 So thanks very much for coming. As you see I have lots of candy up here. I will not promise anything even slightly being any good at aiming. So if I throw some candy at you it's either because you've fallen asleep or you've answered the question right. So you know you could try both but my aim is very bad so the neighbour next to you might get a hit. So I apologize now. So for just let the last couple of people dribble in. Hello. Okay fantastic. So quick introduction of who I am. For those that signed up to the meet-up if this is not who we expect him to speak you're probably at the wrong venue but you've got some free food out of it so that's always good. So I'm as the scientist my name is Irina Chu. I don't look Chinese. I married the Chinese man. It's always one thing that I always get from clients. I thought we were Chinese. Unless I've been an experienced designer now for 15 years so I'm quite old. I know makeup does wonders. But I've been helping brands like Nike, Aviva, AstraZeneca, Barclays and many more in the space of kind of product innovation and helping them scale their design practices. Predominantly for those particular clients we've used design systems but obviously we've worked in a lot of other areas as well. So today as some of you will know we're going to be talking a little bit about product innovation and from my perspective I think product innovation really isn't a magic talent. It's just a craft and just like wizards it's just about using the right tools and giving you the opportunity to spend time innovating rather than just pixel pushing. So in this talk I'm hoping that by the end of it you'll be able to kind of see how innovation can happen if you just disrupt the way that you do things. And if I'm not successful there's feedback forms throughout the walls but I'm hoping it'd be good and bad feedback. Always room for improvement. Before I generally start my talks especially because obviously I'm a designer and this is considered a tech talk who here is not a developer or a technologist of somewhere. Okay so quite a few, quite a few. Good good. But here at ThoughtWorks we do truly believe in kind of that cross-pollination of ideas from other fields that aren't typically the field that you work in because at the end of the day it makes you a better anything be it a developer or a designer. And we often use the quote from Michael Fathers who's a who's a really really awesome author if you haven't read that book you really should pick it up. And he kind of says there's a lot of knowledge outside of our field that will help us kind of look at problems in the very different ways and help us to kind of take those frames and apply them to to other parts of our world. So who here is ready to look at product innovation in a different way? Good there we go now you guys catch. Anyone else? All right good now you see how this works. So what is product innovation? Well the nature of innovation is in my view is wildly misunderstood because innovation is rarely pure innovation so like invention it's not it's not about it's about making better interactions with what has come before. So you look at Apple right? Apple did they invent their MP3? Did they invent the smartphone? David Bowie did he invent Glamrock? Careful I'm a David Bowie fan. No he didn't. Google didn't invent the first web search and Elon Musk even though he might pretend that he did he certainly didn't invent the electric cars. And in all of these cases it's really just that they took the existing something that was already existing and just kind of did it better and it wasn't just about evolution. It's truly about looking outside of the scope and the realm of that particular product and getting influences from the outer world and making it better. So what is innovation if it's not pure invention? And we use this quote because it kind of comes up with two different points. One is around utilizing unique assets so in our world it could be the technical skills that you have but then also looking at the strength of solving the problem in a new and novel way. So I talk a little bit about the curiosity and the ability for you to frame problems in different lights. So the three steps of innovation and by all means if you google the internet you will find a thousand different ways of innovation and I think at the crux of it innovation is a creative process but if you use certain tools you and I'll sound like a broken record by the end of it but at the crux of it innovation is just about reframing the world around you. As developers you look at a particular code problem and it isn't until you kind of step away and go where else have I seen this kind of pattern that you are likely to solve that problem in a new way. I keep looking down on the floor because this cable's in front of me so I apologize if I trip and make a fool of myself. So in terms of the three steps I think from my perspective the next time you kind of face a challenge I challenge you to kind of stop and reframe it and what do I mean by reframing it. It's really about rethinking the problem statement you know break it down into its small parts and unpack all of your assumptions. So if we take the example of so I'm a rugby fan a New Zealander by heart and if I were to redesign the helmets of rugby players or the the headgear of the helmet of the rugby players typically I would look at things like design in terms of economics but also in terms of protecting you against knocks to your brain and how would go about kind of reframing that is to look at the outside world so what would be a typical animal right so we've got woodpeckers their woodpeckers chomp away at the tree every single day yet they don't have any brain injuries and what is it about woodpeckers that is so different from our brain or the way that they're made and then you take those insights and that knowledge and you start to apply it into your design practice but also it helps you kind of unpack those assumptions because typically we go oh well this is how we're made or this is the fabrics that we have and and well it isn't until you look outside that you kind of go maybe that assumption wasn't quite right and then by breaking those into small parts you can really start to focus on the elements that you understand best and and this is where I was saying about kind of looking at the more you know the better the better you are right so you you get the idea you cross-pollinate your knowledge base with very unusual things and suddenly you're able to kind of take in that knowledge to any problem statements and go hmm okay we could try you know the open banking api model on you know biometric management or things like that and by really centering on what you know you can much more readily identify the resources that you have around you and and what you can do to to have it work to form a solution so in a in a recent chat to airbnb they said something really interesting where they said there's a simple truth that you cannot innovate and product without first innovating on the way you build them and the reason why that is is you know we're looking at being able to try and keep up to date with the rest