Nodes of Design#93: Designing at Scale by Matthew Holloway

Nodes of Design

Matthew Holloway ⁠is an accomplished design leader with a career spanning 25 years; Matthew has co-founded six start-ups after holding leadership and executive roles at Apple, WebMD, Shutterfly, and SAP, where he shifted their strategic direction with his team's innovations, delivering increased customer value and market share.

Collaborating across organizations, Matthew helps executive teams fully engage design as a critical differentiator for their businesses while assisting design leaders in making the shift from creative thinkers to business executives. Many designers he has managed and mentored have moved on to executive roles at companies such as SAP, GE, Oracle, Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, JPMorgan Chase, Nike, etc. Matthew also advises early-stage start-ups on effectively balancing their technology, design, and marketing investments to maximize their roadmap's impact.

In this episode, Matthew shared great insights on Designing at scale and helped us understand the term scale in terms of the product and the organization itself; we discussed some of the biggest challenges faced when designing at scale. How to overcome them and speak on balancing creativity and innovation with the need to scale quickly when designing for a large organization, and how to approach user research and testing when designing at scale? What role does collaboration play in creating at scale? How do you encourage cross-functional collaboration and ensure everyone is aligned on the design vision? We then concluded the show with Mathews's tips on measuring the success of a large-scale design project and what metrics to use.

Book Recommendation by Matthew Holloway

Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow

Crucial Conversations, by Grenny, Patterson, and McMillan,

Five Dysfunctions of a Team, by Patrick Lencioni

Stolen Focus, by Johann Hari

Design for the Real World, by Victor Papanek

Orbiting the Giant Hairball, by Gordon McKenzie

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This podcast aims to make design education accessible to all. Nodes of Design is a non-profit and self-sponsored initiative by Tejj.