Design Management

Talking to people about your designs might seem like a basic skill, but it can be difficult to do well. In many cases, how you communicate with stakeholders, clients, and other non-designers may be more important than the designs themselves. Because if you can't get their support, your work will never see the light of day - no matter how good it is. This practical guide focuses on principles, tactics, and actionable methods for presenting your designs.

Real critique has become a lost skill among collaborative teams today. Critique is intended to help teams strengthen their designs, products, and services, rather than be used to assert authority or push agendas under the guise of "feedback". In this practical guide, authors Adam Connor and Aaron Irizarry teach you techniques, tools, and a framework for helping members of your design team give and receive critique.

How many of us have been told after we graduated that what you studied in books is one thing, and how it works in reality is something different! This audiobook is a complete guide that takes you through all phases of a project.

Real Life Organizing offers clutter-free storage solutions and advice that can help you create a Pinterest-worthy home on a small budget: Learn how to organize your home, simplify life, and have more time for the things you love.

As companies evolve to adopt, integrate, and leverage software as the defining element of their success in the 21st century, a rash of processes and methodologies are vying for their product teams' attention. In the worst of cases, each discipline on these teams - product management, design, and software engineering - learn a different model.

We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you use design thinking to produce breakthrough innovations and transform your organization. This book will inspire you to: understand the transformative potential of design thinking; proceed from idea to product at lightning speed; iterate with rapid customer feedback; fail small and win big; create new products people love; lead design thinking teams more effectively; and open new paths to innovation at your company.

How you compensate people is one of the most important strategic decisions your company will make—but few “get it right and out of sight.” Nail it and you can add hundreds of percentage points to the bottom line while driving up the energy in the organization. Make the wrong call (or piecemeal the decision together), and the results will create needless drama throughout the organization.

Design Like Apple uncovers the lessons from Apple's singular approach to product creation, manufacturing, delivery, and customer experience. Learn how design can create a competitive advantage by delivering beauty, ingenuity, and charisma. Get guidance on how to nurture taste, talent, and a design culture at every level of your organization.

Design and construction industry practitioners collaborated to bring you Transforming Design and Construction: A Framework for Change, the first of LCI's Transforming Design and Construction series, to encourage discussion, learning, and experimentation around Lean processes. The short chapters focusses on various Lean topics. They are not designed as a "how-to" for Lean tools, but as a framework for learning and to guide you along your Lean journey.

It's no secret that culture is the key to attracting and engaging top talent and seizing the competitive edge. But the vast majority of culture efforts fail as quickly as they started. Why? Because leaders are missing the big picture. They're creating and communicating values but failing to ensure the values are tied to the purpose and the strategy of the company while also being integrated into processes, operations, and behaviors.

Jeanne Liedtka and Tim Ogilvie educate listeners on one of the hottest trends in business development: "design thinking", or the ability to turn abstract ideas into practical applications for maximal business growth. Jeanne Liedtka's recent book, The Catalyst: How YOU Can Lead Extraordinary Growth, was named a Top Innovation and Design Thinking Book by Business Week. Tim Ogilvie has been hailed as a visionary for his pioneering contributions to service innovation, business model innovation, and customer experience design.

Whether you're rolling out a new product from a city-view office or rolling up your sleeves to deliver a social service in the field, learning why and how to embrace failure can help you do better faster. Smart leaders, entrepreneurs, and change agents design their innovation projects with a key idea in mind: ensure that every failure is maximally useful. In Fail Better, Anjali Sastry and Kara Penn show how to create the conditions, culture, and habits to systematically, ruthlessly, and quickly figure out what works in three steps.

How often do you walk away from a conversation feeling really heard? That it moved the people in it forward in some important way? You’re not alone. In his practice as a designer, Fred Dust began to approach conversations differently. After years of trying to broker communication between colleagues and clients, he came to believe there had to a way to design the art of conversation itself with intention and purpose, but still artful and playful.

The subject of “design thinking” is the rage at business schools, throughout corporations, and increasingly in the popular press - due in large part to work of IDEO, a leading design firm, and its celebrated CEO, Tim Brown, who uses this audiobook to reveal how the techniques and strategies of design belong at every level of business. Change by Design is an audiobook for creative leaders seeking to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization, product, or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.

Emotion by Design reveals how leaders can harness the creative potential of any team, and so resonate with their audience like never before. Reflecting on his time working on Nike campaigns for Ronaldo and LeBron, the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup, Greg Hoffman reveals how any business can unlock its creativity: whether by seeking out the daydreamers (and taking them seriously), or recognising that visionary ideas come not only from ingenious individuals but from whole cultures of innovation or understanding how to turn a mere campaign into a global movement.

Businesses, organizations and society-at-large are all subject to unforeseeable events and incidents that often have a dramatic impact upon prosperity and profit. Due to their unpredictable nature, business leaders and executive teams are unable to prepare for these specific events. But, through innovation, strategizing and an open-minded approach, they can restructure their organization and practices in order to mitigate (or even take advantage of) the impact of such events.

Old houses share their secrets only if they survive. Trading the corporate ladder for a stepladder, Lee McColgan commits to preserving the ramshackle Loring House, built in 1702, using period materials and methods and on a holiday deadline. But his enchantment withers as he discovers the massive repairs it needs. A small kitchen fix reveals that the structure’s rotten frame could collapse at any moment. In a bathroom, mold appears and spreads. He fights deteriorating bricks, frozen pipes, shattered windows, a punctured foundation, and even an airborne chimney cap.

We can't predict the future, yet we do it all the time. We organize projects, events, days, weeks, and years. We plan to buy a home, build a career, travel, get married, raise children, teach a class, retire, or get in shape. Our ability to model the world as it is and might be is a gift, but mental time travel is also really hard. Fortunately, since planning is a skill, everyone from playful improviser to rigorous planner can greatly improve, if they are ready to learn.

This book guides listeners through best practices around planning, designing, building, and implementing a design system, with insights and first-hand experiences from lead designers at Shopify, Google, Apple, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Broken down and stranded 1,000 miles from home with only $7 left in his bank account, Bob Lotich had reached his breaking point. He was stuck in a dead-end job, living paycheck-to-paycheck, and overwhelmed by debt. Bob had been following the world's advice with money and this was the fruit of it. In desperation, he cried out to God for wisdom, for a different way. The answer was a simple four-part formula, one based on timeless biblical principles, and, most important, it worked.