Learning Over Outcomes
Summary
As organizations scale, we risk over-engineering the way design teams work. This can mean creating brittle systems and discouraging true innovation. In this talk, we’ll explore learning-centered approaches as a way to embrace change and foster long-term success — and how we can find inspiration from our childhood roots.
Key Insights
-
•
Montessori principles of independence, order, and developmental stages are key to creating adaptable and resilient UX teams.
-
•
Google’s culture embraces a 20% time policy that encourages independent exploration, leading to major product innovations like Gmail.
-
•
OKRs at Google are bi-directional, written by the teams responsible for outcomes, and graded to encourage ambitious goals rather than perfection.
-
•
The double diamond model helps surface real problems through divergent thinking but struggles without embedding continuous user research.
-
•
The squad model offers autonomy and motivation but can lead to fragmented visions and burnout in scarce disciplines like user research.
-
•
The research train model prioritizes rapid user feedback and learning but demands cultural shifts, significant budget, and changes in engineering incentives.
-
•
Psychological safety is the most critical factor for high team performance, outweighing consensus decision-making or co-location.
-
•
Effective teams rely more on how members interact and structure work than on individual talent or workload balance.
-
•
Program managers should prioritize iterative experimentation, celebrating failure and learning rather than clinging to fixed outcomes.
-
•
Human factors like treating individuals with empathy and avoiding viewing them as mere resources are essential for managing change.
Notable Quotes
"It matters what you build, but it matters more if you learn."
"The greatest sign of success for a teacher is just to be able to say the children are now working as if I did not exist."
"If you get a perfect OKR score, it means you didn’t set your sights high enough."
"People work with autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Autonomy is very motivating."
"Psychological safety is far and away the key ingredient for teams being effective."
"Engineers spending 40 to 50% of their time building prototypes for research studies don’t have launch metrics to show for promotions."
"Design your processes around learning. Celebrate especially when you fail—you often learn the most then."
"Never forget the individual. People are less predictable than algorithms, but they’ll get you through change."
"If you forget the individual, you cut out psychological safety, which is the foundation for dependability and structure."
"Growth and learning is your long term change management plan—does it take letting go of a clear outcome? Yes, but it’s worth the leap."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Getting from terrible to not terrible is often more challenging than going from good to delightful."
Sarah BarrettThe "How" of Enterprise Information Architecture
June 6, 2023
"Visions capture held knowledge that a team has maybe not been able to yet take action on."
Catt SmallCraft a Vision that Actually Gets Shipped
April 30, 2026
"A portfolio is a portfolio piece itself; structure and white space matter as much as content."
Dave Hoffer Joanne WeaverUX Job Search AMA #2 with Joanne Weaver and Dave Hoffer
April 3, 2025
"The hardest part of any researcher's job is translating insights into action."
Jane DavisStrategic Shifts and Innovations in User Research: Navigating Challenges and Opportunities
March 11, 2025
"Nothing is inherently better because it was produced by human intention or machine learning; interrogate the goal first."
Rachael Dietkus, LCSW Llewyn Paine Nishanshi Shukla David WomackAI: Passionate defenses and reasoned critique [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
September 18, 2024
"We keep our playbook in a place where anyone can edit it from the team."
Maria SkaadenPanel Discussion: Methodologies and Work Environments
November 8, 2018
"If you are altering any form of self-expression, you need to be really careful."
Cheryl PlatzDemystifying Multimodal Design: The Design Practice You Didn't Know You're Doing
April 4, 2024
"Attention theft is when experiences are designed to siphon away your focus aggressively."
Ron BronsonDesign, Consequences & Everyday Life
November 18, 2022
"Cross-functional relationships often matter more to output than relationships within the immediate team."
Liam ThurstonWhy Your Design Team Is Quitting, And How To Fix It
June 10, 2022
