We're so excited to bring you a month of extraordinary content from talks and Q&As, panels and social sessions. Not to mention a programme of 90 minute Masterclasses (we'll be launching the Masterclass schedule very soon). We'll keep adding content so do check back and join our mailing list to hear updates on the Festival line-up.
The timings of the sessions should show in your local time, if you click on the clock icon by each session it will show the time in GMT (UK time). If you have any questions do drop us a line on events@clearleft.com
Please note the schedule is subject to changes as we finalise the line-up.
A few words of welcome from Leading Design Festival curator and host Andy Budd and an introduction to today's theme.
As designers, we tend to think about our superpowers as expertise in product thinking, interactions, information architecture, graphic design or even creativity. However, as we grow in our careers, other skills become more and more critical to our success. What are these areas that we need to master and why do they matter in building the best products possible?
Time for a break from sitting down, take a walk if you can, and grab a drink (hot, cold, long or short). We'll be back in 30 minutes.
The way organizations are approaching product development and emerging technologies are constantly changing. At the same time our practice as designers is evolving with new tools, techniques, and approaches, surfacing at a pace that can be hard to keep up with.
What does this mean for us as leaders of teams (big or small)? How can we lead teams in progressive orgs going through digital transformation or orgs that are slower to adapt?
By focusing on developing certain skills, disciplines, and characteristics, within ourselves as leaders, we prepare ourselves for the challenges we face when leading our teams and working with our partners. We also set ourselves up to be leaders that can coach, nurture, and elevate our teams to be best equipped for the challenges they face as they execute on their work.
In this presentation, Aaron will share insights, tools, and techniques (from personal success and failures) for growing his own leadership skills, overcoming leadership challenges, and successfully developing teams.
As companies of all sizes continue to accelerate building design capabilities, there is still very little common wisdom on what makes for a successful design organisation. While a focus on process, methods, tools, and outcomes is essential for credibility and traction, there is still a significant gap of knowledge when it comes to organisational and operational matters. So what are the most common issues - limited time and resources, involving the right people and teams, lack of proven value - which often have an impact on designer happiness and design team success. If we are to truly focus on the pillars of People, Practice and Platform, essentials for design orgs, then we need to champion the programs that support the desired outcomes for each pillar: happier designers, better designers, and more effective teams.
Andy will take your questions for Aaron and Kristin.
Time for a stretch and a cuppa (or something stronger!) We'll be back in 30 minutes.
There is massive demand for designers who have the skills to lead growing design teams in complex organizations, and a vast shortage of designers with the skills and experience to fill these demanding roles. As our generation of design leaders takes on increasingly substantial challenges, what skills will we need to adopt? Where will we find them, and how will we learn them? And how will these skills help us articulate the value of design in a powerful way?
Doug Powell, VP of Design at IBM, will look across the industry and around the world for examples of how designers are using their unique superpowers in powerful new ways.
A few words from Andy about tomorrow and the rest of The Conference.
A few words from Andy on the day ahead
In the words of Cap Watkins: “Congratulations. You got promoted – now prepare to suck at a completely different job.”
This is exactly what happened to Jane multiple times in her twenty year career. She has gone from being a designer, to leading a few people, to leading a team, and now as a director, leading multiple teams. The transitions to each of these three stages of leadership were tough, and painful, and yes, she sucked every time she got promoted into a new stage of leadership. In this talk Jane shares her experiences of each transition and talks about the mistakes she made and the lessons she learned, and gives you hard won advice so that when you get promoted you won’t suck at all.
Time for a break from sitting down, take a walk if you can, and grab a drink (hot, cold, long or short). We'll be back in 30 minutes.
There is a strong perception that one has to move into management if they want to succeed as a leader and expand their influence to have more impact. For many individual contributors, this is a tough choice to make. As someone who’s been successful both as people leader and as a leader in an individual contributor (IC) role, Keith will show that in many ways they’re much closer than many would expect.
In addition to his own experience, Keith’s been chatting with design leaders from all around, and noticing some common trends, problems and opportunities.
IC leaders are uniquely positioned to have terrific positive impact across nearly every aspect of a business. Keith will talk through some common problems keeping them from realizing that impact. He’ll cover some lessons learned over his 20 plus year career as a designer and share a unique perspective as someone who’s currently in a leadership position as an IC, has served in a dual role more than once, and has made the switch between IC leader and people manager a few times. With each lesson, he’ll offer up a bit of actionable advice for both ICs and managers.
Some common problems design orgs face:
Partnerships and shared responsibility are key.
Building influence with a goal of empowering others is the way forward, but know when to just do the work.
