About Benaz Irani
Benaz Irani is a design leader who empowers teams to build products that provide business impact, serve customers better and are usable by all. She thrives solving complex enterprise problems, from previously helping restaurants at OpenTable, to now focussing on live events at Ticketmaster. Design aside, she’s passionate about growing designers into leaders by using a coaching mindset, and also runs Therapy for Designers, a monthly group that drills into the soft skills of design.
Having just moved to London, she's making the most of Europe at her doorstep by travelling most weekends and eating out at as many restaurants as possible.
The designer alter ego:
Embracing a different persona to help strike a balance between compassion and confidence within your teams
Designers are like superheroes,with the superpower of empathy. We tap into our users' emotions to address their concerns and also connect with our teammates' feelings for close collaboration. However, this strength can sometimes become a weakness. Too much empathy can lead to excessive worry about others' opinions, over-agreeability, and over-accommodation to keep the peace.
And like superheroes, designers need alter-egos to overcome these challenges. In this talk, we'll discuss how designers can adopt alter-egos at work to cultivate confidence, assertiveness, direct communication and knowing when and how to push back.
Strategies for designers:
- Practice assertiveness
- Embrace constructive conflict
- Know when and how to push back
- Set clear boundaries
- Be the decision maker
Benaz is speaking on day three, June 20th
Day three focuses on Design Ops and Design Systems.