The designers I trust with the most complex briefs share one habit. They spend the opening days of a project reading the organisation before they read the brief. They work out what this team can absorb, what it can act on, what will land and what will sit in a folder regardless of quality. They do this before ideation. Sometimes, before they ask a single design question.

We call this reading the organisation. And it takes four diagnostic questions before Figma is opened.

The ones who skip this step are not worse designers. Often they are better at the craft and so that makes this harder to see.

Strong visual execution earns early praise. The feedback loop is immediate and feels like progress. Nothing in that signal tells you it is pointing in the wrong direction.

But approval in a design review and influence over what actually gets built are not the same thing. Most teams are too polite to say the work missed the moment. They praise it, note it for future reference and move on. The designer leaves the room thinking it went well.

They only find out much later, when the product ships, that their work gets partially used, quietly reduced or shelved for a future sprint that never comes.

It is usually not a design problem

When good work goes nowhere, our first instinct is to question the work. Should we refine the flows? Improve the fidelity? Perhaps present better?

The more I have watched this pattern, the more I am convinced the problem is almost never the quality of the design. It is the sequencing.

Sequencing, in design work, means understanding what the organisation is ready to receive and act on before deciding what to produce. The best method applied at the wrong moment is not rigorous—it is wasted.

We often look at constraints through the lens of budget, timeline and trade-offs. Those are real. But they are not what determines whether work lands.

The more consequential constraint I’ve seen is organisational readiness: what decisions are still live, who has the authority to act on findings, whether design has ever changed anything here before. That is what the order of design operations has to be built around, not the project plan.

This is what it looks like in practice

Part of working closely with in-house teams is that we get to observe how designers navigate the gap between what they are given and what they are set up to succeed with.

We worked with an in-house designer who was doing everything right. She received the requirements, hit the timeline and thought through the trade-offs. The solution was considered and beautifully executed. It was current, polished and genuinely impressive. The review was glowing.

And yet none of it made it into the final product.

The brief had given her enough room that she took it as a mandate to rethink the problem. So she did. What she did not know was that product and engineering had already aligned on a direction before the requirements reached her.

When her solution landed in the room, it was too ambitious for where the team was. They praised it, parked it for a future redesign that may or may not come, and shipped what the developers had already built. It was faster. It was good enough and it was already done.

Naming the gap

We call this gap design execution without organisational reading.

The trouble is design education teaches craft and method. It teaches designers to solve the problem in front of them. What it almost never teaches is how to read whether the organisation is ready to receive that solution. Whether the problem is still live, whether anyone has the authority to act on the answer, whether the conditions exist for the work to land at all.

That is a different skill entirely. Without it, the craft goes to waste.

It is also what sits underneath most design maturity gaps, where you have teams that are technically skilled but structurally misaligned with the organisations they are designing for.

What reading the organisation looks like in the first week

At Stampede, user-centred design sits at the core of what we do. Often we associate the word “user” with the end user, the people using the app or service. But there’s a more immediate user of our design work: the organisation itself. To be truly embracing user-centred design, we must serve this group first.

As such, meeting people in the organisation where they are, not where we think they should be, is not a compromise. It is the work.

That shift in thinking changes what we pay attention to in the first week of any project. The signals are the same whether you are an external or an in-house designer who has been at the company for three years.

If anything, I’d argue that being an in-house designer is harder. Familiarity makes it harder. When you already know a team, it’s too easy to go in with the assumption that you know what they are ready for.

Where do we begin navigating? We begin by asking targeted, strategic questions.

Here is the organisational terrain I encourage my designers to canvas in the first week of their project. It’s four questions and they cover: whether design has ever changed a decision here, who actually holds the authority to act, whether this is a discovery or execution project and what “design” means to the people who will use the output.

Let’s take a look at what each of them means.

1. Has design ever changed a decision here?

Not whether they have a design system. We’re asking whether past design thinking has visibly changed what the product became.

A team that says “we tried a different pattern for that flow and it didn’t perform” uses design as evidence. A team that says “we did a big redesign two years ago” and moves on is using it as a credential. Those are not the same thing.

2. Who actually has the authority to move this work forward?

Not who is in the kickoff room. In many Malaysian organisations, hierarchy shapes how decisions are communicated as much as how they are made. Disagreement with a senior leader rarely surfaces directly in a meeting but rather moves through other channels, later and quietly.

