Designing Success: How to Succeed and Navigate in a Tough Market

In a world where design is constantly evolving, staying ahead of the curve is more crucial than ever. The year 2023 has presented unique challenges to the design industry, and we believe that now is the time to explore strategies for success.

To facilitate this discussion, TDA recently brought together a panel of thought leaders for an insightful discussion titled “Designing Success: How to Succeed and Navigate in a Tough Market“.

Scott Mackie, Product Design & Innovation Leader ex Indigo, hosted the conversation. Scott is known for building and leading teams from zero to 90 people at companies such as athenahealth, VP Experience Design at Quanttus and recently Indigo Ag.

Joining him were our esteemed panellists, Mansi Vora, Dmitry Nekrasovski and Joseph Williams.

Mansi, Director of Product Design at Manhattan Associates, has over 10 years of experience crafting transformative experiences and guiding teams to create impactful, profitable, and innovative SAAS solutions by employing effective design thinking strategies.

Dmitry, Senior Director of Product Design at Atlas, has over 15 years of experience and 8+ years of experience leading and growing world-class, globally distributed design teams at startups, scaleups, and enterprises.

Joseph, Director of Product Design at project44, has over a decade of experience and has worked in tech across the spectrum from cloud software at Google and Spotify to consumer-focused products at start-ups.

The format of the panel discussion was designed to maximise audience participation. Three pressing questions were put forth:

• How does hiring change in a tough market, and what does that mean for how candidates should present themselves?
• Can you share your thoughts on how to be an invaluable design leader when times are tough?
• Can you tell us how design leaders can continue influencing innovation in this market?

Our panellists shared their insights on how, as a design leader, can you succeed and navigate in the tough market.

They focused on three key topic areas of:

• Getting Hired / Hiring
• Operating
• Influencing