Christian Madsbjerg is the cofounder of ReD Associates, and author of Sensemaking: The Power of the Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm and The Moment of Clarity. We’re also so pleased to announce that he’ll be speaking at our inaugural Advancing Research conference (March 30-April 1 in NYC).

In this episode of Rosenfeld Review, Christian and Lou discuss the differences between social sciences research and data science, and the challenges that arise when organizations try to align them. Christian and Lou also touch on academic chauvinism, the shortcomings of anthropology (despite how much Christian appreciates the subject), and the importance of looking at “people as people.”

Register for Advancing Research 2020: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/advancing-research-2020/register/

Christian’s recommended reading: Radical Empiricism by William James and The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff (the book is an expansion on an article of the same title which appeared in The Atlantic in 2015 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/)

More about Christian:

In addition to working closely as an adviser to senior executives, Christian Madsbjerg writes, speaks, and teaches on the practical application of the human sciences in business. His work has been featured in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Washington Post, Der Spiegel, and Bloomberg Businessweek. His latest book, Sensemaking: The Power of the Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm, was published in the spring of 2017 by Hachette Book Group. His book The Moment of Clarity, co-written with ReD partner Mikkel B. Rasmussen and published by Harvard Business Press in the fall of 2014, has been translated into 15+ languages. Christian is currently teaching at The New School in New York City and working on a new book about the power of observation. He studied philosophy and political science in Copenhagen and London and has a Masters from the University of London.

Four members of our Advancing Research curation team join Lou to discuss the research they did to help shape our inaugural Advancing Research conference (New York City; March 30-April 1, 2020). The team analyzed over 700 survey responses (including about 10,000 answers to open-ended questions!) to learn about user and customer researchers, their learning behaviors, and what they want from conference experiences. Read their summary of the results here: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/advancing-research-community/archive/who-does-research-and-how-do-they-learn/ ; you can also explore the study’s quantitative data yourself via Tableau: https://public.tableau.com/profile/lou.rosenfeld.rosenfeld.media#!/vizhome/WhoDoesResearchandHowDoTheyLearn/StoryDraft1

Podcast guests:

Abby Covert (principal investigator), Staff Information Architect at Etsy

Sean Oslin, Consultant at Aventine Hill Partners

Rocio Werner, Senior User Experience Researcher at ZS

Patricia Thommi, User Experience Researcher at ZS

The rest of the team:

Johan Sarmiento, Steve Portigal, Natalie Hanson, Lou Rosenfeld

Current Design and Research Operations practices face three huge, overarching challenges:

•Proving value and measuring outcomes

•Partnering outside design

•Change management

In this episode of Rosenfeld Review, four DesignOps and ResearchOps leaders—Jose Coronado, Crystal Yan, Guneet Singh, and Rachel Posman—tackle these challenges from a rich set of perspectives, ranging from heading up DesignOps at a large, long-established corporation like JP Morgan Chase, to launching a whole new department at a young company.

Panel Members:

•Jose Coronado, VP Design Operations | Head of DesignOps at JPMorgan Chase & Co.

•Rachel Posman, Head of Design Operations, UberEats

•Crystal Yan, Product Lead, New Initiatives, Remitly

•Guneet Singh, Director of Customer Experience Programs, Docusign

Our closing keynoter at DesignOps 2019, Dave Malouf a veteran design leader, strategist, facilitator, researcher, and educator who has worked with some of the largest and fastest growing organizations globally. He was also one of the creators of the very first DesignOps Summit in 2017. Hear from him about the evolution of DesignOps, and his belief that we need a new framework that emphasizes the topline—the creation of value—over bottomline fixation on resource optimization. This new framing is at the root of DesignOps framework that Dave Malouf will share in his closing keynote. Get a taste of what’s in store for Dave’s keynote “Amplify, Not Optimize” at this year’s DesignOps Summit in New York City, October 23-25.

• Hear from Dave in his past appearance on Rosenfeld Review:

https://soundcloud.com/rosenfeld-media/malouf-podcast

• Follow Dave on Twitter: www.twitter.com/daveixd

• Dave’s shoutout: Harry Max, upcoming Rosenfeld Media author! Sign up for updates on his book “Prioritization” https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/prioritization-book

... AND Kristin Skinner, who has been “a pioneer in putting theory to practice.”

