Resources
What developing design metrics at Apple taught me about communicating the value of Design
Over the last 12 years, I've found that teaching a scorecard approach has unlocked so many questions designers, design leaders, and executives have about OKRs, metrics, and showing the value of design.
A quick, 3-step process to ask better questions during interviews
Unfortunately, over my career, I've been burned too many times by not asking enough probing questions about a role that I later wished I has asked. Here’s a quick, 3-step process to figure out the questions I want to ask a potential employer about a role.
Becoming a great design leader. Simple to say, hard to do.
There are so many things about moving into a design management or leadership role that, on paper, are simple when, in reality, they are really freaking hard. When it comes to growing into your leadership role, resist that urge at first and try remixing what you already know.
Design Evolution Is On A Second Wave
The bottom line, you have to take the course. The classes are full of surprises, but I will NOT share those here. You have to experience it for yourself.
A weekly prompt that will change the way you’ll go into work on Monday
The experience has left me feeling excited, driven, and in desperate need of coffee and reflection. Strategic Business Thinking for Designers is a clever ruse — a weekly prompt that will change the way you’ll act going into work on Monday.
One of the best decisions I made
One of the best decisions I made during the lockdown was to enroll in the course. Each week opened up new possibilities and equipped me with relevant tools to extend my skills beyond being a researcher!
Collective Impact; applying a social framework to large-scale org change
Second Wave Dive is a foundational school for the next wave of Design Executives. We help you claim your agency, shape policy and people (not pixels), and exceed the expectations of others and yourself.
I totally recommend this course!
For me, this 6-week course was like a filling in the gaps exercise. As design professionals, we get to a point in our careers where we realize we need to know how to communicate the business value of design effectively to our stakeholders. Still, because we're too busy being practitioners, we're never taught HOW to do this!
Business thinking designer? Yes please!
The course gave me so much more ways to connect with business, partners and with the whole organization. Designers are not crazy thinking we can make things better, we often just need a better approach. All this and so much more you could hear from the great minds of Second Wave Dive team.
Like a lifetime experience
For the past 5 days , I had a wonderful opportunity, more like a lifetime experience to be part of live session where most of considerable subjects had been covered. There were eye opening facts & thinking, expanding type of activities , diving into business impact of Design, connecting Design desirables to strategic business objectives "KPI's , KR's ,ROI", communicating Design Rationale & storytelling ....any many more valuable topics.
Can’t wait to unleash this knowledge on the next project!
It has been a mind-squeezing learning experience, and a very rewarding one. It’s invaluable to be able to connect the dots between design and business choices and outcomes. Now I can communicate the value or harm of each possible scenario to my colleagues and clients.
Selling the value of Design with The Good Partner Map
Develop a sense of how your cross-functional partners perceive you with The Good Partner Map. Use this resource to document a model of your functional value, to understand how excited your partners are to work with you, how easy your team is to engage with, and how to to continuously improve your partnerships.
The Good Partner Map (pdf)
See your value through the eyes of your colleagues. The Good Partner Map gives you an understanding of how your skills, capabilities, ceremonies, and communications generate excitement for and match the ability of your colleagues.
I was directing design. And I was utterly stuck.
The transition from crafting design to directing design can be lonely and isolating. Build resiliency by looking beyond design. Build confidence through titrated learning.
The art of letting others have your way
By understanding motivations and constraints of those you work with, you can become influential not only as a designer, but also as a communicator, peer, colleague, and leader. Learn to take a step back, listen to all those you design for, and let others have your way.
Leaders create paths for lightning to strike
Great leaders create the paths for others. These leaders do not create the lightning strike, they map out the course that the strike will follow.
Design Meets Business: the first cohort
Do you remember that feeling when, as a designer, you did your first user research and made design decisions from those insights? You came away like OMG WHAT was I even doing before this?? That’s how this course felt.
Embracing the weight of design leadership
Success is scary because there are expectations with success. The moments when we are liberate ourselves from our fears are moments we help liberate others.
5 nuanced steps to overcome self-doubt as a design leader
Becoming an effective design deader is possible, and it takes practice to reduce uncertainty in that transform. The most effective design leaders I know leverage nuance to overcome self-doubt in five steps.
What's with the name, Second Wave Dive?
A little Brian Blessed, a little Dino DeLaurentis, and a whole lot of the 1980s.