of the industry out there and from a design perspective it means that we need to learn how to design it at scale and the problem with scale is really that as delivery and design teams kind of grow and aligning people to deliver these great customer experience starts to become this constant challenge opposing challenge because let's face it making great things is hard and making great things in large organizations or enterprises is even harder but it happens though like there are companies out there there's organizations like GE and IBM and the airbnb model that you saw before and even microsoft have managed to kind of scale their ability to create an on-the-fly product that can be prototyped and tested and iterated at a pace that just eclipses eclipses their competitors but the one thing that I found interesting that they have in common is is the fact that they have design systems right because at the end of the day design systems kind of unify design and design and developer efforts and make it easier for you to ship great customer experience because at the end of the day everyone in the team wants to focus on creating more meaningful work design systems for me are really like a paved road through really really rough terrain because teams can go at it alone but it's slow and it's hard and it doesn't get easier the next time you you need to go through it and so when I looked at kind of trying to find out with a more meaningful definition of what system design or design systems were I found it really frustrating because everything that I read online it was just about repeatable components it was just about atomic design and buttons and UI and placements of this and carousels of that and and to me it's become abundantly clear that it isn't it goes beyond just the repeatable components it's just the starting point because an advanced design system or the systems that have worked for for the clients that we've worked with need to kind of encompass this entire design platform so we're talking tools we're talking yeah we're talking UI we're talking app components but we're talking code libraries and content libraries and data analytics and documentation and workflow it isn't just about creating componentized designs and code and as we know there are certain benefits to having design systems I could kind of I pause here because when I was originally creating this deck I was talking to a designer about you know what kind of content should I include and it feels often as if we become evangelists of design systems primarily because it makes our life easier but at the end of the day for me it's kind of become about this consistent being able to create a consistent customer experience and to be able to kind of collaborate with the developers the product owners the even just you know the analytics team and enabling us to build products faster but making by making designs reusable and kind of scaling much quicker and from a design lead I think for me the caliber of my design team has risen exponentially because now we've kind of gotten to a point where we have this kind of reduced misunderstandings or misinterpretations that gap between what I as a designer aspire and what developers end up developing and please don't take it as an I'm not trying to offend developers because I think sometimes what we say or what we draw versus what you envision can often be misinterpreted so we end up reducing the time spent redesigning the same old patterns I mean I'm assuming a few of you guys have worked on projects where someone has gone oh well we need a feed for something or we need a payments page or a success page or an error page and even just basic four or four pages the number of times that I've had clients come up to me going oh we need a four or four page can you design it for me I'm like there's a design library for that why am I wasting my time with with something as meaningless as that but most importantly for me kind of design systems have helped the organization do more with its resources right so we're creating we're creating connected experiences much quicker and and it's enabled some of our smaller clients to really start acting like technology companies right so you look at there's a really interesting bridge bakery manufacturing place so originally it was just a bakery and they decided they were going to start selling their produce online and in the space of three years they went from not having a website to making over one billion u.s. dollars in profits and that was all through the creation of a website and they were able to kind of keep growing at such a pace that it allowed them to make horrendous amounts of profits but the efficiency that I keep talking about kind of allows us in an agile rapid continuous delivery model to kind of be able to support our delivery teams to to to produce and deliver at that pace so who here works in agile agile yeah who here has no idea what agile is good because I was about to show you the room so next door we have lots and lots of books with the agile methodology but what does that mean sorry yeah cover it design system would you mind explaining what exactly do we mean by design system so as I was saying before I think it's a collection of patterns as well as tools and processes underneath to support the creation of fast design and delivery of designs designed for products designed for products right yeah um so does that mean that everyone needs its own design system does it yes no no I threw a strand to her arms my rugby days are not over yes it's like a prime to you know we don't work together right um yeah so my point was going to be you know like let's get real there are some companies that really don't need their own design systems right especially where um owning your brand isn't mission critical so you look at um products that offer experiences rather than um brands recognition and and also kind of if your team is small and you just don't have to bandwidth then you might as well use all of the ready out-of-the-box design systems out there um under the caveat that um you know if you reach out to things like google material um microsoft or even apple um it is just a design library right so the nuances to design systems is how do I go about implementing these processes that help me continuing to grow this library that help me continue to collaborate that help me to understand as a developer when do I use carousel one two three versus carousel four five six and how do these components or these buttons or these contents how do they kind of interact with each other because it's not just about a cookie cutter approach otherwise everyone will just create their websites in in wicks or WordPress or whatever dare I say that word um but if you are looking at these particular three um readily usable um design systems I'd say google material from my experience tends to be the more well supported and universal design system um microsoft fluent it's kind of great for emerging interfaces so if you're doing something that's cool and up and coming definitely have a look at them um apple human interface guidelines they're really really good from us from from a designer