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Making innovation feel logical

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"Design = Intentionality During the Act of Creation"
- Alison Ostendorf

Quick Summary of Me

5 careers so far

I got into tech in 2015 by teaching myself to code.  Then quickly realized that I am better at writing requirements for new experiences than coding them.

Lived in 6 cities in the US

(You can ask or guess if this is interesting to you.)

Silicon Valley Native

I didn't know how cool this was when I was growing up. Living in other cities has helped me see it.

Autistic

A superpower. I ask a lot of "why" questions, and often actually find the root cause. Then document it.

Honest

Often, too much for allistic humans. But great for design thinking.

"Creative"

I train designers to think logically and work well in teams.

Lover of systems

Systems are the only way for a person with one goal after another to actually achieve at least some of them.

Hater of waste

Waste only along the path to sustainability. Not out of laziness.

Ideas + Strategy person

I want things to be easy and not wasteful. But the friction in daily life is an unlimited source of business ideas.

I am working on publishing my ideas more often.

Some Original Content

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Podcast

Appearance on S1E17 of the Product Led Growth Leaders podcast

Hosted by Thomas Watkins, we discuss how design philosophy impacts Product-Led Growth (PLG).

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Article
10 Steps Toward Designing The Right Product

Follow these 10 steps in order to easily move through the new product delivery process.

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Article
Categories of UX Design Tips

"UX feedback" isn't one type of thing.  How do you know if you've gone through "enough" feedback?

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Checklist
Web Design Best Practices Checklist

Use this checklist when building a new website, especially if for some reason you still build by...

What specifically am I working on now?

Co-founder of an Agile business operations consulting agency

Revenue Lions is a consulting agency that specializes in Agile business operations for mid-sized companies. We are working to build a business that runs itself and helps other entrepreneurs lean into the future by making sustainable choices. 

We lean into the AI tools and automations on behalf of our clients, so that they can continue to focus on their unique market offering, rather than on keeping up with a rapidly evolving tech stack.

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Design Leadership training

An original training built for modern Design Leaders.

The course focuses on topics like how to think about time when working in a creative team, how and why to lead design thinking in the direction of pure thinking, and what kinds of designers to hire for what roles.

Some highlights of the training include:

- Awareness of kairos versus chronos time, to create reliability in delivery date while also allowing for the creative process

- Getting to the Causal Why of a design requirement, and how we relate to Product Managers and Developers while doing so

- How to coach a team of designers while nourishing each team member's individual mind and career goals

Why Why Matters, a book

In this book, I will take a data-driven approach to advocate for the value of designing to the causal Why.

Often in teams with limited resources (which is nearly every team), the investment in Design Thinking takes a back seat to quick implementations of revenue-driving features.

This happens because the data around the feature need is readily accessible to Product, but the data supporting the "better" design doesn't even exist until the design work is done, and even then, it's hard to actually measure.I intend to surface some of this data, and help designers advocate for quality, with revenue-related numbers instead of hypothesis.

Why Why Matters book concept

A good Product leader incorporates Design thinking whenever intentional creation is needed. Which is at the beginning.