Here, the most senior person in the room will nod, stay quiet or say the work looks good. That doesn’t necessarily mean a decision has been made. The actual decision-maker is often a layer up and they may be absent from the brief and reviews and only visible when a direction gets quietly reversed after a presentation they were not in.

The answer to who has the authority is not always obvious and has to be inferred from who the room defers to when a direction is questioned, from whose silence carries more weight than anyone else’s words.

3. Is this a discovery project or an execution project?

Design can enter a project at very different points.

Sometimes it is upstream, where design is involved before the solution exists, helping shape what gets built and why.

Sometimes it is downstream and designers are brought in after the direction has been set, to design it well and make it real. Both are legitimate but not interchangeable.

Engineering-led teams, common in our market, often scope and estimate the solution before design is involved. By the time the brief reaches the designer, the upstream decisions have already been made, and often in conversations that happened weeks earlier. What remains is now a downstream ask: take this direction and make it work.

That is not a lesser role. But treating it as an open mandate when it is not will most likely backfire on good intentions and erode the team’s trust in design as a function.

4. What does “design” mean to the people who will act on it?

Within the Malaysian present context, when a team says they need a designer, they mean someone to produce screens that are clean, polished and on brand. That is a legitimate ask but it is not the only thing design can be.

The gap opens when a designer assumes they have been brought in to shape the problem. To run discovery, frame the brief, challenge the direction, while the team assumed they were getting someone to make the solution look good. Neither party states their assumption. In a high-context culture like ours, neither party will.

So ask them directly: when they say “design”, do they mean making it look good, making it work better or making the right thing in the first place?

Where does asking these questions lead us?

Together, these four questions give you a clear, precise picture of what this organisation is actually ready for and where design sits within it.

Design’s track record tells you whether design has influencing power here. Whether it has ever been the reason a direction changed, or whether it has only ever been the thing that made a decision look better after it was already made.

Whether the role is upstream or downstream tells you something about access. It is how close to the problem design is allowed to get before the solution starts forming without it. In most Malaysian organisations, this is not stated in the brief. By the time it reaches you, the direction has often already been set, very likely in conversations you were not part of. What looks like an open mandate may already have walls around it.

Those two questions provide you with a reading and an opening move to consider.

The grid

The grid maps two readings against each other.

• Design’s track record. This is the vertical axis. Has design influenced decisions here before, or is it still earning that standing? This tells you how much trust you are starting with, before you have produced a single thing.
• Design’s role. The horizontal axis. Has design been brought in upstream to shape the problem, or downstream to execute a direction already set? This tells you how much of the problem space is still open, and how much has already closed without you.

Together, they place you in one of four positions, each with a different opening move.

Top-left: upstream, design has changed decisions here
The rarest configuration. The team has a track record of acting on what design surfaces and you have been given genuine access to the problem. The risk here is not failure — it is wasting the position by playing it safe. Take the harder problem, not the safer brief.

Top-right: downstream, design has changed decisions here
The team trusts design but the direction was already set before you arrived. This is not a slight but simply where you are in this cycle. The mistake is spending energy trying to reopen a brief that was never meant to be reopened. Execute sharply and find the one decision still live to continue earning the trust.

Bottom-left: upstream, design has not changed decisions here
The most common configuration for designers entering a new organisation or team. The mandate looks open but the organisation has no muscle memory for acting on what design surfaces. Building up to a big reveal means your findings arrive after the decisions have already closed. The team will nod, note it for next time and move on. The antidote is to structure your work in batches. Share findings while decisions are still live and people can still act on them.

Bottom-right: downstream, design has not changed decisions here
You have a defined problem but no established credibility yet. The temptation is to overdeliver on the brief to prove worth. The more effective move is to make your reasoning visible alongside your output, how you got there, not just what you produced. That is what shifts the position over time.

What design means and who has the authority

The other two questions, what “design” means to the people acting on it, and who actually has the authority to move the work forward serve as your operating conditions. They don’t change your position on the grid but they determine how much friction stands between you and the opening move your position calls for.

For example, a designer in the right quadrant who cannot get the real decision-maker in the room, or whose definition of design doesn’t match the team’s, is working against resistance that the grid alone won’t show.

