Rosenfeld Media

Kat Vellos, author of Connected From Afar: A Guide for Staying Close When You're Far Away and We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships, is our opening speaker on day one of the DesignOps Summit this October 21-23, 2020. Here, she discusses the issues of loneliness in the workplace, and how managers can support their teams—especially in the time of remote work and added stresses from a global pandemic. In addition to supporting employees’ humanity, a manager who keeps their staff happy enough to stay can have a major impact on a company’s bottom line—at the average national voluntary turnover rate of 25%, a company of 100 people with an average salary of $50,000 will spend between $625,000 and $2.5 million dollars on staff replacement costs in one year. Kat Recommends: Building Brand Communities https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/617261/building-brand-communities-by-carrie-melissa-jones-and-charles-h-vogl/ Learn more about Kat’s session at the DesignOps Summit and get you

Jonathon Colman, Senior Design Manager at Intercom and DesignOps Summit 2020 speaker joins Lou to discuss the challenges of developing content operations (and, sure, let’s go there: ContentOps). Should ContentOps stand alone, or be situated as part of a larger DesignOps team? Jonathon also shares how his team sets consistent expectations and defines success metrics across for designers of all stripes, whether they focus on content, product, research, or design roles. Check out Jonathon’s upcoming DesignOps Summit 2020 presentation and get your ticket to the conference: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/designopssummit2020/sessions/maximize-the-impact-of-content-design/ • Learn more about Intercom’s hiring practices and more: www.Intercom.design • Follow Jonathon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jcolman Jonathon recommends: •Blogs by companies doing good work -https://polaris.shopify.com/ -https://spotify.design/ -https://medium.com/facebook-design •Current favorite podcast: https://www.ouropinionsarecorrect.com/

Vincent Brathwaite, one of the featured speakers at this year’s DesignOps Summit, and Lou go meta: they have a conversation about having a conversation about differences. Their discussion ranges from working through our ever-changing vocabulary of identity to establishing a protocol for genuine, authentic conversations. Vincent also offers suggestions for how to reflect on and own one’s ignorance and accept uncertainty—issues that design leaders continue to wrestle with as they create design teams that are more representative of the world they serve. • Vincent recommends: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson: https://www.amazon.com/Caste-Origins-Discontents-Isabel-Wilkerson/dp/0593230256 • Learn more about Vincent’s upcoming DesignOps Summit talk: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/designopssummit2020/sessions/opener-day-2/ • Register for the DesignOps Summit: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/designopssummit2020/register/ Vincent Brathwaite is a Caribbean American multi-disciplinary design leader,

Cheryl Platz—Rosenfeld Media author, emcee of our Advancing Research and Enterprise Experience conferences, puppeteer, and Principal UX Designer at Gates Foundation—shares the inspiration that drove her new book Design Beyond Devices: Creating Multimodal, Cross-Device Experiences (published December 2020). If you’re an interaction designer, you’ll want to listen as Cheryl dramatically expands our understanding of one of interaction design’s final frontiers. Cheryl recommends: Wired for Speech by Clifford Nass and Scott Brave:https://www.amazon.com/Wired-Speech-Activates-Human-Computer-Relationship/dp/0262640651 Follow Cheryl: https://twitter.com/funnygodmother Get updates on her new book:https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/design-beyond-devices/

Alana Washington and Lou embark on a really wide-ranging conversation, touching on: • The changing nature of work in the time of pandemic, • How we can handle the intersection of our personal and private lives when working remotely, • The restorative power of something as simple as putting down the phone and holding a physical book, and • How DesignOps can help businesses enact more human-based processes. Alana serves as a Senior Design Program Manager at Uber Freight. She’s also part of the DesignOps Summit 2020 curation team. The team is looking to frame the program against the difficult backdrop of these challenging times, when designers need more support than ever before. That’s why resilience is our theme for DesignOps 2020; we’ll explore design operations’ role in helping individual designers, design teams, and entire organizations adapt, survive, and thrive. Learn more: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/designopssummit2020/ Alana’s recommended resources: • 24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week by

