Organization Design

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Great design doesn't happen in a vacuum and the iPhone wasn't designed in a day. With marginal costs of interactive products plummeting (the unit cost of web delivered software is practically zero) spending the time and resources to invest in thoroughly designed products is not optional anymore; it becomes essential for the success of a business.

Process Optimization

A good design process can free designers from guess work and focus their efforts on solving the right problems. I can help you implement or optimize your processes and help connect the dots from understanding your customers to form and behavior of the product. A process involves tasks, deliverables, and the sequence in which these are performed since certain tasks depend on the completion of other tasks and deliverables to be most effective.

Things I might recommend include user research, analyzing the data and modeling, defining requirements, defining the overall system behavior, interaction design and information architecture, visual UI design, prototyping, usability testing, and design documentation and development support. I can examine communication between team members and across teams. I always collaborate closely with stakeholders throughout the process.

Organization Design

To be effective, design needs to be fully integrated in the structure and culture of an organization. The design team depedends on other members of the organization to provide the right information and resources to be effective and the design team is responsible among other things for delivering specifications to the engineering team and inform stakeholders about their work. Having the right skill set, roles, and organizational structure in place to suport a highly effective design team can have a significant impact on cutting costs, improving employee morale, and creating products that are a market success.

I have helped product teams improve their approach to product development by filling in gaps in the process and augmenting teams with necessary skill sets.

Team Building

Filling positions with the right people, having outstanding performers, and a team culture that supports open exchange and healthy competition makes a huge difference for a product organization. Since design is at the very front of the product development process, the leverage that a highly functional team has to impact the success of a product down the road is exponential.

Team building includes looking at the team goals, defining roles, having the right skill set, hiring the right people, training people and augmenting skill sets, educating team members about processes, and last not least, doing things together as a team that are just plain fun.