perspective we use them a lot in referencing our rationale for designs they're very deep they're very detailed but they do primarily focus on app design which is not surprised given so even um even so that we use design systems as part of prototyping as well so behind all of the design systems that we have and I think I'd go through it do I I'll go through into it a little bit more detail but um essentially design systems isn't just about us saying this is what a carousel looks like but we also have the codes behind it the interactions behind it the rationale behind it when you use it how you use it because um looking at something versus understanding the context and the meaning behind it can be very very different so let's say you do need to own or you decide to kind of go down the route of creating your own design systems and you know we work with a lot of clients over the time and have kind of helped them either set up or consult or kind of um apply existing design systems to their new products and some of the more common things that we've seen is initially this enthusiasm and energy for like yes let's do design systems is always there um up front but then they kind of realize how hard it is um because design systems isn't just uh oh I'm going to create this thing over here and once it's done that's it I can move on um it it's going to be something that's going to forever kind of evolve unfortunately but in terms of some of the the kind of the five key lessons that we've learned from the delivery of design systems with our clients is um and I always start with focus on people and processes again because you know to your point it isn't just about creating the library it's about how do you um help the design system become more efficient and help the organization focus on the culture and the processes like sharing and collaborating um how do you create a system that kind of meets where the user needs are so for example as me as a designer I don't want to have to go to a website to copy and paste the component I want to be able to do it inside my tool so from um some of the previous clients we've worked with sketch sketch has a really interesting um um integrated tool that allows you to kind of pull in component libraries um but the reason why people in processes are important is because from my perspective every single client is different so we kind of throw away the rulebook um and we just focus on supporting really intelligent teams to learn what works in the context of the organization because if I go here's the one two three four five tools that you use and here's the processes that need to implement depending on the size of your team the politics in your team um or even just the budget um it'll get to a point where you're like well that doesn't work it's over engineered for me um and talking about the over engineered you know don't just don't go too far ahead of yourself build the design system that kind of allows you to grow as fast as the product that it is that you're developing um you know it's easy to kind of get wrapped up in this aspirational lofty goals of creating the next material design have people heard about material design here yes a few nons people are too scared to put up their hands in case I throw a chocolate at their faces right good um but you know like sometimes just reality gets in the way right so you we find resources hard enough to um justify on our projects the time and budget so if you start small and you evolve over time it really allows the the design system to kind of feel like a living breathing thing rather than just something that's going to collect dust over the time um I kind of talk about using design systems or managing design systems in the service lifecycle inside an organization and what I mean by that is to kind of look at um how do people adopt design systems it's something new to your organization how do you educate someone about what it is and how do I come on board um to to um you know start using this what if I don't um you know have any developers what if I don't understand it do you provide the support do you provide the education so just looking at it like a product lifecycle will allow you to um start creating some much more meaningful processes behind it uh leadership support who here kind of talks to leaderships quite regularly yeah there's a few of you and how much of their time do you typically get very lateral yeah and I think that scenario whereby there's 20 things that they need to get done today 10 of which move the business forwards and only two of you only two of them can be done is kind of very familiar right because with the limited resources in a world where urgency kind of drives the importance it's really easy for us to lose sight of um what we should be doing in favor of what needs to be done does that make sense yeah um so having kind of that evangelist at a senior stakeholder level helps you pave the way to to take to let your design system take root and that's really the heart part of this equation for me um I've talked a little bit about this about it being kind of both design and technology because it kind of works best when developers technologists designers system analysts whatever when they start using a common language it it brings them into the process um and I don't know again it depends on your organization but in ours everyone here is a technologist everyone here is a designer it doesn't matter what your title is because at the end of the day creativity is in everything that we do and by bringing people together with this common language you create something great around what is best the best way forward um in terms of kind of technology systems there's real um an importance for you to kind of create an infrastructure that is flexible for reuse um you know a library of modules components for everyone to use um but it's the integration from end to end that will help you succeed um invest in the right tools and processes you know make things easy for me to get um I've talked a little bit about sketch um Envision does really really good integration with sketch um to allow you to kind of take some of these these tools and prototype really quickly right so um the craft Envision has the craft plugin and it they kind of they sell themselves as the single source of truth in a design system um and rightfully so don't get me wrong but and as a designer what I often feel like is missing is that integration from there into then let's say taking it into Zeppelin or taking it into GitHub or you know that kind of full end-to-end experience because at the end of the day it doesn't stop the moment that I finish my designs um and for me it's not just about the tools it's kind of about the process um and that's always changing right so it's it's only like yesterday that we were applying responsive design or was it adaptive whichever one um but we're kind of creating websites with teams right so surely teams teams changes we evolve we should be streamlining the tools and the processes that we use in order to help us um better scale the things that we do do we have any questions I've kind of taken enough of your drinks time yeah