Kit Unger started her UX career as a “team of one,” and now manages a team of over 30 people as Senior Director of Experience Design at Smartsheet. We’re excited to have her as the leader of a group of presentations on “Keeping Up with Rapid Growth – From Startup to Enterprise” at Enterprise Experience 2020 (September 1; details here: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/enterprise2020/enterprise-experience-program/#day-2) In this episode, she shares the role she wishes she’d hired for 20 employees ago, the elements of scaling a team quickly, and offers a preview of her EX2020 speakers’ presentations: •Building for Scale: Creating the Zendesk UX Research Practice with Veevi Rosenstein https://rosenfeldmedia.com/enterprise2020/sessions/building-for-scale-creating-the-zendesk-ux-research-practice/ •A Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approach to User-Centric Maturity at Scale with Vasileios Xanthopoulos https://rosenfeldmedia.com/enterprise2020/sessions/a-top-down-and-bottom-up-approach-to-user-centric-maturity-at-scale/ •Lead Eff

After a start in digital software, Kate Rutter realized that qualitative definitions of success could, and needed to be, made more quantitative. Years later, she’s Principal at Intelleto, Adjunct Professor in the IXD program at California College of the Arts, and the instructor of our upcoming UX workshop “Crafting Metrics for UX Success." https://rosenfeldmedia.com/public-ux-workshops/crafting-metrics-for-ux-success/ In this episode, she reflects on the extraordinary success with qualitative metrics she has observed in the UX field, and the room for growth around numerical metrics, as well as the many challenges companies are faced with when trying to determine which metrics really matter. Kate’s four part workshop (August 6-7 and August 13-14) is intended to help designers gain a numerical understanding of success—and determine what metrics they need to measure in the first place (not just the easy ones!) Kate’s recommended reading: • Lean Analytics by Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz https://www.am

Best Buy’s Jamie Kaspszak and USAA’s Frank Duran join Lou and Bob Baxley to discuss how UX plays a critical role in bridging their organizations’ silos and disciplines. It’s a preview of what they’ll cover at this year’s Enterprise Experience conference, where they’ll be joined by four other speakers, all who are wrestling with the team sport of organizational transformation. Learn more about these sessions, which take place virtually on September 3. https://rosenfeldmedia.com/enterprise2020/ About our podcast guests and their sessions: Bob Baxley, SVP, Design & Experience at ThoughtSpot, leads the group of speakers who are wrangling silos https://rosenfeldmedia.com/enterprise2020/speakers/bob-baxley/ Jamie Kaspzak’s talk: “Not Your Ordinary Re-Brand: Design’s Path to Driving Customer Obsession at Best Buy” https://rosenfeldmedia.com/enterprise2020/sessions/not-your-ordinary-re-brand-designs-path-to-the-c-suite-at-best-buy/ Frank Duran’s talk: “Put Me In, Coach: The team effort that goes into hiring and deve

Dan Willis is Director of Customer Experience at the General Services Administration’s Centers of Excellence, and the mastermind behind past Enterprise Experience conferences’ wildly-popular “Storytelling Sessions.” At this year’s Enterprise Experience conference, Dan will be leading Theme 3: “Through the Looking Glass – The Outsider’s Perspective on the Enterprise” on Wednesday, September 3. (Full program here: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/enterprise2020/enterprise-experience-program/#day-3). Considering Dan’s extensive government experience means he’s all too familiar with large, slow moving and bureaucratic enterprises. In this wide-ranging episode of the Rosenfeld Review, Dan shares anecdotes from his career and offers some sneak peeks into the six sessions he’ll be leading on day three of Enterprise Experience 2020. More about Dan: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/enterprise2020/speakers/dan-willis/ Listen to our 2018 interview with Dan: https://soundcloud.com/rosenfeld-media/dan-willis-podcast; and another co

Top designers are often thrust into leadership roles, and it’s easy to forget that these two roles do not require the same skillset. In this episode, design managers and Liftoff! co-authors Chris Avore and Russ Unger discuss the mistakes and lessons they—and MANY others—have made in their new book, four years in the works. Liftoff! is a guide for new leaders looking for guidance about managing design teams effectively, and established managers who want to level up their expertise. Order Liftoff! before July 7 and save 15%; for free shipping in the U.S., enter code FREESHIPLIFTOFF at checkout. https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/ux-leadership/ Influencers mentioned: Meet the diverse variety of contributors to the book: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/ux-leadership/liftoff-opening-credits-contributors-guests-and-reviewers/ Jacqui Frey: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacquifrey/ Kara DeFrias: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2013/03/01/meet-pif-kara-defrias Emileigh Barnes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emileighb

