Design at Scale - Grow Your Team and Influence Across the Organization

Design at Scale

Digital Experience (DX) Summit 2017

Chris Avore @erova

Enabling systems thinking to design for a complex future

• Manage a 30-ish person product design team

• Team of designers, front end devs, IA’s, researchers, content strategists

• Teach customer experience coursework at Rutgers University

• Currently writing a book on design management & leadership for Rosenfeld Media (2018)

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Mature industries that have focused on more, better and faster now need to adjust their thinking to include design as a key value differentiator.

Top companies are leading with design. Others that aren’t willing to invest in design because they think it can’t be measured or tied to ROI will fall behind.

Business as usual is no longer good enough.

C R E A T I V E D E S T R U C T I O N

Average company lifespan on S&P 500 Index (in years)

1960 2017

Improve quality of products & services

Reduce costs

Identify new opportunities for growth

Increase margins

Increase productivity

Reduce churn

E X P E C T A T I O N S

New competitors

New technologies

Growth pressure

Lower margins

Globalization

Talent/workforce challenges

More data to “help” us

and it all happens faster

than ever before

R E A L I T Y

Customer Experience

Complex Maze

Most companies’ successes are built on delivering predictable products by repeatable means.

predictable & repeatable

== complicated

predictable & repeatable

!= complex

predictable & repeatable

analysis

synthesis

logic

rationality

empiricism

efficiency

elimination of waste

best practices

These companies thrive on certainty and minimizing risk.

Reductionisiom is the most natural thing in the world to grasp.

It’s simply the belief that a whole can be understood if you understand its parts, and the nature of their sum.

No one in her left brain could reject reductionism.

Douglas Hofstrader, Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid

“

And now many companies are trying to solve new complex problems old ways

predictable & repeatable complex

C O M P L E X S Y S T E M S I N P R A C T I C E

Customer Experience 2020

C U S T O M E R E X P E R I E N C E 2 0 2 0

• Smart Stores

• Hyperpersonalization

• Intelligent Assistants

• Remote Experts

• Instant Fulfillment

• Virtual and Augmented Reality

• Application Experience

In a complicated world, we can look to the past to find patterns and previous solutions.

predictable & repeatable complex

In a complex world, depending on patterns of the past can be expensive and disastrous.

D E S I G N & S Y S T E M S T H I N K I N G

Is Design Thinking enough?

Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.

W H A T I S D E S I G N T H I N K I N G ?

By using design thinking, we make decisions based on what future customers really want instead of relying only on historical data or making risky bets based on instinct instead of evidence.

• fast iterations

• early and frequent interaction with customers

• agile process design with less hierarchy

• learning-by-doing approach via prototypes, mockups, etc

I S D E S I G N T H I N K I N G E N O U G H ?

Design thinking may not do enough to consider the responses of controlling or optimizing parts of systems when focusing on only designing one or two segments

I S D E S I G N T H I N K I N G E N O U G H ?

Even though there are many perspectives involved in parts of the design process, the stakeholders give input solely from their individual experiences and never see how it fits into the whole system.

I S D E S I G N T H I N K I N G E N O U G H ?

The designers’ role is still to piece it all together. 

Customer Experience

Complex Maze

Businesses that used to be

separate are now interconnected

and interdependent, which

means these systems are now

more complex.

Rita McGrath

Complex Adaptive Systems are

diverse living elements made up

of multiple interconnected

agents that have the capacity to

grow and change. Sharon VanderKaay

We can determine complicated outcomes.

We can only enable complex outcomes.

We can specify complicated systems.

We can only intervene in complex systems.

Irene Ng

Design thinking is no longer enough to

prepare for the complex challenges facing

our teams, products, and businesses.

We need to view these challenges through a

lens of systems thinking to survive, scale,

and thrive in a complex world.

Systems thinking is a management discipline that concerns an understanding of a system by examining the linkages and interactions between the components that comprise the entirety of that defined system.

Systems thinking is a management discipline that concerns an understanding of a system by examining the linkages and interactions between the components that comprise the entirety of that defined system.

linkages interactionsentirety of that defined system

Systems thinking is a management discipline that concerns an understanding of a system by examining the linkages and interactions between the components that comprise the entirety of that defined system.entirety of that defined system

Managers are not confronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other.

I call such situations messes.

