What happens when your design job evolves?

Matthew Wate at UXDX Community: EMEA Series: Design Process. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMWPDsmqZe4

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Designers moving into strategic roles

[00:00:00] I want to have a chat today about what happens as your design job evolves. It's something that's come up in the work that I've been doing consulting to organizations on how to implement design, particularly around design capability build. What we've seen is a trend in the last couple of years where organizations are promoting designers to more and more strategic roles. Coming from a design background and landing in these strategic positions, designers are having to navigate a whole new set of responsibilities, and also figure out how their natural skills and talents work as they move further and further away from the delivery of tangible design outputs. Hopefully this will help you as you figure out what to do next and what gets asked of you.

[00:00:47] The reason this is becoming key is that we are seeing a lot more design professionals finding themselves in the C-suite of big organizations, in roles such as chief digital officer, chief innovation officer, and in other organizations chief product officer, that sort of thing. Traditionally, people were coming into those from other areas: from marketing, or product, or innovation, or from a technology background. More and more we're seeing designers end up in these roles, and this is because there is a global drive towards a more customer-centric outlook. As a result, designers are being seen as the right kind of people to navigate organizations' move towards putting the customers at the center of what they do. The big challenge that we face when we get into these roles is how we use our unique skills and the strengths of the design community in a more strategic setting.

[00:01:34] Sorry. As our careers grow, it gets harder to define what we do. I think all designers have this problem. We've all got at least one relative who has no idea when we try to explain what we do, especially older relatives whose jobs were working in mines or harvesting peat or whatever it is. When you try to explain to them that you design an experience, it can be quite difficult. As your career becomes even more strategic and less tangible in terms of output, and we get asked what we do, we make this face: I'm not even going to try to explain it to you, Mum, it's not going to work in your world.

[00:02:15] That becomes even more difficult, because when you end up in these strategic roles and you start to ask yourself what is expected of you now that you're here, even you look at yourself and make this face: I actually don't know why I'm here. Everybody here is so formal and grown up, and they talk about numbers and accounts and retention, and I really just want to talk about why we're not having good experiences at the front end. That kind of questioning is crucial, actually, and it's really important that we recognize what we bring to the table as design professionals when we're in this setting.

What designers bring: problem solving and new voices

[00:02:48] At our core, at our heart, who we really are as design professionals is problem solvers. It's a very human thing. Innovation is driven by problem solving. We didn't start building houses because we like architecture. We built houses because we wanted to stay dry and safe and warm, and that evolved and created a whole load of other experiences. Similarly, all great human progression has come from a need, the solving of a problem, a challenge that needed to be overcome. As designers, and people who've worked in our various organizations, that's what we've always tried to do.

[00:03:28] This gives us a unique set of skills that we can take into the boardroom when we start making strategic decisions and start getting asked for input on big questions by the organizations that we work for. We can look at it from a problem-solving perspective in a way that's not driven or predetermined by a product perspective, or the technological constraints that some of our colleagues who come from different backgrounds bring to the table. Obviously that problem solving does make us look a little bit like superheroes, which we should all be very proud of. I wouldn't advocate wearing a cape to work, but if you think you could rock it, then please go ahead.

[00:04:03] There's also an important thing to recognize here: there is a time for new voices in business strategy. The reason this is crucial is that the time is now, the time is right, because the world has changed, perspectives have changed. Traditionally it was these guys who made all of the decisions, and they gave us some great things. They gave us climate change, the global financial crisis, my pet peeve, middle managers riding Segways in open plan offices, and of course toxic masculinity and a culture of abuse and bullying in the workplace. So their greatest hits are not so great, and it's time for other perspectives to be brought into strategic decision making in organizations. Designers have that ability to look at things differently.

