This video could not have come at a better time, your channel has been so pivotal for my career, and now I am leaning into design management so thanks for the great content ✨
Would you honestly encourage incoming students to study in product/industrial design with this job market? It’s the only thing holding me back along with the career being very difficult to pivot from without further education. Having a very difficult time and I would love to speak to you!
In larger companies the management path often looks like this: Manager → Sr Manager → Director → VP (Vice President) → CDO (Chief Design Officer - C-level role). And no Head of Design since it is more like a startup role.
You are the cutest designer ever❤ Such a great video (as always!). Question: As a design manager, how are you able to put your heart and soul into strategy, staffing, milestones, etc. of a company that you don’t have a stake in? Sure you get a salary there but I’ve always felt discombobulated having to do all these essential business activities for a business that is not my own.
Sounds like the company you're at might not be a good fit? You have to care in some way about the mission in order to feel driven. Otherwise perhaps it's not the right place for you or you're more suited to entrepreneurship?
Great video! Your videos have been very helpful - thank you for doing this. One quick question - as a design manager how should one upskill in other things other than design. How do you suggest or create value in leadership meetings. How to better understand business or tech- to become more valuable. The one challenge which I face is to navigate around other disciplines and being a part of business and not just design- getting the best outcome for me and my design team.
For sure! I have a course all about how to have more impact and influence in your role outside of the design craft. Check it out :) www.femke.design/course
Hey, great video! Thank you for making such an informative video and giving us an insight into the Design Manager role. Appreciate all the work you put in creating great content!
In my experience, crits have been reserved for designers only - to get feedback from peers. What I've seen work well is having slots that designers can reserve, eg. 3x 20min slots in an hour. Designers can claim a slot in advance and use the time to present and get feedback from the rest of the group.
I've moved into the Manager track on more than one occasion. Both times I moved into a Design Manager role, I was confronted with a strong values mismatch with the org I worked for, and asked to support some quite frankly unethical (imo) hiring/firing decisions for IC's who were perceived to be a 'bad fit' (and in both situations, I strongly disagreed). In both instances, I've left the company and moved back to being an IC Designer, not for a lack of desire for manager, but simply in reaction to the circumstances. Do you think this is just bad luck? or simply the stark realities of being a Design Manager?
How do you manage design in your business without feeling like you're an internal agency where other departments just ask you to do design the same way they might ask an agency to do it?
Sounds like design maturity at your company may be a little low and that others may not understand the value of design? A big cultural shift would need to happen in terms of the way you work together x-fnly. Too much to tackle in a YT comment hah, but check out my course which covers this topic! www.femke.design/course
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This video could not have come at a better time, your channel has been so pivotal for my career, and now I am leaning into design management so thanks for the great content ✨
Funny how the timing can sometimes be so perfect! Thanks for watching ☺️
Would you honestly encourage incoming students to study in product/industrial design with this job market? It’s the only thing holding me back along with the career being very difficult to pivot from without further education.
Having a very difficult time and I would love to speak to you!
In larger companies the management path often looks like this: Manager → Sr Manager → Director → VP (Vice President) → CDO (Chief Design Officer - C-level role). And no Head of Design since it is more like a startup role.
Interesting!
You are the cutest designer ever❤ Such a great video (as always!). Question: As a design manager, how are you able to put your heart and soul into strategy, staffing, milestones, etc. of a company that you don’t have a stake in? Sure you get a salary there but I’ve always felt discombobulated having to do all these essential business activities for a business that is not my own.
Sounds like the company you're at might not be a good fit? You have to care in some way about the mission in order to feel driven. Otherwise perhaps it's not the right place for you or you're more suited to entrepreneurship?
Great video! Your videos have been very helpful - thank you for doing this. One quick question - as a design manager how should one upskill in other things other than design. How do you suggest or create value in leadership meetings. How to better understand business or tech- to become more valuable. The one challenge which I face is to navigate around other disciplines and being a part of business and not just design- getting the best outcome for me and my design team.
For sure! I have a course all about how to have more impact and influence in your role outside of the design craft. Check it out :) www.femke.design/course
Hey, great video! Thank you for making such an informative video and giving us an insight into the Design Manager role. Appreciate all the work you put in creating great content!
Thanks so much ☺️
What do design meetings look like? Could you give us some behind the scenes of some of the design crit sessions?
In my experience, crits have been reserved for designers only - to get feedback from peers. What I've seen work well is having slots that designers can reserve, eg. 3x 20min slots in an hour. Designers can claim a slot in advance and use the time to present and get feedback from the rest of the group.
I've moved into the Manager track on more than one occasion. Both times I moved into a Design Manager role, I was confronted with a strong values mismatch with the org I worked for, and asked to support some quite frankly unethical (imo) hiring/firing decisions for IC's who were perceived to be a 'bad fit' (and in both situations, I strongly disagreed). In both instances, I've left the company and moved back to being an IC Designer, not for a lack of desire for manager, but simply in reaction to the circumstances.
Do you think this is just bad luck? or simply the stark realities of being a Design Manager?
How do you manage design in your business without feeling like you're an internal agency where other departments just ask you to do design the same way they might ask an agency to do it?
Sounds like design maturity at your company may be a little low and that others may not understand the value of design? A big cultural shift would need to happen in terms of the way you work together x-fnly. Too much to tackle in a YT comment hah, but check out my course which covers this topic! www.femke.design/course