Category: Blog

Picture this: You’re in a meeting room at your tech company, and two people are having what looks like the same conversation about the same design problem. One is talking about whether the team has the right skills to tackle it. The other is diving deep into whether the solution actually solves the user’s problem. Same room, same problem, completely different lenses.

This is the beautiful, sometimes messy reality of having both a Design Manager and a Lead Designer on the same team. And if you’re wondering how to make this work without creating confusion, overlap, or the dreaded “too many cooks” scenario, you’re asking the right question.

The traditional answer has been to draw clean lines on an org chart. The Design Manager handles people, the Lead Designer handles craft. Problem solved, right? Except clean org charts are fantasy. In reality, both roles care deeply about team health, design quality, and shipping great work. 

The magic happens when you embrace the overlap instead of fighting it—when you start thinking of your design org as a design organism.

The Anatomy of a Healthy Design Team

Here’s what I’ve learned from years of being on both sides of this equation: think of your design team as a living organism. The Design Manager tends to the mind (the psychological safety, the career growth, the team dynamics). The Lead Designer tends to the body (the craft skills, the design standards, the hands-on work that ships to users).

But just like mind and body aren’t completely separate systems, so, too, do these roles overlap in important ways. You can’t have a healthy person without both working in harmony. The trick is knowing where those overlaps are and how to navigate them gracefully.

When we look at how healthy teams actually function, three critical systems emerge. Each requires both roles to work together, but with one taking primary responsibility for keeping that system strong.

The Nervous System: People & Psychology

Primary caretaker: Design Manager
Supporting role: Lead Designer

The nervous system is all about signals, feedback, and psychological safety. When this system is healthy, information flows freely, people feel safe to take risks, and the team can adapt quickly to new challenges.

The Design Manager is the primary caretaker here. They’re monitoring the team’s psychological pulse, ensuring feedback loops are healthy, and creating the conditions for people to grow. They’re hosting career conversations, managing workload, and making sure no one burns out.

But the Lead Designer plays a crucial supporting role. They’re providing sensory input about craft development needs, spotting when someone’s design skills are stagnating, and helping identify growth opportunities that the Design Manager might miss.

Design Manager tends to:

• Career conversations and growth planning
• Team psychological safety and dynamics
• Workload management and resource allocation
• Performance reviews and feedback systems
• Creating learning opportunities

Lead Designer supports by:

• Providing craft-specific feedback on team member development
• Identifying design skill gaps and growth opportunities
• Offering design mentorship and guidance
• Signaling when team members are ready for more complex challenges

The Muscular System: Craft & Execution

Primary caretaker: Lead Designer
Supporting role: Design Manager

The muscular system is about strength, coordination, and skill development. When this system is healthy, the team can execute complex design work with precision, maintain consistent quality, and adapt their craft to new challenges.

The Lead Designer is the primary caretaker here. They’re setting design standards, providing craft coaching, and ensuring that shipping work meets the quality bar. They’re the ones who can tell you if a design decision is sound or if we’re solving the right problem.

But the Design Manager plays a crucial supporting role. They’re ensuring the team has the resources and support to do their best craft work, like proper nutrition and recovery time for an athlete.

Lead Designer tends to:

• Definition of design standards and system usage
• Feedback on what design work meets the standard
• Experience direction for the product
• Design decisions and product-wide alignment
• Innovation and craft advancement

Design Manager supports by:

• Ensuring design standards are understood and adopted across the team
• Confirming experience direction is being followed
• Supporting practices and systems that scale without bottlenecking
• Facilitating design alignment across teams
• Providing resources and removing obstacles to great craft work

The Circulatory System: Strategy & Flow

Shared caretakers: Both Design Manager and Lead Designer

The circulatory system is about how information, decisions, and energy flow through the team. When this system is healthy, strategic direction is clear, priorities are aligned, and the team can respond quickly to new opportunities or challenges.

This is where true partnership happens. Both roles are responsible for keeping the circulation strong, but they’re bringing different perspectives to the table.

Lead Designer contributes:

• User needs are met by the product
• Overall product quality and experience
• Strategic design initiatives
• Research-based user needs for each initiative

Design Manager contributes:

• Communication to team and stakeholders
• Stakeholder management and alignment
• Cross-functional team accountability
• Strategic business initiatives

Both collaborate on:

• Co-creation of strategy with leadership
• Team goals and prioritization approach
• Organizational structure decisions
• Success measures and frameworks

Keeping the Organism Healthy

The key to making this partnership sing is understanding that all three systems need to work together. A team with great craft skills but poor psychological safety will burn out. A team with great culture but weak craft execution will ship mediocre work. A team with both but poor strategic circulation will work hard on the wrong things.