•More about DesignOps Summit: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/designopssummit2019/

Managing an effective design system program is a challenge. In his new workshop “Operating Design Systems” at this year’s DesignOps Summit (October 25), design systems guru Nathan Curtis will explore the operational topics that matter most: defining a system’s vision, forming a core team, scoping and making features, and communicating and contributing across a community. He’ll also zoom out, taking on higher-order challenges of multiple systems that overlap and conflict with one another, and the competition for capacity and attention that every system craves.

On this episode of Rosenfeld Review, you’ll get a taste of Nathan’s workshop on operating design systems. Learn more and register here: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/designopssummit2019/sessions/operating-design-systems-curating-a-product-serving-products/

Our opening keynoter at DesignOps 2019, Amy Thibodeau is a UX director at Shopify, where she’s responsible for UX Operations. In four years there, her role has changed dramatically, broadening from an initial focus on supporting content strategy. Hear her story, and get a taste of what’s in store for Amy’s keynote “Process and Ambiguity” at this year’s DesignOps Summit in New York City, October 23-25.

Follow Amy on Twitter: www.twitter.com/amythibodeau

More about Amy: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/designopssummit2019/speakers/amy-thibodeau/

Amy’s shoutout - Lara Hogan, author of Resilient Management https://larahogan.me/

Kristin Skinner and Peter Merholz, co-writers of Org Design for Design Orgs, are teaching a full day workshop at the DesignOps Summit this year. On this episode of the Rosenfeld Review, they discuss the career milestones that brought them to the realization that there was a book to be written about the challenges they faced when coordinating and managing across teams.

What Peter’s reading: Uday Gajendar’s “Rise of the Meta Designer” in Interactions Magazine https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3338285

What’s inspiring Kristin lately: Scott Berkun’s work http://scottberkun.com

More about the workshop:

As the move to establish in-house design teams accelerates, it turns out there’s very little common wisdom on what makes for a successful design organization. In their full day workshop at the DesignOps Summit on October 25 in New York City, Peter Merholz and Kristin Skinner will draw from their groundbreaking book Org Design for Design Orgs, and address this lacuna by shining a light on the unsung activities of actually running a design team, the organizational and operational challenges and considerations, and what works and what doesn’t.

In this episode of the Rosenfeld Review, Lou and Angelos Arnis, Producer of the Joint Futures Conference in Helsinki, Finland (September 2-5, 2019), discuss the evolving landscape of design professionals’ needs, and how the Joint Futures Conference has changed to suit them.

Rosenfeld Media is pleased to partner with Joint Futures this year to offer four full-day workshops on September 5, 2019.

For more about the workshops: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/public-workshops/helsinki-ux-workshops/

For more about Angelos: www.Arn.is

Follow Angelos on twitter: www.twitter.com/angelosarnis

Jessica Ivins is a UX designer and facilitator at the Center Centre in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In this episode of the Rosenfeld Review, Jessica discusses the methods and philosophy employed by the Center Centre to produce industry-ready designers.

She shares the story of how, after speaking with hiring managers in the industry, co-founders Leslie Jensen-Inman and Jared M. Spool saw a need for an educational program that prepares designers to enter the workforce and start contributing from Day One with minimal onboarding. The Center Centre achieves this by offering a full-time two year program that more closely resembles a workplace experience than a traditional school. Students work on real world projects from large companies that span 3-5 months, and graduate with a portfolio of real world experience.

More about the Center Centre: http://centercentre.com/about

Matt Duignan manages HITS—Microsoft’s Human Insight System, a web-based platform that captures market and data science insights, serving as a cross disciplinary database. He chats with Lou about how his team democratizes the process of arriving at new insights by offering access to researchers’ knowledge and data from different silos across the whole company. He also touches on the challenges of making such a system work in the absence of a cultural commitment to curation, and getting disparate teams to remember that they aren’t only researching for their own departments, but for the benefit of others as well.

Learn more in “Skip User Research Unless You’re Doing It Right — Seriously” on Medium: https://medium.com/microsoft-design/skip-user-research-unless-youre-doing-it-right-seriously-15494e5ee033