Presented at Intersection Conference - http://intersectionconf.com/

Katharina Weber
https://designleadershipframework.de

The topics of Design Leadership and Design Operations are currently very popular due to the still increasing need of companies to deliver great customer experiences and become design-driven organizations. This has been leading to companies hiring or acquiring a large number of designers in the recent years. But many companies struggle to really unite these new design »forces« to deliver a holistic end-to-end experience.

The high amount of designers in organizations leads to a high demand of Design Leadership Roles on different levels. They are dealing with a wide range of topics such as team development, operational processes and organizational structures. At the same time these leaders are supposed to develop a design vision and drive design culture forward in their companies.
Comparing the still emerging discipline of Design Leadership to other more established areas such as IT Management, it becomes apparent that Design Leadership could profit from a concise overview or framework that shows what aspects the discipline encompasses.

At Intersection 2018 Katharina Weber presented an early version of a research-based Design Leadership Framework that aims at tackling this challenge. It is supposed to serve as a tool for design leaders of digital products and services, to focus on the right things in their organization and implement the right initiatives and changes.

Katharina Weber is currently working on refining and finishing the framework based on feedback and discussion with design leaders and experts from the industry. Follow the official EDA Twitter Channels to receive updates for this topics.
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