[00:04:50] You, as designers and design professionals who've spent your careers solving problems, getting close to customers, understanding user ecosystems and going through the design processes that Paul just spoke about, are uniquely placed to help organizations make strategic decisions and plans for the future around the correct kind of priorities, and hopefully avoid the evils of the office Segway. It is time for something new. That's why I want to say: as your roles become more strategic and you find yourself moving further and further away from producing screens and deliverables and being part of that process, embrace the strengths that you bring. Don't try to evolve and become the haha business guy. Still be a designer, still be true to your skills, stay a problem solver, stay focused on customer value, and that is how you can add incredible value in the strategic space.

Big picture thinking and empathy

[00:05:49] There are certain things that we bring as design professionals that can be massively refreshing in the strategic space, and can also provide a lot of additional thought and questioning for the people who are making those decisions. One of those that designers have is big picture thinking. When we solve a problem, whenever we've designed a solution, we start at the beginning. We start with the questions: what is the ecosystem? How are people doing this now? How are they solving it already? Recognizing that, for the most part, 99% of the things we ever create are already being solved. Banking apps didn't invent banking. Airplanes didn't invent travel. People were already doing these things, and our innovation comes from solving them better, faster, cheaper, whatever it is.

[00:06:36] That big picture is crucial. You don't want your strategic decisions being made inside a silo where everybody just repeats what they hear inside. You want to bring that big picture and say: this is what's happening in the outside world, this is what our customers are engaging with, this is how their attitudes are changing. Here's a good example that all of us can refer to and relate to. Before Netflix, we were all quite happy to wait seven days to watch the next episode of a TV show. To the younger people watching this, that may seem absolutely insane, but for most of my life a TV show aired on one day a week, and then you waited seven more days and watched the next one, and if you missed it, you missed it.

[00:07:18] Obviously today that is completely unacceptable. No one waits seven days for anything. If I get into a TV show, I will watch it all in 11 straight hours, forgoing eating and sleeping and washing and spending time with my family, in order to get every little nugget of that TV show in one go. That big picture, the fact that people started binge watching, had an effect on a whole lot of other areas: traditional TV, the way that content is delivered across any number of platforms now. We've all come to accept this binging culture as a standard norm when it comes to video content, and if you didn't take a step back and look at that big picture and understand the mental models around content, you'd have a very hard time forming strategy for these organizations who deliver content on a big scale.

[00:08:04] Empathy is another huge one that designers and design professionals can bring into strategic boardrooms. I used an oil rig for this one, because no one does adverts about the environment better than oil companies. We've all seen them, and they make it look like all they do all day is plant trees and play with kids in parks. The truth is that's not real empathy. That's just people putting a sticker on something and saying that they are empathetic. I think it's really important that we recognize that true empathy looks very different. True empathy is getting close to a customer's world, understanding their ecosystem, understanding why they can't do the thing that you want them to do. What are their blockers? What are their barriers? How does this impact their life in a meaningful way?

[00:08:50] As designers, we've spent our careers building our empathy skills. We've gotten used to understanding how different people use services differently, and it's second nature to us to understand that what works for me won't necessarily work for 17 other users. Bringing that into a strategic space, where we start from understanding who our customers are and where they are, can add immense value to the sections of organizations that are expected to make big decisions, decisions that are going to be felt over the next three to five years. By giving them the tools and insights about our customers and users, you can enable them to make far more meaningful decisions and hopefully increase the engagement that they'll have with their customers over time.

Navigating the abstract

[00:09:33] And finally, navigating the abstract. The image here, as you can see, is from a very, very old map. The phrase on there means "here be dragons." I like it because the legend is that when people made maps back in the old days, navigators would go off to some new place and have to wander around measuring things and drawing maps. If they didn't have time to explore a certain space, they would just write "here be dragons," and that just meant that they didn't know what was there. I think that's a pretty good analogy for some of what happens in corporates, where they don't have time to gather all the facts, so they just assume there are dragons over there: we're going to deal with that later, somebody else will come along and figure it out. It becomes a difficult navigation question.

