Design Leadership Visual Diary

GU DMC Program Fall 2023

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Visual Diary 14

I really appreciated the systems thinking matrix tool we learned about this semester. This is a super helpful way of breaking down and evaluating a complex solution for a wicked problem. Many of the org change projects in my work are definitely "wicked" and this will be a valuable tool for examining the solutions we come up with. The quote from our reading that stood out to me is: "And the lenses through which you say a design is "good" are linked to the stance (stake in the ground) you will take." Establishing a stake in the ground for each project will be critical!

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Visual Diary 14

When completing the ethnographic portions of my projects, I found the IDEO Human-Centered Design Toolkit to be a particularly helpful resource with a wide variety of design interventions and research methods. I have already started to leverage this in my work projects and plan to continue to do so! The tips around group interviews have been particularly useful. Highly recommend.

Design Kit is IDEO.org's platform to learn human-centered design, a creative approach to solving the world's most difficult problems.

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Visual Diary 13

I visited NYC last year and was fortunate enough to visit the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and see their DESIGNING PEACE exhibit. A little about the exhibit:

From activists, scholars, and architects to policymakers and graphic, game, and landscape designers, Designing Peace flips the conversation: peace is not simply a passive state signifying the absence of war, it is a dynamic concept that requires effort, expertise, and multidimensional solutions to address its complexity.

The journey to peace is certainly a wicked problem. This exhibit highlights how design can be a force for good in the world. This is somewhat meta, butbI particularly love the design of this exhibit and how it calls and inspires individuals to action and engages them in the conversation. We can all be designers in our own way/roles. While it's a complex problem, we aren't helpless in the solution and we all have a part to play. Definitely recommend you check it out!

Designing Peace: Building a Better Future Now | Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

How might we collectively put our creative forces together to envision a future we want to live in and take action to create it now? Designi

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Visual Diary 13

More Work for Mother by Ruth Schwartz Cowen is an illuminating book for design leaders. It highlights the long-term implications and consequences our designs can have on individuals and on society as a whole. It really made me think about how every single product has an impact, even something as simple as a microwave. Highly recommend!

In this classic work of women's history (winner of the 1984 Dexter Prize from the Society for the History of Technology), Ruth Schwartz Cowan shows how and why modern women devote as much time to housework as did their colonial sisters. In lively and provocative prose, Cowan explains how the modern conveniences—washing machines, white flour, vacuums, commercial cotton—seemed at first to offer working-class women middle-class standards of comfort. Over time, however, it became clear that these gadgets and gizmos mainly replaced work previously conducted by men, children, and servants. Instead of living lives of leisure, middle-class women found themselves struggling to keep up with ever higher standards of cleanliness.

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Visual Diary 12

The Humanetics Group is addressing safety gaps that have been long known and disregarded by vehicle designers. The company's mission is to protect humans in motion. They're currently designing diverse crash test dummies to improve the safety of vehicles, which are commonly tested with dummies that represent the average male. Women and people of varying heights, weights, and frames are more likely to be injured because vehicle safety is simply not designed with them in mind. Humanetics' new, diverse generation of test dummies will go a long way in protecting more people.

While I applaud Humanetics for their work, I'm disappointed it took this long to address a known problem. The book Invisible Women was extremely illuminating in how much gender bias is perpetuated in the world of design. As a design leader, I think diversity and representation in research is extremely important to consider.

The Humanetics Group engineer extraordinary safety, digital and sensor solutions for critical environments to put humans at the heart of ind

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

Data is fundamental to the modern world. From economic …

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/27/business/car-safety-women.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

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Visual Diary 11

GM's 1950's stake in the ground was focused on planned obselescence. In their effort to differentiate from Ford, they "pioneered a way to entice customers to splurge on the latest, greatest car, to satisfy themselves and impress those in their social circles. This new stake in the ground unfortunately became a model for all industry. Many products are intentionally designed with a limited lifespan to force consumers to buy again-- from appliances and printer cartridges to smart phones and light bulbs. It has become a serious pain for consumers, and one that generates excess waste and violates principles of sustainability. This type of design leadership has caused more harm than good, in my opinion.

Here’s the truth about the ‘planned obsolescence’ of tech

It’s widely held that certain gadgets, cars and other tech have deliberately short lifespans, to make you shell out to replace them. What’s

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Visual Diary 11

An example of a problematic stake in the ground is Gwenyth Paltrow's GOOP, which claims to be on the cutting edge of holistic health and wellness, "cracking open taboos." Unfortunately, they promote products with unfounded/false medical claims. The most notorious example is the jade "vagina egg," which they continue to sell despite the controversy. They also promote extreme fad diets that thinly veil disordered eating habits. Their stake in the ground as a modern wellness company has caused harm to individuals who believe their claims.

How the Latest GOOP Controversy Sums Up Why The Wellness Industry is Problematic

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Visual Diary 10

I don't tend to "stan" brands, but Girlfriend Collective is an exception, I think due in large part to their differentiating stake in the ground that aligns so closely to my own personal values. Even beyond their sustainable factors, their dedication to inclusivity which is demonstrated through their size offerings and their models stands apart. It's one of the first things that caught my attention. I don't think I realized how important inclusivity was to me until I saw it in their advertising. Now I can't see how much other brands lack it, and I use it as a benchmark when making purchasing decisions. This is an example of how a design leader's stake in the ground can convince their audience to believe in their values.

