Jamie Reffell

Great writeup on the value design can bring to product organisations irrespective of technoöogical shifts such as AI.

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I love this article on what we've learned over the past 10 years of Material Design at Google: Form should follow feeling. We need variety as well as consistency where it matters. Just start designing with others and see where lots of iterations take you. And put human connection first to make it interesting. Material has come a long way from "digital paper" and what the world needed 10 years ago, a focus on consistency above all to make the exploding world of apps understandable. I'm super excited by where we're at right now and everything the next 10 years of Material will bring to create unique, but still highly usable, digital products that embrace the feeling of using them. https://lnkd.in/gQC93JdW

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4 ways AI can help designers? • Generate ideas to inspire creativity • Create illustrations for personas and journey maps • Plan out workshop agendas • Create alt text and image captions for better accessibility It's all about the prompts and refining them to work best for your project!

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Many designers complain that they can’t get their ideas into a product backlog. Most of the time this is true depending on the maturity of your team and if your company sees value in the design field, but most of the time, backlogs are product driven. If you want to advocate how to get your ideas you need to convince how the designs are going to impact the business. Saying to PM’s: “The UI looks bad and outdated” is such a bad pitch and will fall on deaf ears. You need to speak “business” and as a designer you need to know how your ideas can make them money. Now, you’re probably thinking “well how can I do that” considering it’s hard to use ARR on designs. This is where we introduce the RICE framework. https://lnkd.in/exaD4xNY . Learning this will help you know the impact of your designs, the reach of the customer base, how confident you are on the designs and estimations and how much effort the business needs to invest in this idea. I will be writing an in depth post on this soon but thought I’d leave this tip on a Sunday night as I am having the designer insonomia.

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Design reviews can make or break your product—and your team’s morale. For first-time founders, knowing how to give actionable, constructive feedback is key to unlocking better product decisions. It also goes a long way in building a healthy design culture. I wrote a quick guide on running effective design reviews here: https://lnkd.in/gDz4eN7V

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🤖 This is an absolute must-read/watch for any designer/design leader navigating this wild new AI world: https://lnkd.in/ezxmvYfi Josh Clark is second to none at demystifying this new crop of technologies, demonstrating how to wield AI as a design material, and thoughtfully balancing optimism & opportunity with skepticism & care. I'm so excited to see the ideas presented in this talk transform into book form. Looking forward to reading Sentient Design, Josh Clark and Veronika Kindred! #ai #generativeai #design #ux #ui #machinelearning #development #webdevelopment

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✨ It's not about the artifact, it's about the insight. ✨ Heidi Trost shares her experience with personas that made an impact. 📝 Instead of complex deliverables, she focused on capturing core insights in a few simple phrases in an infographic. These insights tied behaviors to business goals – and that’s what resonated. 📊 It wasn’t about how it looked, but how well it communicated across the team. 🌟 #UXResearch #BusinessGoals #EffectiveCommunication

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So immensely proud of such an amazing group of people who've been working so hard on this big set of launches at Figma for #Config2024. ICYMI what we launched today, this blog post recap covers it well: https://lnkd.in/gX3KSWj3 I wanted to share a couple fun tweets from a few of the fantastic designers/leaders that worked on some of the things you may have seen in our keynote this morning. * This is not even close to an exhaustive list of those who worked on today's launches, but just a quick lil glimpse showcasing a few who happened to post about them today (also linkedin obscures the links for some reason, but they're all just fun behind the scenes tweets not shady sites I promise lol): Figma Slides - Keeyen Y.: https://lnkd.in/gmxBH3wq - Mihika Kapoor: https://lnkd.in/gr54Upnu - Natasha T. / Ryan Reid: https://lnkd.in/gd-v9gE3 Redesigned Figma (UI3) - Ryhan Hassan: https://lnkd.in/g868XAze (can't wait to watch the behind the scenes talk with him and Joel Miller and KC Oh as well as Wayne Sun's when they come online later) - Tim Van Damme: https://lnkd.in/gQyvqzYr - Nikolas Klein: https://lnkd.in/ge_kKyvD Figma AI - Jordan Singer: https://lnkd.in/gXmFeXTM - Oscar Dumlao: https://lnkd.in/gkACVY_c - Marco Cornacchia: https://lnkd.in/gMt3BvVY - Vincent van der Meulen: https://lnkd.in/gCrHvcVu - Jediah Katz: https://lnkd.in/gMxEu7i8 - Giorgio Caviglia: https://lnkd.in/gCNVQrKC And more: - Jenny Wen (pages design by rocky chen ✌️): https://lnkd.in/gd_6RHAv - Soundharya Muthukrishnan: https://lnkd.in/gsnibt-j - Daniel Destefanis: https://lnkd.in/gu6mYBe6 - Becca Ramos: https://lnkd.in/gqM7RGKQ We hope you enjoy these updates, and excited to meet more of the amazing community at Config for Day 2 tomorrow! I'm particularly excited for Marcin Wichary's talk tomorrow at 3:40 https://lnkd.in/gvJNNerg

