Leadership Approach

My unique leadership style has been shaped by diverse experiences and insights from working with large corporations, startups, and design studios. In my approach to design leadership, I focus on three key pillars: establishing a solid foundation for success, implementing processes that foster excellence, and prioritizing a people-centric approach. I have had the privilege of effectively guiding teams through these essential areas, ensuring that our collective efforts consistently produce outstanding results.

“You know who the best managers are? They're the great individual contributors who never, ever want to be a manager, but decide they want to be a manager, because no one else is going to be able to do as good a job as them”.

––– Steve Jobs

Foundation

Well begun is half done.

Shared Purpose and Leadership I believe in fostering a shared vision across my design team, articulated through effective strategies and team charters. My focus is on providing strong, focused leadership to align the team with our organizational goals, ensuring cohesive collaboration and a unified approach to design.

User Empathy and Value Creation My approach involves using in-depth user research to deeply understand and articulate user needs, integrating this insight into our design process. This helps in creating substantial value by aligning our design solutions closely with user expectations and experiences.

Navigating Ambiguity I view uncertainty and ambiguity as opportunities for innovative problem-solving. My strategy involves adapting our design approach to leverage these opportunities, fostering an environment that encourages exploration and experimentation.

Strategy and Understanding Value I focus on developing a visionary design strategy informed by a comprehensive understanding of our business context, user needs, and product goals. My aim is to articulate and create value through design that aligns with our broader business objectives.

Output

Excellence at every step of the way.

Supporting the Entire Journey I ensure that my design team is integrally involved in every aspect of the customer's journey. My team is adaptable, skilled across various domains, and capable of addressing the full spectrum of user experiences.

Quality and Delivery Standards I balance the delivery of design solutions with maintaining high-quality standards. I establish clear quality benchmarks while ensuring timely delivery, emphasizing the importance of both perfection and efficiency in our design output.

Process and Practice I implement robust design processes and practices that streamline our workflow, enhance efficiency, and ensure consistency in the quality of our output. This includes adopting best practices, methodologies, and tools that facilitate effective design execution.

Diverse Perspectives and Problem Solving I champion embracing diverse perspectives and backgrounds within my design team to fuel innovation and creative problem-solving. This diversity leads to more comprehensive and effective design solutions by incorporating varied viewpoints and approaches.

Management

It all starts with people.

People-Centric Approach I prioritize treating team members as unique individuals, focusing on their personal development and recognizing each member's contributions to our success.

Diversity and Collaboration I build a team with diverse perspectives to enrich our design process and output. My leadership fosters a collaborative environment where team members can share ideas and develop innovative solutions together.

Operational Efficiency I manage the operational aspects of my design team to optimize performance and productivity. This includes streamlining processes and ensuring efficient resource allocation.

Empowering Individuals I create an environment that empowers each individual within my team, acknowledging their unique strengths and contributions. I provide opportunities for personal and professional growth, encouraging autonomy and supporting individual development paths.

Design
thinking

I find the design thinking problem-solving approach immensely helpful in tackling complex challenges. I have successfully used the framework in my projects to drive human-centered innovation without overlooking the possibilities of technology and the requirements for business success. The approach has enabled me to align design strategy with business objectives effectively. It has fostered collaboration between the design team and other departments, allowing for innovation despite tight deadlines. Through design thinking, I've implemented prototyping and iterative processes in projects, adeptly managed feedback and critique on design work, and created a prioritized, actionable, measurable roadmap for key initiatives. This approach has been crucial in driving both creative and strategic success.

Constraints vs. restraints

Product development involves delivering solutions within specific constraints such as scope, schedule, and cost, which are predictable and, thus, more manageable to estimate. In contrast, design thinking is a creative and iterative process, often yielding multiple outcomes that can be less predictable. Employing design principles, best practices, and values as restraints helps manage these outcomes and choose the right thing to do. Recognizing the difference between 'constraints' in product development and 'restraints' in design thinking is critical to controlling project outcomes and accurately estimating efforts.

Constraint determines:
What cannot be done

Restraint determines:
What should not be done

Design philosophy

My design philosophy acts as both a mission statement and a guiding north star for my team. It embodies a collection of principles, beliefs, and values that steer our design process. Here are my six core design values:

Simple

Advocating for simplicity by removing superfluous elements to achieve both clarity and functionality in design.

Empathetic

Prioritizing the understanding of users' needs and focusing on empathy and usability to create designs centered around the user.

Emotional

Aiming to evoke specific emotional responses to enhance user engagement and loyalty through an emotional connection.

Intentional

Emphasizing intentionality in design, where each element is thoughtfully incorporated to serve a specific purpose and align with the object's function.

Systemic

Integrating systems thinking into the design process, considering the broader impacts and interactions of design decisions.

Inclusive

Committing to inclusivity by creating accessible and user-friendly designs for a diverse audience.

Process and practice

The quality of a design team's output is not only their skills but also the sophistication and sensitivity with which they operate. I have established standardized processes and activities for the product development process that act as a formula for consistent results. This approach enables cross-functional teamwork with remarkable speed and iteration, fostering an environment where team members can readily exchange feedback.