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Visual Diary 10

The Savannah Bananas are an incredible example of a design leader placing a stake in the ground. The leader/creator of this baseball team believes that baseball should be a fun experience for fans. And they set out to create a team that flips everything we know about baseball entirely upside down in order to achieve this vision. Every choice they make is guided by their "fans first" value.

"We think there’s a better way to do almost everything. So we will try it all. Some people may think we’re crazy. But we are okay with that. No matter what, we just want to have fun. We are driven by this goal to make baseball fun. And ultimately give fans the best possible experience at our ballpark. We call this Fans First."

The Savannah Bananas show us that sport’s future may not look like sport | Jonathan Liew

As sport is gradually supplanted by scripted entertainment, it is starting to resemble something else entirely

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Visual Diary 9

When factoring cultural parameters into our designs, it's critical to consider appropriation versus appreciation. Appreciation requires significant effort to learn and understand the parameters, which could include the meanings behind cultural symbols and practices. It's simply not okay to design products or services that are "inspired" by a culture different from your own without understanding the cultural context. Listening to and working with the members of the culture is key, which means participatory design is likely the best strategy.

I appreciate the perspective provided by Matter, a textile designer, in this article:

The Line Between Appropriation and Appreciation - Matter Prints

The line between cultural appropriation and appreciation can seem blurry, but if you’re uncertain a general rule of thumb is to just ask.

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Visual Diary 9

I think there are times when cultural parameters absolutely should be broken. Challenging the status quo is how progress and change happens. We can't envision and create a better world if we accept all parameters as concrete.

Consider the design of the rainbow flag as a symbol of LGBT pride in the 70s, a time when mainstream American culture did not accept or respect the civil and human rights of queer individuals. Consider the design of the of the government's response to/solution for the AIDs crisis, which stayed rooted in the anti-gay cultural parameters.

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Visual Diary 8

My instructional design team has two software options when it comes to authoring courses: Articulate Rise, which has a library of pre-programmed blocks that can be positioned linearly, and Articulate Storyline, which is a blank page that allows us to build custom, branching interactions with unique UI. Storyline is an incredibly powerful tool. But to be honest, we have a small team with a backlog of projects. The parameters around resources make the restrictions of Rise's parameters incredibly helpful. Fewer choices means we produce quality products faster. We reserve Storyline for projects that meet specific criteria around time, impact, and content.

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Visual Diary 8: Parameters in Practice

This space planner/interior designer, Julie Jones, posts videos to TikTok where she explains her client's desideratum and parameters, as well as the parameters defined by the space. Often, the floorplans she's working with are very unique and have challenging parameters, but she always comes up with creative solutions that result in a more functional space! Here are some example posts.

#spaceplanning #interiordesign #livingroomlayout #familyroom

#interiordesign #spaceplanning #roommakeover #cornerfireplace

#spaceplanning #interiordesign #bedroomlayout #homeoffice #fyp

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Visual Diary 7

I wanted to share an example of design leadership from my organization/team that I'm particularly proud of. My company has been running the same new hire orientation program for several decades. The program consists of 12 instructor-led sessions. The executive sponsors are quite proud of the program. However, our company has evolved significantly in the last 3-5 years and the instructional design team sees a huge opportunity to revamp to better suit our increasingly diverse audience.

My team realizes we have a bit of a challenge in convincing the program sponsors to envision new possibilities. We're applying ethnographic methods to understand the stakeholder experience from several perspectives--learners, presenters, and admin. We're using surveys, interviews, focus group discussions, attendance data, and observations (the IDEO field guide shared in this course has been particularly helpful to us as we've planned these activities). We're creating journey maps as a key analysis and storytelling tool.

Although we're still in early stages of our ethnographic research, I am very confident we'll be able to bring our sponsors along with us on this journey and engage them as equal partners so we can collaboratively design a new onboarding experience. I'm loving how I've been able to take concepts from this course and apply them directly in my work that same week.

Journey Map | Service Design Tools

Describe how the user interact with the service, throughout its touchpoints

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Visual Diary 7: Participatory Design in Action

I attended a conference this week that focused on leadership in learning and development. A panel speaker shared an incredible example of design leadership. Her organization recently leveraged a participatory approach to design the company's new strategy. Employees of all levels (excluding C-Suite) were invited to apply to be part of the team. The team was responsible for research, ideating, defining, and communicating the new strategy (with support and feedback from relevant support and operations groups). This empowering approach resulted in huge buy-in, ownership, and accountability from the employees who were part of the team--and all the employees they brought along with them through their relationships.

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Visual Diary 6: IDEO's Core Values

An organization's core values document the abstract mindsets that comprise the company culture and guide decisions across all level of the organization. IDEO's values drive their success as design leaders.

The 7 Values That Drive IDEO

IDEO's design thinking blog, written by Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO.

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Visual Diary 6 - Netflix A/B Testing

I've always wanted to do A/B testing for a learning solution but haven't worked it into our process yet! I imagine many streaming platforms use A/B testing. In my research, I found this interesting blog series where Netflix designers explain how they use A/B testing to inform their decision-making.

What is an A/B Test?

This is the second post in a multi-part series on how Netflix uses A/B tests to inform decisions and continuously innovate on our products.