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2 years with Nectar! 🤘🔥 My favorite highlights: → Our team’s growth from 23 employees to 90 employees. Product alone grew from 6 of us to 21 strong now 🙌🏼, and we’re a sleek, efficient, resilient team under Brian Cressall and Nate Tingey. → Established Nectar’s Design System and built our component library, significantly improving speed, consistency, and quality of design and implementation. → Completed a massive UI design refresh for the existing product (bless the devs still building it 🫡 ). → Launched Nominations, the largest and most impactful new feature we’ve built at Nectar yet. → Completely scrapped a project, because it was the right thing to do. Grateful to work on a team that’s hyper-focused on our ultimate goals, and is sincerely willing to let sunk costs be irrelevant. → Ideated, designed, and launched our new product Internal Communications in 8 weeks with a small, mighty team 🤯 I’m still amazed we managed it. → $40M Series B funding in April 2024 with PeakSpan Capital. → Saw our efforts, motivation, and passion pay off when Nectar was recognized as the 2nd Fastest Growing Company in Utah County, 1st fastest growing software company in Utah, 8th fastest growing software company in the U.S., and 87th fastest growing company in the U.S. (across all industries). → 300% increase in revenue in Q3 2023 vs Q3 2024 (Q3 was also 50% above our revenue Q2 2024). → Saw every department at Nectar grow in excellence. I’m in awe of the caliber of Engineering, CS, Marketing, Sales, and what they accomplish. → Relished the challenge and variety of asks in the beginning as Nectar’s sole designer, including working on print design (looking at you, 28’ tradebooth) and animations for the first time. That animation announcing Nectar’s new logo a year ago? That was my first animation, and I’m still proud of myself for figuring it out enough to make that 😂. → Spent way too much on Holiday gas station runs (RIP old office). This is a long list, but for the record I cut it in half from what it was 😅. I’m grateful Nate reached out on LinkedIn right at the perfect time when I was looking to switch things up, and that we’ve made a great team ever since. Getting to work closely with our little product design team—Nate, Mason, Tyler, and Maya—and many, many others keeps me growing and keeps me motivated on the daily. Nectar’s mission and way of working resonated with me from the beginning. It’s rewarding to see our company continue to gain momentum and maturity, all while seeing how much room we still have to grow. Very, very grateful to be part of the journey. As we say, it’s still Day 1 at Nectar. 🚀

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❓ What makes designers great leaders ⁉ Well...designers possess unique qualities including empathy, active listening, storytelling, and systems thinking (dot connectors). Learn more from Evan English, VP of Design & User Research at American Express on Episode 8 of Season 2 of UX Leadership By Design. Other takeaways from the episode: * Leadership behaviors, such as communication, collaboration, and empathy, are crucial for UX leaders. * Shared goals with product partners and design maturity goals are important for driving business value. * Information architecture and design systems play a critical role in supporting the evolving business needs. * Measuring metrics and setting goals are essential for tracking the impact of design efforts and improving customer satisfaction. ____________________________________ Full episode details: Watch on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/en3GJYNu Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/dRZ6xeXv Listen on Spotify: https://lnkd.in/dNGHihRw All Episodes of UX Leadership by Design Podcast: https://lnkd.in/dVe2fggN #UXLeadership, #DesignLeaders, #ProductManagement, #BusinessValue, #DesignSystem, #InformationArchitecture, #TeamAlignment, #LeadershipDevelopment, #DesignOps, #StrategicDesign

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I talk to senior designers and design leaders every day and there is one thing that became evident to me: In the current market there is no clarity about the career paths and what would be the right step for them. Choosing your future role requires a clear understanding of your aspirations, motivations, and chances for success. For this reason, Dilara Cumhur Neutze, Kate Syuma, and I will be hosting a session to discuss the nonlinear design careers and how these two incredibly successful design leaders have found their path. Join us for this discussion on November 26th. We will cover: - Embracing Non-Traditional Design Careers - Creating Space for Reflection and Vision - Choosing What's Right for You: IC vs. Manager - The Power of Execution in Achieving Success Sign up and share your questions in the comments! We will cover some of them in the session!

