In my opinion, the term 'user' focuses too tightly on their experience with the product vs. their ecosystem of influence as a human being. I push my teams to look deeper than digital, and search relentlessly to find meaningful insight about the real world environment which impacts the human behavior in the context of using a digital product or service.

I've worked with many teams who seemed to be chasing the wrong problems, and therefore wasting significant time and resources (and money) on solutions which yielded little to no outcomes. Using design thinking as a framework, I push my teams to identify the right problem(s) to solve and in the simplest way possible.

Josh Seiden's Outcomes over Outputs lays out a fantastic framework for ensuring value delivery in your work, product, service, team, and almost anything else. I have adopted this framework to drive my team, and the companies I work for, to align on and execute work activities based on their ability to create measurable outcomes for users, customers, and therefore the business.

Creating a strong design culture is critically important for the success of my team. I'm hands on in supporting my team to achieving success across the entire design process, guiding them throughout the process in providing constructive feedback and helping them maintain alignment with the stakeholders and business priorities. From a design operations perspective, I focus on creating efficient/simple processes that can scale across the entire design org and enable us to work collaboratively and to ensure our quality.

In a hybrid work culture, many of us can get in the habit of 'always working'. I pride myself on setting the right example when it comes to establishing boundaries and sticking to them, focused on maintaining a strong work-life balance for my team and I.