The grid tells you how to start, not how to stay. Position shifts as credibility builds and as the team’s appetite for design’s involvement grows. Misreading it in either direction is costly, so it helps to be honest about where you actually are rather than where you would like to be.

You may move with too much ambition where trust hasn’t been established, risk getting the work admired but ultimately shelved. On the other hand, moving too cautiously where the mandate is genuinely open would lead to the window closing before you’ve used it.

Like in chess, the question is not what the ideal move looks like. It is what move is available from where you are standing right now.

The opening move is a design decision

For designers trained to do thorough work, the best move may be counterintuitive to what you really want to do and the impact you want to make. Choosing a lighter scope often feels like settling.

The truth is, arguing for a bigger move before you have earned the standing is the most common mistake. It is also the most avoidable one.

The designers who moved the furthest in the organisations I have watched did not start with the most ambitious brief. They start with the piece of work that earns them enough trust. This then creates a shared language and wins to make the next move possible. They chose the move deliberately, not out of safety but because it was right for where the organisation was.

The right opening move is not the most thorough piece of work you could produce. It is the piece that shifts the organisation’s position. One that shows a sceptical PM what research actually surfaces, or gives engineers and designers a shared reference point for the first time.

Small work that shifts a position is worth more than ambitious work that lands nowhere.

The grid is not to limit what you do. Rather, it tells you what to do first.

What this means for how we develop designers

This habit of reading the organisation first is learned. Nobody arrives with it.

How quickly it develops depends on the environment around the designer. The leadership models, what managers enable and what product teams make visible. It is a shared responsibility and it looks different depending on where you sit.

If you are a designer The fastest way to develop this is to be in the room before you are asked to produce anything. The kickoff. The stakeholder introduction. The early conversations where nothing has been designed yet. That exposure starts as observation but must become active: forming your own read of the room, testing it against what emerges, adjusting before the brief hardens.

If you are a design leader The designers who develop this fastest are the ones you bring into those rooms deliberately. Not to present. To observe and to learn. This is the education many senior designers still need and rarely get. Without it, the only way to learn is from having work go nowhere enough times that you start asking different questions. That is a slower and more demoralising path than it needs to be. You can shorten it significantly.

If you are a product manager The designers who will serve you best are the ones who understand what your team is ready to act on before they design anything. You can accelerate this by being transparent early. Share with them what is already decided, who needs to be in the room and what success looks like to the people above you. That context is not a constraint on the design. It is what makes the design useful.

A designer who reads the room well and starts simply will outperform a designer who starts ambitiously in the wrong direction. Every time.

—

If this resonates and you are trying to work out what your design practice is ready for next, I would be glad to think it through with you. You can find me on LinkedIn or reach out to our team.

The post Good designers read the brief—great ones read the organisation appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.

What’s fueling Malaysia’s design revolution?

When the team curated this long-due theme for Makers 9, its simple yet powerful message stuck with me. We are designing for Malaysia.

When I started my design journey, the job was making things look good and work well. The canvas was a Photoshop 1024×768 artboard. Today, our canvas is shaping the experiences of our nation. That’s the magnitude of transformation we’re seeing. From government services to businesses and non-profits, design is weaving itself into the very fabric of our lives.

It’s no longer a dream to see government services become genuinely user-friendly. And we could say this because we’re working with the Malaysian government to identify and remedy UX gaps in their digital services. Platforms like Schola are empowering students to explore career paths beyond typical routes. Small businesses, the “makcik and pakcik” shops we all know, are becoming digitally savvy thanks to platforms like Borong.

It was only apt that our theme celebrates Malaysia’s national month and how far we’ve come while reminding us of the work ahead. In his talk Malaysia on the Rise, Khailee Ng of 500 Startups said, Malaysians are not so used to good news. That may be true, but at the same time, we’ve been seeing a quiet revolution happening. Companies are stepping up to better serve their customers, while public agencies are making digital touchpoints more usable and accessible.

This shift is reshaping our nation, and we’re so excited to shine a light on it through Makers 9.

Design: the unsung hero in Malaysia’s glow-up

This transformation isn’t confined to traditional design roles. My own journey has strayed far from the conventional path—my recent work involved crafting a career progression framework, yet it’s still all about design. I see this same spirit in those around me. Our two incredible speakers at Makers 9 don’t carry the “designer” title but embody the essence of designing for Malaysia. Let’s take a look at how they do it.