[00:10:16] As designers, we're used to navigating the abstract. We're often given tasks that are abstract at the beginning, and we're expected to turn them into something concrete. We've all had situations where you're in a team and they'll say, we need this feature, we need rapid onboarding, we need onboarding in five minutes, whatever. Sure, that's a great thing, but you can't build that. You can't just say we'll build onboarding in five minutes. There's a whole load of things you have to do to make that concrete, whilst not losing the core goal, the objective, what we wanted to do at the beginning. Go back to the Netflix analogy: let's make it so people can binge watch content, let's make ourselves a binging platform. But that's an abstract output. To know what that looks like, you've got to sit down and spend time figuring out how to make sure that this is actually what users want, what they'll resonate with, what they'll use and be comfortable with.

[00:11:08] We're used to that. Take that into a strategic setting where the objectives are very abstract: we need to increase retention, we need to improve our position in the market, we need to ensure that we're number one in people's minds when they think of instant mattresses, or whatever the business model you're dealing with is. That's quite an abstract objective, and understanding what it means is something we can bring to the table. We say, sure, we want to be number one in the instant mattress game, but let's first understand what instant mattresses even mean to people. What are they sleeping on now, when they don't have a mattress? How are they solving their instant sleep needs? You build all of that and navigate to: actually, it's not about the instant mattress, it's about the comfort of the pillow. Let's use that as the starting point and build towards really good pillows, and the instant mattress becomes a secondary thing.

[00:12:01] I don't think that is a real business model. If you're writing stuff down, that's probably not something you should invest money in, but as an example I feel it works. So navigating the abstract is one of the strengths that you're going to take into that setting.

Bringing strategic input from a design perspective

[00:12:13] Obviously what I've just done is tell you a load of abstract stuff, so to help make it more real, I'm going to spend a little bit of time talking about what you can actually do: specific activities and interventions you can make as a design professional. The first, and one of the most important things you'll do as someone in a strategic setting, is to bring strategic input from a design perspective. You're going to have the same conversations you were having at the delivery level, but you're going to start having them from a more meaningful and leveraged position.

[00:12:47] You're going to be the voice of the customer, the same way you've always been, but now you're going to do it at the strategic level and talk to your C-suite members about what customers really need. That also means having the opportunity to create processes that bring these insights into the room when decisions are made. You can force your team to start with the why. Why are we doing this? Why do our customers need it or want it? And why should our teams care about it? That why is crucial. Very often we find organizations are continuing to do the same things that they've always done, or making the same kinds of decisions. They have a formula: we did this this year, next year we're going to do that plus 15%. They keep doing that without ever tracking back to why they're doing it. If you don't understand why, you can't make it meaningful for your customers, and eventually they will disengage. That's your role as the creative, the design perspective in the strategic space: you're the one who's going to push that why.

[00:13:38] You can also start to ask: what is our place in the broader ecosystem of our customers? Who's already doing this, and can we improve it? By bringing that perspective into the discussion, you're providing another avenue to that big picture, where the decision makers, and you as one of the decision makers, can start to examine where you exist as an organization within the broader ecosystem. How do people see you and engage with you? How do they solve the problems that you're addressing now? That input is something you're already doing now, and that's why I said you don't want to change who you are. You're not going to evolve and become the haha business guy. You're still going to be who you are, but you're going to start having these conversations and forcing people who haven't necessarily engaged with it at a meaningful level to start doing so.

A design-led delivery model

[00:14:20] At a secondary level, you want to create a design-led delivery model. You want to build structures and processes that enable value delivery. Paul spoke about a couple of different models that exist, things that organizations are using, and I agree with him completely that all of these models do create a lot of confusion at times. But what's also important is that you, as the leader in that space, have to recognize that you'll need to panel beat certain processes without losing their core value. Implement design thinking, but do it in a way that's authentic, so that you still go through the correct steps. You still build empathy, you still do your definition, you still prototype properly. And it's completely true about prototyping: prototyping isn't a step, it's a tool that exists along all of the steps. It enables other steps. It enables testing, it enables insights, it enables experimentation.

