Remaking the Making Company: Moving from Product to Experience
Summary
In this talk, Mike, the VP of Experience Design at Autodesk, shares his approach to leading change within a 33-year-old global software company. Emphasizing that change is a team sport, he highlights how Autodesk’s leadership supports this transformation. Mike explains how he treated joining Autodesk as a design problem, spending extensive time listening across the company, from interns to the CEO, to understand the challenges. He outlines four key pillars of his strategy: building community by democratizing design through programs like Luma; focusing on customers by amplifying research and direct customer engagement; connecting experiences by unifying Autodesk’s disparate products through a consistent visual language and targeted Tiger teams; and elevating quality by shifting the mindset from MVP to Minimal Lovable Product. Mike illustrates how silos within the organization hinder progress and how his federated design model fosters collaboration among 320 designers worldwide. A highlight includes hosting an internal experience design conference and running a global visual design hackathon to crowdsource ideas. The talk closes with optimism about the progress made and the ongoing journey to deliver delightful, well-crafted products.
Key Insights
-
•
Change must be embraced at the leadership level and cannot be driven by individuals alone.
-
•
Design should be seen as a verb and a collective effort; everyone in the company can and should be a designer.
-
•
Democratizing design tools and methods, like the Luma training program, enables non-designers to participate effectively in the design process.
-
•
Organizational silos are major obstacles to effective design and product cohesion, requiring intentional connective initiatives.
-
•
A federated model for design leadership balances autonomy of distributed teams with needed cross-company collaboration.
-
•
Focusing on customers means banning the word 'user' to humanize and connect people to real customer stories and needs.
-
•
Bringing customers into the product development process through co-creation accelerates meaningful innovation.
-
•
Creating a unified visual design language across 130+ products acquired over decades addresses consistency and brand identity challenges.
-
•
Tiger teams targeting ‘signature product moments’ are an effective way to break down complex cross-product problems.
-
•
Replacing the concept of MVP with Minimal Lovable Product encourages shipping products with quality and emotional connection, not just minimal features.
Notable Quotes
"I treat everything in life as if it’s a design problem."
"Change really cannot be done by any individual person. Change is a team sport."
"Design is not a noun. Design is an active verb."
"Everyone is a designer."
"The word user kills your ability to put faces around our customers."
"We have to go from shipping a minimal viable product to creating a minimal lovable experience."
"Organizational silos are killers."
"The only way you’re going to go from good to great is through well-crafted experiences."
"You have to ask yourself, are you ready for the messiness, the hard choices, and the chaos that come with change?"
"We created Tiger teams that work like cancer cell hunters, targeting isolated problems and then dissolving after their work is done."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"If you ask our partners what we do, they might say I’m not totally sure, but I know that we need it."
Rebecca GimenezWork in Progress: Service Design at Airbnb
December 3, 2024
"Mastercard designers grew meaningfully for both people and business despite uncertainty."
Lada GorlenkoTheme 2 Intro
June 9, 2022
"There’s a tension in repositories having to serve immediate product decisions and more durable, strategic knowledge."
Brigette Metzler Dana ChrisfieldResearch Repositories: A global project by the ResearchOps Community
August 27, 2020
"Journey mapping was created with Intersection, founded by Chuck Pelley and Joan Greger, to help us look in the mirror."
Discussion
June 9, 2017
"Designing a service is really designing a new relationship between government and people, who come with enormous baggage."
Sarah Brooks Jennifer PahlkaFireside chat with Sarah Brooks and Jen Pahlka
October 21, 2021
"Participants can skip any questions they don’t feel comfortable answering; most demographic questions are optional to respect privacy."
Lisa Spitz Nikki BrandBuilding Trust Through Equitable Research Practices
November 18, 2022
"You aren't going to understand the healthcare ecosystem right off the bat; it’s incredibly complex."
Theresa NeilDesigning for Wellness: Specializing in Healthcare
May 22, 2024
"Cursor is super transparent about what files it creates and how it builds the logic step by step."
Maverick Chan Claire LinFrom Doodle to Demo: AI as Our Storytelling Partner
October 23, 2025
"Safety is a state of our nervous system, not simply a feeling or relationship."
Alla WeinbergDesign Teams Need Psychological Safety: Here’s How to Create It
September 8, 2022
