Erick is a Service Design Director at Digital Arts Network in Auckland, where he works at the intersection of people, design and change to help companies envision, prototype and bring products and services to market.
He is fascinated by making complex things simple, understanding behaviour, and most importantly, making things real. With over 20 years of experience, Erick honed a set of creative and analytical skills to drive business growth. He ran projects as diverse as re-designing the check-in experience for a major airline to developing a suite of value-added services for a global logistics company.
Erick is a keen follower of the mantra ‘Don’t get ready, get started’. In a world of rapid change and technological wonder, the shortest way to great products and services is through rough and ready prototypes, one iteration at a time.
Agile development, design sprints, squads, prototyping and customer experience are no longer jargons exclusive to start-ups or design consultancies. Larger organisations are already adopting these practices, and more importantly, we are starting to see design rise to C-suite levels. Job titles such as “Head of Customer Experience” or “Chief Customer Officer” are becoming increasingly common.
But the reality is that this change to a more design-oriented way of doing things is not easy, particularly in larger organisations. What’s happening instead is that we are seeing pockets of good design practices and capabilities operating in isolation across organisations.
While some of these organisations are experiencing advanced levels of design competence, others are still in its infancy and taking baby steps towards a more mature design state.
This talk will provide a critical analysis of the ‘state of design’ in organisations (as well as a a consolidated view of how New Zealand is performing) through, hands-on evidence and practical take-aways extracted from interviews with design leaders from large organisations in Australia and New Zealand.