Linda Rasip: Bringing empathy (and order) to chaos

I’ve known Linda Rasip since she first sought out Stampede for a Malaysian UX agency with global reach. Today, she’s the CTO and co-founder of Borong, a B2B eCommerce platform that empowers small businesses—the very backbone of Malaysia’s economy.

At Makers 9, Linda explained how her team tackled the problem of small businesses struggling to access suppliers in real time. “When designing for Malaysians, you need to anticipate their challenges before they do,” she said.

Borong owed its success in listening, adapting, and understanding Malaysia’s unique business culture. Here’s how they do it:

Empathy first
Linda’s team invests time in understanding local business norms and informal practices. They learn how shop owners manage inventory and understand trust systems in local supply chains so they can identify nuances that matter to Malaysian small businesses.

Build on familiarity
Borong doesn’t impose new processes on its customers. Instead, it complements the way the businesses already operate. This move creates a sense of familiarity, intuitive experience, and confidence, which all lead to trust and ultimately, sticky adoption.

Leverage omnichannel strategies
For seamless digital transformation, Borong ensures businesses can manage orders, update inventories and communicate consistently across various digital and physical touchpoints. This integration means businesses can maintain a cohesive operation, whether online, on social media or in-store.

Design for practical solutions
They introduced features like flexible credit terms and simplified supplier listings. These are real pain points discovered through research, and making them practical turns Borong into a reliable and easy-to-use solution.

When designing for Malaysia, Borong focused on building trust and leaned into cultural insights discovered through user research. To them, the work goes beyond bridging gaps. To be successful in Malaysia and other similar markets, the key is in building lasting relationships.

Yi Fen: Turning career confusion into curiosity and conversations

Then there’s Kong Yi Fen, Product Manager at Schola. Her team at Creador Foundation built a career exploration app to guide Malaysian students, but what happened next was unexpected—Schola went viral, not just among students but adults across the nation.

Everyone, from professionals to industry leaders, was taking career quizzes and sharing their results. (Mine was #budakperform, in case you’re curious.)

Yi Fen’s story began with a simple yet crucial act: listening. “We realized we weren’t asking the right questions,” she shared. Schola’s early days were marked by enthusiastic efforts to address too many problems at once. Through direct conversations with students, teachers, and communities, they narrowed their focus to one key gap: early career exposure. That shift, driven by genuine engagement, led to Schola’s success.

Here’s how Schola made it work:

User research to identify gaps
Yi Fen’s team conducted extensive research to uncover what students and communities truly needed. They listened to students, teachers, and parents closely. As a result, they were able to identify early career exposure as a key area lacking guidance. This insight shaped their product development, ensuring they addressed a real, pressing need.

Focus and adapt
After identifying this gap, the team narrowed their efforts to early career exposure. This focus allowed them to build targeted features, leading to more effective engagement. As a non-profit, this focus exercise allowed them to make the most out of the limited resources they had.

Make it fun and relatable
Schola didn’t just provide career quizzes—they infused local flavor into it! They used familiar slang, playful scenarios and Malaysian cultural references abundantly and this made career exploration feel more like a conversation than an assessment. You could see how it sparked curiosity across ages.

Break it down
Knowing students often hesitated to plan their futures, the app simplified career information into bite-sized, engaging content. Exploring career options is easier and less overwhelming now, and more students are engaging.

Accessible and inclusive to all
Schola’s mission is to make career planning resources free and accessible, reaching students in both urban and rural areas. A key factor in their success is the team’s diversity. With backgrounds in education, tech, finance, and social impact, they bring varied perspectives to the table. This helped them understand different user needs, making sure that the platform remains inclusive, relatable and relevant across demographics.

Schola is an experience that felt authentically Malaysian. But it did so much more than helping students. It sparked dialogue across generations, inspiring everyone to think about career paths with a different lens.

Where do we go from here?

What stood out to me during Makers 9 wasn’t just the impressive platforms or clever solutions. It was the optimism—the shared sense of hope for what design can achieve here.

We are a nation of talents, from tech innovators to local entrepreneurs, all united by the desire to make things better, clearer and more accessible. And every step forward counts.

We’re also on the cusp of something big. Design is no longer an afterthought. It’s now becoming the backbone of how we solve problems in Malaysia. Whether it’s transforming how students plan their futures or streamlining how businesses connect, design is driving real change.

