Elliot Rylands

What an incredible experience moderating my first panel! Did I feel nervous? Absolutely. But more importantly, it built my confidence to moderate the next one. Confidence doesn’t come before—it’s built through action, after you’ve done it. At Design Leadership MY’s FUSECON24 recent satelite event on “What Makes a Great Product Culture and Product Org”, I had the privilege of hosting a fantastic group of panelists, each sharing their unique perspectives on what makes SEEK a truly product-led organization. The insights were inspiring, and the energy in the room was electric! This post came in abit late. Nonetheless, Big thanks to: • Rishi Patil – Head of Product, for your deep insights on scaling products • Michele Manigart – Chief Strategy Officer, Asia, for sharing SEEK’s strategic direction • Aditi Kulkarni – Design Lead, for shedding light on design’s role in product culture • Laavanya Kathiresen – Engineering Director, for emphasizing the importance of community events in building a strong culture And a huge thank you to the SEEKers who helped bring this event to life! 🙌 This experience reinforced the importance of stepping out of your comfort zone, and I’m excited for more opportunities to engage with the community and continue learning and growing. Interested in being part of a team where potential meets possibility? We're always looking for passionate individuals to join us in building great products that make a difference! Learn more at https://lnkd.in/gYBGPCaY See you at FUSECON24 next week!! #ProductCulture #ProductInnovation #TechCommunity #PanelDiscussion #Leadership #Growth #FUSECON24

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Design Leaders, how can we manage remote teams better? 🤔 I love this clip from my chat with Bob Baxley in the last episode of 'Design Beyond Pixels' 🎙️ Managing remote teams in the US can be challenging and it's an even bigger challenge when it's cross continent and wildly different time zones. In this clip, Bob explains an amazing way to collaborate with his team who do happen to be in a completely different continent. Recording clips at the end of they day explaining what has happened, challenges you have faced and what the plan is for tomorrow has proven to be highly successful in Bob's team. He has also seen a huge improvement in his team's ability to present their work and story tell, two key attributes that all designers need to have! If you want to hear more of Bob's market leading insights into the design world, check out the full episode in comments below!

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Excited to share this insightful podcast featuring my friend, Bethan Ashley, where she dives into the nuances of product management, AI, and mentorship! In this episode, Bethan, Senior Product Manager at thoughtbot and Founderland Startup Mentor, discusses not just how to integrate AI, but if you should. She also breaks down the difference between project and product management and why understanding this distinction is essential. With valuable insights on customer communication, navigating common product pitfalls, and overcoming the fear of failure, Bethan offers practical advice for anyone looking to enhance their approach to product development. Check it out for a wealth of advice on building impactful, customer-centric products!

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Contrary to popular belief, I think data driven design decisions are NOT the epitome of a designer's maturity or a design team's maturity. Data driven design decisions are indeed an excellent way BUT, not always possible. If there is sufficient data around why something should be done in a certain way, then most of the designers can anyways do it. IMO, the epitome of a Designer is the ability to take bets with minimum data points and strong intuition. This is what you build over time by reading, observing and exploring. #uxdesign #uiux #uxjob

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I recently spoke with FLUX about my career journey and product design leadership. Kristie Craft was a stellar interviewer, which helped me articulate a few things that I've been noodling on over the last little while... 👽 After years of struggling with impostor syndrome, it was when I chose to be brave and have the audacity that the best opportunities came. It's not easy, but it starts with the core belief that you are deserving of your dreams. 👀 The prerequisite of being a great designer is curiosity. Get curious about an aspect of craft, process, leadership, or business and dig like you're doing a deep dive on the hand in the IG story your crush just posted. 🏀 Put in your 10,000 hours. Practice makes perfect, the cliche is true. Whatever part of your skillset you're trying to grow, be patient and put in time — before you know it, you'll be an MVP. 📣 Great communication is a hallmark of a great leader. Great communication and feedback is clear, succinct, and aligned to the business. 🖼 Visual design craft excellence is a hot topic in product design lately. I have a love for graphic design, where I started my career. I just got this book, Sun Ra: Art on Saturn, a collection of sketches and album art Sun Ra created for his works. Very different than what most PDs are looking at every day, which is precisely why I recommend it. Look for inspiration outside of a screen. Check out the full interview and let me know what you think.

