BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:icalendar-ruby CALSCALE:GREGORIAN BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Los_Angeles BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20240310T030000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=2SU;BYMONTH=3 TZNAME:PDT END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20241103T010000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=1SU;BYMONTH=11 TZNAME:PST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20260521T011517Z UID:wrEEmQ DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240321T090000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240321T140000 CLASS:PUBLIC CREATED:20240205T154211 DESCRIPTION: Undervalued. Overlooked. Dispensable. Discarded. \n\n These ar e just a few words that describe the pain that many designers are feeling right now. \n\n Tech is at an existential crossroads - is it threatening o r empowering? – and widespread layoffs bring an added layer of uncertain ty to the struggle against burnout. \n\n It’s easy to feel helpless. But looking at the industry from this perspective isn’t productive for your job in the short term\, and it isn’t healthy for your career in the lon g term. \n\n Take a step back. Look at design from a different angle. Ther e is a better way forward for our industry\, and it starts with asking why people buy design in the first place. \n\n Another World is Possible \n\n Designers are good at researching why customers buy products\, but the ma jority of us don’t perform the same research on our own jobs. Why do cli ents choose to work with us? Why do we get hired to practice design? What ’s our own purpose? \n\n This research is essential because it helps us understand the value that we bring to the table. It helps us understand ho w we can be essential to our clients and our companies. \n\n Design isn’ t bought because of trends like crypto\, large language models\, or even b ecause our portfolios have a specific aesthetic. \n\n People buy design be cause there’s an expensive problem that needs to be solved in a way that the designer’s specific expertise is uniquely suited to solve. \n\n Bus inesses want to increase profit\, lower their costs\, or reduce risk. They will invest in anything that can affect one of those variables. When you come off as a person who can help them do that\, you become valuable to th e business. \n\n Become Essential \n\n When you’re viewed as essential\, you’re more likely to survive a round of layoffs. You might get promote d into a role with more power. You might find a job that respects you. In short\, you might finally pull up that ever-elusive seat at the table that we all keep hearing about. \n\n So\, how do you become essential? By root ing your design practice in the generation of value\, which we call value- based design. \n\n Value-Based Design \n\n Value-based design incorporates elements of customer success\, product\, interaction design\, and user re search to create a holistic approach to design that is grounded in evidenc e. \n\n When you become a practitioner of value-based design\, you’ll: \ n\n \n Use your design sense to reliably deliver work that has an impact. \n Understand how to ground design decisions in evidence \n Apply the soft skills you need to survive and thrive in any organization \n Accurately m easure the impact of your decisions \n Advocate for design in a way that ’s fundamentally impossible to ignore \n \n\n In short\, you’ll become essential. \n\n We wrote the definitive book on value-based design\, and we want to teach you everything we know\, hands on\, to help you level up your career. We invite you to begin your journey of proving your worth by attending the Value-Based Design Workshop from 9AM to 2PM Pacific Time on March 21st. \n\n What You’ll Learn \n\n In this workshop\, you’ll lear n how to go beyond the basic principles of design and learn how to get a s eat at the table: \n\n 1. The high level design process. \n\n \n Research\ , synthesis\, prioritization\, experimentation. Define what each is and wh y each is important to the design process. Where design-qua-design fits in to this. \n Soft skills. Current power dynamics in tech. \n How to get oth ers involved in the organization. Issues to watch out for. \n Basic projec t management. Creating clear sources of truth for communication. Prioritiz ation comes later! \n \n\n 2. How to suggest one-off improvements to a sto re or marketing site to fit with current best practices. \n\n \n Heuristic evaluation: what it is\, why it’s important\, how to create a series of heuristics that work for you\, example heuristic lists. \n What metrics a re: how you measure the success of a design. How to create metrics that wo rk for you. \n Common metrics to start with. \n How to adapt heuristics ov er time as the business evolves. \n \n\n 3. How to analyze of heat &\; scroll maps to make high-leverage design decisions. \n\n \n How to run one : existing tools\, how to install tracking\, etc. \n What to look for. How to read a heat map. How to read a scroll map. Typical issues on key pages . \n How to synthesize into design decisions. \n \n\n 4. How to run usabil ity tests. \n\n \n How to plan one. What are the goals of usability testin g? What is an ideal outcome? \n What frameworks to use. Subscription versu s a la carte. Recruitment issues. \n How to frame questions in a test. Gen eral versus specific questioning. Common starter questions. How to not lea d participants on. What makes for a good test. \n What to watch out for wh en synthesizing a usability test. How to turn usability test results into design decisions. How to investigate usability test findings in order to c onfirm before designing. \n \n\n 5. How to prioritize a series of design d ecisions such that they possess maximal strategic leverage for a business. \n\n \n Separating ideas between experiments &\; one-off fixes. When e xperiment versus roll out? \n Our framework at Draft: impact\, feasibility \, strategic alignment. \n How to prioritize one-off fixes: instead of str ategic alignment\, prioritize context fit. \n \n\n 6. How to run &\; an alyze experiments. \n\n \n Experimentation frameworks. What they do. Picki ng a framework. \n Hypotheses. What a hypothesis contains (design decision \, primary metric\, intended lift). Turning a design decision into a hypot hesis. Calculating minimum sample size. \n Development &\; implementati on. Difference between WYSIWYG v. feature flag tests. When to get the rest of the team involved. \n Basic statistics: chi-squared testing\, Bayesian /black box calculations\, statistical significance. \n Final analysis. Kno ck-on effects &\; secondary metrics. Segmentation. Should we roll the d ecision out or not? Should we run new experiments based on what we’ve di scovered? \n \n\n These are the same processes I’ve used repeatedly to h elp stores generate more revenue without increased ad spend. \n\n Who Am I ? \n\n I’m Nick Disabato\, a designer &\; writer from the city of Chi cago with 18 years of experience in the industry. I run Draft\, a small co nsultancy for online stores that is known for a deep focus on revenue gene ration through qualitative\, value-based research. \n\n Our case studies r epresent a net annual increase of $41M in revenue\, and we’ve just had o ur best year ever. In 2023. The dissonance is felt over here. \n\n Draft ’s third book Value-Based Design was released in 2019\, and represents t he definitive answer to the “seat at the table” debate. Our latest boo k\, Store Design\, reinforces these ideas for ecommerce.\n \n\n Workshop Details \n\n The workshop will be on March 21st from 9AM to 2PM Pacific Ti me (check your timezone here). It will be held over Zoom\, and will be rec orded and transcribed for later viewing. \n\n There will be several high-v alue group exercises and discussion throughout the day\, and you’re enco uraged to ask questions. \n\n Attendees will also receive one month of mem bership to Draft for free\, a $30 value. \n LAST-MODIFIED:20240314T105242 LOCATION:Zoom (online remote) ORGANIZER:mailto:nickd@badass.dev SUMMARY:Value-Based Design Workshop URL;VALUE=URI:https://ti.to/nick-disabato/value-based-design-workshop URL;VALUE=URI:https://ti.to/nick-disabato/value-based-design-workshop END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR