Pro/Design Masterclass Wrap-up
Entrepreneurs, founders, and startup advisers regularly hear about the importance of design to the overall success of a new product or service. But simply knowing that design, and a user-centered design process, can be a significant differentiator, and actually creating an environment where design can thrive are two very different things.
The Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center, a non-profit in San Francisco dedicated to providing entrepreneurs with quality resources and access to mentors, training, and networking — all at no charge, partnered with Nasdaq’s Global Corporate Solutions Product Design team to share a stage where designers and entrepreneurs could learn practical, actionable approaches to solving business problems.
The result was our first Pro/Design Masterclass on June 29th.
This was the second event to use the Pro/Design moniker, following our successful Pro/Design Conference, a one day single-track event featuring Nasdaq Product Design speakers and other design experts in January 2015.
The program addressed the needs of founders, entrepreneurs, product managers, and advisers more so than designers. Throughout the day, topics included:
- When to hire designers when founding a company
- How many designers does a startup need?
- Where should design fit in the larger organization?
- How should startups apply personas, sketching, and critique to their product development process?
- What is the state of design in the larger startup community today?
The Masterclass was split into 3 events:
- a panel discussion featuring 3 designers and a Chief Marketing Officer of a design-focused startup
- a lecture and workshop exploring how to prepare entrepreneurs to apply design thinking to actually designing
- an interview with Silicon Valley design executive Peter Merholz
The comments shared on Twitter suggest attendees were engaged and supportive of the event and program:
The Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center and Nasdaq Design are confident that these events address a need core to the Center’s mission to help startups thrive. We hope to see you at future Pro/Design Masterclass events in the future. To learn about upcoming events, follow @TheCenter and @NasdaqDesign, and subscribe to the Center’s newsletter.
Special thanks to the guest panelists and speakers — follow them on Twitter for their latest insights on design and the startup world:
Indhira Rojas (Twitter | LinkedIn)
Redindhi Studio
Indhira Rojas is a visual and interaction designer working in the fields of brand strategy, user experience and product design. In her practice she focuses on crafting engaging and meaningful experiences that are both beautiful and delightful to use.
Anne Driscoll (Twitter | LinkedIn)
Chief Marketing Officer, Wrap Media
Anne Driscoll is the Chief Marketing Officer of San Francisco-based Wrap Media. She leads the development and execution of Wrap’s marketing, advertising and communications strategies, ensuring the three tracks are aligned with the brand positioning and larger company vision.
Pamela Castillo (Twitter | LinkedIn)
Product Strategy and Design Consultant
Pamela Castillo is a technology entrepreneur, product strategist and designer, with a focus on consumer lifestyle, ecommerce and publishing. She has consulted for clients such as The Huffington Post, Vanity Fair, Estée Lauder and more. Additionally, her third startup, Finale, was acquired last year by Bloglovin’.
Uday Gajendar (Twitter | LinkedIn)
Principal UX Consultant
Uday Gajendar is a proven design leader focused on new product innovation & guiding start-ups on UX fundamentals. Uday has 15 years of versatile expertise at Frogdesign, Citrix, Peel, Netflix, Adobe, CloudPhysics and others, spanning enterprise to consumer, web to mobile domains.
Peter Merholz (Twitter | LinkedIn)
Design & Product Executive
Peter Merholz is a design and product management executive. He was most recently a Sr. Director in Product Experience at Jawbone, the company behind UP fitness trackers. He helped OpenTable launch their redesigned website, and before that was VP of Design at Groupon. He was one of the founders of Adaptive Path, and helped it grow from 7 to 50 people. He’s been writing about design and technology (among other things) at http://peterme.com for 17 years.
For more, keep up with Peter at peterme.com or on Medium as Peter Merholz
Resources used or cited in the presentations:
- Slides from the PRO/Design Masterclass
- Article: Enabling Design Influence at Scale by Chris Avore
- Presentation: Design Upstream — Advancing Strategic Design Without Going Against the Current by Chris Avore
Watch the presentation
Slides
from Prototypes, Process, and Play, Chicago 2015 - Article: The Double Diamond Model of Product Definition and Design by Peter Merholz
- Design in Tech Report 2016
- Presentation: Discussing Design Without Losing Your Mind by Aaron Irizarry
