Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Scaling Design Beyond Designers
Gold
Friday, June 11, 2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Share the love for this talk
Scaling Design Beyond Designers
Speakers: Lona Moore
Link:

Summary

Scaling design is hard. Scaling design across an established enterprise with more than a century of history and a global workforce of over 70,000 non-designers is even harder. To scale design at that level, you need to anchor people’s identity in design: that’s the power of community. Communities bring people together around a shared vision and purpose. By embracing community, you can create more scalable, human-centered experiences regardless of your industry, location, or design expertise. I’m excited to share what I’ve learned building and scaling ExxonMobil’s Design Community and share how you can do the same.

Key Insights

  • Over 90% of ExxonMobil's design community members are non-designers, emphasizing that design mindset can be scaled beyond traditional roles.

  • Creating a user-centered design 101 class was key to introducing non-designers at ExxonMobil to human-centered design principles.

  • Framing design distinctly from technical engineering helped clarify its value and purpose in a traditional enterprise.

  • Lona Moore views her role as a 'design tour guide,' enabling rather than directing, and guiding people through design journeys without formal authority.

  • Local design chapters across over 30 countries are largely self-sustaining and led by passionate non-designers who also become trainers and champions.

  • Playful activities like role-playing games foster psychological safety and creativity, linking fun directly to business value by sparking new thinking.

  • Leadership endorsement and quantifying design’s impact in business terms were critical to gaining enterprise-wide buy-in.

  • The community uses rituals and social experiences to reinforce shared values and create a human-centered culture across organizational boundaries.

  • Scaling design requires planting long-term goals alongside short-term wins and focusing on measurable progress and feedback.

  • Evolving the design community manager role to reflect growing responsibilities helped formalize design career paths and increase strategic impact.

Notable Quotes

"Design at ExxonMobil isn’t just what designers do; it’s about changing the way people think and solve problems through a human-centered lens."

"I like to think of myself as a DJ at a party, amplifying the power of design so more people can dance to the future."

"We framed it as user-centered design because we needed to distinguish it from technical engineering design."

"Creating an environment where people feel safe to try design helps build enthusiasm and psychological safety."

"You don’t have to be a designer to participate; over 90% of our community are not design professionals."

"Many design champions started as non-designers and transitioned into design careers after becoming community leads."

"Leadership knew design transformation would be hard, which is why my role was created to help guide that change."

"Scaling design in an enterprise is like having more feet in the car — it gets you there faster."

"Rituals symbolize community identity and shared values, helping scale human-centered habits across boundaries."

"We constantly collect feedback to improve our community and design practice because iteration is key to impact."

Ask the Rosenbot
Dr. Jamika D. Burge
Advancing the Inclusion of Womxn in Research Practices
2022 • Advancing Research Community
Crystal Yan
Building a Customer-Centric Culture
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Bria Alexander
Day 1 Panel: Up to the Minute: The latest in AI’s impact on UX
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Megan Kierstead
You Are a Badass at UX: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Marc Majers
Interrupted UX - Add A Dose of Reality To Usability Testing
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Aras Bilgen
Who does the math: A designer’s journey in building an AI-based tutoring app
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Cheryl Platz
Demystifying Multimodal Design: The Design Practice You Didn't Know You're Doing
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Dianne Que
Real Talk: Proving Value through a Scrappy Playbook
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Robin Beers
How to create actionable insight in the face of politics and silos [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
2023 • Advancing Research Community
Louis Rosenfeld
The Bigger Picture: A Panel Discussion
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Russ Unger
Getting Out from Under Everyone: How to Escape the Paralysis of Getting Started
2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Gold
Mila Kuznetsova
How Lessons Learned from Our Youngest Users Can Help Us Evolve our Practices
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Marc Fonteijn
Increase your confidence, influence, and impact (through a Professional Community)
2024 • Advancing Service Design 2024
Gold
Bria Alexander
Opening Remarks
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Bria Alexander
Reflect and Chart Forward
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Jon Fukuda
Theme One Intro
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold

More Videos

Sam Proulx

"Consistency is so important that sometimes even consistency in failure works if it means I only have to learn the workaround once."

Sam Proulx

Online Shopping: Designing an Accessible Experience

June 7, 2023

Ignacio Martinez

"Our evaluation tool is a Google Sheet so we can quickly make adjustments without being bogged down by unnecessary features."

Ignacio Martinez

Fair and Effective Designer Evaluation

September 25, 2024

Sarah Kinkade

"Transformation is metamorphosis; it's often messy and aims to create systems out of chaos."

Sarah Kinkade Mariana Ortiz-Reyes

Design Management Models in the Face of Transformation

June 8, 2022

Daniel Gloyd

"You could lift their famous ladder back chair with just your pinky finger—it’s exquisitely designed with minimal material."

Daniel Gloyd

Warming the User Experience: Lessons from America's first and most radical human-centered designers

May 9, 2024

Patrick Boehler

"We’re moving from theory of change to theory of service: starting with what people actually need before creating anything."

Patrick Boehler

Fishing for Real Needs: Reimagining Journalism Needs with AI

June 10, 2025

Andy Barraclough

"Anyone can do a basic AI summary with zero control, but we offer robust, evidence-backed, scalable chat analysis."

Andy Barraclough Betsy Nelson

From Costly Complexity to Efficient Insights: Why UX Teams Are Switching To Voxpopme

September 23, 2024

Alexandra Schmidt

"The future of our technology cannot and should not rest solely on the ethics of individual designers."

Alexandra Schmidt

Why Ethics Can't Save Tech

November 18, 2022

Louis Rosenfeld

"The greatest sin of the designer is to say I have the answers and no one else is allowed to have them."

Louis Rosenfeld

Discussion: What Operations can teach DesignOps

November 6, 2017

Mitchell Bernstein

"We’re literally using AI to help AI build AI, including bias detection and correction in the process."

Mitchell Bernstein

Organizing Chaos: How IBM is Defining Design Systems with Sketch for an Ever-Changing AI Landscape

September 29, 2021