Empathy is at the heart of driving Malaysia forward. We could do it by engaging directly with users—we listen, observe and understand their needs. We could use our local insights to craft solutions that truly resonate, and we build trust by anticipating their challenges.

Malaysians are highly collaborative by nature, so this part is natural but key for us. Partnering with developers, marketers and educators brings diverse perspectives, sparking innovation. We could focus on making our digital platforms simple and accessible so that they work for everyone. Then, we must share our insights and connect within our communities to amplify this impact so that together, we create a network that orients towards positive, lasting change.

Small steps. Big difference.

How do we play a part in this transformation?

Designing for Malaysia starts with understanding its unique blend of challenges and strengths.

This is a process that goes beyond how things look. We’re reaching deeper to address our people’s needs in ways that feel authentic and meaningful.

To do that, we must start by recognising what makes us unique.

The Malaysian flavour

Take Malaysia’s diversity. We’re a blend of cultures, languages, and traditions, each adding richness to our shared experience. This mix shapes how we interact, learn, and connect. It calls for design that is flexible, inclusive, and deeply attuned to these nuances, ensuring solutions that resonate across communities.

One key to designing digital platforms for Malaysia is supporting its multilingual culture. With Malay, Chinese, Tamil, and English speakers, robust multi-language features are essential for inclusivity.

Inclusive design also means understanding local nuances—catering to varied digital literacy with simple, clear interfaces and localised payment options.

Malaysian consumers are distinct in their digital behaviour, especially on mobile. Smartphones are the go-to device for browsing, shopping, and staying connected, so platforms need to be mobile-first. Convenience is key too—fast loading, intuitive navigation, and localised payment options like FPX and GrabPay make all the difference.

Trust plays a huge role here too. Clear privacy policies, secure transactions and visible customer support build confidence. Social proof matters too; user reviews and ratings often guide decisions, as Malaysians seek reassurance before purchasing.

Throughout Makers 9, we heard stories that proved how thoughtful design can lead to real change. Each speaker showed us the impact of listening, adapting, and building with empathy.

This is Design that connects—where every detail matters, and every choice makes a difference. It’s a reminder that when design is done right, it has the power to transform communities.

Building bridges, not only platforms

Makers 9 wouldn’t have been the same without the support of UOB. From the start, William, Sean and the entire UOB team turned their venue into more than just a space—it felt like Makers’ home for the day. We truly appreciate their hospitality and the care they took to make everything seamless.

We’ve had partners and friends from Seek, Setel, Mercedes Benz and Grab Digital Bank joining us too, exchanging insights and deepening connections. Conversations went beyond the usual, diving into how we can collaborate more meaningfully, understand their challenges, and build solutions together.

And to our volunteers—Sandra, Faiq, and Fatimah Aliaa—thank you. Your energy, kindness, and behind-the-scenes support made Makers 9 an extra special one for us.

A community is not an event, but a movement

Makers 9 felt like a reunion of dreamers, doers, and everyone in between. With over 100 attendees on a wet Saturday morning, we had an overflow of ideas and collaborations that didn’t just end when the UOB’s beautiful hall lights dimmed.

I’m certain that the seeds planted here will continue to grow and lead to more impact on our own home turf.

To all who attended, contributed, and shared their stories, terima kasih!

We’re not just designing for Malaysia—we’re designing Malaysia. Here’s to even bigger and better things at Makers 10.

Join us in designing Malaysia!

If you want to be part of the team that is designing Malaysia, we’re looking for specific people who can take us further! Come join our rank.

The post Malaysia’s quiet design revolution at Makers 9 appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.

Stampede Makers is a quarterly event that celebrates the designers and builders in all of us. Run by the team at Stampede, it gathers those who are advancing their craft in design and technology to create better, more thoughtful worlds.

Makers 8 explores growing design maturity in organisations, or what we know as the big elephant in the room that rarely gets air time in Malaysia. Many thanks to our community partner, Setel, for opening their doors to over 170 people last Saturday. Everything from learning to ideas to coffee and seats was quite literally overflowing.

From the very first session, it was clear that this was not just another conference calling itself a meetup. Stampede Makers is a movement, a call to elevate design practices, and a celebration of the old-age wisdom of “if you must go far, go together.”

Stay here and join us as we recap the highlights and insights from Makers 8.

