My Latest Adventure: Joining InVision as Head of Design Transformation
My planet has been circling around the InVision sun for several years now, so in some ways, it was inevitable that I’d join the team full-time. As an early adopter of the prototyping approach to design, my relationship with InVision started with the product.
More recently with InVision, I’ve worked with Aarron Walter and Elijah Woolery on the Enterprise Design Sprints handbook, run several workshops, and hosted Design Leadership Forums. I’ve also worked with filmmakers Ben Goldman and Daniel Cowen on the soon-to-be released Squads movie. Between my desire to have a bigger impact on the design community and the mission of the company, it made joining InVision an easy choice.
Now as head of Design Transformation, my team will work with Fortune 100 companies and enterprise customers globally to help them grow and accelerate their design maturity. We do this through assessments, workshops, and developing high-value content for customers.
It’s clear that design is at the heart of digital transformation for every business. The New Design Frontier report and dozens of other pieces of evidence have shown this time and again. What’s critical to understand is that it’s not just design that affects transformation. Each area of a business needs to work together to bridge gaps, mend seams, and connect the workflow.
The role of design is to provide the mortar between the bricks so that those gaps can be filled.
If you’re interested in learning more about my thoughts on design maturity, the most important topics shaping design today, and what I’m most passionate about, please do check out the Q&A below. I’d also love to hear what your organization is doing to level up your design function, say hi on Twitter at @rmbanfield.
At InVision, your mission is to help companies grow and accelerate their design maturity. Why is design maturity so important to a company’s overall success?
Richard Banfield: The product universe is an increasingly human-centric place. Although design doesn’t need to own the human-centric conversation, it’s often the group best prepared to drive that conversation and the work that follows. Design maturity is just another way of saying customer-centric value delivery, so we believe that if you care about your customers then you care about design maturity.
What do you see as the biggest challenges and opportunities in trying to help elevate an organization’s design maturity?
RB: It depends on the stage of maturity. There’s no one single challenge, but rather a collection of maturity level appropriate issues that need to be identified first. Just like you don’t want to have a generic solution to your medical problems, companies need specific solutions for their specific problems. Our Design Maturity Assessment is an objective way to help companies self-assess and identify their greatest challenges and opportunities. For some design teams, the challenge might be getting organized around a universal design system, while for others they need to strengthen their ability to experiment and learn.
How would you describe “design-thinking,” and the most effective way of implementing it across an organization’s various, cross-functional teams?
RB: Design thinking is just thinking with a framework. We have become a society that values action over thinking so all design thinking does is asks, “before we take action, what’s the real problem that needs solving here and how might we address that problem?” Some might say this slows things down, but in my experience, it actually speeds things up. The velocity created by design thinking process is in the fact that it de-risks the work we’re delivering and ensures what we build is something that users actually want.
The best way to use design thinking in cross-functional teams is to practice with frameworks like the Design Sprint. These time-boxed approaches give teams the safe psychological space to dig into problems, share their thinking and collaborate on solutions, without any politics associated with traditional ‘solutioning.’
What are some of the most important topics shaping design today?
RB: The connected workflow. Designers, and creators of all types, no matter how good they are, don’t work in a vacuum. They work with others. They collaborate with others. They learn from others. To do this we need practices and platforms to amplify the collaboration between teams and reduce the friction. We’re seeing product teams rallying around evidence, experimentation and answers, and turning away from assumptions, hearsay and industry myths. We see the customer at the center of the connected workflow so the flow of value is conspicuous. We see small, diverse teams working in psychological safety. We see teams using tools and techniques to visualize the work they do to ensure clarity, and reduce misunderstanding. We see work being continuously shared with everyone involved in the creative process to reduce handoffs and big reveals. We see teams embrace learning over dogma, even when it means they have to make hard choices.
How do you think companies can create digital and service products that are more user-focused, and seamlessly integrate with the physical world?
RB: Putting the customer at the center of the conversation. Knowing them and knowing their pain gives product teams really valuable insights. That means getting out of your comfort zone, and often physically on getting out of your office, to go and talk to them. Getting face to face with the customer gives you knowledge that you can’t get by just doing quantitative research. As mentioned above, the best teams are also reducing the gaps between functional groups and that leads to better communication, and better communication leads to better products. So in a nutshell, more communication. Both externally and internally.
You interviewed hundreds of the industry’s top product leaders for your book, Product Leadership. Can you share the formula for what makes a successful product leader?
RB: I’ll start by saying that humans are complicated and so what works for one leader might not work for another. There are lots of good ways to be a leader. However there are some themes are consistent themes throughout the interviews. Leaders of the best teams and the best companies are very customer focused and use the customer value to focus their decisions and initiatives. They also have a strong point of view on where they can play successfully so they can remain focused, and keep their teams focused. This point of view also tells them where they don’t want to spend time and energy, so knowing what not to do is just as important as knowing what they can and should do.
These leaders also invest a disproportionate amount of time in their team members. Not just ‘managing’ them but mentoring them, guiding their careers and truly getting to know them as individuals. This investment leads to increased collaboration and high-quality communication.
You wrote a best-selling book called Design Sprint. One of the first things you did at InVision was something really ambitious: run marketing sprints for nearly 100 marketers. What are the top learnings from this experience?
RB: Top learning was that this team is amazing. It was a huge effort with very little preparation time but we pulled it off. We also showed the world that it’s possible to run a massive remote design sprint successfully.
If you could have one superpower to help you do your job, what would it be?
RB: I love to travel and I’m very happy when I’m in new places with new people talking about the power of design. So my superpower would be to get places very fast so I could have more conversations.
