In recent years, there’s been a rising trend within product teams and the design community pointing to design systems for poor design decisions and the resulting low-quality experiences. Once hailed as models of efficiency and consistency, design systems are now frequently perceived as stifling creativity, bearing the brunt of blame. This shift in perspective seems […]
Early in my people leader journey, one of the things I struggled with most was when someone from my team resigned. After investing what I believe was the best of me in developing and helping them, they decided to continue their professional life elsewhere. I remember taking those situations quite personally. People indeed leave toxic […]
A common misconception on design systems by design leaders and design organizations is that the team in charge of the system is the one setting its direction. Having led design systems both in Huawei and Xero taught me that the teams closest to the customer are the ones providing the right insights for directional decision […]
I’ve recently turned two years working at Xero so I thought of sharing some thoughts that came as notes from my ongoing reflections. We grew, and we grew fast When I started at Xero we were 6 in my design team, now we are 36.Michael Hebden and myself invested six months reviewing applications, interviewing and […]
Throughout the years of building and managing teams, I’ve came with a couple of guiding principles to help my teams hire and operate within: Challenge Respectfully challenge everything. Empowerment to disagree is fundamental to enrich the views on a given topic, your voice and opinion matters. Bring Design to all conversations. Be curious Keeping an […]
Design doesn’t need a seat at EVERY table, Design needs allies and sponsors for true customer-centric decisions. Collaboration trumps influence.
One of the ways Design teams fail to deliver great experiences -where quality isn’t high- like products that remain as MVP, products with large backlogs of UX debt, is when they make the concern and responsibility of the design quality as the one of the design discipline and its practice. Design leadership and designers, need […]
A small hack to build high-trust teams.Hire people you’d feel comfortable working for in a future. Why? You will develop them to become the best version of themselves. You will invite people to join your teams with a similar ethical framework to work within. You will build the strongest possible working relationships with them. You […]