ENHANCING COLLABORATION THROUGH HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN
THE PROBLEM
Across a global organization serving brand clients at scale, silos between engineering, product management, and design were limiting the quality and speed of innovation. Teams lacked shared frameworks for collaboration, and a culture of human-centered thinking had yet to take root broadly across the organization.
OUR HYPOTHESIS
By embedding UX thinking, structured ideation, and cross-functional collaboration practices into the DNA of the organization, we could strengthen agility, improve the quality of solutions, and inspire a culture of innovation that would benefit both internal teams and the brand clients they serve.
MY CONTRIBUTIONS
As a User Experience Leader at Google, I led global programs and drove initiatives to build a stronger culture of collaboration, design thinking, and innovation across engineering, product, and design disciplines.
- •Facilitated cross-functional collaboration by bringing together engineering, product management, and design leaders for ideation and innovation workshops, strengthening organizational agility
- •Oversaw global programs (100+ staff) serving brand clients, optimizing hiring, training, collaboration and agile ways of working
- •Developed and presented "UX 101" strategy assets, inspiring empathy and collaboration among partners and influencing a culture of innovation across Google
- •Developed a framework around "creative tension" to help teams better understand their counterparts and inspire co-creation to achieve more abundant and effective collaboration between teams and deliver more innovative solutions
- •Coached discipline leaders in leveraging "creative tension" across functions to develop more innovative solutions to business problems
THE RESULT
Built a stronger foundation for cross-functional collaboration and human-centered design thinking across a global organization. The "creative tension" framework gave teams a shared language and approach for co-creation, and a culture of empathy and innovation took hold — improving the quality of solutions delivered to brand clients and elevating the role of UX across the organization.