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.

Stop Talking, Start Doing
Gold
Friday, June 9, 2017 • Enterprise Experience 2017
Share the love for this talk
Stop Talking, Start Doing
Speakers: Kaaren Hanson
Link:

Summary

Karin recounts her experience leading design transformation at Intuit between 2003 and 2014. She begins with the origin of Quicken by Scott Cook and Tom Pru, emphasizing early user-centered design that led to market dominance. However, as Intuit grew, product silos and complexity diluted customer focus, and usability benchmarking revealed the company was only average compared to competitors. Karin pressed leadership, including then-CEO Steve Bennett, to prioritize ease of use, which improved task success but did not boost net promoter scores or revenue growth. Steve challenged the team to find what lies beyond ease, prompting Karin and the tiger team to study companies like Apple and Nike, leading to the Design for Delight (D for D) initiative. Despite initial enthusiasm and executive support, the initiative stagnated due to leadership transitions and weak design leadership. Karin and her core design partners resolved to be bolder and pushed to embed design deeply into Intuit’s culture. They gained the new CEO Brad Smith’s full support and created immersive empathy experiences for executives, shifting the company’s focus from usability to delight and financial impact for customers. The Innovation Catalysts program spread design thinking across teams beyond designers, sparking measurable improvements across departments. Karin also highlights the importance of scaling design talent and leadership, showing that respected design-driven companies maintain at least a 2:1 designer-to-product manager ratio. By establishing formal design ladders, increasing senior leadership roles for designers, and embedding design in company operations, Intuit became recognized externally as a design-driven organization. Karin closes with four keys to lasting impact: articulate a clear vision, engage hearts and minds through emotion and data, give design work away to empower others, and scale design sustainably through organizational mechanisms.

Key Insights

  • Quicken's early success stemmed from deeply observing real users and setting concrete usability goals.

  • Despite a strong customer-focus legacy, Intuit became average in usability relative to competitors over time.

  • Improving ease of use alone increased task success but did not raise net promoter scores or revenue growth.

  • Studying companies with brand loyalty (Apple, Nike, Harley-Davidson) revealed the critical role of customer delight.

  • Design for Delight (D for D) needed executive sponsorship, emotional storytelling, accountability, and a structured process.

  • Initial D for D efforts failed due to shifting leadership, lack of design leadership, and insufficient cultural embedding.

  • Creating immersive empathy experiences for executives shifted strategic focus to solving deeper customer problems.

  • Innovation Catalysts helped spread design thinking beyond designers, empowering broader organizational change.

  • A ratio of at least two designers per product manager strongly correlates with better user experiences.

  • Embedding design into hiring, training, leadership ladders, and everyday operations creates lasting cultural impact.

Notable Quotes

"Legacy is about having an impact that lasts, not just short term but years or even decades."

"Scott Cook noticed his wife’s frustration balancing their checkbook and realized millions more probably felt the same pain."

"We benchmarked usability and found Intuit was average compared to competitors — not good enough anymore."

"Steve Bennett asked, what’s beyond ease, leading us to study companies known for delighting their customers."

"Design for Delight wasn’t about fun — it was deliberately designing for delight to engage customers emotionally."

"Ron Johnson from Apple and Paul English from Kayak inspired us by sharing how their companies build customer loyalty."

"After a year of D for D, nothing had changed. The initiative looked like just another check box."

"Our CEO Brad Smith said, I’m all in on Design for Delight, but no new content — it has to reinforce what we already do."

"When executives met customers’ real stories during the recession, they said, holy crap, now we get the pain."

"Companies with strong user experiences had twice as many designers as product managers, often with senior design strategists."

Ask the Rosenbot
Angy Peterson
More Than Technology: Personalized Public Sector Experiences
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Rachael Dietkus, LCSW
The power to heal and harm
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Catherine Dubut
Bridging Physical and Digital Spaces: Approaches to Retail Service Design
2021 • Enterprise Community
Jenny Price
From Tradition to Transformation: Unlocking Startup Agility in a Legacy Enterprise
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Conference
Raven Veal
Dark Metrics: Illuminating the Negative Impact of Digital Health Design
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Bria Alexander
Opening Remarks Day 1
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Panel Discussion: Communicating the Value of DesignOps
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Frances Yllana
DesignOps–Leading the Path to Parity
2023 • DesignOps Community
Sean McKay
Coexisting with non-researchers: Practical strategies for a democratized research future
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Sarah Kinkade
Design Management Models in the Face of Transformation
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Patrick Boehler
Fishing for Real Needs: Reimagining Journalism Needs with AI
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Phil Gilbert
A Consistent Culture of Design
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Mac Smith
Measuring Up: Using Product Research for Organizational Impact
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Greg Petroff
Design is the Differentiator: Bringing New Design Innovations to a Very Antiquated and Very Large Industry
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Jemma Ahmed
Collaboration: learning from other fields beyond our own [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
2024 • Advancing Research Community
Corey Long
Hiring in DesignOps: A Critical Study on How to Hire and Get Hired
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold

More Videos

Scott Plewes

"Personas and journeys are all models we use in UX to manage complexity."

Scott Plewes

Why Isn't Your UX Approach Going Viral?: A Mathematical Model

March 28, 2023

Alison Rand

"If people just got in the room and I did nothing except take a seat, everything would be fine."

Alison Rand Sarah Brooks

Scaling Impact with Service Design

March 25, 2021

Rachael Dietkus, LCSW

"Research should prioritize participant and researcher well-being over institutional convenience."

Rachael Dietkus, LCSW

The power to heal and harm

March 13, 2025

Sheryl Cababa

"Today's problems come from yesterday's solutions."

Sheryl Cababa

Living in the Clouds: Adopting a Systems Thinking Mindset

June 6, 2023

Renee Bouwens

"I think the world we’re in is definitely not antagonistic to research, there’s a huge opportunity right now."

Renee Bouwens

Landing Product Impact: Aligning Research as a Foundational Driver for Delivering the World’s Best Products

December 15, 2023

JP Allen

"User research is interdisciplinary; only two thirds of people who do research describe their job as primarily research."

JP Allen Holly Holden

Navigating the UX Tools Landscape

October 1, 2021

Bria Alexander

"If you have a question for a speaker, put it in the thread for their talk, not in the general chat."

Bria Alexander

Opening Remarks

November 18, 2022

Llewyn Paine

"DeepFakes can look too realistic and might introduce new privacy risks if donor faces come from real people."

Llewyn Paine

[Demo] Deploying AI doppelgangers to de-identify user research recordings

June 5, 2024

Ricardo Martins

"Conjoint analysis was used by Apple and Samsung to determine the financial value of specific product features."

Ricardo Martins

Unlocking the power of advanced quantitative methods

March 12, 2025