Authors Stephen P. Anderson and Karl Fast discuss the complex world of information (think incomprehensible tax policies to confusing medical explanations) we are faced with, and the ways in which information can be transformed into better presentations, better meetings, better software, and better decisions. Stephen also shares a personal anecdote about part of the inspiration for the book. Get your copy: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/figure-it-out/ Mentioned in the episode… Stephen’s latest project: The Mighty Minds Club. Learn more and subscribe: https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/the-mighty-minds-club Karl’s recommended reads: Smarter Than You Think by Clive Thompson https://www.amazon.com/Smarter-Than-You-Think-Technology/dp/1594204454 and Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives by Tim Hartford https://www.amazon.com/Messy-Power-Disorder-Transform-Lives-ebook/dp/B01BD1SU2E/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1587498076&sr=1-1 Stephen’s interesting people to check out: Nicky Case and

Amy Bucher is VP of Behavior Change Design at Mad*Pow and author of our newest book, Engaged: Designing for Behavior Change. Amy has a PhD. in Psychology, so you’d be forgiven for assuming that she works in academia. Instead, she ended up at an agency where she focuses on healthcare and the many different motivational factors that are at play in the way people live their lives. In this episode, Amy and Lou Rosenfeld discuss the ethics of data collection, self-determination theory, fitness apps, her new book, and more. Get Amy’s book: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/engaged-designing-for-behavior-change/ About Mad*Pow: https://madpow.com Amy’s recommended reading: Whisper Network by Chandler Baker https://www.amazon.com/Whisper-Network-Novel-Chandler-Baker/dp/1250205360 More about Amy: amybucher.com Follow Amy: twitter.com/amybphd

Lada Gorlenko, Director of UX Research at Smartsheet in Seattle, is the lead curator of this year’s Enterprise Experience conference (August 31-September 3, virtual, rosenfeldmedia.com/enterprise2020). Lada began her career in prison, spending lots of time with murderers and drug dealers! Not what you think, though: she was a psychologist researching the personality changes caused by long-term imprisonment. The experience led her to a better understanding of how universally transferable the principles of research and design are, whether in a prison or at an enterprise. In this episode of the Rosenfeld Review, Lada shares her career path and the story of how she ended up in UX, and the themes she’s developed for the upcoming Enterprise Experience conference. Lada recommends: "Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping" by Paco Underhill, an urban anthropologist. https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Buy-Science-Shopping/dp/0739341928 See the themes, theme leaders, and program here: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/enterprise20

Mariano Suarez-Battan is the co-founder and CEO of MURAL https://mural.co/, a tool for remote collaboration—and longtime partner/sponsor of Rosenfeld Media’s conferences. MURAL was founded in 2011 after Mariano experienced first-hand the struggle of working remotely with a large, distributed team while designing video games. In this episode of the Rosenfeld Review, Mariano and Lou discuss the challenges of collaboration among remote teams and how platforms like MURAL can level the playing field between coworkers, often flattening hierarchies and changing culture in the process. Mariano also shares his predictions about how workplaces will operate five years in the future. Learn more: mural.co/ebook Mariano’s shoutout - IBM’s Phil Gilbert, one of MURAL’s early adopters, and Tim Brown, former CEO at Ideo who introduced Mariano to Phil. Follow Mariano on Twitter: https://twitter.com/batmelon MURAL is sponsoring all three of Rosenfeld Media conferences this year: Advancing Research https://rosenfeldmedia.co

Brianna Sylver, founder of Sylver Consulting and speaker at the upcoming Advancing Research conference (March 30-April 1, NYC), joins Lou to break down the importance of insight. At its core, insight is about shifts in perspective and can come from anywhere—user research, market research, psychology, mining big data; according to Brianna, it doesn’t really matter. Rather, she emphasizes the importance of capturing all the threads in one container. Lou and Brianna dive into what an insights container can look like, and best practices for making insights actionable. Brianna’s shoutouts: Heather Dominick, her business mentor, and the impact of her work with “highly sensitive entrepreneurs” (https://www.businessmiracles.com/), and Dr. Elaine Aron’s work on “the highly sensitive person.” https://hsperson.com/ Learn more about Brianna’s upcoming talk at Advancing Research, then get your tickets: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/advancing-research-2020/sessions/the-intent-to-effect-pathway-how-design-and-designers-can-d

