I’ve long believed that, rather than Heads, Directors and VPs of design being the pivotal team role, we actually need to focus on hiring more Lead Designers. In this article I attempt to explain what a Lead Designer is, what they do, and why they play such an important role in high performing teams.
I'm super interested in how the rise of automation and agentive technology may affect the role of the designer over the coming years. In this article I attempt to make sense of some of the current trends and outline one potential future (if we're not too careful).
The purpose of a portfolio site is simple: to showcase the skills you have to the people who might want them. As such I’m often surprised when I see folks who describe themselves as UX/UI designers, choose to focus their portfolio on the UI side of the equation. It feels to me that these people may be selling themselves short by only focusing on a fraction of their skill-set, but before I jump into details, let’s start with some caveats.
If you know me, then you'll know that I'm all about increasing the impact design can have on the world. For the past 20 years I’ve focused on using design to solve meaningful problems, remove frustrations, and make people's lives that tiny bit better.
In my previous post I shared the idea that high functioning teams are comfortable with high levels of conflict, as long as it’s the right type of conflict— namely constructive conflict around “things” rather than judgemental conflict around “people”. This idea is sometimes described as “task conflict” versus “personality conflict”.
The ability to share conflicting views about a situation or problem and still get on is a vital component of any high functioning team. It allows us to broaden our range of possible solutions, spot weaknesses in our arguments, and test our assumptions—usually in the pursuit of a better outcome. As a result, productive conflict is generally focussed on things—be they ideas, features or solutions—rather than individuals. “I don’t agree with this” rather than “I don’t agree with you”.