[00:15:04] You've got to build those processes and make sure that they fit within your organization. Every organization is different: the way the teams are structured, the way your technology stack is either impervious to change or far more agile. You've got to build your processes around that, and you've got to be the champion of that. You've got to create an environment that encourages experimentation. You want to embrace learning from failure and link the outcomes that you create to true human needs.

[00:15:29] I think one of the most important things is to define the objectives early on from a customer perspective: understand what the customer is trying to do, not what product we're trying to sell them. An example we've used in previous conversations around this is that nobody ever wants a home loan or mortgage, depending on what you call it where you are. No one wants one of those. We all just want a new house, and the mortgage or the home loan becomes a means to an end. No one wakes up in the morning saying, what I really want to do today is get into a 30-year relationship with a bank. But we have to deliver that, and people recognize they need it, but they'd much rather focus on the home, the move.

[00:16:03] If you build a process that recognizes that the real need, the real journey here, is one of moving into a new home, and that the enabler is simply the lending product, you can have a far more meaningful conversation with your customers. That's what you want to do: be able to show your organization how to link the outcomes that they're building towards back to the human need that they're solving for. With all of that in mind, it's your role as the design leader to build toolkits that are based on that design thinking methodology, that are bespoke to your organization and allow innovation to flourish. I think that's a really important role to play: to advocate for that and be the voice of change.

Measuring and promoting excellence

[00:16:44] The last thing is often overlooked in organizations, because we are all very, very busy at the moment. I think it's almost an overhang from the last couple of years. We've all moved into this rapid, we've just got to get stuff done mode. Things have changed, everybody's gone digital, everything's new, everything's open for the taking, and as a result we're just running ahead with new features and delivering new things, and very few organizations are taking the time to effectively measure and promote excellence. You've got to be that champion of good design, ethical engagement and honest value creation. You've got to look for the opportunities to showcase the hard work of your design team through awards, industry events and knowledge sharing events like this one, for example.

[00:17:25] You've also got to set the principles of delivery and build mechanisms to measure them, report back, and learn and grow. Are we delivering against the value that we've set for ourselves? Not are we selling products, but are we actually solving a human problem? Is that measured effectively? Are people happy with the way that we do it, or are they doing it because they have to? That's an important difference, because if they're just using your product because they have to, as soon as something easier comes along they'll leave instantly. But if you're solving their human need, if you're solving their problem, they're far more likely to stay with you when a new mechanism comes along.

[00:17:57] I think that's the key thing here. If you don't set that principle of delivery and measure against it effectively, you're going to find it far more difficult to evolve later, because you won't know why your customers are dropping off. Whereas if you've already measured it properly and you understand the need that was informing their engagement with you, you'll find it a lot easier to evolve with your customers, because you'll know where they are and you'll have inserted mechanisms to track them, learn from them, and be with them on that journey. So when something new comes along and they realize they don't need the home loan anymore... I don't know what's going to happen in the future. Realistically, we're probably going to go backwards, and you're going to end up buying assets with cows or bartering with goat's milk, and once they start doing that, we want to be the ones who manage the goat milk market. But if you're not there with your customer, you'll find it very difficult to know that they're doing that.

[00:18:44] That was, for me, a very brief overview of what design careers look like as they evolve, and I hope it helps some people. I'm happy to take questions and talk about it some more, but the key thing is: never stop being the designer, the problem solver, and never overlook the strengths that you bring to the table as you move away from delivery and more towards strategy and planning in your career. Thank you.

Q&A

[00:19:11] Host: Great, thank you very much, Matthew. That was really interesting, just a different take on where things can go. We've actually got a question coming from the audience, from Camo Hello [?]. He said: "Thanks for sharing, Matt, very informative and inspiring. What are the strategic post-delivery activities we should implement in order to avoid solutions becoming legacy solutions no one ever touches again?"

