Design goes past aesthetics.
In a world the place the intersection of expertise, innovation, and human expertise shapes the panorama of our day by day interactions, design emerges because the silent orchestrator. It’s the considerate fusion of artwork and performance.
Design considers consumer wants. It’s a part of the devices we love. The media we eat. It’s the compass guiding us by the complexities of the fashionable world.
I had the privilege of speaking to G2’s personal VP of Product Expertise Design, Dane Howard. A builder of design and innovation groups and coach to executives, designers, and product leaders for over 20 years, Dane shares with us his journey to turning into a design chief.
This interview is a part of G2’s Skilled Highlight collection. For extra content material like this, subscribe to G2 Tea, a month-to-month publication with SaaS-y information and leisure.
Heat-up questions
What’s your favourite beverage? Tea. Peppermint or Egyptian licorice.
When do you take pleasure in it in relation to work? Late morning, early afternoon.
What was your first job? Room service.
What issues at work make you need to throw your laptop computer out the window?
We take “connection” as a right. “All the time on” web and quick speeds. When that’s interrupted, it’s humbling.
Deep dives with Dane Howard
Tanuja Bahirat: Hello, Dane! Thanks for taking the time to speak with me at this time. You might have a powerful résumé with loads of big-name firms on it. Are you able to give me an outline of your skilled journey and the way you ended up right here at G2?
Dane Howard: I get loads of feedback about my various background, and I take that as a badge of honor. Massive and small firms; startups and end-ups. And I’ve additionally co-founded two firms, one in all which was proper out of college. Since early on, I’ve had this entrepreneurial spirit to construct worth and buyer experiences. The facility of worth creation, collectively. I’m lucky to have grown from a person contributor to design administration and, in the end, design management.
What are some key milestones that helped form your profession and push you towards design management?
A few issues stick out to me. One was a really influential job, which was working for the Olympics. I led a workforce of about 30 folks for the summer season 2000 video games proper when the web began to turn into related. Think about you’re watching the Olympics on TV, and they might say, “For extra info, go to NBColympics.com!” We had been one of many first Olympics that actually began to occur.
The glory to work at such a worldwide scale – and this was after I knew what the deadline was! You needed to be prepared. As a result of whether or not you had been prepared or not, the Olympics had been gonna come. That was one of many actually essential seasons of my life. I needed to turn into a superb folks supervisor and study to work underneath stress.
The second is that I co-founded an organization that we bought to eBay. At a time when cell and e-commerce had been coming collectively – that’s after I actually grew up. I used to be initially a person contributor (IC), however was then requested to handle others. And through my time there – which was about seven years – I understood what it meant to serve a worldwide viewers. We had localization, had tasks in France and Germany, and I needed to launch a enterprise and scale throughout iOS and Android.
The CEO on the time requested me to spend money on what it will appear to be to amplify design. I had by no means accomplished something like that then, and it didn’t occur in a single day. Nevertheless, I discovered about market dynamics connecting consumers and sellers, labored on international tasks, and labored with totally different cultures.
Such an inspiring journey! I’m curious to know extra about your philosophy concerning the function of design.
Design has turn into extra of a measured follow. It is much less about what issues appear to be and extra concerning the perform – how they work. However I additionally acknowledge that design is a loaded phrase.
If you use the phrase design, it means various things to totally different folks. To be efficient in a corporation, a tech firm, or perhaps a G2, you need to current the craft in a means that’s usable and purposeful. It’s a must to assume empathetically and stroll in your clients’ sneakers.
I’d say that I ended up reframing the perform of design to be much more customer-centric. It’s a must to acknowledge that the craft itself is totally different – what we create is visible – there’s loads of significance across the tradition of creating, permitting designers to make their craft. Do not lead with the perform of design, however lead with the consumer and buyer language.
One other means to take a look at it’s as a three-legged stool. In the event you have a look at a balanced stool, one leg is perhaps engineering, one is perhaps enterprise/product administration, and one is perhaps design or consumer expertise. You place the client on the heart of that stool, and they’re going to really feel the stability. This has normally been a great way for me to consider design as an enter to the client.
That’s an attention-grabbing instance and a good way to take a look at design and consumer expertise. How do you assume design helps form folks’s experiences?
It is a blessing and a curse going by your complete life understanding design as a result of it is at all times in entrance of you. A method to consider design is thru friction. Design at all times helps scale back friction. Whether or not it is getting you thru an airport quicker or feeling a sure means a few lodge keep, it at all times helps scale back friction. If you’re obliged to inform one other individual how superior a sure product/service is, that is the best regard for design.
I see friction in every single place.
Design is a profession of service. You at all times should be empathetic. It’s a must to think about what your work does within the context of another person utilizing it. It’s a must to consider it holistically.
If you’re watching an ideal film, you are actually immersed in it, you’re not likely considering, “Oh, that is a extremely good soundtrack.”
When nice design occurs, it is not leaping on you saying, “I am a extremely good design!” You are not fascinated by it. It is so superbly woven into the material of what you are experiencing.
How do you deal with scaling the design course of throughout a number of enterprise domains to make sure a cohesive product?
My journey to scaling merchandise has taken a number of years. Creating issues is totally different from scaling them or making them repetitive. Generally, we name them “mechanisms.” They’re like course of machines that want to have the ability to run while you aren’t there. They should be well-documented, witnessed, and repeatable by many.
