Great culture + process = great products
Design leadership
At Polyvore and Yahoo, I built design processes, culture, and teams that resulted in solid products. Examples:
Adapted design thinking to deliver results
Set product strategy via best practice user-needs concepting. Modified process to better work with impatient eng/PM partners in an Agile Scrum framework. Used for new products (Yahoo View case study), blue-sky apps, and feature updates to established products.
Ran friendly but thorough design reviews
Peer-based sessions kept the bar high while building up skills for each designer in a positive environment.
Hired and coached a happy, productive team
Built and retained design org from scratch, growing junior members and maintaining morale through startup acquisition and org changes. Currently coaching design managers at Yahoo as a consultant.
My approach
Putting things into practice: do good work efficiently, treat people fairly, be reasonable.
On building products
- Teams build the best products when PM, UX, and eng sit side-by-side.
- Done is better than perfect.
- Take the effort to get details right, but don't be slow.
- Prioritize impact over polish, but don't launch junk.
- Successful products balance user, technical, and business needs.
- Gather just enough data and insights to DECIDE.
On leading teams
- Trust teams to make the best decisions for their projects.
- Respect each other. Design reviews are for improving, not criticizing.
- Give credit where it's due.
- No one is above pitching in.
- Anyone can improve process and culture.
- Humor, niceness, and fun go a long way.
Some products launched by my teams
- Polyvore style shopping
- Polyvore advertiser dashboards
- Love It poll app (experimental)
- Shimmer fashion diary app (experimental)
- Yahoo View tv trivia feature (desktop only)
- Tumblr Cabana video chat