Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Remaking the Making Company: Moving from Product to Experience
Gold
Thursday, June 9, 2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Share the love for this talk
Remaking the Making Company: Moving from Product to Experience
Speakers: Maria Giudice
Link:

Summary

The speaker, recently appointed VP of Experience Design at Autodesk, reflects on his first year driving a cultural and strategic transformation in the 33-year-old company. Recognizing the urgent need for traditional companies like Autodesk to evolve, he framed the transition from shipping powerful but complicated software products to delivering seamless, lovable customer experiences. He emphasizes that leadership readiness and a trust-filled environment were critical conditions for change. Early on, he approached the challenge as a design problem, traveling globally to listen to employees and identify common obstacles such as power imbalances on product teams, siloed communication, limited customer access, and an overwhelming focus on quantity of features over quality. To overcome these, he implemented a federated model to connect dispersed design teams, launched initiatives to build community and democratize human-centered design with programs like Luma, and hosted a large internal experience design conference to raise design visibility. He advocated banning the term user to foster empathy and focused on amplifying pockets of customer research excellence through initiatives like volunteer customer call days and customer co-creation sessions. Addressing product inconsistency from Autodesk’s history of acquisitions, he led a global hackathon to crowdsource a unified visual design language and formed cross-company Tiger teams to tackle critical experience problems. Finally, he promoted redefining quality from Minimum Viable Product to Minimum Lovable Experience, emphasizing value, ease of use, and craft. Ending with a progress review from a junior designer, Shalom, he expresses motivation fueled by increased connection and inspiration across teams. His journey highlights the multifaceted approach needed for enterprise digital transformation through design leadership.

Key Insights

  • Change in large organizations requires leadership readiness and is a team sport, not an individual effort.

  • Treating organizational transformation as a design problem encourages immersive listening and data synthesis.

  • Enterprise design teams often suffer from power imbalances and fragmentation, especially marginalizing designers.

  • Organizational silos are one of the biggest killers of collaboration and innovation.

  • Adopting a federated design model keeps designers embedded in product teams while creating connective tissue across the company.

  • Democratizing human-centered design methods empowers non-designers to participate in the design process.

  • Changing language, such as banning the word 'user,' helps humanize customers and improve empathy.

  • Co-creation with customers and volunteering on customer service calls strengthens customer-centricity.

  • Creating a unified visual design language in a company with many acquisitions requires inclusive crowdsourcing approaches.

  • Replacing the Minimum Viable Product concept with Minimum Lovable Experience shifts focus to value, ease of use, and craft.

Notable Quotes

"I’ve run to risk, I’ve run to change."

"If your leadership team isn’t ready for change, you have this uphill battle."

"Change is a team sport."

"Design is not a noun; design is an active verb."

"Everyone is a designer."

"There’s power in saying what you mean, but being respectful — we call it mature directness."

"Two groups of people who use the word user: our industry and drug dealers."

"Silos are organizational killers."

"Minimum Viable Product: let’s fucking blow it up."

"When we build valuable, easy to use products with the highest degree of craft, we achieve the quality that inspires love."

Ask the Rosenbot
Dan Willis
Enterprise Storytelling Sessions
2017 • Enterprise Experience 2017
Gold
Michelle Morrison
Culture Design (Videoconference)
2020 • DesignOps Community
Jeff Gothelf
The Intersection of Lean and Design (Videoconference)
2019 • Enterprise Community
Dave Malouf
The Past, Present, and Future of DesignOps: a 2-part DesignOps Community Call (Part 2) (Videoconference)
2022 • DesignOps Community
Bria Alexander
Theme Two Intro
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Ovetta Sampson
Research in the Automated Future
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Sam Proulx
Online Shopping: Designing an Accessible Experience
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Eniola Oluwole
Lessons From the DesignOps Journey of the World's Largest Travel Site
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Jeff Gothelf
Innovation Studios: the Engines of Enterprise Experimentation
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Erin Weigel
Get Your Whole Team Testing to Design for Impact
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Kyria Stephens
Power to Heal: Civic Design in the Aftermath of Tragedy
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Teresa Swingler
Look, Up in the Sky! UX/UI for Aerospace (Videoconference)
2022 • Enterprise Community
Allison Sanders
Operating with Purpose
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Christian Madsbjerg
Influencing Strategy
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Fredrik Matheson
First-time users, longtime strategies: Why Parkinson’s Law is making you less effective at work – and how to design a fix.
2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Gold
Pippa Lomas
Paving the Path for Neurodiversity in Design
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold

More Videos

"If design didn’t move the needle, we wouldn’t be having this conversation."

Standardizing Product Merits for Leaders, Designers, and Everyone

June 15, 2018

Simon Wardley

"There’s no such thing as one-size-fits-all methods; what works in one part of the map doesn’t work in another."

Simon Wardley

Maps and Topographical Intelligence (Videoconference)

January 31, 2019

Sandra Camacho

"Bias is a tendency, feeling or opinion for or against something without reason or evidence."

Sandra Camacho

Creating More Bias-Proof Designs

January 22, 2025

Darian Davis

"When fellow co-workers label an individual as difficult, it’s hard not to treat that person as a problem."

Darian Davis

Lessons from a Toxic Work Relationship

January 8, 2024

Fisayo Osilaja

"We mitigated data privacy risks by subscribing to the corporate plan for ChatGPT, which offers enhanced security."

Fisayo Osilaja

[Demo] The AI edge: From researcher to strategist

June 4, 2024

Uday Gajendar

"Craft cultivates customer satisfaction, loyalty, and even forgiveness when functional issues arise."

Uday Gajendar

The Wicked Craft of Enterprise UX

May 13, 2015

Davis Neable

"Trust is often underestimated but is critical when designers face public critique and feedback."

Davis Neable Guy Segal

How to Drive a Design Project When you Don’t Have a Design Team

June 10, 2021

Eniola Oluwole

"People felt designs were self-evident and too much explanation was a barrier to using the patterns."

Eniola Oluwole

Lessons From the DesignOps Journey of the World's Largest Travel Site

October 24, 2019

Aurobinda Pradhan

"We believe tracking design metrics aligned to business goals is important to demonstrate design’s impact."

Aurobinda Pradhan Shashank Deshpande

Introduction to Collaborative DesignOps using Cubyts

September 9, 2022