Keynote: Design maturity — investment or cost?

Hidayu Hakim, Stampede’s UX Lead, kicked off the session with a resoundingly relevant keynote about design maturity, how it manifests in organisations and the debate about whether it is an investment or cost.

“The impact of design is not found in design.”

In her talk, Hidayu takes attention away from design for aesthetics value to driving business outcomes and enhancing user satisfaction. Integrating design into strategic decision-making enables businesses to boost engagement, increase retention, and foster customer loyalty. A customer-obsessed approach also leads to operational efficiencies and market differentiation, proving design is a smart investment.

She also highlighted that achieving design maturity is an ongoing journey requiring continuous effort and organisational support. Design must be advocated and embedded at every level, embracing cross-functional collaboration so it can be set as the base for human-centred innovation. This approach must also align with strategic goals for design to be a serious driver towards sustainable growth and long-term competitiveness.

As a researcher curious about Malaysia’s design maturity, Hidayu conducted a live poll during her talk. It revealed diverse maturity levels across organisations, contrary to her expectations of a predominantly nascent stage.

While 37% of participants were “Curious about design,” recognising its importance but still in the early stages of design integration, 28% already viewed design as a strategic element driven from the top down.

Organisations in Malaysia are increasingly recognising that design maturity is not just about design; it’s an investment in business performance and innovation. The leadership is ready to embrace design more deeply, putting the ball in the designers’ court to lead the charge.

Panel: Breaking barriers to growing design maturity

Hidayu’s talk set the stage for an in-depth panel discussion at Makers 8. The panel brought together voices from design, business, and engineering to explore the benefits, barriers, and breakthroughs in growing design maturity across organisations of all sizes. Moderating this discussion was a pleasure, given the diverse and unique perspectives each panellist brought to the table.

Joining us was Ikhwan Nazaruddin, Technical Director at Aerodyne Group, who champions the integration of design maturity within technological frameworks, highlighting its significant benefits for product development.

On the business side, Mariam Parineh, founder and strategist of VivaValet, readily incorporates user-centred design into her business strategies but discovers she needs to cascade down this understanding and inspire action to the ground level.

We also had Leonor Cogneau, a global UX strategist and design leader who has driven UX vision and strategy across diverse industries.

Completing the panel was Riccardo Lavezzari, Principal Product Designer at SEEK, who has 15 years of experience advancing design maturity in multinational organisations with a focus on outcomes and steady navigation.

Together, the panel explores the benefits, barriers and breakthroughs in growing design maturity.

“Benefits that create long-term competitive advantage.”

At Makers 8, our panel illuminated the substantial benefits of growing design maturity within organisations. Ikhwan highlighted the importance of design artefacts like visualisations and user journeys in improving product stickiness, echoing Mariam’s point that UX research and usability tests help businesses avoid early mistakes and enable strategic pivots based on evidence.

To Mariam, usability consistently trumps trends. Understanding the customer—including their psychographic, environmental, and physical challenges—yields better results than following trends. For VivaValet, bringing insights from the research and exposing their product and development team to how older users interact with technology was a game changer for both the business and the product.

Leo observed that growing design maturity boosts team morale, with teams feeling more valued, confident and innovative with every product release. This aligns with Riccardo’s insight that design maturity enhances business growth, engineering efficiency, and time-to-market. Designing with customers provides a defensible long-term competitive advantage, reinforcing the company’s innovation stack and making it difficult for others to replicate.

“It’s a persistent, continuous journey.”

Despite the clear benefits, several barriers can impede the growth of design maturity. Ikhwan pointed out that in the frenzy of achieving targets, businesses could prioritise short-term deliverables over strategic improvements, leading to quick solutions like copying competitors or making shortcuts that become UX debt that increases the cost of service this debt over time.

This issue is compounded when designers themselves shy away from business conversations, as Ikhwan observed, and thus miss the opportunity to align their work with organisational goals. On the business side, Mariam added that when the business is ready to engage and experiment, designers often play it safe and seek permission before innovating, as they are trained to establish constraints before exploring possibilities.

On the ground, achieving design maturity is a continuous journey requiring persistent effort and strategic alignment, says Riccardo. His insight highlights the need for dedication and a long-term vision, as design maturity does not happen overnight but through sustained effort and collaboration across departments.

“Be brave and be bold.”

