What’s it like to build out a design organization that spans many countries, languages, and culture? Wizeline co-founder Wendy Johansson discusses the insights she gleaned when opening a second Wizeline office in Guadalajara, then a third and fourth in Vietnam and Thailand. From different societal norms to language barriers, her story can inform your own ways of collaboration with new people and cultures, whether abroad or just within your own team.

Wendy recommends:

• The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business by Erin Meyer https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Map-Breaking-Invisible-Boundaries/dp/1610392507

• David Hoang’s Career Hype Doc https://davidhoang.substack.com/p/your-career-hype-doc

Follow Wendy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/uxwendy

Wendy is our next DesignOps Community videoconference guest, January 21, 4pm-5pm EST: “Designing a Design Team Culture When You're Decentralized at a Consultancy.” Join the community for an invitation: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/designops-community/

Though trained as a computer scientist, Jamika Burge admits she does not have the heart of a programmer; rather, she’s interested in surfacing and connecting with the humanity of the technology we create. Jamika has taken that approach in her past work, including a stint at DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), where she studied the impact of games on learning. Jamika now leads AI Design Insights at CapitalOne, and is also one of the Advancing Research 2021 Conference curators. Here she shares the story of her career path, and the work she is doing with blackcomputeHER.org (pronounced ‘black computer’), an organization she co-founded that is dedicated to supporting computation and design workforce development for black women and girls.

Jamika Recommends:

Gendershades.org, a project by Joy Buolamwini, Lead Author and Timnit Gebru, PhD, Co-Author

Keep up with Jamika:

JamikaBurge.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JDBurge

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/j.jurious/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamika/

More about AR2021: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/advancing-research-2021/

Allan Chochinov, Founding Chair of the MFA in Products of Design graduate program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, joins Lou to discuss how his program approaches the education of new designers—from the belief that grades can hamper creativity and risk taking, to the need for his students to learn the art of careful listening. After eight graduating classes, Allan offers surprises and insights about different career trajectories for design students, and clear evidence that career paths are often non-traditional.

Allan Chochinov is a partner of Core77, the design network serving a global community of designers and design enthusiasts since 1995.

More about Allan: https://www.allanchochinov.com/

Allan Recommends:

•Girls Garage by Emily Pilloton https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44601186-girls-garage?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=ghIzeV0mbb&rank=1

•Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6260997-half-the-sky

•Not to Scale: How the Small Becomes Large, the Large Becomes Unthinkable, and the Unthinkable Becomes Possible by Jamer Hunt https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51203318-not-to-scale

•Present Shock by Douglas Rushkoff https://rushkoff.com/books/present-shock/

•User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play by Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/41940285-user-friendly

•By Design: Why There Are No Locks on the Bathroom Doors in the Hotel Louis XIV and Other Object Lessons by Ralph Caplan https://www.secondsale.com/i/by-design-2nd-edition-why-there-are-no-locks-on-the-bathroom-doors-in-the-hotel-louis-xiv-and-other-object-lessons/9781563673498?gclid=Cj0KCQjwreT8BRDTARIsAJLI0KLamLylKCGMu5u7Sz-ZM8lyn8ZgDdugGTwGC7dHJgHBEu_vqp2OL-waAmPQEALw_wcB

Lou and Bria Alexander, Brand Experience Program Manager at Adobe, range widely in a conversation on diversity, equity, and inclusion—and how they pertain to how a conference program might challenge your beliefs, the ways in which capitalism influences design, co-creation, and more.

Bria will be the emcee at our upcoming conference, the DesignOps Summit, October 21-23. Check out the program and get your ticket: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/designopssummit2020/program/#tab=day-1

Bria’s recommendations:

• The Curb Cut Effect https://racialequitybuffalo.org/files/winter_17_the_curb_cut_effect.pdf

• How To Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi https://www.ibramxkendi.com/how-to-be-an-antiracist-1

• The 1619 Project podcast thttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/podcasts/1619-podcast.html

• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson: https://www.amazon.com/Caste-Origins-Discontents-Isabel-Wilkerson/dp/0593230256

• August 2 John Oliver episode discussing U.S. history: https://slate.com/culture/2020/08/john-oliver-american-history-textbooks-slavery.html

More about Bria: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/designopssummit2020/speakers/bria-alexander/

Kat Vellos, author of Connected From Afar: A Guide for Staying Close When You're Far Away and We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships, is our opening speaker on day one of the DesignOps Summit this October 21-23, 2020.

Here, she discusses the issues of loneliness in the workplace, and how managers can support their teams—especially in the time of remote work and added stresses from a global pandemic. In addition to supporting employees’ humanity, a manager who keeps their staff happy enough to stay can have a major impact on a company’s bottom line—at the average national voluntary turnover rate of 25%, a company of 100 people with an average salary of $50,000 will spend between $625,000 and $2.5 million dollars on staff replacement costs in one year.

