How I see and approach work
Design and Business
Businesses universally strive to rapidly reach profitability, prolong growth, and delay or avert decline. Design has ways to contribute to all those goals. A leader should know how to align the design operation with the evolving and immediate needs of the business while safeguarding its long-term success by ensuring that user interests remain integral to the company's core objectives.
Design and customer
For customers, adopting a new product/feature always comes with different forms of anxiety while they universally want to spend less of their limited recourses (attention, cognitive power, time, money) toward the benefits they receive from it. That creates a constant challenge for the businesses to fight customers’ inertia and resistance for change.
As a pragmatic leader, I constantly evaluate if we allocate enough energy on understanding customers' pains and anxieties and drive adoption. Is our processes and rutines put enough emphasize on that and if anything blocks the team in achieving that?
Design and Impact
Design functions within typical organizations may have limited authority over direction but have significant potential for influence over it. The effectiveness of a design leader can be measured by how much of this potential they can unlock. Can they shift the mindset of their designers from focusing solely on design quality to design impact? Give them the tool and remove the barrier to cultivate an obsession with usage as much as usability.
Design, Specificity, Creativity
Success cannot be measured in an unbounded context. I document processes not to limit designers’ creative freedom but to provide them with a baseline or fallback plan when needed. These processes help specify the minimum requirements needed to align operations and ensure a workable outcome. However, I always encourage designers to practice First Principles thinking, imagining solutions without constraints as a way of developing vision and demonstrate to their partners what is possible beyond the immediate and most practical approach.
Design culture and values
Collaboration thrives when there is trust.
Team spirit is nourished when everyone works toward shared goals.
Quality improves in a work environment that is safe for everyone to freely share their work and express viewpoints.
Productivity increases with motivated teams
Work remains enjoyable when you maintain a sense of humor and build deeper human connections.