User Experience Design

PREFACE

The story of this Playbook started in late 2012 when I was a design leader at a large software company leading the centralized design group responsible for the user experience (UX) design for most of the company’s leading products. At that point, I had spent close to six years in UX design leadership in two separate organizations, starting as associate UX manager before being promoted to managing director of design.

As part of my career planning conversation with my manager, the topic of aspirations came up. I was itching to transition my role from design leadership into business leadership, where I felt that I could make a more holistic impact in the organization. As a result of this conversation, the company sponsored me to attend Harvard Business School’s famed General Management Program, an executive education program designed for senior leaders to get an end‐to‐end management training. The program was a transformational experience for me, as I was surrounded by more than 100 accomplished leaders who had achieved a lot and were now in the similar pursuit of gaining more formal business learning.

There were two key takeaways for me here: First, I learned the power of frameworks; the professors would consistently iterate and set up simple frameworks that students could understand, teach, and replicate. From SWOT analysis, to the “Five P’s of Marketing,” to the Balanced Scorecard, I built an appreciation for the power of frameworks and have used the same approach as ...