Empathize

Purpose & Goals
  • Understand demand and market opportunity
  • Research user needs
  • Research business needs
  • Identify current user behaviors
Activities
  • Customer interviews
  • Insignts from research, analysis, shadowing
  • Job stories
  • Journey map / user flows
Key Drivers
  • Product
  • Product Marketing
  • Design
  • Research
  • CX
Exit Criteria
  • PRD Draft
  • Concept Sketches

Define

Purpose & Goals
  • Define problem and goals
  • Define product strategy
  • Define scope and timing
  • Define success metrics
Milestones
  • Product Line Review
Activities
  • Choosing success metrics
  • Understanding constraints
  • Validating assumptions
  • Gathering requirements
  • Estimating time and resources
Key Drivers
  • Product
  • Design
XFT Partners
  • CX
  • UX Research
  • Product Marketing
  • Engineering
Exit Criteria
  • PLR passed
  • Success metrics defined
  • PRD draft

Ideate

Purpose & Goals
  • Share and collaborate on potential design solutions
  • Determine flow, features, format and structure
Milestones
  • Design Huddle Presentation
Activities
  • User flows and feature sets
  • Information architecture
  • Journey mapping
  • Design sketches
  • Copywrting
Key Drivers
  • Design
  • Product
XFT Partners
  • Engineering
  • CX
  • Product Marketing
  • DSS
Exit Criteria
  • Potential design solutions
  • PRD
  • Copy draft

Prototype

Purpose & Goals
  • Design proposed solutions
  • Write content to be tested
  • Document design decisions
Activities
  • Component specs
  • Copy deck
  • Sharing solution with key stakeholders
Key Drivers
  • Design
XFT Partners
  • Product
  • UX research
Exit Criteria
  • Testable prototype
  • Research plan
  • Revised copy

Test

Purpose & Goals
  • Test solution through qualitative and quantitative measures
  • Report on progress
  • Hypothesis
Activities
  • Usability testing
  • Additional research methodologies
  • Data and testing analysis
Key Drivers
  • Product
  • Design
  • UX Research
XFT Partners
  • CX
Exit Criteria
  • Product quality demonstrated
  • User testing data
  • Customer acceptance

Review

Purpose & Goals
  • Apply insights to product
  • Peer reviews
  • Cross-functional sign-off
  • Tech feasibility reviews
Milestones
  • Research Review
Activities
  • Design critiques
  • Cross-functional stakeholder sessions
Key Drivers
  • Design
  • Product
  • Research
XFT Partners
  • Executives (optional)
  • CX
  • Engineering
  • Product Marketing
Exit Criteria
  • Stakeholder approval
  • Team alignment
  • Research insights

Final Design

Purpose & Goals
  • Finalize experience design
Activities
  • Design critiques
  • Dev handoff
Key Drivers
  • Design
XFT Partners
  • Product
  • Engineering
Exit Criteria
  • Final design documentation

Comp Review

Purpose & Goals
  • Executive visibility and buy-in
Milestones
  • Executive Design Review (aka comprehensive review)
Key Drivers
  • Design
  • Product
XFT Partners
  • Executives
  • Engineering
  • PMM
  • CX
  • PMO
Exit Criteria
  • Executive approval
  • Stakeholder approval

Implement

Purpose & Goals
  • Design/Dev handoff
  • Build design solution
Activities
  • Design and Engg pairing
  • Ensure content alignment with other teams
  • Launch management/ Internal communications
Key Drivers
  • Engineering
XFT Partners
  • Design
  • Product
  • CX
Exit Criteria
  • QA-ready code

Design Approval

Purpose & Goals
  • Verify that implementation matches design
  • Quality assurance
  • Prevention of major failures in production applications
Milestones
  • Design/QA approval
Activities
  • Identifying inconsistencies, system errors and feature redundancies
Key Drivers
  • Design
  • QA
XFT Partners
  • Engineering
  • Product
Exit Criteria
  • Design approval
  • Code pushed to production

Release

Purpose & Goals
  • Initial public release
Typically Includes
  • Pushing code into production
  • A/B testing
  • Launching marketing campaigns
  • Maintenance and migration
  • CX product support
Key Drivers
  • Engineering
  • Product
  • Product Marketing
  • CX
XFT Partners
  • Design
Exit Criteria
  • Initial public release

Learn and Iterate

Purpose & Goals
  • Fixes and rapid iteration
  • Metrics and performance tracking
  • Quality assurance
Activities
  • A/B test analysis
  • Measuring against success and previously defined metrics
Key Drivers
  • Design
  • Product
XFT Partners
  • UX Research
  • Stakeholders
Exit Criteria
  • Atleast two weeks of tracking
  • Stakeholder approval

See my process come to life

Twenty+ years of excellence

I’ve had success improving millions of lives through the products I designed at Yahoo, Cisco and Symantec and a few other startups. Take a look at my portfolio of diverse product design work, from mobile to desktop, highlighting UI/UX, branding, spatial design, design systems, and design ops.