Co-Creating Operating Models for Design Teams with Daniel Orbach
The best operating models for design orgs are mission-driven, evolving, and team-developed. Those criteria might seem daunting, but Daniel Orbach, Lou’s guest and a speaker at the DesignOps Summit (taking place virtually September 23-25), explains how he facilitates a dynamic culture of co-creating with his team at JP Morgan Chase. Daniel outlines his framework, one where the whole team is involved. It’s a dynamic, fluid process that builds teamwork, creates buy-in, and establishes a framework of periodic review, which encourages continual evolution.
Lou and Daniel discuss the impact of rituals and mission statements on both teams and individuals. They also explore the impact of a team’s operating models on the broader organization and how interactions with various teams can foster shared understanding within the broader context of the organization.
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
- How mission statements can inspire and drive operating models
- The power of organic rituals and the unusual, unifying ritual of Daniel’s team at JP Morgan Chase
- How cross-pollinating between teams can create a shared vocabulary and increase understanding
Quick Reference Guide:
2:36 – Introduction of Daniel
3:14 – Co-creating operating models with a team
4:33 – On mission and operating models
7:19 – Quarterly impact retrospectives
9:16 – Rituals and mission
12:55 – Co-creating operating models
15:34 – Why you need the Rosenverse
18:39 – Operating models’ effects on broader organizations
21:00 – Shared vocabulary
23:07 – Cross-pollinating in organizations to facilitate shared understanding
25:05 – Operating models and the individual
28:09 – Daniel’s gift for the audience
How to Design for Growth: A Chat with Laura Klein
It happens all too often: a beautifully designed product ends up loved and used by only few dozen people. Laura Klein talks with Lou about how UX designers and product managers can borrow ideas from growth hacking to grow a bigger base of users for the products they make.
Recruiting for User Research: a Chat with Nate Bolt
Nate Bolt knows more about recruiting for user research than the average human. He created the first moderated remote testing software, founded Ethnio, and authored the book Remote Research. In this podcast, Nate sits down with Lou to share ideas for how to get started, and what to look for in an ideal research participant.
Why Pharmaceutical’s Research Model Should Replace Design Thinking
In many organizations, design thinking dominates the research process with expansive research processes upfront during discovery. Pharmaceutical research gives us an alternative model that we can adapt based on a fail early and fail often (tech mantra) that should make discovery research an easier sell in any organization.
Takeaways:
- An alternative model to discovery research with reduced upfront costs
- Starting discovery research when buy-in is difficult
- Maintaining discovery research when funds tighten up
- An alternative model to measuring the value of research that takes into account savings
The Real Point of Research: a Chat with Erika Hall, author of Just Enough Research
Erika Hall wants us to get one thing straight: getting research right isn’t about the method you choose. It’s about gathering research to make the right design decisions for your business. Hear Erika’s ideas for how to bake research into the product design process. And why every organization needs a “team philosopher.”
Getting to Done: a Chat with Cindy Alvarez, author of Lean Customer Development
Cindy Alvarez knows how to go toe to toe with leaders who resist user research and still get it done. The author of Lean Customer Development shares tips from her experience for conducting research–even when you don’t have formal authority or budget.
How to Make Research Appealing to Anyone: A Chat with Abby Covert
You’re sitting in front of a mound of user research data. How do you take that mound and make it into valuable bite-sized chunks? How do you make decisionmakers care? Abby Covert, author of How to Make Sense of Any Mess, shares her approach to packaging research in ways that get at what audiences need.
Talking to Tech: Designing Conversations with Giles Colborne
Did you talk to your smartphone today? Ask Google Home to play your favorite audiobook? The two-way conversation with technology has graduated from metaphor to reality. Lou sits down with Giles Colborne, author of “Simple and Usable” and the CEO/founder of CX Partners, to explore how having meaningful, interactive conversations with our tech is shaping and changing UX design.
Elementary, My Dear Watson: AI Essentials and Ethics with Chris Noessel
Why has artificial intelligence (AI) captivated the attention of everyday consumers now? Lou chats with Chris Noessel, Global Practice Design Lead for Transportation at IBM to explore how “smart” technology is shaking up many industries. His new book, “Designing Agentive Technology: AI That Works for People,” explores solutions, implications and ethics of design “smart” products for customers.
Scaling Empathy, A Case Study in Change Management
Organizations of all sizes often struggle to reap the full benefits of change, especially in times of transformation, despite huge investments in technology and process. This is often because employees don’t understand how their role is changing. It may seem simple to just clarify roles and responsibilities, but as with consumer facing products, people are unique, complex, and motivated by factors that aren’t always easy to discover. Additionally, designing for the employee can also mean designing for stakeholder buy-in.
This is a story about a real world approach to building practical application of empathy across multiple disciplines and reporting lines, overcoming reservations, navigating politics, with the goal of building a lasting partnership where employee UX design/execution is a team sport and never outsourced.