Be Explicit About Which System You’re Tending

When you’re in a meeting about a design problem, it helps to acknowledge which system you’re primarily focused on. “I’m thinking about this from a team capacity perspective” (nervous system) or “I’m looking at this through the lens of user needs” (muscular system) gives everyone context for your input.

This isn’t about staying in your lane. It’s about being transparent as to which lens you’re using, so the other person knows how to best add their perspective.

Create Healthy Feedback Loops

The most successful partnerships I’ve seen establish clear feedback loops between the systems:

Nervous system signals to muscular system: “The team is struggling with confidence in their design skills” → Lead Designer provides more craft coaching and clearer standards.

Muscular system signals to nervous system: “The team’s craft skills are advancing faster than their project complexity” → Design Manager finds more challenging growth opportunities.

Both systems signal to circulatory system: “We’re seeing patterns in team health and craft development that suggest we need to adjust our strategic priorities.”

Handle Handoffs Gracefully

The most critical moments in this partnership are when something moves from one system to another. This might be when a design standard (muscular system) needs to be rolled out across the team (nervous system), or when a strategic initiative (circulatory system) needs specific craft execution (muscular system).

Make these transitions explicit. “I’ve defined the new component standards. Can you help me think through how to get the team up to speed?” or “We’ve agreed on this strategic direction. I’m going to focus on the specific user experience approach from here.”

Stay Curious, Not Territorial

The Design Manager who never thinks about craft, or the Lead Designer who never considers team dynamics, is like a doctor who only looks at one body system. Great design leadership requires both people to care about the whole organism, even when they’re not the primary caretaker.

This means asking questions rather than making assumptions. “What do you think about the team’s craft development in this area?” or “How do you see this impacting team morale and workload?” keeps both perspectives active in every decision.

When the Organism Gets Sick

Even with clear roles, this partnership can go sideways. Here are the most common failure modes I’ve seen:

System Isolation

The Design Manager focuses only on the nervous system and ignores craft development. The Lead Designer focuses only on the muscular system and ignores team dynamics. Both people retreat to their comfort zones and stop collaborating.

The symptoms: Team members get mixed messages, work quality suffers, morale drops.

The treatment: Reconnect around shared outcomes. What are you both trying to achieve? Usually it’s great design work that ships on time from a healthy team. Figure out how both systems serve that goal.

Poor Circulation

Strategic direction is unclear, priorities keep shifting, and neither role is taking responsibility for keeping information flowing.

The symptoms: Team members are confused about priorities, work gets duplicated or dropped, deadlines are missed.

The treatment: Explicitly assign responsibility for circulation. Who’s communicating what to whom? How often? What’s the feedback loop?

Autoimmune Response

One person feels threatened by the other’s expertise. The Design Manager thinks the Lead Designer is undermining their authority. The Lead Designer thinks the Design Manager doesn’t understand craft.

The symptoms: Defensive behavior, territorial disputes, team members caught in the middle.

The treatment: Remember that you’re both caretakers of the same organism. When one system fails, the whole team suffers. When both systems are healthy, the team thrives.

The Payoff

Yes, this model requires more communication. Yes, it requires both people to be secure enough to share responsibility for team health. But the payoff is worth it: better decisions, stronger teams, and design work that’s both excellent and sustainable.

When both roles are healthy and working well together, you get the best of both worlds: deep craft expertise and strong people leadership. When one person is out sick, on vacation, or overwhelmed, the other can help maintain the team’s health. When a decision requires both the people perspective and the craft perspective, you’ve got both right there in the room.

Most importantly, the framework scales. As your team grows, you can apply the same system thinking to new challenges. Need to launch a design system? Lead Designer tends to the muscular system (standards and implementation), Design Manager tends to the nervous system (team adoption and change management), and both tend to circulation (communication and stakeholder alignment).

The Bottom Line

The relationship between a Design Manager and Lead Designer isn’t about dividing territories. It’s about multiplying impact. When both roles understand they’re tending to different aspects of the same healthy organism, magic happens.

The mind and body work together. The team gets both the strategic thinking and the craft excellence they need. And most importantly, the work that ships to users benefits from both perspectives.

So the next time you’re in that meeting room, wondering why two people are talking about the same problem from different angles, remember: you’re watching shared leadership in action. And if it’s working well, both the mind and body of your design team are getting stronger.

As a product builder over too many years to mention, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen promising ideas go from zero to hero in a few weeks, only to fizzle out within months.

Financial products, which is the field I work in, are no exception. With people’s real hard-earned money on the line, user expectations running high, and a crowded market, it’s tempting to throw as many features at the wall as possible and hope something sticks. But this approach is a recipe for disaster. Here’s why:

The pitfalls of feature-first development

When you start building a financial product from the ground up, or are migrating existing customer journeys from paper or telephony channels onto online banking or mobile apps, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of creating new features. You might think, “If I can just add one more thing that solves this particular user problem, they’ll love me!” But what happens when you inevitably hit a roadblock because the narcs (your security team!) don’t like it? When a hard-fought feature isn’t as popular as you thought, or it breaks due to unforeseen complexity?

