Finding Our Way Jesse James Garrett and Peter Merholz

In which Peter and Jesse talk to strategic design and research consultant Erika Hall of Mule Design, learn about how "the business model is the new grid," why most design is simply just styling, and the importance of asking questions.

In which Peter and Jesse speak with Billie Mandel, design leader, team coach, and UX educator, and we somehow get from team dynamics to leadership qualities of vulnerability to sociopathy to totalitarianism in surprisingly short order.

Product management consultant and educator Melissa Perri joins Peter and Jesse to talk about the view of design from the product management side of the table, the true value that product managers bring to the process, and how designers can collaborate more effectively with their peers in product management.

(Apologies for the suboptimal audio, we found you get used to it pretty quickly, and the content was too rich to not share with you!)

Learn more about Melissa at http://melissaperri.com/

In which Peter and Jesse talk to Sally Carson, Head of Product Design at Duo Security (now part of Cisco), about her journey, from bike messenger to multimedia designer to design lead. Along the way, we discuss executive relationships, handling burnout and managing your energy, and how her experience cycling prepared her for the ups and downs of leadership.

Jesse and Peter return from their hiatus and dig into a few emerging trends we've seen in product design teams, including (00:25) the rise of the senior individual contributor, (13:44) the increasingly tangled relationship between design, engineering, and product management, and (35:37) what it takes to lay the foundation for lasting change.

In which Jesse and Peter answer questions on funding models, shifting from output to impact, demonstrating value, and the challenges of being a design leader right now.



Questions addressed:



(01:00) "How does a good business fund design activity?"



(09:28) "How can one handle being a good lead designer, when in the company where you work, the majority of product owners don't understand their role."



(12:43) "[How can] design influence their orgs to move from an artifact/output-based model of design to a practice/impact one?"



(16:40) "How [can] a design team better frame their unique value inside an organization that is crowded out by engineering voices and investment. How can I articulate the value that the design team creates as being as critical as sound software engineering?"



(26:34) "How can I help my team feel secure and supported when my own world is adrift on stormy seas," and "How to help my designers feel safe and secure in rocky times."