Pamela Hardy

If your personas describe users in isolation, you’re limiting impact. Real work is collaborative, constrained, and increasingly shaped by automated systems. Our design artifacts need to reflect that reality. This piece explores what it means to expand personas beyond the single user, and why relationships between actors matter just as much as the actors themselves. https://lnkd.in/g4dxrrHx #designexcellence #designleadership #userpersona #AIintegration

27

1 Comment

Terminal Fluency: As AI becomes more central to Designer workflows, I’ve been seeing more questions about whether the terminal is still worth learning. I think it is, terminal is core skill that compounds and unlocks next-level control over agents. Make terminal your second brain with this tmux + vim cheatsheet (or just get started) and keep your hands on the keyboard. https://lnkd.in/eV5bAFhF

35

1 Comment

Are IC enterprise designers unintentionally sabotaging their portfolios in this AI-obsessed market? If you’re a Product Designer updating your case studies… you’ll probably want to read this... I’m actively hiring two Sr-to-Lead Product Designers, and after reviewing a lot of portfolios recently, a pattern keeps repeating: 👉 Too many portfolios are leading with AI chatbot projects. Not sprinkled in… leading with them. Often multiple ones in the same portfolio as Case Study #1 and #2. Here’s the problem👇 AI chatbots are important, but they’re not the center of gravity for most enterprise / SaaS product teams. In the last six-nine months, many of these patterns are already shipped and commoditized. And now with agentic flows, the UI work becomes more about reviewing, validating, and confirming work AI has already completed behind the scenes. Which means… “Old school” multi-step, end-to-end product flows are still valid – with a twist. Because every IC job post right now is calling for “high craft” or “consumer-grade design” – it’s no longer acceptable for flows to simply “get the job done.” Hiring panels want to see refinement and polish in the final output.  Otherwise you’ll get the feedback we give far too often: “The design thinking is great… but the visual design is just… [sigh/meh]… not quite there.” Visual craft always matters. Everywhere. At every company. Whether D2C or B2B or Enterprise. So if you’re refreshing your portfolio, here’s my ask as someone hiring in this tough market: Don’t over-index on AI chatbots just because they’re hot right now. Show me your complex, nuanced, multi-stage flows—the kind that prove you can handle the real product work most teams need. Just make sure they’re polished (ie. That “high craft” buzzword again), intentional, and tight. Because that’s what will actually differentiate you in 2025 and into 2026. And now the proverbial 🔌: If you’re a high-performing Sr. or Lead looking to innovate in the HR and Comp tech space, holler at me in my DMs or Comments. Thanks! 🙏

36

3 Comments

Most redesigns focus on visuals. The meaningful ones focus on systems that aligning design, technology, and user experience into one framework that can scale. I break this down in my latest Forbes Agency Council piece: Design as a System: How Strategy Shapes Every Experience. https://lnkd.in/gekgMZyr

4

1 Comment

Forrester reports that companies investing in design-driven innovation see a 228% ROI. As someone who advocates for design to have a seat at the table, I love this stat! But companies evolve… and so should design. It’s no longer *just* about securing a seat; it’s about questioning if you want a seat at *that* table. Maybe it’s about building a new one. One that welcomes the voices too often left out. ❤️

18

1 Comment

What happens when every design principle you've built your career on gets inverted? 🤔 That's the challenge for design leaders today. Our latest blog is a must-read for anyone in a design leadership role: https://lnkd.in/gDb7cZZV Inside Riley Coleman, Founder & AI Enablement Coach at AI Flywheel, shares three essential actions for every design leader to build their own AI literacy, create adaptive capacity within their teams, and lead with confidence. This isn't just about surviving; it's about pioneering.

7

3 Comments

Check out the latest drop from The Hocket by my partner in crime Nick Eberhardt. If you are unfamiliar with complexity theory, this is a wonderful primer, and a succinct acknowledgement that the world we live in, and thus design for, does not fall into neat patterns. If things are inherently both ordered and chaotic at the same time, how might we design for that? #designthinking #design #UX

3

UX designers: your portfolio should be doing more than showing work. It should be landing you a job. Shopify shares key tips for designing a UX portfolio that gets you noticed and opens doors. https://bit.ly/4oK1L3O

3