Russell Ackoff, systems theorist

“

• increase in efficiency through reduced redundancy (one size fits all)

• subsidies so people have an incentive to stay rather than change

• more sunk costs into maintaining status quo

• increased command and control (less and less flexibility)

• preoccupation with process (more rules, more time devoted to sticking to procedures)

• suppression of novelty, less experimentation

• rising transaction costs to get stuff done

• Smart Stores

• Hyperpersonalization

• Intelligent Assistants

• Remote Experts

• Instant Fulfillment

• Virtual and Augmented Reality

• Application Experience

• increase in efficiency through reduced redundancy (one size fits all)

• subsidies so people have an incentive to stay rather than change

• more sunk costs into maintaining status quo

• increased command and control (less and less flexibility)

• preoccupation with process (more rules, more time devoted to sticking to procedures)

• suppression of novelty, less experimentation

• rising transaction costs to get stuff done

• Smart Stores

• Hyperpersonalization

• Intelligent Assistants

• Remote Experts

• Instant Fulfillment

• Virtual and Augmented Reality

• Application Experience

predictable & repeatable complex

Business

ProductMe

Dev

When will this ship?

How many designers do you need?

How many releases will this take?

• How many releases will this take?

• How many designers do you need?

• When will this ship?

predictable & repeatable

E M B R A C E D E S I G N I N G F O R C O M P L E X I T Y

Diversification

Modularity

Close Feedback Loops

Redundancy

1. Diversification of ideas

D I V E R S I F YI have an have

an idea!

Great idea!

Agree 100%

Let’s do it!

I have an have an idea!

Let’s try it this way

I’m skeptical

How can we test it?

D I V E R S I F Y

Hire people from different backgrounds

Don’t fall for domain knowledge or years of experience when hiring

Bring in new people to your meeting

Send someone else

Invite more voices

Acknowledge novelty

Team Approach Business

Alternate prototyping methods, research techniques

Change up who presents to stakeholders, bosses, interview clients, etc

Continually monitor the industry as potential partners, not competitors

Highlight risk of only engaging with one content provider, no API, etc

An organization that places high value explicitly or implicitly on getting along may be intolerant of conflict, unusual ideas, or voices from the margin.

D I V E R S I F Y

• Diversity fosters innovation and creativity through a greater variety of problem-solving approaches, perspectives, and ideas.

• Diversity helps companies react more effectively to market shifts and new customer needs.

• Virtuous cycle of improved returns for companies that prioritize diversity at all levels of the company, including the Board, Executive and senior leadership

“In our top-100 executive meetings we spend more than half of our time speaking about Asia. But if I look around the room I hardly see anybody with an Asian background”. Fortunately, CEOs from many different industries are increasingly adopting the view that “it is crucial for a company’s employees to reflect the people they serve”.

2. Modularity

M O D U L A R I T Y

M O D U L A R I T Y

Centralized Partnership

Teams focused on users(not features)

M O D U L A R I T Y : C E N T R A L I Z E D T E A M S

Design teams maintain commitment across meaningful set of products & features

Maintain a holistic view across the entire customer experience

Teams bring diverse skills to different projects

Freedom for designers to move across projects

Ability to load balance

M O D U L A R I T Y : T E A M F O C U S

Design OpsDesign OpsWhere do I find markup, colors swatches, values, icons, patterns, breakpoints?

How do I load the CSS if I’m prototyping, in production, in a web view?

What’s the best way to load fonts, to display icons?

Where should I file bugs and find where other people found a solution to their problems (issue tracking, knowledge base)?

How do I contribute to the Design System (fix a bug, add an icon)?

M O D U L A R I T Y

• Where your team sits in the organization

• Research resources / pattern libraries / style guide / design systems

• Enable redundancy

Organizing your design team by function (collaboration, data visualization, etc) instead of business unit or product increases modularity.

3. Close feedback loops

We’re gonna be rich!

The prototype is testing great

It’s amazing!

The prototype has serious problems

Let’s get to work.

Let’s look at the research

I’m ready to help

The first test went OK

Uh oh, the prototype has

serious problems

C L O S E F E E D B A C K L O O P S

Don’t bring me

Bring me

When there are long delays in feedback loops, some sort of foresight is essential.

To act only when a problem becomes obvious is to miss an important opportunity to solve the problem.

