Manesh John

✨ podcast: everything I’ve learned about design leadership ✨ We sat down to discuss my early days of transitioning to Design, all the way to becoming a Design Leader. Here I share everything I have learned in the last 4 years about Design Leadership, shared as candidly as I could. Special thanks to Kedar Nimkar and Shreyas Satish for this absolute cracker of an episode:

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In a world where technology continuously evolves, one constant remains: the importance of understanding and connecting with the people who use our products. At the heart of this connection lies empathy. Empathy-driven design goes beyond creating visually appealing interfaces; it delves into the realm of human emotions, behaviors, and experiences. Uncover the power of empathy in design and learn from how we at acoustic build products that truly matter to the people who use them. #uxd #usercentereddesign #marketing, #acoustic

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This episode of the Finding Our Way podcast articulates, with such clarity, what’s been on my mind about the value proposition of design as a function. A business could leverage creating a stellar user experience as a strategic lever to succeed in the market, or NOT. The latter is totally acceptable where designers primarily focus on production tasks (like UI designs) in an org that prioritizes churning out features. Yet, it’s a bitter pill to swallow for many designers. They feel disgruntled and get exhausted speaking to the deaf ears about how great an outcome design can bring to the table and how influential they could be outside of Figma. This podcast talks about how many designer leaders are struggling to deal with this reality. As someone who is not in a leadership position, I feel the struggle too. But if I were to stay positive and constructive while prioritizing my mental sanity, these would be some options to consider. - Get hired by a company that REALLY values design (think Airbnb, Linear) - Be extremely good at your craft and find fulfillment in it, regardless of its direct impact on the bottom line—as long as you remain employed 🤷🏻‍♀️ - Elbow your way into cross-functional discussions as much as possible, at least within your team, to find opportunities to demonstrate what you can do outside of Figma. You can help expand the perspective on design that your cross-functional partners have, one person at a time. https://lnkd.in/gjheYY_f

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🎨 Color is hard. As our team leverages variables to apply themes across a design system, things break. Maintaining accessible color contrast across multiple components with various states is a beast of task. - Brand colors can vary from light to dark affecting foreground contrast. - State changes across various components require independent contrast checks for foreground text. - Yellow. (Do I need to say more? Whether its a brand or system color, yellow and orange demand special attention) 🌈 Color for brand designers working with product teams by Katie Cooper I dig everything Katie Cooper writes about color for design systems. The approach outlined offers a great perspective on how to evaluate brand color viability. It includes considerations for secondary colors and color ramps as you develop proper contrast ratios. https://lnkd.in/gna4CGCV 💛 The dark yellow problem by Lodestar Design via UX Collective I know a lot of folks have touched on this, but I like how succinctly this writeup spells out the problems when designing with yellow while trying to maintain some form or brand consistency. Mustard anyone? https://lnkd.in/gsA4FZgQ 👏 Color in design systems by Nathan Curtis A classic write up on color in design systems and considerations for theming. Big takeaways for our team included limiting how themes cascade through various components like links and buttons, as well as ensuring any “changes” to brand colors to meet the needs of the UI get approval first. If you haven’t read everything by Nathan on Medium on design systems you’re missing out! https://lnkd.in/gYXVCY2e ✨ So grateful for all the resources out there and hope some of this can be useful to your team. From our research, the team has established a few best practices: - Start by auditing color contrast options across all brand colors through color ramps and component states - Ensure a consistent lightness ramp across all steps of each color in the palette to help with predictable contrast - Pay special attention to your yellows to balance brand consistency with accessibility - Limit how brand colors cascade into critical elements such as forms, buttons and links to ensure usability - Continue to use plugins and manual review to check color contrast ratios across the system, components and patterns as you go #ui #design #designsystems #color #branding #theming #accessibility

