What you’ll find here
Loads of DocuSign
Half of the pieces here talk about work I did at DocuSign because I worked there for four years as a leader most recently. Those pieces tell stories about my work and its impact on areas like career ladders and hiring for the design organization, a documented effort to advance design maturity on a larger team I led for a short while, and one of the most successful workshops I’ve ever done to date.
A sprinkle of Avanade — because I helped rapidly scale a team to over 100 people and did most of the design operations work myself, that one is in here even though it dates back to 2010.
A spoonful of MorningStar — work that will give you an idea of how I approach designing both services (Accessible Investing) and products (Modern Portfolio Theory), including a few assets created for the work I did.
I only put work in my portfolio that is less than 5 years old if it contains actual design artifacts. That work must also meet my bar for quality and success, which is objectively described as “a lot” and does not always mean it has commercial success or can be measured that way.
Best. Workshop. Ever.
After running an effective priority- and roadmap-combining workshop for two DocuSign teams in Europe earlier in the year, word got around, and I was asked to do another workshop for our PLG team.
At first it sounded pretty rote and normal: a workshop about same-paginess and priority setting, with roadmap items emerging, but then... I learned there would be over 100 people, it would be in person, and the goals were highly ambitious for a DocuSign get-together.
What I did
After learning that, I thought, I’m gonna need a bigger boat. So I got to work:
Designing eight hours of in-person ideation workshops spanning 2 days for about 170 employees across all major functions — marketing, design, content, engineering, growth, and their leadership
Recruiting and prepping nine facilitators and a photographer from my team and other teams to facilitate 30-person breakouts
Supporting the selection and organization of a venue that would hold all of these people, work for the activities I designed, and purchase all the supplies (have you ever bought 200 Sharpies at once? It’s a comical amount of Sharpies.)
How’d It Go?
The space was extremely beige. The people started out ambivalent, not knowing what to expect. Pretty soon, though, we were shoulder deep in (compostable) Post-its, making new connections, and building partnerships that wouldn’t have otherwise existed.
All the activities we did over two days.
Sounds fun, but what were the outcomes?
Most importantly for where DocuSign was at as a company, I was able to
Facilitate conversations that built unified momentum for relevant business change that will continue for at least two years
Galvanize our product-led growth teams to action, exploring shared ideas for reaching ambitious goals that went into their OKRs
Help PLG executives build a successful case for the CEO to include the ideas we developed in the product team’s roadmaps
Make the Product Experience team look great at a moment when the products were under a lot of (warranted) experiential scrutiny
The most gratifying outcome was what people said to me afterward. I was approached by multiple people, including sponsoring execs, who told me that was the most effective, engaging gathering they’d ever attended for work.
I’d be happy to chat more about how I chose the activities I did, how I designed the interactions, and how I kept the energy up for two whole days in a beige ballroom. This piece would be much too long if I explained all that here!
Lastly, here’s an update from a PLG leader about a week after our workshop:
