Panel: Collaboration Tools

We have all heard the old saying “communication is key” but as the landscape of technology widens so do the options we have for communication tools using that technology. To talk about the challenges and opportunities that our organizations face when solving the communication conundrum, we have invited three people working in three different areas where communication is key for organizations with designers: research insights, workflow management and design systems management. Facilitated by Abby Covert.

Designing with Outcomes in Mind: Transformation in the Enterprise with Lada Gorlenko

Lada Gorlenko, Director of UX Research at Smartsheet in Seattle, is the lead curator of this year’s Enterprise Experience conference.

Lada began her career in prison, spending lots of time with murderers and drug dealers! Not what you think, though: she was a psychologist researching the personality changes caused by long-term imprisonment. The experience led her to a better understanding of how universally transferable the principles of research and design are, whether in a prison or at an enterprise. In this episode of the Rosenfeld Review, Lada shares her career path and the story of how she ended up in UX, and the themes she’s developed for the upcoming Enterprise Experience conference.

Evaluating Designers with Ignacio Martinez

Giving feedback to subordinates can be just as stressful as receiving it. Yet evaluations are a critical component of retention, employer/employee expectations, and production in general. Having an evaluation framework and system in place creates efficiencies, fills voids, and benefits everyone on the team. Enter Ignacio Martinez, associate director at Grand Studio in Chicago. He’ll be delivering a talk at the DesignOps Summit in September, “Fair and Effective Designer Evaluation”.

In this podcast episode, Ignacio and Lou explore the importance of a well-structured evaluation framework that highlights “glows and grows” in the areas of craft, quality, client interaction, and teamwork. Ignacio’s system, built on the very accessible Google Sheets, combines quantitative metrics with qualitative feedback to reduce bias and offer a comprehensive assessment of designers’ performance. His framework allows for continuous feedback from peers, project directors, and supervisors.

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• The principles and methodologies behind creating a fair and effective designer evaluation system
• How contributions from peers, career managers, and directors can create a robust evaluation system
• The importance of a structured framework with clear categories and traits such as craft, quality, client interaction, and teamwork
• The benefits of incorporating both quantitative metrics and qualitative feedback to minimize bias and provide comprehensive evaluations
• How to create a framework for continuous ongoing feedback from peers, project directors, and supervisors
• How evaluation criteria may evolve based on internal priorities

Quick Reference Guide:
0:13 – Intro of Ignacio
3:54 – Evaluating designers then and now
6:32 – Gut feelings versus using a system
8:27 – Defining desired traits and levels
11:49 – The framework of the documentation
14:54 – The Rosenverse
17:34 – Who are the evaluators? Are they biased? Are they anonymous?
21:33 – The frequency of evaluations
22:36 – Consider what makes the business run
26:05 – The importance of transparency
26:51 – Ignacio’s gift for listeners

Do we need more design conferences? Chris Avore and Lou Rosenfeld say yes.

Chris Avore and Lou Rosenfeld talk about their upcoming conferences: Pro/Design in New York City on January 30 (hosted by Nasdaq) and Enterprise UX in San Antonio on May 13-15(hosted by Rosenfeld Media and Rackspace).

Pro/Design will be held on Friday, January 30, 2015. There are currently no more tickets available. However, Nasdaq will be releasing live stream information on Monday, January 26.

All about ResearchOps with Kate Towsey

Kate Towsey has certainly left her mark on research operations, pioneering the practice, helping launch the ResearchOps community, and now through writing Research That Scales: The Research Operations Handbook, which Rosenfeld Media published in September of 2024.

In her interview with Lou, Kate reflects on her journey from content strategist to a pivotal figure in the research operations community. She recounts her early days at the UK Government Digital Service, where she unexpectedly found herself building research labs, and later at Atlassian, where she helped develop systems to manage vast amounts of research data. Through her work, Kate realized the need for a more structured approach to research operations, leading to facilitating a global ResearchOps community. Oh, and along the way, she coined the term “PWDR” (“People Who Do Research”).

The conversation delves into the strategic importance of ResearchOps, emphasizing that it’s much more than just administrative support—it’s about designing systems that enable organizations to effectively learn and innovate. Kate likens research operations to city planning, highlighting the need for strategy to build successful, sustainable systems.

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• How Kate’s early work in content strategy and her experiences at the UK Government Digital Service (GDS) led to the work she does today
• The importance of aligning research operations with a clear research strategy
• How research operations have evolved over the years
• The distinction between research and insights, and the value of turning research findings into actionable insights that drive decision-making

Quick Reference Guide:
0:27 – Introduction of Kate and her book
3:32 – Kate’s ah-ha moment
9:38 – Facilitating a global conversation before writing the book
11:47 – 8 elements unique to operations
14:09 – The Rosenverse
16:56 – Defining research operations
16:15 – Strategy in operations
20:50 – A story from overlooking the Hudson River in 2018
23:58 – On insight
27:14 – Human-centered research
32:04 – Kate’s gift for listeners

Imagination Work Meets Remote Work: Reflections on Collaboration with MURAL’s Mariano Suarez-Battan

Mariano Suarez-Battan is the co-founder and CEO of MURAL, a tool for remote collaboration—and longtime partner/sponsor of Rosenfeld Media’s conferences. MURAL was founded in 2011 after Mariano experienced first-hand the struggle of working remotely with a large, distributed team while designing video games. In this episode of the Rosenfeld Review, Mariano and Lou discuss the challenges of collaboration among remote teams and how platforms like MURAL can level the playing field between coworkers, often flattening hierarchies and changing culture in the process. Mariano also shares his predictions about how workplaces will operate five years in the future.

Mariano’s shoutout – IBM’s Phil Gilbert, one of MURAL’s early adopters, and Tim Brown, former CEO at Ideo who introduced Mariano to Phil.

MURAL is sponsoring all three of Rosenfeld Media conferences this year: Advancing Research, Enterprise Experience, and DesignOps Summit. Be sure to stop by their booth!

Better Together: Partnering with Others to Transform Enterprise

Best Buy’s Jamie Kaspszak and USAA’s Frank Duran join Lou and Bob Baxley to discuss how UX plays a critical role in bridging their organizations’ silos and disciplines. It’s a preview of what they’ll cover at this year’s Enterprise Experience conference, where they’ll be joined by four other speakers, all who are wrestling with the team sport of organizational transformation. Learn more about these sessions, which take place virtually on September 3.

Design Planning and Management Support

Looking for ways to improve your design planning and management process and tools? We’ve got you covered.
Whether you are an individual contributor or a DesignOps manager, everyone needs ecosystem visibility at multiple levels of altitude to help answer questions like:

• What components am I working on next?
• What screens use those components?
• How many components and templates are complete?
• What content types will be using those components?

You also need quick access to all the relevant design outputs that aren’t kept in a design system and are updated throughout the design process (e.g. information architecture, content types, taxonomies, interaction models, etc.)

When you work with Limina, we not only help you get UX done, but we empower your teams with new processes and tools to address the design planning and management needs and system thinking gaps in your organization

Interested in learning more?

• As we partner with you, we will include our design planning and management templates and tools along with the design deliverables. You will see the tools in action during our collaboration, and we will empower you to own and manage the tools going forward.
• Or, maybe you would prefer the mentorship or coaching approach? We can get to know your current state, introduce you to our process and tooling best practices, and guide you through the learning process

Psst…inside scoop: Design planning and management is a core knowledge management function that is deployed as you iterate through the design process