An instance is perhaps the way you run a design evaluate, construct an agenda, or create a cadence of presenting yearly for a corporation.
There may be little or no “institutional reminiscence” in a corporation. New individuals are coming and going. Scaling a superb (or unhealthy) course of can fizzle out.
You spoke about conducting design opinions. What’s one thing you search for whereas doing the identical?
When work is shared, it’s at all times shared within the context of a design course of. It’s most helpful if the designer shares the place they’re within the course of and what sort of suggestions they’re searching for.
They’re the subject material consultants; they’ve been working deeply on the product, they know their clients, they know their buyer friction and ache factors, and so they’ve been given an issue to unravel. So it’s at all times nice after we give that story the chance to disclose itself. It helps everybody within the room perceive the place you’re within the course of.
There are some guidelines round giving suggestions. To these of us who’ve been to design faculty, it’s about the way you usually articulate suggestions in a means that’s useful or helpful. This may embrace what you explored, what you eradicated, and what you thought-about. It’d supply alternatives to take a look at the issue in new methods. Oftentimes, a person underneath a deadline may work in a means that introduces bias. Design evaluate lets us see the issue with a contemporary perspective.
“We’re at all times critiquing work and never the individual. We have now to actually amplify the PEAK worth of kindness however within the spirit of authenticity and efficiency.”
Dane Howard
VP, Product Expertise Design, G2.
I’ll shift gears right here and discuss AI. How has AI impacted design, and what challenges do you anticipate sooner or later?
In 2022-23, AI actually began choosing up, and I had to consider how it will have an effect on workflows. It’s a useful software that by no means complains, works 24/7, and might be taught to do something, so what would you train it?
I run a collaborative design studio referred to as the Dane Howard Studio, which makes a speciality of design and fantastic artwork for industrial and residential tasks throughout a number of disciplines, resembling style, sports activities, generative AI, and extra. One of the vital latest AI tasks I labored on was the Implausible Creatures, uncommon and extraordinary creatures of the world that you simply haven’t met but.
If you use AI ethically, you could have new superpowers. I’m sufficiently old to know that Photoshop doesn’t at all times have layers. If we’re speaking a few time when customers had layers, you could possibly activate layers, flip them off, and verify your iterations.
And I believe that’s the hallmark of how AI will assist design. It’ll assist take away a number of the tedious work. In the event you can take away tedious work, you can also make extra iterations. If you can also make extra iterations, your inventive confidence goes up. In the event you consider AI in that sense, it helps scale back tedious work and increase inventive confidence.
I noticed in your LinkedIn you stated, “I consider that tales construct in energy with re-telling. It’s the product and model tales that turn into the explanation all of us transfer ahead collectively.” How does design power you to turn into a greater storyteller?
Love the query. Our brains are wired for tales. It’s one of many issues that emotionally connects us after we hear a narrative.
In the event you’re gonna design a function or a product, it by no means sits alone. It comes with the context of what got here earlier than it, what second you’re having now, and the long run.
Utilizing storytelling in a corporation helps everybody get enthusiastic about what we will construct collectively. Design is normally the front-end of the method; though it’s extremely collaborative, it helps maintain the story collectively.
As a frontrunner, you employ repetition of a narrative to permit others to listen to it after which re-tell it. It amplifies the chance as a result of it creates a resonance within the unifying course of. Constructing software program is an act of will. Like an orchestra, all devices taking part in collectively, engaged on the identical music sheet.
Tales have a strategy to align all these devices in a means that the sound is usually a larger sound.
What’s one thing about design that others usually misunderstand or get unsuitable?
If I am going again to the instance of the three-legged stool, design needs to be extremely collaborative. It’s a loaded phrase.
Design is in service of another person. “Hey, are you able to get this to me by Friday?” That places design right into a reactive posture.
However on the core of design, it’s drawback fixing. How usually is design used to unravel the unsuitable drawback? A giant misinterpretation could be to consider design as solely a service or [dis]service or a selected drawback another person has outlined.
Whereas in hindsight, you need to use design to get forward of the issue, discover the issue, agree on the issue, and use it to proactively remedy the issue in order that the artifacts of design – the prototypes – the boldness of what needs to be constructed rises.
“It is much less about outsourcing design as a requirement, however extra about leaning into the proactive alternatives of what to construct collectively.”
Dane Howard
VP, Product Expertise Design, G2.
This has been extremely insightful, Dane. I’d love to shut with some takeaways for our readers. What design traits do you foresee? Do you could have any parting phrases or recommendation to provide to design leaders?
Tendencies come and go. That is the definition of a development. My steering round a development that can serve folks higher is to place that into context. Let’s take VR for instance. Let’s say you placed on a VR headset for a very long time or take into consideration carrying one in public. The use case exponentially reduces.
Expertise might be enticing, however can not sit by itself. Plenty of it sits in utility. Plenty of design traits can final solely as a result of society is prepared to simply accept them.
As for parting phrases to design leaders, I’ve two issues to say.
If I can invite designers and design leaders to consider one thing that they are going to make investments time and vitality in for his or her complete profession.
Hear extra. Speak much less.
A lot of the design world is about taking in info and being very exact about your communication in giving course. And people two factors have actually served me nicely.
Observe Dane Howard on LinkedIn to study extra about Design Management, Communication, Teaching & Mentoring.
