On the surface — strategy, communication, collaboration, facilitation and adaptability don’t sound like the core skills of a product designer. To create impact as part of cross functional teams requires breaking out of stereotypical moulds. But these skills aren’t emphasised enough in the design profession. At Made by Many we want to change that. — There is a big gap between the skills and mindset that education equips designers with and what’s needed to forge a resilient career in product design.

How to make your design portfolio work for you — Product designer portfolios come in all shapes and sizes, and I saw a lot of them while I was taking part in a recent Portfolio Masterclass ran by The Dots. I found myself giving the same piece of advice again and again to potential candidates: When applying for a design…

How awesome guitar riffs can inspire great brand experiences for digital products — During my heady student days, I spent most of my time (and student loan) travelling up and down the country playing guitar in a pop-punk band. Rather than attending lectures, I thought my time would be better spent writing hook-laden pop rock. I never found songwriting easy, as I…

Things don’t always go to plan on projects. It comes with the territory when working in an adaptive, lean and nimble way. But how do you get precious hindsight before you’ve started a project? We use a simple technique to map potential risks or failures at a project kickoff to…

Now more than ever, as we create the next generation of products and services that are lasting longer, reaching wider and impacting more lives — we need to break out of our bubble of culturally homogeneous product teams. As practitioners, it’s our duty to bring together teams that better represent…

Quality customer research is the foundation to creating things people want to use — and potentially love to use. But it’s really easy to mess up this kind of research. Especially the customer interview. If you really want to waste your customers’ time as well as your own, here are…

The evolution of the humble sketch — Like the products we make, our tools and processes are constantly being iterated at Made by Many. One of those is the continuing evolution of ‘the sketch’. The value of sketches is they simply and effectively get to the heart of a proposition or service idea. We use them often…

“You two look like Ant and Dec.” A small finger prods at me through the air. “You… are Ant.” Knocked off balance I look to my colleague for reassurance, only to be greeted with a nervous smile. Deep breath. Smile. Don’t take the bait. …

In 2011, I was part of a small team that re-designed BBC Weather online. My role involved visual and interaction design. Along with designing core pages to the service, a large part of my work involved bringing back and modernising the classic BBC Weather icon set. In 2013 I was…