Designing at scale is about much more than simply hiring more people.

This month we deconstructed the organisational challenges of enterprise-level design with Catherine Hills, Senior Manager – Experience Strategy, Customer Experience & Innovation Consulting at Publicis Sapient.

Catherine is a hugely experienced design leader, coach and conference speaker. She has almost two decades of experience in technology, specialising in digital and software engineering, UX, CX, service and human-centred design. She also has close to a decade of experience in social research specialising in both commercial and academic roles and is an experienced lean and agile practitioner and design thinker.

We discussed:

- Leveraging design to drive business transformation

- Harnessing the power of human-centred design in agile environments

- Setting up for success with robust designops

- Scaling UX and UI with robust design systems

This month we chatted with Fiona Meighan, Chief Eco Innovation Officer at STREAT and Director of Innovation Practice at MAKE Studios about how behavioural design and human-centred design make a powerful combination.

Fiona is an accomplished human centred designer, strategist and innovation leader. As a psychologist, Fiona is passionate about achieving positive outcomes through insight-led design.

We talked about:

• The fundamentals of behavioural design and how it can extend the power of human-centred design

• How human cognition and unconscious processing influences our decision-making

• Examples of key tools and frameworks to nudge helpful new behaviours

• The ethics of behavioural design

This month we put the spotlight on design leadership with Megan Dell, Director of Design at 99designs. Over the past 10 years Megan has transitioned from accomplished UX practitioner to leading teams for household names like MYOB and REA Group.

We chatted about her design journey and dived into topics such as:

- The day-to-day tasks of team leadership

- How to become ‘career-ready’ for a leadership role

- Understanding if a leadership role is right for you, and if not, what next?

- What makes a good design leader?

In our first session of 2021 we welcomed back our good friend John Murphy, principal at Design4Use, Melbourne.

We chatted in depth at diary studies and related longitudinal design research techniques, including:

- When to use diary studies, and the type of insight they deliver

- How to plan and execute successful longitudinal research

- The ‘nuts and bolts’ of diary studies

- Activities, duration, do’s and dont’s

- Synthesising your research into actionable findings

In the world of human-centred design we dive into projects without knowing the real problem. We spend time trying to make sense of things without knowing the answer. And by the way, if you KNOW the answer upfront, you're almost certainly wrong.

We have to live in the problem space long enough to unpick it but without getting bogged down. How much time is enough?

Sometimes we have to completely change tack while the project is in motion. How do we know when, and how?

If we don’t know exactly where we are heading, how can we give our clients confidence that we’ll deliver?

And what, exactly, will we be delivering?

Staying on track and trusting the process can be immensely stressful.

This month we talked about getting comfortable with the periods of ambiguity in our projects and how we embrace uncertainty head on.

Joining us were:

Julia Birks, Associate Director, Strategic Design, Isobar

George Cockerill, Freelance User Experience Consultant

This month we caught up with our friend John Murphy who’ll help us towards design research excellence.

John, principal at Design4Use, is a regular speaker at UX Australia and Ozchi and boasts over 20 years of international experience across not-for-profit, government, telecommunications, retail, banking and beyond.

We chatted about:

- The why, when and how of design research

- The ethics and challenges of engaging with hard-to-reach and disadvantaged audiences

- How to engage and enthuse your stakeholders and bring them along on the journey

- Synthesising your research into actionable findings, and

- Driving meaningful change

A career in human-centred design has many potential entry points.

We've worked with talented designers with backgrounds as diverse as software development, psychology and ergonomics. But this can be problematic.

- How do you learn human-centred design?

- What does it take to pivot from another career choice?

- Do you need a portfolio? If so what should it showcase?

- When can you call yourself a designer? How do you avoid imposter syndrome?

We've got an amazing panel to talk us through all of this and more. Join us to hear from:

- Kim Bonavia - UX Designer & Experience Design Centre Manager, Bourne Digital

- Inyoung Choi - Freelance Senior UX Designer

- Rohan Irvine - Lead UX Researcher, PageUp