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Design Management Masterclass

Yury Vetrov

Your instructor
Yury Vetrov

Workshop includes:

  • Working examples to take away
  • Interactive sessions
  • Workshop recordings
  • Dedicated Q&A time
  • Smashing Certificate

Unfortunately, this workshop is fully sold out! But you can join the waiting list in case a ticket becomes available:


Workshop, 5×2h + Q&A Wed & Thu, Dec 1–15 2021
09:00 – 11:30 AM PT (Pacific, US) 18:00 – 20:30 CET (Europe)

Are you working as a designer or design manager in an organisation and want to get better results? Want to take the design maturity of your organisation to the next level? Design Management Patterns is the way forward. In this practical 5-day interactive workshop, Yury will teach you how to analyse your organisation’s design maturity and provide you with practical ways to improve.


But my organisation is unique!

Yes it is, so seeing and understanding design management patterns is how you can learn from others. Applying their learnings — in a structured manner — to your organisation is the best way to get better results. You will see how improving the design maturity of your organization has a direct effect on you and the business and how to implement this strategy practically.

We’ll touch on the following topics:

  • Design maturity model — how maturity models work in general and my version with three levels (operational, tactical, and strategic) in particular.
  • Design management patterns framework — how to re-use methods & practices.
  • Operational level — how designers can become better individual contributors. How to be a good design leader, earning credibility & quick wins, hiring Т-shaped designers, building a common toolset.
  • Tactical level — you will learn how designers can become an integral part of a product team and deeply integrates design into other product development tasks and processes. Learn how to set up an organizational structure, build a stakeholder map & grow teamwork skills. You will also get insights into developing other designers, governing a design system, solving design debt, and meeting user needs.
  • Strategic level — you will learn how designers can become visionaries who influence strategic decisions on evolving a product. Build company-wide design literacy, implement co-design, plan for the long term, finding design metrics that connect to business KPIs, discovering & defining user needs, combining a brand and user interface.
  • Strategy implementation — how to outline a design strategy and make it work.

In This Workshop, You’ll Learn:

  • Various tools and methods to assess the design maturity of your design team and company.
  • How to correctly analyze how your current design maturity affects products and business — using the design management canvas.
  • How to use — and in-depth understand the Design Management Canvas.
  • How to outline a strategy to increase the design maturity in your organisation (based on the design management canvas + strategy draft).
  • To create a Design Strategy Draft.
  • How to implement this Design Strategy Draft in your organisation.

Who Should Attend

Designers and design managers who want to get more out of themselves, their team and their organisation.

What Hardware/Software Do You Need?

To get the most out of the workshop, you’ll need access to Zoom (for audio, video and screensharing), Miro (for hands-on activities), and Slack (using a SmashingConf private channel for workshop communications).


About Yury Vetrov

Yury is an experienced UX designer from Russia. He used to run his own UX consultancy, and ran brand & design teams for the Mail.ru Group — serving 100+ million users. He now leads several brand & design teams at the Raiffeisen Bank. Besides this, he is an experienced writer and speaker, and runs one of the biggest design conferences in Russia.

Time & Schedule

This workshop is split over five days. Our virtual doors open at 8:45, we start at 9 AM PT.

The workshop sessions will run on the following days:

  • Wed, December 1, 09:00 – 11:30 AM PT (18:00 – 20:30 CET)
  • Tue, December 2, 09:00 – 11:30 AM PT (18:00 – 20:30 CET)
  • Wed, December 8, 09:00 – 11:30 AM PT (18:00 – 20:30 CET)
  • Tue, December 9, 09:00 – 11:30 AM PT (18:00 – 20:30 CET)
  • Wed, December 15, 09:00 – 11:30 AM PT (18:00 – 20:30 CET)



Day 1: An Introduction to the Design Maturity Model

8:45 am PT
Virtual doors open, registration, chat and introductions.

9:00 am – 10:00 am
Design maturity models concept & overview of key methods & analyzing current situation in your company

10:00 am – 10:15 am
Break

10:15 am – 11:15 am
Design management patterns concept, discussing key pain points and choosing the most valuable patterns.

11:15 am – 11:30 am
Q&A with Yury on the day’s material. Networking!

Day 2: Operational Level

8:45 am PT
Virtual doors open, registration, chat and introductions.

9:00 am – 10:00 am
Overview of patterns on an operational level.

10:00 am – 10:15 am
Break

10:15 am – 11:15 am
Looking at the different patterns on an operational level.

11:15 am – 11:30 am
Q&A with Yury on the day’s material. Networking!

Day 3: Tactical Level

8:45 am PT
Virtual doors open, registration, chat and introductions.

9:00 am – 10:00 am
Overview of patterns on an tactical level.

10:00 am – 10:15 am
Break

10:15 am – 11:15 am
Looking at the different patterns on an tactical level.

11:15 am – 11:30 am
Q&A with Yury on the day’s material. Networking!

Day 4: Strategic Level

8:45 am PT
Virtual doors open, registration, chat and introductions.

9:00 am – 10:00 am
Overview of patterns on a strategic level.

10:00 am – 10:15 am
Break

10:15 am – 11:15 am
Looking at the different patterns on a strategic level.

11:15 am – 11:30 am
Q&A with Yury on the day’s material. Networking!

Day 5: Design Strategy

8:45 am PT
Virtual doors open, registration, chat and introductions.

9:00 am – 10:00 am
Long-term design strategy approach and strategy implementation tools.

10:00 am – 10:15 am
Break

10:15 am – 11:15 am
How to turn design management canvas into design strategy draft and how to apply this to your own situation. Tips, final words and reflecting on the course results.

11:15 am – 11:30 am
Q&A with Yury on the day’s material. Goodbye’s!


Unfortunately, this workshop is fully sold out! But you can join the waiting list in case a ticket becomes available:


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