Russell Ackoff, systems theorist

“

C L O S E F E E D B A C K L O O P S

As a design manager, it may not be your responsibility to make sure all parties are talking to each other, but you can facilitate the conversations and recognize who is missing.

• Invite business & product execs to design studio

• Share design research with everyone

• Keep Support, Sales, Marketing included

• Monitor thresholds & patterns, outliers

4. Redundancy

R E D U N D A N C Y

R E D U N D A N C Y

• Greater exposure to more themes, not more people

• Cross-train designers so more people know research, visual design, etc

• Teach product managers, stakeholders, others how to apply design methods in their daily work

• Move people to different projects so others know what the projects are about

• Don’t over-rely on specialization

Teams in which different individuals took turns leading the group were more creative than teams in which one person was consistently in charge

MIT Sloan Management Review

S U M M A R Y

• Diverse teams, approaches, and products increase your ability to react to disruptive events or take on new opportunities

• Modular teams can sustain disruption without adversely affecting other parts of your organization

• Longer, looser feedback loops mean disruptions can go unnoticed

• Redundancy provides multiple sources of productivity, knowledge, and leadership

• Designing for emergence gives you flexibility to pivot or change when your feedback loops indicate you should shift approach

These recommendations will be difficult to implement in a business built for optimization, efficiency, and maximum returns based on minimum effort.

process is not a proxy for quality

Hi-Tech Over-Reliance on Process Detector

Your businessYour business

Systems thinking prepares us for the risks of the design challenges of tomorrow

In today’s business world, design thinking and systems thinking are considered separate things.

The challenge remains how the design thinking community can learn from the systems thinking community and vice versa.

Systems thinking prepares us for the risks of the design challenges of tomorrow

Systems thinking can help designers better understand the world around them.

Systems thinking prepares us for the risks of the design challenges of tomorrow

Designers can achieve more sustainable designs by following systems principles.

Systems thinking prepares us for the risks of the design challenges of tomorrow

Design can be greatly enhanced if it improves the performance of the system as a whole, even if you are redesigning the part.

But Facebook’s unquestioning commitment to the Hacker Way—to a belief system that puts technical solutions first, and encourages programmers and product teams to take risks without thinking about their implications—made it easy for it to stay blind to the problem, until it was far too late.

At a time when the world is more messy, more crowded, more interconnected, more interdependent, and more rapidly changing than ever before, the more ways of seeing, the better.

reclaim our intuition about whole systems

hone our abilities to understand parts

see interconnections

ask “what-if ” questions about possible future behaviors

be creative and courageous about system redesign

C H A N G E T H E M I N D S E T T O E N A B L E S C A L I N G

See your design team, service teams, as a part of an interdependent system

Appreciate and expect ambiguity

Account for non-linear progress

Replace scarcity-driven approaches with creating abundance

Embrace grassroots/bottom-up ideas & projects

Learn from experience, not just training

Strive for influence, not control

Organizations are complex adaptive systems.

people

hierarchy

norms

values

partners

clients

S C A L I N G D E S I G N A C R O S S T H E O R G A N I Z A T I O N

S C A L I N G D E S I G N A C R O S S T H E O R G A N I Z A T I O N

Observe

Listen

Assess Skill Levels

Learn the business

Identify allies, promoters, skeptics, saboteurs

Foster relationships w/ primary partners:

Dev teams

Product management

Understand the hierarchy

Just Hired, New to Org1.Step

Introduce Best Practices

Share User Research

Identify High Performers

Begin designing for re-use

Hire Generalists

Foster relationships w/ other stakeholders

- Commercial

- Service

- Marketing

Establish measures for design quality: metrics, KPI, OKR, analytics

design one Product2.Step multiple products

Introduce Design Ops

Find inefficiencies

Revisit Governance

Empower new design leaders

Hire Specialists

Evangelize & Show thought leadership

Show improvement via sales, retention, margin, revenue, etc

3.Step multiple business units

Spin Design Ops into own team

Share & Apply Process

Empower new design teams

Evangelize, educate

Identify new allies, skeptics, etc

Show successes at portfolio level, not product level

Continue identifying new leaders to take on new projects

Advise on innovation, new ventures, what to sunset

4.Step

Design at Scale

Chris Avore

@erova

@avore@erova.com

linkedin.com/in/chrisavore

Digital Experience (DX) Summit 2017

Thank you!