Kat Recommends: Building Brand Communities https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/617261/building-brand-communities-by-carrie-melissa-jones-and-charles-h-vogl/

Learn more about Kat’s session at the DesignOps Summit and get your ticket: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/designopssummit2020/sessions/opener-day-1/

Follow Kat on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KatVellos

The Connection Club: https://weshouldgettogether.com/

Jonathon Colman, Senior Design Manager at Intercom and DesignOps Summit 2020 speaker joins Lou to discuss the challenges of developing content operations (and, sure, let’s go there: ContentOps). Should ContentOps stand alone, or be situated as part of a larger DesignOps team? Jonathon also shares how his team sets consistent expectations and defines success metrics across for designers of all stripes, whether they focus on content, product, research, or design roles.

Check out Jonathon’s upcoming DesignOps Summit 2020 presentation and get your ticket to the conference: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/designopssummit2020/sessions/maximize-the-impact-of-content-design/

• Learn more about Intercom’s hiring practices and more: www.Intercom.design

• Follow Jonathon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jcolman

Jonathon recommends:

•Blogs by companies doing good work

-https://polaris.shopify.com/

-https://spotify.design/

-https://medium.com/facebook-design

•Current favorite podcast: https://www.ouropinionsarecorrect.com/

Vincent Brathwaite, one of the featured speakers at this year’s DesignOps Summit, and Lou go meta: they have a conversation about having a conversation about differences. Their discussion ranges from working through our ever-changing vocabulary of identity to establishing a protocol for genuine, authentic conversations.

Vincent also offers suggestions for how to reflect on and own one’s ignorance and accept uncertainty—issues that design leaders continue to wrestle with as they create design teams that are more representative of the world they serve.

• Vincent recommends: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson: https://www.amazon.com/Caste-Origins-Discontents-Isabel-Wilkerson/dp/0593230256

• Learn more about Vincent’s upcoming DesignOps Summit talk: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/designopssummit2020/sessions/opener-day-2/

• Register for the DesignOps Summit: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/designopssummit2020/register/

Vincent Brathwaite is a Caribbean American multi-disciplinary design leader, educator, and speaker. For the past two decades, he has worked to transform communities through disruptive design thinking. Driven by integrity, empathy, kindness, courage, and resilience, his mission is to design experiences that help leaders positively impact the world. Visit his website at https://www.vincentjbrathwaite.com/design

Cheryl Platz—Rosenfeld Media author, emcee of our Advancing Research and Enterprise Experience conferences, puppeteer, and Principal UX Designer at Gates Foundation—shares the inspiration that drove her new book Design Beyond Devices: Creating Multimodal, Cross-Device Experiences (published December 2020). If you’re an interaction designer, you’ll want to listen as Cheryl dramatically expands our understanding of one of interaction design’s final frontiers.

Cheryl recommends:

Wired for Speech by Clifford Nass and Scott Brave:https://www.amazon.com/Wired-Speech-Activates-Human-Computer-Relationship/dp/0262640651

Follow Cheryl: https://twitter.com/funnygodmother

Get updates on her new book:https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/design-beyond-devices/

Alana Washington and Lou embark on a really wide-ranging conversation, touching on:

• The changing nature of work in the time of pandemic,

• How we can handle the intersection of our personal and private lives when working remotely,

• The restorative power of something as simple as putting down the phone and holding a physical book, and

• How DesignOps can help businesses enact more human-based processes.

Alana serves as a Senior Design Program Manager at Uber Freight. She’s also part of the DesignOps Summit 2020 curation team. The team is looking to frame the program against the difficult backdrop of these challenging times, when designers need more support than ever before. That’s why resilience is our theme for DesignOps 2020; we’ll explore design operations’ role in helping individual designers, design teams, and entire organizations adapt, survive, and thrive.

Learn more: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/designopssummit2020/

Alana’s recommended resources:

• 24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week by Tiffany Shlain https://www.amazon.com/24-Power-Unplugging-One-Week/dp/1982116862

• Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown https://www.akpress.org/emergentstrategy.html

• Lou recommends: 6 tips for surviving a racism pandemic by Alana herself! https://womentalkdesign.com/talks/6-tips-for-surviving-a-racism-pandemic/

Kit Unger started her UX career as a “team of one,” and now manages a team of over 30 people as Senior Director of Experience Design at Smartsheet. We’re excited to have her as the leader of a group of presentations on “Keeping Up with Rapid Growth – From Startup to Enterprise” at Enterprise Experience 2020 (September 1; details here: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/enterprise2020/enterprise-experience-program/#day-2)

In this episode, she shares the role she wishes she’d hired for 20 employees ago, the elements of scaling a team quickly, and offers a preview of her EX2020 speakers’ presentations:

•Building for Scale: Creating the Zendesk UX Research Practice with Veevi Rosenstein https://rosenfeldmedia.com/enterprise2020/sessions/building-for-scale-creating-the-zendesk-ux-research-practice/

•A Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approach to User-Centric Maturity at Scale with Vasileios Xanthopoulos https://rosenfeldmedia.com/enterprise2020/sessions/a-top-down-and-bottom-up-approach-to-user-centric-maturity-at-scale/

•Lead Effectively While Preserving Team Autonomy with Growth Boards with Jackie Ho https://rosenfeldmedia.com/enterprise2020/sessions/lead-effectively-while-preserving-team-autonomy-with-growth-boards/

Kit’s shoutout: Sarah Hubbard, co-founder of Seattle Women of Design and UX https://www.meetup.com/seaDUXX/

More about Kit https://rosenfeldmedia.com/enterprise2020/speakers/kit-unger/