It's been a while. Life happens, kids are born, and blogs sometimes sadly wither.
I've been incredibly fortunate to have had a wonderful year being a new Dad. It has given me a new perspective on patience, a greater appreciation of focusing on what is essential, and an intense understanding of meeting the needs of your users (albeit, ones that are sometimes screaming at 3:00 a.m., throwing up on you, or just saying "no" repeatedly these days! ;)
On the design front, I've had a chance to travel pretty regularly to tech hubs; namely the Bay area, Seattle, and New York City. The goals have primarily been recruiting-focused and to deepen our connections within the design community. In talking with these really talented folks, you also can't help but get a grass-roots sense of what's happening within the field of design across lots of different orgs and verticals.
Here are some general takeaways from the last year of lurking on design blogs, speaking at conferences, and from many-a-coffee with some immensely talented people...
Design is a thing. Although there are certainly differences in maturity throughout organizations, design as a competitive and strategic advantage is here to stay. Regardless of whether you call it UX, Experience Design, Interaction Design, or Product Design, companies have recognized the very real value that the craft brings to their customers (and therefore bottom lines!)
A seat at the table isn't enough. It's what you do with that seat that matters! Designers are in influential positions, but a theoretical appreciation of design principles isn't enough. Being able to articulate why design excellence matters in the context of very real product decision-making with Product and Engineering leaders - and then substantiated it with real data - is where it's at. (And yes, you can measure things like engagement and fun if you happen to be working in the entertainment space).
Outcomes matter. Understanding the experiential and emotional goals that products and services hope to achieve are arguably becoming as important as business planning itself. (My favorite overheard line at a recent VC pitch session went something like: "That all makes perfect business sense, but how will you invent the future in this particular space?")
Talented Designers are scarce and jobs are aplenty. With the stated needs above, great designers are usually pretty busy working on the future. And, the pipeline for creating great design talent isn't catching-up any time soon! A stat I saw recently indicated that there are currently over 20,000 'design' jobs available and something like less than 1,000 designers coming out of the more well-established design programs annually. Wow, the numbers are in our favor and companies are even building out design education programs internally to keep up with demand (e.g., IBM's Design Studio).
I'll definitely go a little deeper into some of the above topics soon, especially the one on attracting great talent. I've spent a fair amount of my time in this area lately and can hopefully share some perspective on how to build world-class teams.
Marc