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Design & Business

Design decision making - is it possible to manage the product by design?

Power Talk

🇬🇧 English

About

In this power talk, Bartłomiej Lenard will show a few examples of design decisions that made a strong impact on strategic product value. He'll analyze it through a retrospective approach and go deeper into designers' thinking processes, showing when designers make decisions and what decisions they make. He'll also bounce it off a few decision-making theories.

Talk by

Photo of Bartłomiej Lenard, Experience Design Lead at EY

Bartłomiej Lenard

Experience Design Lead at EY

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From the recording

Talk in brief

A compact argument that design is not merely downstream execution but a way of managing product uncertainty. Designers and managers both shape strategy, test assumptions, and influence which value a product can create, although they approach decisions through different models. Research remains important in unfamiliar contexts, while design also contributes by making possibilities tangible and exposing consequences. The talk encourages designers to present accessibility, customer reach, and other design concerns in the strategic and financial language of product decisions.

Key takeaways

01
Recognize design as strategic product work
Product strategy is shaped during design when teams frame problems, compare possibilities, and decide which assumptions deserve investment.
Watch from 3:38
02
Treat intuition as a reasoning process
Expert intuition combines learned patterns and context rather than producing an unexplained answer in a single moment.
Watch from 6:28
03
Use action to update assumptions
A design intervention can both seek an outcome and create evidence that changes the team’s understanding of the product.
Watch from 9:23
04
Translate accessibility into future value
Mapping inclusion to customers, revenue, and product options helps accessibility enter strategic conversations earlier.
Watch from 12:12
05
Research unfamiliar users and contexts
Strategic design confidence should narrow when the team lacks knowledge of the situation, audience, or consequences.
Watch from 18:16

Video chapters

1:07Is design a form of management
The opening compares experienced designers who became managers and asks what capabilities the roles share.
3:38Strategy formed inside design decisions
Product direction changes as design frames the problem and makes alternatives concrete.
6:28Different models of intuition and choice
Decision-making frameworks show intuition as a layered process rather than an instant answer.
9:23Learning while acting on the product
Design work changes assumptions at the same time that it attempts to create an effect.
12:12Making accessibility strategically legible
An accessibility matrix connects inclusive choices to customers, income, and future product value.
15:13Widening the designer’s product influence
Ordinary design practice can include process, product, and managerial decisions without claiming every role.
18:16Research limits strategic overconfidence
Unknown users and contexts require direct learning even when an experienced designer sees a familiar pattern.

Read edited transcript highlights

These concise notes were edited from automatic captions and checked against the talk structure. They are not a verbatim transcript.

Strategy is present before a screen is finished

Design decisions determine which customer is prioritized, which problem is considered solvable, and which future options remain available. Managers may formally own strategy, but designers influence it whenever they frame alternatives and reveal consequences. A team should make that influence explicit so important product choices are discussed rather than hidden inside artifacts.

Watch from 3:38

Intuition contains a chain of learned comparisons

An experienced answer can arrive quickly while still depending on many earlier observations and failures. Designers should avoid presenting intuition as authority detached from reasoning. Name the pattern, describe why it appears relevant, and identify signals that would challenge it. This makes expertise usable by the team and leaves room for context to overturn it.

Watch from 6:28

Design action can produce evidence

A prototype or product change is not only an attempt to improve a metric. It can expose whether the team’s assumptions about behavior, feasibility, and value were sound. Plan the action with an expected effect and a way to observe it, then use the result to revise the model rather than merely optimize the execution.

Watch from 9:23

Accessibility belongs in the value model

Inclusive design is easier to postpone when it is framed only as an additional requirement. Mapping accessibility to customer reach, reduced risk, future markets, and more resilient product choices makes its strategic effect visible. Commercial language should not replace the ethical case, but it can help accessibility shape priorities before constraints are locked in.

Watch from 12:12

Research is strongest where context is unknown

Design expertise does not remove the need to learn from people. When the audience, setting, or consequences are unfamiliar, prior patterns may mislead. Research should target those uncertainties and inform the decision at hand. The goal is neither intuition alone nor process by default, but judgment calibrated to how much the team actually knows.

Watch from 18:16

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