Design is all about people, from day one and you’ll need to develop your people skills to move up and keep adding value as you go.
Craft is much more than we think it is. There are many ways to craft - play to individual strengths and challenge for growth.
For everyone - let’s redefine craft and what it means to be a maker. There are many ways to craft, and people skills are as much a craft as anything you do with design tools.
Over the years, you worked hard to become a great designer — you practised your craft, honed your skills and finally put those imposter syndrome days behind you. Now, with your experience in tow, you've taken the step into leadership. But yet you find yourself wondering: ""Wait. Have I got this right?"" and asking ""what the hell am I even doing here?"".
For anyone new to leading a design team and feeling like an imposter: you're not alone. In this session, I'll share my personal journey with impostor syndrome in leadership, and thoughts on how to move from feeling like you're faking it to finding your voice as a leader.
Time for a stretch and a cuppa (or something stronger!) We'll be back in 30 minutes.
What are the ideal conditions for contemporary product design to thrive? How can design leaders create them? In this wide-ranging talk, hear Michael Yap share his career path and recent experiences as Etsy’s Interim Head of Product Design by shaping the conditions for design to flourish. He’ll identify the most dangerous pitfalls for new leaders to avoid and offer a practical framework for optimizing design organizations. And share some of the work he now leads to help scale and advance the organization as Senior Staff.
Andy will take your questions for Michael.
A few words from Andy about tomorrow and the rest of The Conference.
A few words of welcome from Leading Design Festival curator and host Andy Budd and an introduction to today's theme.
There are days where you want to wring your hands...or wring someone’s neck; feeling “These millennials, #ijustcant”. They’re a whole different animal, one whose sheer numbers are outpacing the rest of your company. While it might be overwhelming, or you find you can’t relate, by mythbusting these millennials — you’ll learn how to connect, understand and communicate to this breed.
All blinders will be taken off and you’ll be privy to an inside view of Design Department Structures, Stratification & Individual Requirements, overall Process and multiple Management Styles. We’ll also peek into a few product projects and delve into managing from a team, project, individual and company level.
How To’s ranging from analyzing baseline skillsets apart from raw talent, determining your reward cadence, to inspiring trust and passion will be tackled. Lastly, we’ll wander down the winding path of building a tight, productive and motivated ship working at full steam...not taking naps on the bean bag in the corner. This talk will be highly interactive, come prepared to turn the mirror inward on your team and tactics; and know (as your millennials certainly do) only the strong survive.
Time for a break from sitting down, take a walk if you can, and grab a drink (hot, cold, long or short). We'll be back in 30 minutes.
In this talk Abi will look at how we can really make our 121's a success. From establishing trust, creating mutual purpose, and helping your team achieve their goals Abi will take us through her own journey with 121's and share what's she's learnt along the way!
Do you squirm in your seat when asked to introduce yourself? Do you find networking awkward and embarrassing? In meetings, do you find yourself keeping quiet even though you have something to say? Does a quiet evening at home with a book sound more attractive to you than an evening socialising with people you’ve never met?
If your answer to most of these questions is yes, congratulations: you are (probably) an introvert. As an introvert, you lose energy when engaging with people rather than gain. People engagement is not optional if you want to lead. So how do you lead as an introvert?
In this talk, Timothy will share techniques he's used to manage his own introversion in order to lead as a designer. He'll also share power tips he's learned leading a fully remote global team during coronavirus isolation that play to an introvert's strengths.
Time for a stretch and a cuppa (or something stronger!) We'll be back in 30 minutes.
In this talk Noah Levin will share his experience and philosophy of creating, growing and nurturing the Figma Design team. He’ll explain some of the key rituals they put in place as a team, share tools for onboarding and maintaining a culture of learning, and give insights from some mistakes made along the way.
A few words from Andy to finish off The Conference and about the activities happening across the next month!
A few words of welcome from Leading Design Festival curator and host Andy Budd and an introduction to today's theme.
At the heart of most agile development frameworks are small, cross-functional squads. And in those squads resides a lone designer, collaborating with a product owner and engineers. This model has lead to the quest for the Unicorn designer, the broadly skilled individual who can do interaction design, visual design, and maybe even content and research as well!
This trend has potentially terrible ramifications on the practice of design in companies. In this talk, Peter will explain why the Team, not any one designer, is the Atomic Unit of Design Organisations. Drawing upon his experience from shaping teams at Adaptive Path, through his work as a VP of Design and now management consultant for design orgs, he'll walk through the process of intentionally creating a strong, diverse team, what behaviours and norms enable a team to behave at their best, and explain why the Team Lead is the most important role in your design organisation (yes, even more than Head of Design).
Andy will take your questions for Peter.
