At some stage in your design career, you may find yourself at a bit of a crossroads. One path is the path of the craftsperson; a path you’re very experienced and comfortable with. Down the other path is the lure of management, and all the power and riches that entails. If you’re lucky enough to work at a cool Silicon Valley tech company, there’s a clear process for choosing either path. You can decide to be an individual contributor (IC) or a manager, and — in theory at least — the choice you make won’t have an effect on your…
We’ve all spent the last six months living on Zoom, and it’s frankly tiring. So when we started thinking about bringing Leading Design online, the last thing we wanted to do was force people to sit through a never-ending series of back-to-back talks.
Instead, we’ve decided to spread our event across a much longer period and turn it into the first Leading Design Festival. So we’re going to have practical masterclasses, talks, panel discussions, and a host of other sessions peppered throughout the month. …
The announcement is full of platitudes. “ It’s been a wonderful journey so far” the founders will explain, and “this sale marks the next exciting chapter in our history”. The founders will take great pains to explain how much “synergy” they have with their new owners, and how the purchase will “secure the future of their agency and their wonderful employees”.
“This is an amazing opportunity for our agency”, the founders will be at pains to point out, “allowing us to have an even bigger impact than we had before”. This sounds great, but you can’t help feel like the…
Being invited to speak at an event confers some benefits. For newer speakers, the most obvious benefit of speaking is to advance your career. Speaking at an event confers a certain amount of legitimacy and status. The fact that you’re on stage and other people are listening to you implies that you’re somebody who deserves to be listened to; that your ideas hold value that the other people in the audience will benefit from them. This is a great thing to have in your back pocket at interviews, and is sure to impress the person doing the interviewing.
Speaking at…
There’s a logic in the tech industry-popularised by books like The Lean Startup-which explains that the goal of any start-up is to achieve product-market fit; the perfect nirvana of a product that people want, that solves a real problem, and customers who are willing to pay.
It takes a lot of time, effort, talent and money to reach true product-market fit, and the majority of companies fall by the wayside. That’s often because they run out of time, run out of money, or lack the talent needed to get them there in the first place.
On the one hand I think it’s a very powerful tool that can help designers cut through opinion battles, test hypotheses, and get the most effective solutions into the hands of customers quickly. However, we also run the risk of removing human judgement from the equation, prioritising company KPIs over customer needs, and iterating towards local maxima.
It’s ironic that since starting Clearleft, we’ve been advising our clients not to become too reliant on agencies like our own.
We remind them that they need to develop both internal capabilities and organizational memory, so that when their agency partners leave-as they always do-they’re not left with a critical skill or knowledge gap.
We start every project with an awareness that we’ll leave as soon as is practical, and it’s our job to make sure the client and their team are in the right place when we do. We’re not here to get you addicted to our services, as…
While Clearleft are first and foremost a design consultancy, we’re huge fans of conferences and events. We love attending them, we love speaking at them, and most of all we love producing them.
We love bringing people together from around the world to meet, socialise, share ideas, build friendships, and learn from the experience of others. Most of all I think we love the sense of connectedness and community.
This desire to learn from others and share what we know is one of our core values. It’s also part of our mission to advance the practice and impact of design…
With disturbing regularity, my Twitter stream seems to explode with posts demonising commonly used, yet seemingly harmless design tools. These posts take great pains to document all the ways these tools have failed people in the past (while downplaying or ignoring situation where they may have helped). Reading one of these threads you’d be forgiven for thinking these tools were actively harmful; some sort of public health nuisance this brave whistleblower was uncovering for the first time. Sadly these arguments tend to be full of misunderstandings, half truths and personal anecdotes, rather than any reasoned or measured debate. …
Starting this June, I’m going to be running a UX focussed “Office Hours” drop-in session on the last Thursday of the month in London.
If you haven’t come across the concept of “Office Hours” before, it’s a practice that’s been popularised by venture capital firms, but has since spread to other areas of the industry.
How it works
I’ll block out my day for a series of 45 minute meetings, which you’ll be able to book in advance. During these sessions, we can discuss anything UX related that’s on your mind. Maybe you’re a startup founder looking for feedback on a recent design…
