About

Design at Scale is a publication that supports designers who scale up design propositions. With twenty-plus years of experience, we have identified four core pillars contributing to the design community and function.

These pillars are:

• Communication
• Technology
• Operations
• Product

Whether you are starting your design career, have just become part of a design team, or perhaps your challenges are set on managing a design function in a big organisation, we want to hear your story — whether you failed or succeeded.

The platform offers knowledge, insights, case studies and perhaps a little bit of humour about everyday product designer development challenging the world we know it. We also promote the best stories on Design at Scale via our own newsletter and social media channels.

Categories

The primary purpose of categories is to offer clarity behind the topics you choose to represent as a contributor. Your unique point of view is solely yours — we kindly ask you to fit it into the following sections:

Communication

One of the critical challenges for individuals, teams and departments is communication and transparency between doers, influencers and decision-makers. Our stories reflect the dynamics and how the communication influenced product, delivery, team dynamic or the impact of the overall release.

Technology

Automation, algorithms and dashboard increasingly impact our design work. What role the technology and automation play in your design-related tasks?
Is the technology a fundamental enabler, or does it bring continuous challenges to your team and your company?

Operation

Whether you work alone or in a sophisticated and well-integrated team, the design or development operation drives your day-to-day outputs. The process and workflow affect your performance, enjoyment, and routine and impacts the experience you contribute to the team, feature or department. We look together at the operations from the angle of scale and how it affects the team and the value created for the business and customer.

Product

Whether you are building products or services, we urge you to ask a fundamental question — how will I scale it? 72% of a startup in the UK fails in the third year. Not because their idea is not right, nor because there is too much legislation from the government.

They simply fail because they can not scale their propositions.

How do you scale, and what role the scale plays in your product design delivery?

Scale that matter.

We focus on scaling up your design proposition. Yet we challenge every stem of growing them and bringing more operational complexity. We advocate for well-functioned, agile-based, and self-driven design teams. We help multilayered design departments with 300+ designers to challenge silos and create efficient and impactful design functions within the organisation.

1 — The team of one.

The phenomenon of the 21st century and remote working opens opportunities for more design-led specialists, so-called “the company of one”, by offering their services in different countries or continents. They bring their solution and uniquely deal with complexity while remaining sole traders. We’ll look at how these individuals operate and what they have to say about being in the design team of one.

10 — Product Team

How does your team integrate design function, research, insights, experience design and branding? Is your voice unique, or do you have to fight for the ideas to be integrated? Is it a primary business-led, product-led or technology-led company, and you constantly lose your design/customer battles?

Let us know your story.

100 — Design Department.

Some of you might choose to work for a big corporation — with 100+ designers in the team across several departments, transformational units or subdivisions. Regardless of the size of your design team, you might feel separated. We’ll discuss how to make a connection with your department. How do we reach the right type of help? And most importantly, what is the context of your current project in the overall company vision?

We are Social Enterprise.

We are a social enterprise — please check our Write for Design at Scale article describing submission criteria for all external users. We appreciate your effort; every writer will receive 20% of the article’s earnings in the first calendar year. The next 20% is for the marketing budget, 50% is for operations and 10% we donate to Red Cross. By submitting the article to Design at Scale™, you agree with the Terms of Services. If you have any questions, please reach out directly on Twitter — designatscaletm

One More Thing

Our early contributors have a chance to become the continent or country Ambassadors that will ensure the connection between the HQ and its own branches — no politics, bureaucracy, or bosses, just pure transparency and sharing from one to another.

Enjoy scaling up!