Time for a break from sitting down, take a walk if you can, and grab a drink (hot, cold, long or short). We'll be back in 30 minutes.
When teams grow, pain seems inevitable. Critiques feel like a council throw-down on Game of Thrones; tenured team members start feeling either smug or displaced; new joiners feel like they interrupted a movie in progress; everyone feels like they’ve lost the plot and aren’t sure what else will change; etc
How do we build a team while building its culture? How do we scale while strengthening that culture? When should we hire early-career designers versus seasoned veterans? “No pain, no gain” might work for body building, but for building a team, pain signals imminent entropy. There’s another way: Andrea will share her growth strategy, tactics, and tools for taking small design teams (fewer than a dozen members) to the next level.
Growth strategies Be human-centered. When a team grows, individual members experience it personally. Being human-centered means caring deeply about individuals to understand and manage their hopes, fears, and dreams. Negative experiences lead to attrition, and hiring becomes a Sisyphean task. Positive experiences have a flywheel effect on recruitment, culture, and bench strength. Co-create the team’s growth plan. We co-create and co-design outcomes with stakeholders because it brings them along for the journey. Why should growing a design team be different?
Tactics and tools Skills matrices. Designers use these to identify their own areas of interest and growth opportunities, providing rich fodder to ensure 1:1s don’t devolve into discussing the work. Balanced team approach. Depending on how an org is set up, it may not be possible to hire early-career designers until enough seniors are available to support them. Consciously build a culture of support and make team-based hiring decisions.
Andrea's experience of team growth as a designer has been traumatic. As a manager, she wanted to create a different outcome. She's proven it’s possible and now wants to share that experience.
As the future of work and social interaction changes, a new era is upon us. One that comes with huge opportunities to re-design teams, cultures and products from the lense of the collective. By following Feminine principles we can create inclusive, safe environments that provide ample psychological oxygen, and ensure both individuals and communities can thrive.
Time for a stretch and a cuppa (or something stronger!) We'll be back in 30 minutes.
As designers, we aren't always in full control of the outcomes of our work. Sometimes we find ourselves on successful projects with fantastic engineers and product managers. Other times, we deal with more complex situations involving difficult teammates, impossible deadlines, and other challenges which obscure the quality of our efforts. As leaders of design orgs, how do we best control for this variability, ensuring designers move up in the company based on how they work as opposed to what objective outcomes may be assigned — rightfully or wrongfully — to them? In this talk, we'll walk through how to create an evaluation process for your org that respects all of the nuances of working in a complex, cross-functional organization.
A few words from Andy about the highlights from today and the next Leading Design Festival activities.
A few words of welcome from Leading Design Festival curator and host Andy Budd and an introduction to today's theme.
Many designers aspire to move into leadership positions at some point in their careers. They want to become a fearless design leader without a clear understanding of what it's all about. What is it really like to be a design leader? Time for real talk!
Time for a break from sitting down, take a walk if you can, and grab a drink (hot, cold, long or short). We'll be back in 30 minutes.
From a global pandemic to an economic rollercoaster to a society embroiled in unrest, 2020 packed a punch. It also packed roughly 10 years of leadership lessons into a matter of months. Audrey will talk through those lessons and reflect on what it means to lead through extreme uncertainty in an industry that was one of the hardest hit by COVID.
Design Leadership is tough. Tough because many of us in these rapidly evolving and newly expanded roles have no precedents. The ambiguity of leader vs manager puts us at perennial risk of Imposter Syndrome and sometimes outright failure.
Consider then, the challenges of leading Design in hostile environments. Places where we have been brought in by a visionary, but the rest of the world is yet to catch up. Places where our skills are desperately needed and for us, our mission is clear and important. How do you navigate the hostility, build your team and make an impact?
Using her personal experiences working across a range of digital teams, including a blockchain infrastructure start-up, this talk aims to provide the audience with a mindset and tools for leading Design in said environments.
Lola will set out a way of diagnosing the characteristics of the environment, the tools that serve us best and the behaviours we can adopt to make the space for your team to do great Design.
Time for a stretch and a cuppa (or something stronger!) We'll be back in 30 minutes.
Everyone has a personal history. Formative struggles and the happier times alike mold and teach us how to navigate our day-to-day. As a California-born Korean kid, Frank will talk about his experience as a second generation American, and how early questions of assimilation and identity shaped his career and perspective on effective teams and leadership.
A few words from Andy about the highlights from today and the next Leading Design Festival activities.
A few words of welcome from Leading Design Festival curator and host Andy Budd and an introduction to today's theme.
Stuart Frisby shares lessons learnt from leading a design team through the excitement and optimism of growth, to the fear and uncertainty of crisis.
