Product Design

Companies make promises, and their products and services are the primary vehicle for delivering on them. If they fall short, everything else they do will be impacted by trying to recover from those failures. Modern products and services are complex and full of small interactions and opportunities to make good on your commitments. An accountable design team is your primary tool for humanizing products, smoothing out the rough edges, and making sure that your communications and actions are aligned.

Strategy

Know where you’re going. Involve your design team early and often, and let them help you understand how best to achieve the goals of the company through human interactions. Design and communications have the power to lead and inspire your organization and customers to go places and do things that they never thought possible, but they can't do that without intent. Understanding every dimension of your company, its products and its customers is key to a long term design strategy that works.

Brand & Values

Company communication is not about the company, it is about the people. It should be intentional, thoughtful, and human. Great brands inspire employees and customers by communicating a company's past, present, and future consistently across every channel and touch point. This requires a clear understanding of everywhere you're connecting with people, and how important it is that those interactions be intentional. A great design team effectively executes a brand strategy across all of your products, services, and communications.

All About the People

How can we all be a little better? How can teams of people collectively trust each other enough to allow for constant change and improvement? How do you balance individual needs with the needs of the organization and short term versus long term goals? This is what makes me want to help people every day. My approach is built on two ideas: I can always improve, and my capabilities are infinite. I believe that I am at my best when I am helping other people feel the same way. Neither thing is always true, but a foundation of belief that things can always change for the better has been critical to my success, often in the face of very compelling contrary arguments.

Communications

What happens in the space between people? How can we clearly communicate the ideas that we have? What tools can we use to help us? I love subtle communication details like color, contrast, context, and tone. They are great as individual tools, and when combined across multiple products, services, and advertisements they make up a complex quilt of messages that can do a beautiful job of building relationships. This space between people is what fascinates me, and it’s where the most interesting products and brands thrive.

Aesthetics & Utility

Why do we choose the products we use? How do we use them to help define us, and how can they help us explore who we are and challenge how we think about ourselves? What are the impacts these choices have on how others perceive us? Aesthetics and utility are huge drivers of our decisions in these areas, and I have spent my career making them work together.

Leadership

People are the internal reservoir for growth and change inside an organization, and the ability of a company to change and grow is governed by their motivation and capacity to execute. Great design leaders care about their people above all, and should work tirelessly to cultivate two things: an open environment to create, and a clear path to success.

Environment

Great design work comes from vulnerability, and vulnerability requires trust. A design leader is responsible for creating and maintaining an environment that works for all of the different personalities that make up a team. This requires building the right internal team processes and techniques, and educating and gaining the trust of the broader organization about the needs and overall value of the design function.

Paths To Success

A design team will only reach its highest potential when it has a shared vision to motivate and guide difficult decisions. The best teams hire and retain great people, but truly great design teams are much more than just collections of talented individuals. Understanding the needs of teams and individuals and the ability to match them is a vital skill for a design leader. The best environments are ones where the goals of the team and its individuals aren't in conflict, the individuals trust each other, and everyone knows that their goals are not in direct conflict with those of the team and company. Consistently ensuring the goals are communicated clearly, and are constantly revisited and revised, creates an environment with clear paths to success that people need to maximize their potential.