Turn the Ship Around: How to Apply Design Thinking Across Your Organization
Summary
- Define design thinking for your design org and also understand how it applies to product management, engineering, marketing, and other departments.
- Hear about tactics for sharing design thinking and its positive results with partners across your organization.
- See how design thinking can be built into the systems that fuel design, product development, and critical business processes such as planning.
Key Insights
-
•
Compass organizes design teams around customer workflows and end-to-end journeys, not isolated features.
-
•
Design thinking at Compass is viewed as a mindset everyone can practice, rather than an exclusive skill.
-
•
Breaking silos is a core benefit of design thinking by aligning all roles on a shared customer problem.
-
•
Design systems enable fast prototyping and iteration, essential to effective design thinking.
-
•
Direct involvement of customers (agents) in the design process speeds up feedback and reduces recruitment pain.
-
•
Artifacts like personas, journey maps, and affinity diagrams preserve alignment and decisions across teams.
-
•
Balancing collaboration involves starting with small-group alignment then surfacing ideas to larger teams.
-
•
Building trust with leadership unfamiliar with design requires relationship building, data-driven decisions, and starting small.
-
•
Using approachable language and inclusive facilitation reduces barriers for non-designers in design thinking.
-
•
Cultural traits at Compass such as low ego, patience, and shared ownership help embed design thinking successfully.
Notable Quotes
"Design thinking is a mindset everyone can do, not a mystical, exclusive club."
"Our teams focus on entire customer outcomes, not just features."
"Breaking down silos requires aligning people around a singular customer problem so they have to talk to each other."
"Design systems allow us to wrap up a prototype quickly, test, fail fast, and iterate."
"Having agents as part of the team makes customer involvement much quicker and easier."
"Artifacts capture our decisions and give us a place to point back when misalignment happens."
"Start with small groups to get alignment and then bring ideas to larger groups carefully."
"Trust is hard to find but essential; we hire smart people so let’s all trust and move forward."
"We do a lot of work to avoid design jargon and make conversations accessible to all."
"Patience, low ego, and shared ownership are key cultural factors that help roll design thinking out in big companies."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"There are too many things all over the place. I would like to use my magic wand for making them one system."
Abby Covert Tomer SharonPanel: Collaboration Tools
November 6, 2017
"A story lets people assign the meaning that's powerful to them and then think about the decisions they need to make and align."
John CutlerThe Alignment Trap
November 29, 2023
"Start small and learn in low-stakes ways so you can train the organization to think, act, and react to AI."
Erika FlowersAI-Readiness: Preparing NASA for a Data-Driven, Agile Future
June 10, 2025
"If I make a mistake on our team, it’s not gonna be held against me; my team won’t disconnect from me."
Alla WeinbergDesign Teams Need Psychological Safety: Here’s How to Create It
September 9, 2022
"Design system decision records prevent knowledge being stuck in one person’s head."
Dan DonaldDesign Systems as a Vehicle for Systemic Change
June 1, 2023
"It is my honor and pleasure to welcome each of you to the 2021 Design at Scale Conference."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
June 9, 2021
"Trauma is a universal human experience."
Carol Scott Melissa EgglestonAvoid Harming Your Team and Users: Promoting Care and Brand Reputation with Trauma-Informed UX Practices
February 5, 2025
"In women, ADHD can sometimes just be seen as being chatty or forgetful or clumsy, as opposed to restless and disruptive."
Jessica NorrisADHD: A DesignOps Superpower
September 9, 2022
"When you add underinvestment, segregation, and poverty, you have a recipe for disaster."
Kyria Stephens Marlon KernerPower to Heal: Civic Design in the Aftermath of Tragedy
November 17, 2022