Time for a break from sitting down, take a walk if you can, and grab a drink (hot, cold, long or short). We'll be back in 30 minutes.
Dantley Davis is one of a small but growing number of Chief Design Officers. In this wide ranging interview, we'll discuss Dantley's journey into Design Leadership, what the role of CDO entails, and what having a 'seat at the table' really means.
Design's reputation has come a long way from ""window dressing"" to being recognized as an essential strategic lever. Designers are now in the boardroom, are members of the executive team, and are being included at every stage of product development.
However, has our contribution in these forums born the fruit we know it can? Did we get what we wanted and are now taking it for granted? Designers have the opportunity to transform the way businesses work to ensure creativity, empathy and innovation thrive. But this sort of impact requires more than getting a seat at the table.
This talk will examine how far we've come and what it will take for us to deliver outstanding value in the next era of design. Leveraging our design skills, we have the opportunity to become instrumental in building the next generation of business.
Time for a stretch and a cuppa (or something stronger!) We'll be back in 30 minutes.
"Getting a seat at the table" is often positioned as the ultimate goal. But getting the seat shouldn't be the goal. Creating incredible value for the company should. It often means being a great leader for your company first, and your discipline second.
Lynsey will share what she's learned and where she's failed in expanding her skills as her roles have expanded from a User Research team of one, to a 400+ UX team, to General Manager of the company's Core Product.
A few words from Andy about the highlights from today and the next Leading Design Festival activities.
Welcome to our festival activities as part of 'The Rest of the Fest'. On Wednesdays throughout March we will bring you a host of round tables, panel discussions, networking opportunities and peer support and mentoring from fellow attendees. We’re thrilled to offer this more intimate part of our schedule.
In the past year, design teams everywhere strived to overcome the challenges of working collaboratively and fostering culture while remaining physically isolated. Whether you have a dedicated design operations team or not, it’s important that we cultivate belonging and prepare our creative teams to deliver their best work amidst changing dynamics and hybrid working environments. Join Salesforce leaders for a conversation about our ongoing journey to build effective spaces for innovative and creative work.
Learning objectives:
Join an intimate group where each of you can share a current challenge you face as a design leader and get support and advice from your fellow attendees. Hosted on Zoom and facilitated by Leading Design this is the perfect place to share your challenges and learn from your peers.
An opportunity to come together one-to-one with fellow attendees to discuss themes from the festival. Hosted on Twine, you’ll be paired up for 10 minutes at a time and given a number of prompts and questions to aid conversation and encourage sharing. Brought to you by our friends Amazon design.
Senior designers tell stories about their wins (and losses) when designing for global audiences. They'll also share their advice for building and maintaining diverse teams.
Join us to share, discuss, and deliberate the real life challenges of leading creative teams. Join Alastair Simpson, VP of Design at Dropbox, for a refreshing take on the tensions and strategies we all navigate in our day jobs. Alastair has led creative teams for the past decade and can share what he’s learned in his journey form agency to small startup to massive software companies.
An opportunity to come together one-to-one with fellow attendees to discuss themes from the festival. Hosted on Twine, you’ll be paired up for 10 minutes at a time and given a number of prompts and questions to aid conversation and encourage sharing. Brought to you by our friends Amazon design.
With digital design becoming an urgent competitive advantage in a world where ‘going digital’ has become the number one strategic priority for many businesses, are organisations who foster strong and resilient design cultures better equipped to thrive in the future? How do we as design leaders empower and sustain that culture?
As a companion to her conference talk ‘Managing Millennials’, this roundtable will explore your personal leadership challenges and the secrets you’ve discovered working alongside the new age workforce. Expect to be vulnerable, share learnings and lean on those in the discussion to provide insights and truths you can take back to implement with your team.
An opportunity to come together one-to-one with fellow attendees to discuss themes from the festival. Hosted on Twine, you’ll be paired up for 10 minutes at a time and given a number of prompts and questions to aid conversation and encourage sharing. Brought to you by our friends Amazon design.
As the festival comes to a close we invite you to join us in looking back on some of the key moments, reflect on discussion points and share takeaways.
Join an intimate group of attendees who identify as female where you can share a current challenge as a design leader. Find support and advice from your fellow attendees. Hosted on zoom and facilitated by Leading Design this is the perfect place to share your challenges and learnings as someone who identifies as female in your org.
An opportunity to come together one-to-one with fellow attendees to discuss themes from the festival. Hosted on Twine, you’ll be paired up for 10 minutes at a time and given a number of prompts and questions to aid conversation and encourage sharing. Brought to you by our friends Amazon design.