This is where the concept of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) comes in. Jason Fried’s book Getting Real and his podcast Rework often touch on this idea, even if he doesn’t always call it that. An MVP is a product that provides just enough value to your users to keep them engaged, but not so much that it becomes overwhelming or difficult to maintain. It sounds like an easy concept but it requires a razor sharp eye, a ruthless edge and having the courage to stick by your opinion because it is easy to be seduced by “the Columbo Effect”… when there’s always “just one more thing…” that someone wants to add.

The problem with most finance apps, however, is that they often become a reflection of the internal politics of the business rather than an experience solely designed around the customer. This means that the focus is on delivering as many features and functionalities as possible to satisfy the needs and desires of competing internal departments, rather than providing a clear value proposition that is focused on what the people out there in the real world want. As a result, these products can very easily bloat to become a mixed bag of confusing, unrelated and ultimately unlovable customer experiences—a feature salad, you might say.

The importance of bedrock

So what’s a better approach? How can we build products that are stable, user-friendly, and—most importantly—stick?

That’s where the concept of “bedrock” comes in. Bedrock is the core element of your product that truly matters to users. It’s the fundamental building block that provides value and stays relevant over time.

In the world of retail banking, which is where I work, the bedrock has got to be in and around the regular servicing journeys. People open their current account once in a blue moon but they look at it every day. They sign up for a credit card every year or two, but they check their balance and pay their bill at least once a month.

Identifying the core tasks that people want to do and then relentlessly striving to make them easy to do, dependable, and trustworthy is where the gravy’s at.

But how do you get to bedrock? By focusing on the “MVP” approach, prioritizing simplicity, and iterating towards a clear value proposition. This means cutting out unnecessary features and focusing on delivering real value to your users.

It also means having some guts, because your colleagues might not always instantly share your vision to start with. And controversially, sometimes it can even mean making it clear to customers that you’re not going to come to their house and make their dinner. The occasional “opinionated user interface design” (i.e. clunky workaround for edge cases) might sometimes be what you need to use to test a concept or buy you space to work on something more important.

Practical strategies for building financial products that stick

So what are the key strategies I’ve learned from my own experience and research?

1. Start with a clear “why”: What problem are you trying to solve? For whom? Make sure your mission is crystal clear before building anything. Make sure it aligns with your company’s objectives, too.
2. Focus on a single, core feature and obsess on getting that right before moving on to something else: Resist the temptation to add too many features at once. Instead, choose one that delivers real value and iterate from there.
3. Prioritize simplicity over complexity: Less is often more when it comes to financial products. Cut out unnecessary bells and whistles and keep the focus on what matters most.
4. Embrace continuous iteration: Bedrock isn’t a fixed destination—it’s a dynamic process. Continuously gather user feedback, refine your product, and iterate towards that bedrock state.
5. Stop, look and listen: Don’t just test your product as part of your delivery process—test it repeatedly in the field. Use it yourself. Run A/B tests. Gather user feedback. Talk to people who use it, and refine accordingly.

The bedrock paradox

There’s an interesting paradox at play here: building towards bedrock means sacrificing some short-term growth potential in favour of long-term stability. But the payoff is worth it—products built with a focus on bedrock will outlast and outperform their competitors, and deliver sustained value to users over time.

So, how do you start your journey towards bedrock? Take it one step at a time. Start by identifying those core elements that truly matter to your users. Focus on building and refining a single, powerful feature that delivers real value. And above all, test obsessively—for, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, Alan Kay, or Peter Drucker (whomever you believe!!), “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

Today’s web is not always an amiable place. Sites greet you with a popover that demands assent to their cookie policy, and leave you with Taboola ads promising “One Weird Trick!” to cure your ailments. Social media sites are tuned for engagement, and few things are more engaging than a fight. Today it seems that people want to quarrel; I have seen flame wars among birders.  

These tensions are often at odds with a site’s goals. If we are providing support and advice to customers, we don’t want those customers to wrangle with each other. If we offer news about the latest research, we want readers to feel at ease; if we promote upcoming marches, we want our core supporters to feel comfortable and we want curious newcomers to feel welcome. 

In a study for a conference on the History of the Web, I looked to the origins of Computer Science in Vienna (1928-1934)  for a case study of the importance of amiability in a research community and the disastrous consequences of its loss. That story has interesting implications for web environments that promote amiable interaction among disparate, difficult (and sometimes disagreeable) people.