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I'm thrilled to share that my latest product and design discovery article is live on Mind the Product! As a consultant, I've observed that the term 'Discovery' can have varying interpretations across different teams. It's not uncommon to encounter a team deeply immersed in a solution yet lacking a shared understanding of the customer opportunity they're addressing. At Lab Zero, we meet clients where they are and advocate for discovery while maintaining flexibility. We often employ lightweight methodologies to foster a shared understanding, even when work is already underway. Teresa Torres' book “Continuous Discovery Habits” is a guide to developing the mindset and practices that enable teams to discover and deliver value to their customers throughout the product development process. Her explanation of the 'Opportunity Solution Tree' helped me articulate a process for asking questions and bridging gaps when joining a new team. The first part of this two-part series looks at reversing the 'Opportunity Solution Tree' to establish a connection between the ongoing solution, customer opportunities, and business outcomes. The second part (coming soon!) will explore strategies for identifying gaps in your team's understanding of customer needs and the necessary measures to mitigate risks before launch. This series will help consultants, new team members, or a struggling team connect with that all-important why and launch valuable experiences for their customers and their orgs. Have you tried something like this with your team? Feedback is appreciated! If you haven't explored Mind The Product's extensive content library, I highly recommend it! In addition to articles about discovery and understanding customer needs, the community has shared insightful perspectives on product leadership, business, and teams. It's a great place to see perspectives on processes and theories informed by real-world use.  #ProductDiscovery #Design #Discovery #ContinuousDiscovery #Onboarding #Risk #CustomerOpportunity #Value #BusinessOutcomes

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Products like Recraft are like the Perplexity for creating images with #GenAI. They are leaning into the benefits of going beyond a conversational prompt-based interface ONLY and integrating traditional, familiar GUI-based workflows with prompts to provide outcomes that creative people seek. In this example, they've notably improved the experience of creating multiple #images in a consistent style using #AI. In addition, they seem to be among the few (only one?) offering SVG export, making them a great option for #illustration. https://lnkd.in/eiGPqbKU

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Why not all voices should be equal in the design process. If we are serious about social change and equity, we need to start centring the knowledge and decisions of those deeply impacted. #UX #productDesign #designProcess

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Another solid course from Dr. Jules at Vanderbilt that teaches how to design agentic AI bots and systems: The course covers techniques like the flipped interaction pattern and few-shot prompting to train AI bots for task performance. Free to audit. https://lnkd.in/es7H7Qbh #AI #AgenticAI #AITraining

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Completed my 50th mentor session on ADPList and I must say, I continue to be impressed with the platform and the mentees. It has been a great learning experience for me as well. Here's to my next 50! #mentoring #ADPList

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Self discovery and self awareness is key to deal with day to day outer world Those who can attend.. please do so .. all 3 topics are excellent

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Excited to share my latest white paper on Navigating the Cognitive Complexities of Voice User Interfaces. This comprehensive analysis delves into the evolving world of VUI technology, highlighting challenges, insights, and future directions. Whether you're a developer, designer, or tech enthusiast, this paper offers valuable insights to shape the future of voice interfaces. #VoiceUserInterface #VUI #SmartGlasses #TechInnovation #UserExperience #CognitiveScience #VoiceTechnology #PrivacyTech #HumanMachineInteraction #FutureOfTech #DigitalTransformation #AI #UXDesign #TechTrends #Innovation

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Designers are challenged to humanize AI, fostering interactions that clearly differentiate between user and machine while respecting human instincts. On Reloaded AI, I share content on all matters related to AI. I invite you to check it out, follow me, and share. ⬇

My LinkedIn profile describes me as a successful design leader, but that's not even half of the story. Behind the scenes is a rollercoaster of job rejections, lack of self confidence , financial setbacks, navigating industry switch, balancing college and freelance assignments and countless lessons on professional and interpersonal skills with each year. Learning to be a good manager was totally another feat. The most challenging of it all was seeking an entry into the product design field while studying graphic design from National Institute of Design, two totally different things but here I was, pushing the boundaries! All of these shaped me into who I am today. From self-support to enduring over 15+ interviews in preparation for Product Design opportunity, All I was doing was striving for more. Now I realise nobody has all the answers, even if it may seem that way. So just believe in yourself and put in your best efforts. Pushing ahead is the only key to this game. My advice to anyone starting their career journey is to stay in the present and give your best efforts to achieve what you really believe you can :) #productdesign

