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!

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.

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

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

Ethan Marcotte on the Tech Industry, Unions, and AI

In a time of massive layoffs across the tech industry, and with the inevitable advancement of AI, is it time for tech workers to organize — as in, unionize? I know, I know. You thought unions were for 1950’s factory workers. Not so. Ethan Marcotte, author of You Deserve a Tech Union (and coiner of the term “responsive web design”) thinks it’s high time for tech workers to protect themselves by coming together and deciding what’s most important to them as a collective.

Certainly tech workers don’t face the same kind of potential life-threatening working conditions of industrial America, but they still deserve a seat at the table when important decisions about their work are being discussed. With issues related to equality, transparency, workplace harassment, and how AI is shifting roles and affecting how work gets done, there’s a lot to talk about.

Ethan will bring his perspective on tech workers and how they’re being impacted by AI to the upcoming Designing with AI virtual conference in June.

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• What’s attractive about unionizing for tech workers of the 2020s
• What tech workers would change if they could
• About tech walkouts and unions that have already happened
• Helpful resources for starting conversations with coworkers
• The potential relationship among AI, reskilling, and worker unions

Quick Reference Guide:
0:20 – Introduction of Ethan
3:35 – How Ethan became interested in the idea of tech unions
6:04 – “Weren’t unions for the manufacturing industry in the 1950s?”
9:32 – The things tech workers would change if they could
11:14 – Conversations among employees – are they safe? Are they protected?
13:28 – On organizing for the greater good of humanity
17:11 – Plug for Managing Priorities: How to Create Better Plans and Make Smarter Decisions by Harry Max
19:06 – How we should feel about AI
22:36 – AI, reskilling, and when workers don’t want to leave mundane tasks behind
31:08 – Employees “voting with their feet” is costly for organizations
33:24 – How future workers may organize as it relates to AI
36:30 – Ethan’s gift for listeners

Breaking through the empathy gap: a conversation with Indi Young

Empathy is a hot conversation topic these days but much as we try, we’re not quite using our empathy muscles to their fullest extent when solving design problems for real people. Indi Young, author of Mental Models and Practical Empathy talks about how our assumptions can lead us astray.

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.