Order Writing Is Designing: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/writing-is-designing/ Michael Metts and Andy Welfle, authors of the new Rosenfeld Media book Writing Is Designing, get meta and discuss writing about UX writing with Lou Rosenfeld. They also stress the importance of looking through the “lens of language,” when solving problems – reworking your existing language to make things clear from the outset, rather than fixing problems by adding more copy later. Their book will help those responsible for digital copy communicate more effectively—from designers to marketers who might never have considered themselves “UX people.” Andy Welfle and Michael J. Metts are the co-authors of the upcoming Rosenfeld Media title, Writing Is Designing, available January 14, 2020. Order Writing Is Designing: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/writing-is-designing/ What Andy’s reading: Strategic Writing for UX https://www.amazon.com/Strategic-Writing-Engagement-Conversion-Retention/dp/1492049395 What Michael’s reading: Con

Christian Madsbjerg is the cofounder of ReD Associates, and author of Sensemaking: The Power of the Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm and The Moment of Clarity. We’re also so pleased to announce that he’ll be speaking at our inaugural Advancing Research conference (March 30-April 1 in NYC). In this episode of Rosenfeld Review, Christian and Lou discuss the differences between social sciences research and data science, and the challenges that arise when organizations try to align them. Christian and Lou also touch on academic chauvinism, the shortcomings of anthropology (despite how much Christian appreciates the subject), and the importance of looking at “people as people.” Register for Advancing Research 2020: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/advancing-research-2020/register/ Christian’s recommended reading: Radical Empiricism by William James and The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff (the book is

Four members of our Advancing Research curation team join Lou to discuss the research they did to help shape our inaugural Advancing Research conference (New York City; March 30-April 1, 2020). The team analyzed over 700 survey responses (including about 10,000 answers to open-ended questions!) to learn about user and customer researchers, their learning behaviors, and what they want from conference experiences. Read their summary of the results here: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/advancing-research-community/archive/who-does-research-and-how-do-they-learn/ ; you can also explore the study’s quantitative data yourself via Tableau: https://public.tableau.com/profile/lou.rosenfeld.rosenfeld.media#!/vizhome/WhoDoesResearchandHowDoTheyLearn/StoryDraft1 Podcast guests: Abby Covert (principal investigator), Staff Information Architect at Etsy Sean Oslin, Consultant at Aventine Hill Partners Rocio Werner, Senior User Experience Researcher at ZS Patricia Thommi, User Experience Researcher at ZS The rest of the team:

Current Design and Research Operations practices face three huge, overarching challenges: •Proving value and measuring outcomes •Partnering outside design •Change management In this episode of Rosenfeld Review, four DesignOps and ResearchOps leaders—Jose Coronado, Crystal Yan, Guneet Singh, and Rachel Posman—tackle these challenges from a rich set of perspectives, ranging from heading up DesignOps at a large, long-established corporation like JP Morgan Chase, to launching a whole new department at a young company. Panel Members: •Jose Coronado, VP Design Operations | Head of DesignOps at JPMorgan Chase & Co. •Rachel Posman, Head of Design Operations, UberEats •Crystal Yan, Product Lead, New Initiatives, Remitly •Guneet Singh, Director of Customer Experience Programs, Docusign

Our closing keynoter at DesignOps 2019, Dave Malouf a veteran design leader, strategist, facilitator, researcher, and educator who has worked with some of the largest and fastest growing organizations globally. He was also one of the creators of the very first DesignOps Summit in 2017. Hear from him about the evolution of DesignOps, and his belief that we need a new framework that emphasizes the topline—the creation of value—over bottomline fixation on resource optimization. This new framing is at the root of DesignOps framework that Dave Malouf will share in his closing keynote. Get a taste of what’s in store for Dave’s keynote “Amplify, Not Optimize” at this year’s DesignOps Summit in New York City, October 23-25. • Hear from Dave in his past appearance on Rosenfeld Review: https://soundcloud.com/rosenfeld-media/malouf-podcast • Follow Dave on Twitter: www.twitter.com/daveixd • Dave’s shoutout: Harry Max, upcoming Rosenfeld Media author! Sign up for updates on his book “Prioritization” https://rosenfeldme