Designing for Impact: How to Connect Design to Business Outcomes

Do you work in product or design? Do you want to learn to speak the language of business to show the value and impact of your design work? 

Come along to Aquent’s in-person ‘Humans in Design’ panel event in Sydney, and learn how to better navigate between business-oriented skills and advocating for design and user experience. 

You’ll hear from four inspiring leaders on our panel—each has led design within various-sized organisations. They’ll discuss how to drive impact by aligning design decisions to business growth and commercial outcomes. 

Moderated by Kate Verran, HCD Talent Specialist at Aquent Australia, our panel of industry experts will discuss:

• Tips to manage the product design and product manager dynamic including pitfalls to avoid and insights to drive impact from both perspectives. 
• Navigating diverse sectors and organisational structures—start-ups to enterprises, tech and product to retail, finance to government—to drive impactful change.
• How to understand business objectives from the perspective of various roles (product, UI, UX, research).

With a focus on practical, actionable advice and strategies, we're aiming for you to leave with insights you can apply to your design practice.

Our industry panel:

• Greg Hodgson, Head of Design (Enterprise) @ Atlassian
• Mel Hambarsoomian, Director of Product Design @ Zip Co
• Jacalin Ding, Design Educator and Principal Product Designer @ Service NSW
• Bec Jolly, Head of Digital Design @ ANZ

Event details:
🗓️ Thursday 23rd May
⏰ 5:30 - 7:30 pm
📍 Atlassian, Level 6, 341 George Street, Sydney (entry via Wynyard Street)

Agenda:
5.30 pm: Networking, pizza and drinks
6.00 pm: Panel discussion
6.45 pm: Q&A
7.10 pm: Additional networking
7.30 pm: Close

Join us in a relaxed and social environment where we’ll provide pizza and drinks. 

Spaces are limited and we are sure to fill up fast, so reserve your spot ASAP so you don’t miss out. Feel free to invite your design and product colleagues as well!

More about our panellists:

Jacalin Ding, Design Educator & Principal Product Designer @ Service NSW
Jacalin is a seasoned product design leader and business strategist with more than 10 years of experience in building design teams and turning big product ideas into successful products. She has worked with start-ups, enterprises, and agencies in various locations, including New York, Vancouver, Tokyo, Singapore, and Sydney. Since 2019, Jacalin has been a design educator. She has taught and mentored more than 350+ designers and facilitated 50+ workshops that impacted more than 10,000 creative problem solvers worldwide.

Greg Hodgson, Head of Design (Enterprise) @ Atlassian
Greg is a leader of all sorts of technology teams. Creative teams - innovation labs, design teams, UX teams, coders or product people & delivery teams - engineering cohorts, hybrid teams and remote delivery teams. He currently leads the Design Cohort for Enterprise at Atlassian, making sure to take care of the needs of our largest and most complex customers.

Mel Hambarsoomian, Director of Product Design @ Zip Co
Mel has over 13 years of experience in Experience and Product Design. She's the Director of Product Design at Zip leading a team of designers and researchers. Previously she's worked in London and Berlin, and in organisations including MOO, Telegraph UK, Ansarada, and Deloitte Digital. In addition to all things Design, she's passionate about design maturity, leadership, strategy, and Product ways of working.

Bec Jolly, Head of Digital Design @ ANZ
Bec uses her 20 years of design experience to build high-calibre, diverse design teams that manage and understand business goals and customer problems and transform them into meaningful products. Her focus is on delivering intuitive and enjoyable user experiences for customers across the entire customer journey.