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Spoke at the SaaSD meet-up today on the state of UX in AI SaaS landscape, discussing challenges around democratization of AI capabilities, retrofitting AI concepts, and functional challenges from the UXD perspective. Showcased some smart AI features developed at SurveySparrow too! Received an intriguing question on the relevance of product design in a future where personalized AI-served content might converge on various devices. Is defining a specialized product experience still crucial in this scenario? My take is that designers must adapt to shaping preferred 'experiences' with AI, focusing on meaningful engagement loops over traditional UI. Interfaces may become less vital as we evolve to cater to new user needs. #AI #UXDesign #ProductDesign #SaaS #UserExperience

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It has been my continuous struggle to showcase the contributions of the design team to business. Slapping the rules at product level seems unjust. Finiding out a comparative for a specific feature becomes difficult to assess. I am on my journey towards putting a right measuring metrics for the same. Let's connect if you are also looking out or something that might have worked well for you. #uxdaily #productmetrices #designmetrices #productstrategy #designstrategy

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In this political season, we are reminded that every vote counts, and every vote must be counted. That applies to South by Southwest too! If you are a designer working in a large organization or on enterprise digital products, arguably the biggest conundrum facing our industry today lies in this question: does Enterprise Software require design to fit into a factory model, forever closing the door on Innovation? Or will our focus on empathy and human-centricity be a force for positive change in a sea of sameness? If you want to hear a unique perspective on this challenge, please vote for my panel, "Enterprise Digital Products: The Death of Design Innovation?". I will be joined by some truly amazing creative leaders, where we will candidly discuss how to lead Design teams in the creation of enterprise digital products. My panel will include... ...Barry Fiske, CXO Americas at Merkle (and co-host of #whatbubblesup), ...Valerie Vacante, VP, Solutions Innovation, dentsu, ...and Sara Alloy, Head of Design for CoreAI at Publicis Sapient. We will explore the benefits, challenges, myths, legends, and inconvenient truths of Designing for the Enterprise. So if you want to see us onstage, we'd appreciate your vote! (I'm Phil Golub, and I approve this message...) WongDoody Infosys P.S. - WongDoody has a bunch of great submissions. Vote us all in while you're at it!! https://lnkd.in/epA-aqcB

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Embracing AI in Design School: Advice for a Dad Last week, during a talk on AI and Product Management, a concerned dad asked me what advice he should give to his daughter who is studying design in college. Her program discourages using large language models (LLMs) and views AI tools negatively. Here was my advice: 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐔𝐬𝐞 𝐀𝐈 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐓𝐨𝐨𝐥 Technology often offers us new ways to be creative, from the camera and 3D animation to video installations and various graphic tools I've learned over the years. AI provides a new avenue for creativity and expression. Encourage your daughter to explore the capabilities of these tools and how to use them to achieve her vision. 𝐈𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 Understanding proportion, color, scale, texture, and other design principles will always be relevant. No matter where technology goes, learning how to conceive a work, explain her process, and take criticism constructively will serve her well. 𝐀𝐝𝐯𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐀𝐈 Encourage your daughter to think critically about issues like consent, compensation, and ownership of creative work. Have her learn about bias, privacy, security, and AI ethics. This thoughtful engagement will ensure that AI is used responsibly and ethically in her creative process. When faced with tension between opportunity and risk, the instinct might be to resolve it quickly. Instead, encourage her to embrace and navigate this tension thoughtfully. I sincerely hope she has a long and rewarding career. #designeducation #artificialintelligence #designthinking #creativity #technology #responsibleAI #productdesign #futureofwork #education

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