Cross-Company programs
Spot a problem? I take the initiative to fix it. During my 12 years at Autodesk, when I saw problems affecting the company as a whole, I built project initiatives, partnered with other teams, got buy-in from leaders, drove the success of the programs, and found teams and leaders to sustain the projects. These are just a few of those projects.
I dive into more detail on similar projects in the case studies on Collaborative AI, MCP Servers.
The Team
Varied
Timeframe
2 years for each program to become established
My Role
Leader
Impact
99
Patterns contributed through the Design Lab
2/3rds
Faster go-to-market through Figma adoption
$5 M
Estimated $ saved through Figma adoption in 3 years
Design System contribution process
While working as Lead Portfolio Architect, I noticed how hard it was to even know which projects were happening, much less collaborate on patterns that should be in our nascient design system (which had around 18 patterns at the time) across the 500-800 designers in the company. There needed to be a single place where everyone could find out if other teams were working on design patterns that could be reused.
I put together a Design Lab team, conducted internal research to understand the needs and fears of people who wanted to contribute to the system, collaborated with the Design System team to launch first a wiki-based contribution system, then later a Figma-based process. We launched it company wide at our internal tech conference in under 6 months, and shortly thereafter I got headcount to create a steward to evangelize contribution across the company.
Within 2 years, the Design Lab became a key part of the Design System team strategy, and within 3 years, fully integrated into their processes, at which time I stepped back, while still contributing as a member of the Design System Core Team.
The Team: 2x Design engineers (part time), researcher (part time), Steward (full time)
My role: Leader, research, templates
Drove Figma adoption in 2018
When I first tried Figma in 2018, I knew this was going to improve collaboration and revolutionize time-to-prototype - but our leadership had just standardized on Sketch - Invision - Abstract 2 years before and adoption of those tools was still spotty.
I knew we needed to prove the design community would move with us if we wanted to switch again - so I surveyed the entire design community, collaborated with the Design System team to learn how much effort it would take to switch, joined Figma's API beta and got contractor dollars to build two plugins to allow the theme switching we needed. I ran financial projections, got the buy-in from leaders to pay for the switch, collaborated with Vendor management on everything from security to contracts, and worked to understand the reservations and requirements of every Design Manager at the company to plan a gradual rollout.
But once people tried it, there was no going back. We completed total adoption in 1 year instead of 3. I stayed on as administrator for 4 years, then handed business ownership over to our centralized IT team.
Career ladders for design
People achieve best in their careers when they know what is expected of them and what excellence looks like. When I was offered a management position, aside from some vague and outdated HR guidance, there was no clear guidance that worked across teams.
I first created a framework for my own team, so that team members could better understand their level and what would be required to achieve at the next level.
Then I joined and led a company-wide initiative to standardize on levels. With a management group that I sponsored for 2 years, I ran two workshops to get consensus on the skills and levels we saw for each of our career ladder steps. We then ran got the sanction of HR to complete the work and built out a full set of ladders. Nearly every design manager at Autodesk was involved at some point, and eventually I handed the project off to a new Director of Design.