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⭐ Tips for Designers Seeking Contract Roles ⭐ For all designers struggling to find contract work, try these tips to boost your chances: 1️⃣ Reach Out to Past Contacts 👉 Contact Recruiters or Direct Hiring Managers or Designers you've previously worked with Be Concise: ◾ Include your job title, day rate (inside/outside IR35), availability, CV, portfolio, mobile number, and email in the message to them. ◾ Add a brief bullet point on your key experience (e.g., native app experience, B2C/B2B checkout/conversions, SaaS). Tailor this to the client if you're contacting them directly. 2️⃣ Update Your Portfolio & CV 👉 Highlight Contract Details ◾ Projects: Describe what you worked on (e.g., Native/Responsive app, discovery phases). ◾ Purpose: Explain why you were hired. ◾ Collaboration: Mention who you worked with. ◾ Success Metrics: Define how you measured success. ◾ Role: Outline your daily contributions and processes (keep it brief). ◾ Outcome: Detail the results of your work. ◾ Keywords: Include terms that target specific companies (e.g., SaaS, B2B, data visualization, relevant tools). 🌟Additional Tips🌟 ◾ Tailor Job Titles: If you’re a product designer applying for a UX or service design role, adjust your job title and keywords to align with the position (e.g., UX-weighted Product Designer). ◾ Be Honest: Ensure your experience reflects the role accurately and truthfully otherwise this is a waste of time for you and the recruiter These steps can help you present yourself effectively and increase your chances of securing a contract role. If anyone has any success stories then feel free to comment and this will help lots of people!

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Interesting take from Scott Jenson, the first member of the System Software Human Interface group at Apple in the late 80s, working on System 7 operative system in the period of Jobs absence: "The one thing I'd add is that the zeitgeist has shifted and many of the UX problems feel 'sorted', i.e. there are only so many ways you can do a restaurant app. In the early heady days of mobile, we'd argue for hours if the menu should be on the right or the left. That just feels like an issue people are willing to just accept as sorted. I'd argue this is a false sense of completeness. Just because we have mature design systems doesn't mean we understand the user and most importantly, what they need before and after they interact with our product. We're constantly being told to 'work with the business' which implies doing EXACTLY this flow. Of course, start with this flow to engage, but do whatever you can to expand that flow and add additional research/testing/insights as you can. When I was in London at Symbian, we called this "sneaking drugs in their tea". If done right, the team will learn it's important. It's a shame we have to be so sneaky about it, but in the end, it's one way to build credibility and influence."

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🎨 Transform Your Design Career with Honest Advice! The Honest Designers Show podcast is a goldmine of actionable insights from industry veterans. Learn how to tackle freelance challenges, refine your skills, and grow your creative career. ✅ Ready to be inspired? Start here: https://lnkd.in/g4GnH2Yh What’s the best design advice you’ve received? Share in the comments! #DesignCareers #CreativeGrowth #WebCoursesBangkok

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A study found that if every adult in the UK sent one less "thank you" email, it could save 16,433 tonnes of carbon a year — the equivalent to taking 3,334 diesel cars off the road. Did you know that as a UX/UI or product designer you can make a real tangible difference to climate change? Here’s a short list to get you started: - How can you make your digital application more efficient? A simple UI is not only good for the users, it’s good for the planet too! - Can you nudge your users towards more sustainable behaviors? Sending fewer emails, avoiding duplicate work, making more sustainable choices digitally or physically will impact on the environment. - Can you become an advocate for all living systems, not just human users? UX designers became the advocates for users 20 to 30 years ago, making sure their needs and concerns were considered at every step of a design process - now we need to expand and care for ALL living systems. Which living systems do you directly impact? - What are the ethical considerations of your digital application? Who or what is most negatively impacted by it, and what are the opportunities to address that? And with that I’m going to start writing about being a designer in the GreenTech or ClimateTech world. Let me know what you think, is this something you care about? What things do you do to design more climate friendly services? Find the above and a whole lot more on ClimateDesigners https://lnkd.in/etaXcRB6 And make sure to follow me or https://lnkd.in/eaHq5E8d for more like this!

