Ben Holliday is an experienced design leader, writer and speaker. This is his blog (started in 2005). If you’re new to this site, Ben has published a playbook for design linking together many of his blog posts from the past 5 years. You can book him to speak at an event, get in touch or follow him on Twitter.
To follow on from my last blog post about leading sideways, here’s an example of how I work best.
I’m naturally more comfortable having a conversation about design, or leading a design process, standing side by side with people, rather than face to face. Continue reading…
When thinking about seniority in design, how to manage or ask for feedback is important.
Feedback is something you have to find as a designer. It’s something you have to be proactive about. As a rule, I think that everyone should be looking for feedback all the time. Continue reading…
Some more thoughts on design leadership and positioning (where you lead from).
Sometimes the intention to lead is enough. You can hold yourself to that responsibility, even when you’re not seen as a leader by others in your organisation. Continue reading…
Inspired by the Twits – Roald Dahl
I’ve always believed that that working in the open is important.
This week I spoke on a panel about collaboration. My main reflection was that collaboration and learning works both ways. Progress is often the result of how we open up ideas, conversations and make new connections. Continue reading…
A general observation from work I see happening across the public sector:
Continue reading…The quality of creative thinking, communication, visual and content design limits the effectiveness of the process or practice of designing services. There’s also a lack of implementation as the result of service design work.
The language we use and what we mean when we’re using a design-led or based approach is important. I recently shared my thinking about different types of design focus on Twitter.
These are my definitions. Continue reading…
It’s been a busy year so far and my intention of writing regular monthly updates hasn’t materialised (my last proper update was back in February). I’ve been prioritising other things, mostly real life and family.
I am still finding some time to write, especially as part of my role as Chief Design Officer at FutureGov, so I thought it would be useful to collect together everything that I’ve written this year. Continue reading…
I’m encouraged by the number of people talking about how they are taking on more responsibility to lead design. Emma’s blog post was great about her decision to take on a new role, and Ale’s call out to bring together more people in lead design roles has had a great response. Continue reading…
More and more I feel like I’m stepping outside recognised design communities to have conversations about design.
I think that this is important. For me, the practice of design is secondary to being able to translate design into something more impactful. Continue reading…
Just over a year ago, I wrote about comparing service design to business analysis. This was to highlight differences in skill sets, with an emphasis on how service design can bring a new set of approaches and focus to organisations.
In areas of government, and often in large or more enterprise IT-led organisations, service design is still seen at best as interchangeable with established business design functions. Continue reading…