[00:19:41] Matthew: Oh, wow. Well, thanks for the question. I think it's twofold. Before you even start, you have to have gotten close to understanding what the real problem is that we're solving, what this solution is going to be doing in the customer's life, and then use that to define your measures later. You need to identify what the value drivers are, the blockers, the pain points you're attempting to overcome. Then, post delivery, and even during development, you should be measuring against those to say, are we hitting the high notes in the customer's mental models, and revisiting that. One of the challenges we have in a lot of organizations is that we're pushed so fast to the next feature, the next delivery, the next iteration, that we don't often take enough time to measure what we just did, and whether or not it still holds relevance for our customers' mental models and for the problem we set out to solve in the beginning. I hope that helps.

[00:20:38] Host: Yeah, that resonates with me. And I probably haven't pronounced your name properly, Camo Hello [?], apologies for that, but if you do want to ask a follow-up, I'll put the question to Matthew. One thing you touched on there I thought was really interesting, and this is what I feel happens a lot: you're being pushed to the next feature, to the next feature. When you were talking, I was equating it to Jobs to be Done: people don't want the drill, they want the hole in the wall. What about when you are being squeezed? How, as a designer, can you take charge to evolve your role yourself when you are being squeezed, and you want to spend more time doing that more strategic work but you're caught in the tactical day-to-day?

[00:21:30] Matthew: Yeah, it's something that happens a lot, and in the teams that I've worked with we've seen it in different spaces. The thing is that evolution actually takes quite a lot of time. It goes back again to using design thinking to unpack it with the team you're working with. Very often that push is coming from the product owners, the solution owners and the delivery leads, who are under pressure for whatever reason. They need to move the needle, and they've identified that this thing will do that. So in the early days you play a bit of compromise, where you say: I'm going to do this as you've asked for now, but I want us to have a more meaningful discussion. Don't just tell me the feature you want; tell me the problem you want to solve, and let's go through a process where we solve a problem and don't just deliver a feature. Don't tell me you want a big red button; tell me what the button needs to do, and let's talk about how we can better solve that, because maybe it doesn't need to be a button at all. Maybe it can be something else that does what a button does.

[00:22:23] Host: Yeah, and again, I think you might be preaching to the choir, definitely. Coming back to your first point about the language and getting into those conversations: I've seen where people have tried, but they've been told, this is your box, you go and do the designs, we've come up with the ideas, stop asking these annoying questions.

[00:22:53] Matthew: Yeah. Something I've seen work in some spaces is designers taking it on themselves to solve two things, almost an internal A/B test, where they do what they're asked to do, and then separately they go through a design process that comes up with a different solution, and then present both back to their teams: I did what you asked for, it looks like this, but I had a thought that we could go through the journey differently, and it looks like this. A lot more organizations are open to actually A/B testing in the real world these days, which is fantastic. Having the opportunity to do that is really good, but even doing it through your normal design processes, prototyping and user testing a concept, you can usually get buy-in for at least that, as long as you can make the case that you're only wasting your own time if it goes wrong. A lot of organizations will let you do that.

[00:23:39] I think it's about showcasing. You need to move away from arguing about the solution itself, because ultimately we've got to be agnostic and fluid around what gets delivered, and focus on getting your team to start talking more meaningfully about the customer and the customer problem. That starts with being slightly annoying at the beginning of the day, to say: is this what our customer wants? Producing the personas, making sure they're backed by data, so that you can show your team: this isn't going to work in the ecosystem of the customer that we agreed we're building for. This doesn't sit well with them. This doesn't compare to the competitors that we know they're using. Having those conversations and pushing back and pushing back until they give you the space to explore solutions from a more customer-centric perspective.

[00:24:24] Host: Excellent, some great advice there. Hopefully people can use that. Camo [?] has said great answer, thanks again, so obviously you answered their question correctly. I think that brings us to pretty much time, so thank you very much, Matthew. I really enjoyed that talk, and I hope everybody out there enjoyed it too. Thanks so much.