Design-Up 2019: Key Takeaways
Design up is Asia’s biggest design conference that brings design leaders, practitioners and enthusiasts from all over the world under one roof. This year’s conference was held at Hotel Lalit Ashok, Bengaluru, and I got the opportunity to be a part of it.
For those of you who missed it, here are some takeaways gathered from the talks listed below:
“Being a design leader (and how not to lose your hair in the process)”- by Parameswaran Venkataraman
I felt this was by far the best talk I attended this year packed with questions, insights, and humor!
- Focus shift from just design to a lot more as you grow
Param covered a comprehensive list of stages starting with a steady focus on the craft we feel we are good at as young designers to slowly progressing towards leading projects, teams to eventually an entire organization with design at the center. He also talked about various challenges we may face and how to overcome them. For example: How we may feel that we are just managing people and projects and not ‘designing anymore’.
Listed below are some methods he applied to overcome such situations,
2. Ensure an organization understands its purpose and cannot succeed without design strategies
It is the role of a (mindful) design leader to help business folks see the value design can add. Unless this is articulated to them in a tangible form, the chances are your design team will never get a seat at the table and be able to retain it.
3. How to w̶o̶r̶k̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h align people from various levels
As designers, we’ve all faced situations where we’ve had ‘those recommendations’ and contemplated whether to take a top>down approach going from the CEO to win the rest of the org. or vice-versa.
Param, through his experience, stressed that by focusing on one set of people at a time, you are already setting yourself up for failure. It is critical to keep every responsible member/department engaged in every step and move gradually. The key is to keep everyone aligned throughout the process.
4. Identify the right people
Most organizations will have people who can broadly be classified under the categories: Skeptics > Neutrals > Enthusiasts, in that order.
Work yourself around starting from the enthusiasts as they’re very likely to be innovative and open to a change. Once you have this set covered, the neutrals will automatically convert. Then come the skeptics who take the longest to convert but you need them to be on your side too. Just understand that it’ll all take time and won’t necessarily happen in the beginning.
“Documenting design” -by Hardik Pandya
5. Mocks lack the narrative
As designers today, many of us don’t spend time documenting our work. We try to push pixels all around, screens after screens.
Slow down. Take time to write down a narrative for the values added, considerations, explorations covered to influence people. Mocks go around to so many people and without a document, all of it can be interpreted in so many ways — heard of the game Chinese whispers?
Tip: Add tags to your presentation such as ‘approved’, ‘early exploration’ and ‘experimenting’ so people know what it is.
6. Don’t put everyone in one room at once… seriously
It is important to get buy-ins (not resolutions) from stakeholders individually before you present to them collectively. This doesn’t need much elaboration as we’ve all had at least one such shootdown by presenting something collectively. Get everything resolved locally before going all out with your work.
(Incidentally, this applied to the room where he presented this point. There were just too many people in the room! 🙄
DesignUp could have a done better job here. The hall was jam-packed with no space for people to even stand. Many stood outside the door and stuck their phones inside literally to record it all; whereas the larger hall was fairly empty, I heard.)
7. Keep it alive
Once the artifacts are sent out, it is the designer’s responsibility to socialize, get feedback, iterate and maintain the doc. A well-prepared document is as good as not having done it if it isn’t alive.
For teams split by verticals and geographies, documentation and sometimes over-communication is imperative.
“Deconstruct report” -by Ripul Kumar and Rasagy Sharma
8. Understand how the design team is seen within your organization
Understanding which category your design team falls under is critical to gauge how successful your stint would be at your organization. Once you have this identified, you can choose to apply various methods for making the design team an integral part.
Thanks to Jay Dutta and the rest of the DesignUp team for organizing this event brilliantly and Katja Forbes for all the improvs in between.
