Candid end of year reflections with three design leaders

Design Feeling

#026 - To wrap up the year, I had a candid chat with 3 friends who are all design leaders and creatives. Egle is a designer, researcher and lifestyle photographer who leads design teams for a global corporation. Rafa is a Design Director, Product Design Consultant, and Visiting Lecturer at The Bartlett (UCL) and London College of Communication (UAL). Sinem is a Principal UX Designer and Design Lecturer. We talked about how the year 2022 was for each one of them and their biggest challenges, learnings and advice for designers.

In this episode:

• Active listening and trusting people first before trying to solve problems with design
• Importance of alignment, trust and connection
• Letting go of methodologies and building your agility in a cross-functional team
• Not trying to control all the outcomes
• Thinking about the long-term impact on product and people
• Being comfortable with uncomfortable feelings and uncomfortable situations

Shownotes

Happy Startup School

https://www.thehappystartupschool.com/

Brene Brown

https://brenebrown.com/

Amy Edmondson

https://amycedmondson.com/

The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter

https://eastermichael.com/book/

The Making of a Manager by Julie Zhuo

https://juliezhuo.com/book/manager.html

Design, When Everybody Designs by Ezio Manzini

https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/4460/Design-When-Everybody-DesignsAn-Introduction-to

Brave New Work by Aaron Dignan

https://www.bravenewwork.com/

Four Thousand Weeks

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56155228-four-thousand-weeks

F*ck It by John C. Parkin

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4837266-f-k-it

Egle Beliunaite

https://www.linkedin.com/in/egle-beliunaite/

Rafa Prada

http://rafa.madeabroad.io/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafaprada/

Sinem Erdemli

https://tinyurl.com/sinsplace

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sinemerdemli/

Show credits

Illustrations by Isa Vicente

https://www.instagram.com/isadezgz/

Music by Brad Porter

https://prtr.co/

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Chapters

1. Introduction (00:00:00)

2. Welcome (00:01:58)

3. Biggest challenge of the year (00:07:36)

4. Advice for 2023 (00:38:16)

5. Best resource that's helped them (00:43:48)

6. Wrap up (00:46:39)