June 11, 2018 // 53 minutes
Maria Giudice: DesignOps, diversity, and design making a difference
Listen to PodcastFeaturing
Maria Giudice
Founder, Hot Studio
About The Episode
Rallying around a shared vision is one of the biggest challenges for design teams operating at scale. So how can you foster that vision and bring people together to execute it?
In this episode, Hot Studio Founder and former Autodesk VP of Experience Design Maria Giudice talks about overcoming team silos and learning to lead with influence instead of authority. She also discusses why diversity is one of the keys to great product design, along with lessons she learned while working with fast-moving companies like Facebook.
Agile was not developed with design in mind—but we as designers can impact that process and bring our own processes in. I call it human-centered agile…At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter about being a designer, or an engineer, or a data scientist—it’s more about ‘Did we ship a great product together?’
Maria Giudice
Listen as Eli and Aarron chat with Maria about everything from Hot Studio’s role in establishing the practice of DesignOps to how companies can reinforce design culture. If you enjoy this episode, we’d appreciate it if you could leave a review on iTunes.
Maria’s bio
Maria Giudice has pursued a vision of intelligent, elegant, people-centered design throughout her professional life. Under her leadership, Hot Studio, the award-winning experience design firm she founded in 1997, grew into a full-service creative agency with an impressive list of Fortune 500 clients. In 2013, Facebook acquired the talent behind Hot Studio, where Maria worked as a Director of Product Design. In 2015, she joined Autodesk as Vice President of Experience Design.
Notable awards and recognition for Hot Studio include a nomination for a National Design Award. In 2012, Maria was recognized as an AIGA Design Fellow which recognizes designers who have made a significant contribution to raising the standards of excellence in practice. Maria’s third book, Rise of the DEO: Leadership by Design, is available in several languages, and she has spoken at conferences all over the world.
Meet Your Hosts
Aarron Walter
VP of Design Education
Aarron Walter is Director of Product on the COVID Response team at Resolve to Save Lives. Previously, he was VP of Design Education at InVision, and founded the UX practice at Mailchimp where he helped grow the product from a few thousand users to more than 10 million. He’s the author of a number of books, the latest of which is a second edition of Designing for Emotion. Aarron’s design guidance has helped the White House, the US Department of State, and dozens of major corporations, startups, and venture capital firms.
Eli Woolery
Director of Design Education
Eli is the Director of Design Education at InVision. His design career spans both physical and digital products, and he has worked with companies ranging from startups (his own and others) to Fortune 500 companies.
In addition to his background in product and industrial design, he has been a professional photographer and filmmaker. He teaches the senior capstone class Implementation to undergraduate Product Designers at Stanford University. You can find Eli on Twitter and Medium.
Podcast
Uncover insights from the world’s top designers and creatives
In our sixth season, we’re looking beyond the design team to explore the far reaches of collaboration, and we’ll surface a cross-disciplinary approach to doing complex work with diverse teams.