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It’s very easy to get sucked in to the looming concern of AI decimating our discipline. I’ve written a few words on why I believe humans are close to irreplaceable (for now) in the UX space and why it’s more important now than ever to embrace AI as a tool in our belt as opposed to a threat. #UX #ProductDesign #Design #Tech #Business https://lnkd.in/erCr4tu9

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To build a stable design system you need to start with a central model, and then when the base is well established, move to federated contribution. This will keep the vision, brand, structure unified and keep everyone updated with the DS. Article by Nathan Curtis

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Check out this mobileLIVE blog article on the dos and don'ts of design thinking! Some of my thoughts have been added :) #designthinking #design #uxdesign #ux.

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Someone at Apple and Google needs to share with me how the design thinking session actually takes pls. I’ve completed a facilitators course with AJ&Smart but something still tells me there’s more. #knowledge #ui #userinterface #mvp #design #experiencedesign #justdesign #compliants #kyc

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You shouldn't have to 'protect' your design team. A sign of a strong product design team is one that's integrated successfully across a business and respected. If you're having to 'protect' your design team from the rest of the organisation then something's not right. Product Designers should feel empowered.

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Join us at the Askable webinar. You’ll hear strategies how we scale research maturity at SEEK

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As designers we are constantly judge on our outcomes You could have taken the best decision based on your knowledge and still have a bad outcome If you get judge solely by that outcome (positive or negative) Might be a case of outcome bias... (Let's be honest we all have outcome bias 🫠) The outcome bias is a tendency to evaluate a decision based on its outcome even when those outcomes were influenced by factors beyond us That's why performance evaluations are so tricky, you could have done everything correctly and have still a bad result Sooo... how can we tackle it? ▶ Focus on the decision-making process, when, how, why x decision was taken. Learn from it regardless of how good or bad was it ▶ Change your perspective... What if the result is different, would you have done the same? ▶ Reflect on how long similar activities or decisions have taken in the past ▶ Collect and analyze data over time Let's build cultures that learns from both successes and failures 💪🏽

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Incase you missed it I'm hiring several UX/UI designers for a boutique owner led agency of 20 designers & researchers based here in Berlin. Lots of details below because my website to publish this stuff on is still getting built 🫠 TL;DR: I'm hiring german fluent senior & mid level UX/UI designers for a design agency in Berlin. Applicants must be Berlin based & have a minimum of 3 years experience in UX/UI design, including experience working in agency environments. Salary up to €80k. 2 stage interview process. 50/50 office / remote Sadly I can only process applications which meet the above requirements. Full job spec below. Variety. Security. Growth. Sounds like LinkedIn business shit-chat right? Trust me it's not. These are the 3 words I jotted down while reading over the notes from my call with the founder of this agency. The agency services early stage startups as well as large legacy clients, so business is consistent & secure. The work they completed for their legacy clients helped educate these clients in the business value of design, and they love it. These projects are super high impact, as the clients are hungry for innovation. In these roles you'll have a lot of freedom to facilitate this. The agency understands that variety is key to retention, so designers tend to work on 2-3 projects simultaneously, they also tend to never leave once they've joined. Career growth wise there is huge potential, it's all for the taking. One recent starter in the design team received 3 promotions within the last year. Personal growth wise, the owner understands the stronger & better equipped the team, the better their business will perform. If you're looking to either sharpen, or even develop from scratch, this is the perfect environment to do it in. Culture wise, it's an agency, naturally there's a little more grind than a startup, but it's all in good taste. The founder is a designer, who remains very hands on in both the work & the culture. They're really hot on the community aspect of design so if you've always dreamt of building one, this could be the place to do it as they're looking to start hosting events & building communities soon and will be partnering with some big names to do this. It doesn't matter whether you're more focused on UX or UI, as a team they distribute the work in a way that plays best into the strengths of each designer. Salary range - €60-€80k DOE Interview process - 2 stages 50/50 office / remote If you meet the criteria & it sounds interesting, share your CV & folio with me here! Your favourite design recruiter ❤️ #designjobs #UXdesign #UIdesign #berlinjobs #designagency #productdesignerjobs

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