One thing we always do at Makers is scale the strategic heights but also wrap each session with actionable tips or experiments you could immediately try on Monday. The panelists were truly generous with their tips for achieving breakthroughs in design maturity. Here’s what they said.

No design culture? Build one!


If your organisation is exhibiting signs of low design maturity, Riccardo suggests flipping the situation into a chance to create a design culture from scratch. Making the design process visible and inclusive by involving cross-functional colleagues has successfully turned these peers into staunch allies.

Speak your stakeholders’ language

Ikhwan emphasises the importance of speaking the language of stakeholders. Data is the common ground for design, product, engineering, and business, and designers could use data, especially if gathered from mixed-method research, to bring clarity and confidence to the product development process.

Initiate without permission


Mariam and Leo urge designers to take the initiative without waiting for permission. So used to designing with constraints, the freedom to explore other possibilities and really stretch design capability may be debilitating to risk-averse designers who like to play it safe. Innovation lies outside the comfort zone, so go on-site, shadow people, conduct interviews, and even start a secret design system if needed, says Leo.

Ask for opportunities


Malaysians could be shy folks. If we’re not invited, we often assume it was by design. This is certainly not the case, says Ikhwan and Mariam. Managers and business stakeholders may not know that you want to contribute, so be bold and ask for opportunities. State your intent to create value and ask for the invitation. As Mariam quipped, “No business stakeholders in their right mind will not want their people to contribute in a big way to meet organisation goals”

Create lift for others


Leo also suggests finding design allies across the organisation. We could collaborate with engineers, operations staff, or PMs eager to build meaningful products. The success achieved together can inspire others to join the effort. One way to do this is by identifying your collaborator’s KPIs and finding ways you could help them move the needed through design.

Our massive thanks to Ikhwan, Mariam, Riccardo and Leo for lending their diverse voices to Makers 8. This cross-disciplinary discourse makes for real and candid conversations that set the right foundation for how we could all join hands and work together to grow design maturity.

Amplifying voices of Makers 8

Just like the panel, Makers’ audience is diverse in background, training, and expertise. Some travel from other states, and a few are Malaysian diaspora who visit home (and stay longer) to join us.

That creates an interesting congregation that never failed to surprise with their candid and forward-thinking responses. Designers, engineers, product managers, entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers and architects sit side by side, engaging, sharing thoughts and building connections that last beyond the event. We’re fortunate to have captured that spirit of Makers magic at Makers 8.

The start of a meaningful career

In every physical Makers, we help connect design talents with workplaces where they can thrive. Our Makers Job Board saw opportunities from Ernst & Young, SEEK, Maybank, Touch ‘n Go Digital, and many more companies.

Stampede is growing our team too so if you’re looking to join a team that designs and builds thoughtful future experiences, visit our Career page for job openings.

Love, thanks and see you at Makers 9!

Makers 8 wouldn’t have been possible without our incredible team’s hard work and dedication. From coordinating logistics to managing social media to planning the attendee experience, this has labour of love written all over it.

Thank you for being part of our community of designers and builders of the future! To creating better worlds together, and see you at Makers 9 in September!

The post Advancing design maturity in organisations at Makers 8 appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.

Throughout most of 2023, we’ve been curious about our role as designers and makers when the world needs us to go beyond the confines of our craft. This is us living in a house, one day looking at the ceiling and thinking “I wonder if it can go higher than that?”.

The ceiling is our perceived limit of roles and definition of design. The future will happen with or without designers; if we want to be an active part of it, we need to raise the ceiling.

In this edition, we look to extend these conversations from inside Stampede outward.

But first, the polls!

As participants started arriving, we wanted to take the temperature of the room, so Qi, the moderator, kicked things off with a quick poll.

We learned several interesting things about our fellow designers:

• People feel mostly hopeful and confident about their role as designers, but a few are worried.
• An overwhelming majority feel psychologically safe in their current team – fantastic sign!
• The majority who joined are beginners in design advocacy, which probably explains why the Design Advocacy breakout room garnered the most interest.

Asking Big Questions

In this talk, I shared my macro and micro reflections on the state of design in 2023. Here are a few big questions I had in my design journey.