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It’s Thursday! Let’s talk about DESIGN DISCOVERY and how to make it PRACTICAL. Discovery is an essential part of the design process. In discovery, designers build a shared understanding of the problem and the design direction, establishing a foundation for all future design decisions. What does that foundation look like? In PRACTICAL DESIGN DISCOVERY, I describe three kinds of things to put into this foundation: → Principles: Enablers that help you make decisions → Concepts: Ideas that establish a big picture or north star → Models: Representations of the user experience When you draw a conclusion from user research, that’s a principle. When you say “our product is like a concierge for kids activities,” that’s a concept. And when you sketch out a flow chart or wireframe an important screen, that’s a model. Each of these contributes to the foundation that informs further design decisions. You’re not just creating these for yourself. The other people on your team – product managers and business stakeholders and developers – need to contribute to this foundation. These things – principles, concepts, and models – are the way you draw others into the discovery process. Sometimes managers tell designers to cut principles and concepts out of their process. I get it: Models are accessible because they are tangible representations of the final product. Even a flow chart is easier to react to than an unmoored design principle or a big idea. In discovery, however, you can’t model every aspect of a product. The point of discovery is to set the direction. Models provide enough of a view into the final product to get buy-in on that direction. But they’re not the whole picture. Principles provide guidelines for making decisions that the models do not cover. They establish constraints on the design process. Concepts align everyone around the product’s purpose or essence. They paint a picture of what the world looks like with the product in it. Both are helpful for decision-making. You don’t need to break the bank creating principles or concepts, or even models. Use a text file to capture statements as they jump out during the design process, like “never show a data visualization without context or explanation [a principle]” or “this is a mash-up between a to-do list and a calendar [a concept]”. Use models to illustrate principles and concepts. When folks provide feedback on the models, ask them about the concepts and the principles. “You said you were worried about the fields on this screen, but it aligns with our principle of ‘only ask for information when needed.’ Are there circumstances when the principle doesn’t apply?” Every part of the foundation – principles, concepts, and models – is a hook for a conversation with the entire team about the direction of your product. Looking for more ways to refine your discovery practice? Grab a copy of PRACTICAL DESIGN DISCOVERY! https://lnkd.in/dtar-e2

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Great insights on design leadership with solid examples of results.

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I just joined Intro as an expert and have already had amazing calls. I help product leaders, startup founders, and VCs with their product strategy, AI strategies, roadmaps, and seeing around corners. Comment “interested” and I’ll select 1 person for a free 15 minute call. Let’s talk! intro.co/AndrewPeters Schedule a call for advice on: ✔️ Product Strategy ✔️ Product Roadmaps ✔️ AI Strategies ✔️ Product Design ✔️ Going from -1 to 0 to 1 ✔️ Product Org Design and Growth

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Really looking forward to Product Design Week this year. I'm doing a talk - Why Talent & Culture Are Still Your Greatest Asset - on Day 1 of Design Leaders + (12:30-1:00 on November 11th). https://lnkd.in/gH_YVJR8 Anyone working in customer experience, design, product or strategy right now will know that we are living in - ahem - interesting times. The challenges facing leaders within brands, agencies and consultancies are more complex and fast-evolving than ever before. The experience design road has never been a smooth one, but it feels particularly rocky, potholed and full of hidden hairpins at the moment! Watching the conversations play out on LinkedIn you might safely assume that many are currently feeling pretty doom and gloom. But look at any disruptive cycle of technology-led adjustment in history and you will always see growth and positive progress right in there with the painful stuff. Personally I think that real opportunity can be found in the intersection between innovative, enabling technologies and the design of human-centred experiences - and after 30 years in the digital experience business I'm still convinced that's right where it's always lived. Teams who can combine the ability to deliver compelling customer experiences with the competencies to harness data, AI and genuine insight are going to be the real unlockers of value. And organisations that are able to access and attract those people - and provide the right environment and culture to empower and retain them - will achieve true competitive advantage and return on investment. My talk on the 11th is going to focus on those factors. Ultimately, technology comes and goes. It arrives all shiny and shouty, then it gets all habitual and legacy on you. What doesn't change is the importance of the skilled talent that can build magic from base metals - and making sure that that talent is supported by an environment in which it can create and deliver that magic. Hope to see you there! #PDW24 #Talent #Culture #Experience #Design #Leadership #Technology

