Remaking the Making Company: Moving from Product to Experience
Summary
In this talk, Mike, the VP of Experience Design at Autodesk, shares his approach to leading change within a 33-year-old global software company. Emphasizing that change is a team sport, he highlights how Autodesk’s leadership supports this transformation. Mike explains how he treated joining Autodesk as a design problem, spending extensive time listening across the company, from interns to the CEO, to understand the challenges. He outlines four key pillars of his strategy: building community by democratizing design through programs like Luma; focusing on customers by amplifying research and direct customer engagement; connecting experiences by unifying Autodesk’s disparate products through a consistent visual language and targeted Tiger teams; and elevating quality by shifting the mindset from MVP to Minimal Lovable Product. Mike illustrates how silos within the organization hinder progress and how his federated design model fosters collaboration among 320 designers worldwide. A highlight includes hosting an internal experience design conference and running a global visual design hackathon to crowdsource ideas. The talk closes with optimism about the progress made and the ongoing journey to deliver delightful, well-crafted products.
Key Insights
-
•
Change must be embraced at the leadership level and cannot be driven by individuals alone.
-
•
Design should be seen as a verb and a collective effort; everyone in the company can and should be a designer.
-
•
Democratizing design tools and methods, like the Luma training program, enables non-designers to participate effectively in the design process.
-
•
Organizational silos are major obstacles to effective design and product cohesion, requiring intentional connective initiatives.
-
•
A federated model for design leadership balances autonomy of distributed teams with needed cross-company collaboration.
-
•
Focusing on customers means banning the word 'user' to humanize and connect people to real customer stories and needs.
-
•
Bringing customers into the product development process through co-creation accelerates meaningful innovation.
-
•
Creating a unified visual design language across 130+ products acquired over decades addresses consistency and brand identity challenges.
-
•
Tiger teams targeting ‘signature product moments’ are an effective way to break down complex cross-product problems.
-
•
Replacing the concept of MVP with Minimal Lovable Product encourages shipping products with quality and emotional connection, not just minimal features.
Notable Quotes
"I treat everything in life as if it’s a design problem."
"Change really cannot be done by any individual person. Change is a team sport."
"Design is not a noun. Design is an active verb."
"Everyone is a designer."
"The word user kills your ability to put faces around our customers."
"We have to go from shipping a minimal viable product to creating a minimal lovable experience."
"Organizational silos are killers."
"The only way you’re going to go from good to great is through well-crafted experiences."
"You have to ask yourself, are you ready for the messiness, the hard choices, and the chaos that come with change?"
"We created Tiger teams that work like cancer cell hunters, targeting isolated problems and then dissolving after their work is done."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Video parties allow many teams to engage and observe learnings in a more compelling and digestible way than slides."
Joanna Vodopivec Prabhas PokharelOne Research Team for All - Influence Without Authority
March 9, 2022
"I didn’t understand just how complex everything was both on the stakeholder and technology side."
Louis Rosenfeld Lashanda Hodge Senongo Akpem Chris HodowanecBecoming a Civic Designer: Making the Move from Private to Public Sector
November 17, 2022
"Sponsor sessions are optional but incredibly high content and not sales pitches."
Bria AlexanderDay 3 Welcome
September 25, 2024
"Melissa Burnett is a creator of order out of chaos, leader of leaders."
Uday Gajendar Louis RosenfeldDay 2 Welcome
June 5, 2024
"Confidence is a higher burden in retail because people are giving real money; inaccessible flows cause quick abandonment."
Sam ProulxOnline Shopping: Designing an Accessible Experience
June 7, 2023
"Onboarding isn’t a single event or process, it’s an ecosystem with many touchpoints impacting the new employee experience."
Russ UngerOnboarding: The Ecosystem, not the Afterthought
November 7, 2017
"We could impact the end-to-end customer service and customer experience through our most underutilized asset: our store employees."
Catherine DubutBridging Physical and Digital Spaces: Approaches to Retail Service Design
March 18, 2021
"These intelligent interfaces are collaborative, proactive partners on the user’s journey."
Josh Clark Veronika KindredSentient Design: New Postures for AI-Mediated Experiences (2nd of 3 seminars)
January 29, 2025
"My dad told me very early on in my career that I had to work two times harder than anyone else to get the same things."
Dantley DavisLeadership & Diversity—A Fireside Chat with Dantley Davis
September 17, 2020
