Interview with Gail Swanson

In advance of the Leading Design conference in London on the 24th-26th October, I caught up with Gail Swanson 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 started my career in a time and place where I was the only design representative on my project teams, and my managers knew how to manage development staff, but had no design knowledge. I had some successes finding my own way, but made some huge mistakes in absence of a mentor or community of practice to tap into. So I turned to books and blogs and anything I could get my hands on that provided guidance on how to be a leader and become the best designer I could.

What does a typical day look like for you? Is it all meetings?

A typical day for me does include a lot of meetings. The majority of those meetings shape the opportunities for my team to do amazing work. I do a lot of one on one coaching and guiding teams to get the most value out of the work that they do.

Do you still get to do any “real” design?

The design that I do these days is in collaboration with a team, primarily in the early sketching stage. To be honest, I feel like I spend most of my time designing the experience of my team and their work. All the techniques of user research and UX design guide how I serve my team. In working with clients and with our leadership team, I break out the post it notes and discuss controlled vocabularies.

What are the qualities of a good design leader?

The best design leaders know how to guide people to the best design, empowering designers to make decisions rather than stepping in to make the decisions for them.

The best design leaders listen well to those they serve and yet are decisive.

Good design leaders elevate the work of their team and give away the credit freely.

Good design leaders give constructive feedback with candor helping people reach for a higher level of excellence.

What is the design culture like in your current company?

At 18F, design culture is the most inclusive and cross-functional of any environment I’ve worked in. User research is the foundation of our design decision-making. We do more than include stakeholders, we co-design with them. They join us in research, they are product owners.

I’ve started building a strategy practice within 18F to “prepare the field” for our designers and other team members before they get started on a project. Just like our other efforts, it’s an experiment driven by a hypothesis. That hypothesis: developing a shared understanding of the path forward helps you get there faster, together.

What are you most proud of achieving as a design leader?

I am most proud of persevering through long hours, mistakes, conflict, changing technology and growing complexity in our field to learn lessons that I can pass on to my team.