Services for Leadership
Critique Programs
for Design Teams
Create a healthy critique environment for your design team
Through 2+ years of experimenting this with my own design team, both in-person and remote, plus a few more years of thinking about Kanban, I have a few core principles to help you set up your own critique practice in your organization. Starting with team input, long-term strategy, and weekly pivots on what works and what doesn’t, you are soon to have a thriving critique presence that is healthy and pushes work to the next level.
Design Team Operations
Optimize workflow and clarify/untangle your deliverables with cognitive shift in mind
Invision vs. Figma? Grids or no grids? Pixel perfect or pair QA? Create a motivating prioritization list? Start, agitate, or recover a relationship with marketing? Optimize deliverables? Heads down time vs. collaboration? User testing schedule? New idea or keeping something steady?
There are so many things to think about when it comes to operating a design team within an organization. Teasing out exactly what your intentions are and designing a flexible workflow makes a huge difference.
Organizational Strategy
Develop a strategic way to develop design clout
The story here is consistent and still on repeat. Design teams start small, like super small, and always have to explain what they do and why it’s important. Let’s sit down and analyze how your organization is structured, discuss some of the politics involved, and lay out some options to build more design clout.
Product Innovation,
Planning, & Prioritization
Democratic methods to develop & deliver a product with everyone in the room
Honestly, the white man will declare “Product” and everyone will listen. But a year down the line, they’ll find out he didn’t quite know what he was talking about. It’s important to build a product from a team— the product manager can have a vision but will fail without team support. If you rally the troops, spend time upfront to build accountability across the team, you’ll have a better outcome managing the product in the future.
Training
More people need to know the “why” of Product, UX, Service Design, Facilitation, and more.
Whether it’s a design team that needs a refresher or other departments that need insight into design and how it works, understanding the “why” of design opens eyes and calms anxiety.
Production
(Always delivered with strategy)
Logo Work
Identity matters
The world is a place that has systemic branding built into the way we perceive anything. Let’s figure out the “thing” you want to put out into the universe and represent it accordingly.
Note: I approach this work starting with selecting a typeface. If you don’t like that approach, you might want to look somewhere else.
Website Design
& Development
For small businesses and artists
Over the past 6 years, I’ve helped small businesses, start-ups, and artists develop their presence online. Figuring out your mission statement is where you start, and having UX follow that mission statement is key.
Product Strategy, Planning, & Design
Physical and digital products aren’t that different
“Product” is all the rage these days, but do you know why? It’s because the word represents a holistic approach to a thing. UX, UI, Usability, Research, User Stories, Epics, and all of the rest. It’s more business minded, self-aware, and pointed in the direction we want to be heading towards. Let’s figure out what your product can, could, and will do.
Note: It’s important to know that many people, both designers and engineers have been wanting this vision for years. This word may change in a few years but it sill be in pursuit of this spirit.
Full-Stack UX
One part of the line impacts the other
Mastering a special skill in UX, such as usability, is superb. But what happens with the rest of the production line? It’s important to know that every section impacts the other and designers should be learning and building their skills towards a holistic view of UX.
User Research
Ethnographic, primary, secondary, behavioral, and more
Human Centered Design is just another way of saying— research for empirical creation. Ditch the top down way of making decisions and double down on bottom to top. Find the humans you want to have a relationship with and figure out how to actually help.
User Testing
People first. Always.
People are so fascinating. If you walk into any user testing session with that spirit, it will energize everyone who is working on a product. It is humbling and necessary in this line of work.
Note: Anybody, with the right training, can run a user test. It’s best to learn the core necessities of a user test and implement it with your own personality. If it’s not genuine, it doesn’t work.