Speakers
Peter Merholz
Peter Merholz has worked at the intersection of design, technology, and humans for over 25 years. Currently, he’s an independent consultant focused on improving the effectiveness of design organizations. His clients include JP Morgan Chase, Ceridian, The New York Times, Roblox, and Starbucks.
He co-founded Adaptive Path, the premier user experience consultancy, acquired by Capital One in 2014. After leaving Adaptive Path, he served as a design executive, leading teams at Groupon, OpenTable, Capital One, Snagajob, and Kaiser Permanente.
He co-wrote Org Design for Design Orgs, still the premier book on building in-house design teams, and co-hosts Finding Our Way, a podcast exploring design leadership.
Oh, and yeah, he coined the word 'blog'.
About the talk
The Atomic Unit of Design Is The Team
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 behaviors 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).
About the workshop
Coach, Diplomat, Champion, Architect: A Workshop on Design Leadership Fundamentals
Most Design Leaders and Managers were promoted into these roles due to their strength as designers. They soon learn, though, that the skills that brought you to the role are not the ones that will carry you forward. To enable and empower their design teams, leaders and managers must embrace a new set of practices. And it turns out that there are circumstances specific to the function of design that go beyond generic "management training."
In this half-day workshop, Peter Merholz will use his Coach (managing down), Diplomat (managing across), Champion (managing up), and Architect (managing at scale) framework to guide leaders and managers through what's required of them in their roles, introducing them to a set of practices and activities that will strengthen their performance.