Designers spend the first few years fine-tuning their craft, earning their stripes. One of the challenges a team faces is the need to figure out what to build that goes beyond execution. In this session, Emmet will discuss the changing role of design and how it can change as your company scales and your career grows, the product vision which used to come from the top to a point where the long-term strategy and vision falls on the product team. Emmet will discuss how to best prepare for this new skillset and design for longer term vision over immediate execution.

1. Emmet Connolly
@thoughtwax
From Visual Design
to Vision Design
VP of Product Design
Intercom
UXDX Dublin
Oct 2022
The role of Product Designers
in shaping product direction

2. Shift from big tech to business impact
More disruptive change is coming
Designers now desire greater “strategic impact”
Design can
fi
ll a critical company gap
FOUR DRIVERS OF CHANGE
1.
2.
3.
4.

3. DESIGNERSSHOULDSHAPE
PRODUCTVISION

4. Where did we come from,
where do we go?
The seat-at-the-table-i
fi
ciation of design
PART I

5. 2000s 2010s

8. Always design a thing by considering
it in its next larger context—
a chair in a room,
a room in a house,
a house in an environment,
an environment in a city plan.
Eliel Saarinen

10. https://designerfund.com/business-impact

11. Customer
problem
Product
solution
Business
impact
→ →

12. Customer
opportunity
Customer
problem
Product
solution
→ →

13. Business
focused
User
focused

14. Syd Mead sketch
youtube.com
syd mead, cityscape, retrofuturism, highly detailed, soft
lighting, 8k resolution, oil on canvas, architectural
magazine
Stable Diffusion

16. https://twitter.com/wbuchw/status/1563162131024920576

17. Execution-focused Execution and strategy-focused
→

18. “I want to work on strategy”

24. Designers are seeking out strategy work

25. Designers
Organisational
requirements
Product
Vision

26. Strategy
What we want

27. Strategy
What we want
Execution
How we build
→

28. Strategy
What we want
Vision
What to build
Execution
How we build
→ →

29. Understanding of customers, business, competitors
Facilitation and synthesis
Creativity, idea generation, product intuition
Exploration, divergence and convergence
Ability to tell a compelling story about the future
Ability to bring ideas to life visually
In short… DESIGN SKILLS!

30. Designers are ideally suited
to fill this gap

31. Shift from big tech to business impact
More disruptive change is coming
Designers now desire greater “strategic impact”
Design can
fi
ll a critical company gap
FOUR DRIVERS OF CHANGE
1.
2.
3.
4.

32. What even is a
product vision?
And how to create one in several hundred simple steps
PART II

33. Strategy
What we want
Vision
What to build
Execution
How we build
→ →

36. Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud

41. PRODUCT VISION CASE STUDY: INTERCOM INBOX

42. Form a working group
• De
fi
ne DACI
• Set up working sessions

43. Align on the objectives
• Why do you need a vision?
• What is the scope of the vision?
• How will you use it?

44. Start collecting ideas
• From a broad group, right away
• Use as inputs for brainstorming later

45. Uncover key problems and
opportunities
• Gather existing research
• Conduct new research
• Audit the product yourself
• Group it into themes
• Score them (frequency, importance)

46. Gather inputs for
brainstorming
• How competitors solve these problems
• How other industries solve similar
problems

47. Plan cross-functional design
workshops
• How will you use the time?
• Who should be there?
• What problems or opportunities are you
going to explore?

48. Run cross-functional design
workshops
• Gather a broad set of ideas
• Discuss the most interesting ideas

49. Synthesise the results
• Group similar ideas together
• Describe or visualise
• Rank them by potential and ambiguity
• Pair with someone on this

50. Develop promising but
ambiguous ideas further
• Disambiguate the solution at a high
level

51. Evaluate the ideas
• Which have the biggest potential?
• Consider your con
fi
dence, effort,
ambiguity, differentiation, revenue
impact, etc.

52. Test the most promising ideas
with customers
• Show customers
• Show your Sales team
• Understand what resonates and what
doesn't
😇

53. Develop key pillars for the
vision
• What are the broader themes?
• How will they help you win?
• How will you explain it to customers?
• What’s your revenue hypothesis?

54. Turn it into a story and
communicate it
• Strategy → Vision → Outcome
• Share it far and wide, get buy-in
(getting folks involved in workshops
makes this easier)

59. Plan how you'll bring the
vision to life
• Team remits
• Key projects
• Sequence

61. DESIGNERSSHOULDSHAPE
PRODUCTVISION

63. Emmet Connolly
@thoughtwax
From Visual Design
to Vision Design
VP of Product Design
Intercom
UXDX Dublin
Oct 2022
The role of Product Designers
in shaping product direction