On designing in the era of automation and AI

Are designers being made redundant by automation? For low-level pixel pushing function, or derivative design using components from a library that can be automated, perhaps. But it is also an invitation to look at how designers can influence the human-AI experience. To do this, we must cultivate future-ready designers who are explorer-builders, emboldened and trans-disciplinary, who dare to push forth the meaning of interface beyond screens.

We must also be responsible for our creation. We’ve been mostly thinking short-term in product validation. Assessment of the long-term hedonic value of designed experiences and occupational stress resulting from workplace digitalisation and automation must enter our vocabulary if we are to be proponents of inclusive design.

On design relevancy and value

All around us, designers are being advised that we need to prove our value. What is unique about design that we need to do so when other disciplines like engineering don’t? In answering this, I found that the problem with design is its value manifests not within the design team itself, but in other business-critical areas.

Consider that if the design does its job well, the value is not measured in the number of Figma components inserts or interfaces we generate. The value design brings is in how we improve product conversion, increase customer success and satisfaction, and improve the speed and consistency of interface implementation for developers. So the value of design is real and all-affecting, only not within our discipline itself and not always in the short term. But remove a designer today, and the cost of servicing the design debt will become overwhelming real quickly.

On design quality

Designers are often seen as sufferers of process pedanticism. We’re guilty of following closely our process and taking the time necessary to maintain the integrity and quality of our work, often at the expense of moving fast and breaking things. On the other hand, the process is instrumental in focusing well before speeding up so we can attack problems smarter and with cost-effective precision. Therefore, the design process and innovation progress are not at odds with each other but should co-exist.

On design leadership and being good human beings to each other

We designers over-extend empathy to our users, collaborators and stakeholders, but we often forget to use it with each other. As leaders, we spend so much time being the shit umbrella that we sometimes forget to sow and nurture the ground under us so people can thrive. Care is a positive workplace currency, but those who care most passionately are often the first to burn out. As leaders, we need to ask our people and ourselves how to become better support systems for each other.

The shift from learning to making opportunities

Makers are inherent learners, though sometimes we could fall into the trap of learning without actually doing it or waiting for opportunities to arrive without creating them.

Four of our designers shared their observations and reflections on the shift they had to make in 2023.

On design advocacy, Mai Sarah shared her experience inviting non-designers into usability testing and product ideation sessions. When design is open and made visible to others, we start seeing a proliferation of design enthusiasts and allies, as Azim found in WUC. His conversations with others in WUC not only led him to new collaborative ventures but also exposed him to the breadth and depth of the UX field.

Reflecting on Eric Snowden’s wisdom, the VP of Design at Adobe, we highlighted the importance of empathy towards our teammates, beyond our users. Recognizing empathy as a crucial element for creating a sense of safety, Adiel advocated for some ways to foster psychological safety within a team. These include practicing open communication, seeking feedback regularly, and placing trust in the capabilities of the team.

We also talked about building a future-proof team, Hidayu shared her key takeaways from the Design Leaders conference, emphasizing the need to shift the design conversation from solving issues to understanding the real problem first. Building a future-proof team also means we need to be inclusive of other disciplines, leveraging new perspectives to reach our common goal, and ultimately raising the ceiling of our profession.

The after-party experiment

Every online event feels unceremoniously cut short and awkward at the end. The host said bye. People turned on their webcam for a split second to wave to everyone. Everyone then tried to hit the Leave Meeting button while maintaining that awkward smile.

We have come a long way with online events, yet the solution to this sudden withdrawal remains elusive.

The topics we chose this time were big – each could be its own Makers theme. As we looked for ways to get people to delve, expand, and connect over them meaningfully, it became clearer that an experiment was in order.

We figured nothing beats genuine connection around a topic you’re passionate about. What happens if we create intentional spaces for people to connect deeper around things they care about? Can we do that remotely?

We launched five after-party conversations, discussing big themes like growing future-ready design teams, amplifying design value, psychological safety, and stretching our craft’s breadth and depth. Our design apprentices, from various non-design backgrounds, also hosted their conversations on fusing old craft and new.

Despite the initial tech hiccup (because of Murphy’s Law), people stayed long into the night, conversing and sharing their takes so that together, we could move the industry into the future.

This is the very spirit of Stampede Makers.

— A massive thank you to everyone who made Makers more special with every edition. If you want to join Makers #7 in February, likely in person, watch our social media posts.

The post Raising the Ceiling of Design in Malaysia at Makers 6 appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.