some kind of online platform, we’ll call them TechSite. Someone on the TechSite team, a leader of some kind, decides that an initiative is important and declares it a priority to launch a new product. The …
Without risk, there is no opportunity. Any business, any organization–even any individual person–will face their own responsibility for identifying risks, assessing the probability and consequences, and managing the risk to the best possible outcome. Some people are better at it than others, and some firms are better at it than others. Designers can find themselves …
The Knowdell Career Values Card Sort is a straightforward online card sort tool to help prioritize what aspects of your career you value or those you could pursue. I did an assessment as part of my MBA program, among many others. My report indicates the following variables that are key to my work satisfaction, in …
Over the course of my MBA, I have taken a series of assessments to determine strengths, weaknesses, and skills. These are mostly provided by my program in an effort for every student to be come more attuned to their abilities and strategize ways to address their weaknesses, whether that means taking on new skills or …
Last week, I was let go in a re-organization. It was a pretty great ride, and the people I have met during my tenure there have been remarkable partners and coworkers. No hard feelings. The reality is that I’ve been dealing with pretty significant burnout for about… 9 months, maybe longer. Eventually, I would read …
We used to go here in the summer, to the Outer Banks. I have so many wonderful memories of time spent on the beach and in beach houses and at mini golf and getting ice cream and eating crabs and so many more things. One year, maybe in the early 2000s, I remember hearing on …
I think about stress a lot. I learned yesterday about an interesting study conducted in 1908 related to the application of stress and the affect on productivity, a study that is still impacting how organizations view worker productivity today. Robert M. Yerkes and John Dodson conducted an experiment with a box. The box had set …
Well, here we go. Why would a designer get an MBA? Early in my design career, I was the only interaction designer at a burgeoning ecommerce startup. I found myself pushing pixels around my computer screen after hours in the latest of a string of late nights. I was in the process of transforming our …
Update: I changed the title of this post from “Design Systems for Small Teams” to “Building a Design System Without a Team.” This is a more accurate description of the content of this post and addresses the key issues: building a design system when it is impossible to dedicate full-time resources. When a new design …