Design Leadership for the Real World

Phil Bolles | Lead UX, Manager, Multi-disciplinary Designer, Professor

How do we design in the real world? Projects don't always start with the idea; often, they begin with an existing product, on which to iterate. Some projects start in the middle, some start toward the end — and some require large teams, but often a small, cross-functional team is the right approach.

Process A rendition of a four-step process, showing that design may start at any of the four steps, depening on the project. The title of the SVG A longer, more complete description for complex graphics.
Where does design come in? Depending on the project, design begins at various places in the process.

Iteration isn’t always a forward-moving process — instead of constantly adding, sometimes we need to subtract.

Factors in Good Design

I’ve led design teams for years, in addition to being an IC/Lead, and I’ve noticed a few big factors in good design: first, prototyping early (with realistic content and data) helps us to test and determine the viability of a product, or of an iteration.

Next, shipping is often merely an early step toward good design. Ship when you have viability, and try to learn from how people actually use your product.

Beyond that, I've seen how design creates systems, and how we need to understand the variables and actors in those systems in order to create great products.

How I Can Help Your Organization

  • Design Management

  • Principal/Lead interaction design

  • Accessibility expertise

  • DesignOps

  • Systems thinking

  • Facilitation and collaboration between departments

  • Design systems creation, incl. design tokens

  • Heuristic expertise

Select Work

Creating a better ZIP code search for patients

When patients search for a doctor, using their ZIP code, is a centerpoint based on a bounding box really the best approach?

Leveraging User Research to Help Clients Make Decisions

We employed tree testing to provide evidence of the most effective new I.A. for a client's site.

Helping parents and teens evaluate sports for their children

How do people know which sports may be most beneficial for their teenagers to play? And how might they customize rankings based on what is important to them or their family members?

Side Projects

Tiling My Art for Wrapping Paper

What's better than making your own wrapping paper?

Scripting Adobe Illustrator

When you need to bring 120 titles and dates into their own files, just write a script for it.