Interview with Catherine Courage
In advance of the Leading Design conference in London on the 24th-26th October, I caught up with Catherine Courage to discuss her background, experience and thoughts on the subject of Design Leadership.
Tell us about your first design leadership role? Who did you model yourself on?
I joined salesforce.com as the first UX hire with the goal of establishing UX within the company and building a team. Back then, in 2004, UX was still emerging as a leadership function. I only knew of one VP of UX in software. I was very lucky to have a great mentor in Joe Dumas and a fantastic UX partner in Ian Swinson. We often felt like we were making it up as we went, but we learned a tremendous amount through our successes and failures. During my five years there we build and established a talented, credible and valued team, delivering great work.
What does a typical day look like for you? Is it all meetings?
Yes. I wish that wasn’t the answer, but I do spend the majority of time in my meetings. As UX leader, I am responsible for advocating for the team and communicating what we are doing across the organization. Helping people understand and see the impact of UX. It also involves travelling and spending face time with different teams and individuals across the globe. Another extremely important function of any UX leader is spending time with your team and talking to them. Learning how things are going and understanding how you can help. And of course, hiring. All this equates to a lot of meetings.
Do you still get to do any “real” design?
Design these days consists of contributing to a whiteboard session and lots of design reviews. Through this kind of engagement across teams, one of the areas a UX leader can add tremendous value is being able to look across all area of the product(s) and uncover design patterns; connect people who should be collaborating and uncovering higher order design themes/ideas.
It can be hard to give up the intensive hands-on role you’re used to playing in CX, but you can’t get involved in every detail or you’ll be overwhelmed. Set a direction, establish a tone for the right way to work — the processes to use and the standards to meet — and make your expectations clear. Show them you’ll back them up through thick and thin. If you’ve hired the right people, they’ll come through for you.
What are the qualities of a good design leader?
Influence — whether it is a design concept, a usability issue or the need for more headcount or budget. You need to be able to influence those above you, below you and next to you as to why your ideas have business merit. While I’m the direct leader of the UX organization, my effectiveness is tied to my ability to make things happen where I don’t have direct control or authority.
Business IQ — as UX professional we are often great at selling our ideas to product manager, engineers and other designers. But as you rise to a senior leadership role you need to have a solid understanding of the business. Why drives decisions? What metrics are important? What will deliver business growth. You need to be able to transform the value of good UX into this language.
Accountable — suddenly when you have a senior role in front of your title your level of accountability increases. The buck stops with you. If you make a commitment or a mission fails you have to be willing to step up and take accountability.
What is the design culture like in your current company?
I joined DocuSign a year ago. I was delighted that the first value is customer focus. People understand the importance of the customer and have the desire to deliver a great experience. We have been delivering training in design thinking and journey mapping across the business, as well as sending people to the Stanford d.school. Beyond doing design work, investing in educating employees across the business has been a great way to scale customer-focused thinking across the company.
What challenges are you facing at the moment and what are you doing to overcome them?
So much to do! I think most UX leaders to face this problem. I’ve had to focus on a subset of key initiatives where I see momentum and business value and align myself and the team with those. It is important to chat with key product stakeholders to prioritize. I could not do this in a vacuum. Factors that contributed to my decisions include products that are strategic, new initiatives, and teams that want to engage.
How is your design team structured and how is that working? Anything you’d tweak?
We are a centralized team….with design functions aligned to critical areas of the product. In addition, we have a customer research function, writing function, customer education, and program management. It works well, but we are a rapidly growing company, so it is my responsibility to frequently look and how were are functioning and assess if we need to change the org structure to make us more effective.
What are you most proud of achieving as a design leader?
I had an exciting opportunity to give a TedX talk in Kyoto in 2014. This was a great opportunity for me to be able to stretch myself and share my broader thoughts on creativity and design outside of my job. It was an incredible experience.
Any advice for a new design leader?
I believe fear comes into play in career impact and advancement. This can be a challenge as we may tend to let that feeling of fear hold us back. That twinge of doubt you feel is most often a sign that you’re pushing to the next level. My advice is to embrace it rather than letting it hold you back. I always tell myself that if for some reason any decision does not work out, I’ll learn from it, and quickly move on and face the next challenge. It’s important to remember that the potential rewards of taking the chance you are considering are tremendous, and far more significant than the fears and risk you may be feeling.
Anything else on your mind at the moment?
I always have too much on my mind! :) But one key area is innovation. We have a ton of really cool ideas and we need to focus and execute to ensure we can bring them to life.