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“Hybrid-unicorn-front-endish-designery-type-person” is a mashup of labels I’ve been given since starting to make websites years ago. As our tools change and systems become more complex, the lines between what responsibilities fall on a designer or an engineer are blurred. Some questions that come up on my team between designers and engineers as we continue to grow: → How do we play together? How early and often are we getting together to brainstorm ideas and share ownership over what we are making? → Can we talk? How are we communicating progress over time and reaching out to ask questions and get clarity when there’s ambiguity? → What did we decide again? When we make decisions together or within our function, where are we writing that down to make sure others understand how we got to where we are? Some wisdom from the community shines some light on some of these places: 🤹‍♀️ New roles: Diana Mounter’s talk at Clarity: A design systems community conference this year walked through the benefits of design engineers and hybrid roles that allow specialists to focus on high-quality performant user interactions and how they might potentially be folded under design systems teams along with designers for unified leadership. I identified with her personal story of how she discovered a happy path to merging technical curiosity with design creativity. https://broccolini.net/ 🎨 Shared assets: Tokens have become the common language both teams understand and guidelines both can agree to. One place where many teams focus on building bridges is through syncing design tokens between Figma and code repositories. Samantha Gordashko and the team at Token Studios have several outstanding resources to help teams manage tokens across design files and codebases which I highly recommend. https://tokens.studio/ 🤝 Shared values: As we continue to build connections, our team has found that accessibility is a practice that both teams are drawn to for its impact and inclusiveness. We decided to invest time into centralizing resources such as guidelines and training to give each team the confidence to deliver on a shared process. Stéphanie Walter is an excellent resource for designers looking to dig deeper into supporting accessibility and how to collaborate with their engineering partners. https://lnkd.in/gJxaWJ7r 💎 For teams looking to find places to bring their design and engineering teams together here are some takeaways that work at Exygy → Research hybrid roles and identify if there are already team members who could facilitate deeper collaboration across your teams. → Audit and organize your design tokens across both teams and see if there are opportunities to add consistency or streamline your process for sharing tokens. → Find a common practice on your team that aligns with your shared values and principles like accessibility and invest in spaces to develop a shared approach. #design #engineering #designengineering #designsystems

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Exciting news! 🎉 My book Design in Context: A Framework for Strategic Differentiation is now available on Audible! 🎧 If you’re a design driven company or a designer driving companies. This is the book for you ✌️ Design Thinking has evolved 🤔... meet Context-based Design 🚀 --- https://lnkd.in/eJqHAYVy #DesignInContext #Audible #BusinessStrategy #DesignThinking #Innovation #DesignInContext

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Only one-third of CEOs could detail what their CDO oversaw at the company. In other words, 66% of CEOs couldn’t say what their CDO actually did, or how that success should be measured. No wonder only 10% of CEOs reported that a senior designer played a meaningful role in the company’s strategy. And only 17% of design leaders thought they were in the right position to give a company their full value. McKinsey concludes that 90% of companies aren’t using design talent to their full potential. https://lnkd.in/ePHAS4S3

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I'm thrilled to share that my latest product and design discovery article is live on Mind the Product! As a consultant, I've observed that the term 'Discovery' can have varying interpretations across different teams. It's not uncommon to encounter a team deeply immersed in a solution yet lacking a shared understanding of the customer opportunity they're addressing. At Lab Zero, we meet clients where they are and advocate for discovery while maintaining flexibility. We often employ lightweight methodologies to foster a shared understanding, even when work is already underway. Teresa Torres' book “Continuous Discovery Habits” is a guide to developing the mindset and practices that enable teams to discover and deliver value to their customers throughout the product development process. Her explanation of the 'Opportunity Solution Tree' helped me articulate a process for asking questions and bridging gaps when joining a new team. The first part of this two-part series looks at reversing the 'Opportunity Solution Tree' to establish a connection between the ongoing solution, customer opportunities, and business outcomes. The second part (coming soon!) will explore strategies for identifying gaps in your team's understanding of customer needs and the necessary measures to mitigate risks before launch. This series will help consultants, new team members, or a struggling team connect with that all-important why and launch valuable experiences for their customers and their orgs. Have you tried something like this with your team? Feedback is appreciated! If you haven't explored Mind The Product's extensive content library, I highly recommend it! In addition to articles about discovery and understanding customer needs, the community has shared insightful perspectives on product leadership, business, and teams. It's a great place to see perspectives on processes and theories informed by real-world use.  #ProductDiscovery #Design #Discovery #ContinuousDiscovery #Onboarding #Risk #CustomerOpportunity #Value #BusinessOutcomes

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