About Laura Yarrow
Laura works in UK Central Government as the Head of Design at HM Land Registry, leading design across a variety of public services that underpins the UK economy worth £7 trillion per year.
She has spent the last 16 years in the digital industry, first as a web developer and eventually moving into user research and user experience design, fuelled by a growing curiosity about the people she was creating products and services for.
Her passions are design strategy and leadership, soft skills for UX practitioners, behavioural psychology and generally understanding why people do what they do. When she’s not immersed in experience design and spending time with her family, she can also be found reading and trying to write her own book, taming her out of control garden, and playing the piano out of tune.
At the table or on the menu?
Design is often undervalued, underfunded and completely misunderstood. It can leave designers fighting for that elusive seat at the table, advocating for cultural change to do good, impactful design work. If we don't have that seat, then we are more likely to be "on the menu" - being eaten alive!
We uphold ourselves as the experts in human behaviour, but we probably spend the least amount of time understanding the people that matter the most when we’re trying to change the organisational culture - our colleagues and stakeholders.
This talk explores some of the inadvertent boundaries we put up in design and how to break them down, so we can start to build sustainable relationships to take ourselves off the menu, and get that all important seat at the table.
Laura spoke on day three, June 30th
Day three focused on growing. Scale product design with design systems.