June 2020: The atomic unit of design is the team, with Peter Merholz

At the heart of most agile development frameworks are small, cross-functional squads. And in those squads resides a lone designer, collaborating with a product owner and engineers. This model has lead to the quest for the Unicorn designer, the broadly skilled individual who can do interaction design, visual design, and maybe even content and research as well!

This trend has potentially terrible ramifications on the practice of design in companies. In this talk, Peter Merholz will explain why the Team, not any one designer, is the Atomic Unit of Design Organizations. Drawing upon his experience from shaping teams at Adaptive Path, through his work as a VP of Design and now management consultant for design orgs, he'll walk through the process of intentionally creating a strong, diverse team, what behaviours and norms enable a team to behave at their best, and explain why the Team Lead is the most important role in your design organization (yes, even more than Head of Design).

Note that this will be a live streaming event. For what we hope are obvious reasons we won’t be sitting together in a physical space! We'll send attendees a Zoom link on the day of the session.