The Vienna Circle

Though people had been thinking about calculating engines and thinking machines from antiquity, Computing really got going in Depression-era Vienna.  The people who worked out the theory had no interest in building machines; they wanted to puzzle out the limits of reason in the absence of divine authority. If we could not rely on God or Aristotle to tell us how to think, could we instead build arguments that were self-contained and demonstrably correct? Can we be sure that mathematics is consistent? Are there things that are true but that cannot be expressed in language? 

The core ideas were worked out in the weekly meetings (Thursdays at 6) of a group remembered as the Vienna Circle. They got together in the office of Professor Moritz Schlick at the University of Vienna to discuss problems in philosophy, math, and language. The intersection of physics and philosophy had long been a specialty of this Vienna department, and this work had placed them among the world leaders.  Schlick’s colleague Hans Hahn was a central participant, and by 1928 Hahn brought along his graduate students Karl Menger and Kurt Gödel. Other frequent participants included philosopher Rudolf Carnap, psychologist Karl Popper, economist Ludwig von Mises (brought by his brother Frederick, a physicist),  graphic designer Otto Neurath (inventor of infographics), and architect Josef Frank (brought by his physicist brother, Phillip).  Out-of-town visitors often joined, including the young Johnny von Neumann, Alfred Tarski, and the irascible Ludwig Wittgenstein. 

When Schlick’s office grew too dim, participants adjourned to a nearby café for additional discussion with an even larger circle of participants.  This convivial circle was far from unique.  An intersecting circle–Neurath, von Mises, Oskar Morgenstern–established the Austrian School of free-market economics. There were theatrical circles (Peter Lorre, Hedy Lamarr, Max Reinhardt), and literary circles. The café was where things happened.

The interdisciplinarity of the group posed real challenges of temperament and understanding. Personalities were often a challenge. Gödel was convinced people were trying to poison him. Architect Josef Frank depended on contracts for public housing, which Mises opposed as wasteful. Wittgenstein’s temper had lost him his job as a secondary school teacher, and for some of these years he maintained a detailed list of whom he was willing to meet. Neurath was eager to detect muddled thinking and would interrupt a speaker with a shouted “Metaphysics!” The continuing amity of these meetings was facilitated by the personality of their leader, Moritz Schlick, who would be remembered as notably adept in keeping disagreements from becoming quarrels.

In the Café

The Viennese café of this era was long remembered as a particularly good place to argue with your friends, to read, and to write. Built to serve an imperial capital, the cafés found themselves with too much space and too few customers now that the Empire was gone. There was no need to turn tables: a café could only survive by coaxing customers to linger. Perhaps they would order another coffee, or one of their friends might drop by. One could play chess, or billiards, or read newspapers from abroad. Coffee was invariably served with a glass of purified spring water, still a novelty in an era in which most water was still unsafe to drink. That water glass would be refilled indefinitely. 

In the basement of one café, the poet Jura Soyfer staged “The End Of The World,” a musical comedy in which Professor Peep has discovered a comet heading for earth.

Prof. Peep: The comet is going to destroy everybody!

Hitler:  Destroying everybody is my business.

Of course, coffee can be prepared in many ways, and the Viennese café developed a broad vocabulary to represent precisely how one preferred to drink it: melange, Einspänner, Brauner, Schwarzer, Kapuziner. This extensive customization, with correspondingly esoteric conventions of service, established the café as a comfortable and personal third space, a neutral ground in which anyone who could afford a coffee would be welcome. Viennese of this era were fastidious in their use of personal titles, of which an abundance were in common use. Café waiters greeted regular customers with titles too, but were careful to address their patrons with titles a notch or two greater than they deserved. A graduate student would be Doktor, an unpaid postdoc Professor.  This assurance mattered all the more because so many members of the Circle (and so many other Viennese) came from elsewhere: Carnap from Wuppertal, Gödel from Brno, von Neumann from Budapest. No one was going to make fun of your clothes, mannerisms, or accent. Your friends wouldn’t be bothered by the pram in the hall. Everyone shared a Germanic Austrian literary and philosophical culture, not least those whose ancestors had been Eastern European Jews who knew that culture well, having read all about it in books.

The amiability of the café circle was enhanced by its openness. Because the circle sometimes extended to architects and actors, people could feel less constrained to admit shortfalls in their understanding. It was soon discovered that marble tabletops made a useful surface for pencil sketches, serving all as an improvised and accessible blackboard.

Comedies like “The End Of The World” and fictional newspaper sketches or feuilletons of writers like Joseph Roth and Stefan Zweig served as a second defense against disagreeable or churlish behavior. The knowledge that, if one got carried away, a parody of one’s remarks might shortly appear in Neue Freie Presse surely helped Professor Schlick keep matters in hand.

The End Of Red Vienna

Though Austria’s government drifted to the right after the War, Vienna’s city council had been Socialist, dedicated to public housing based on user-centered design, and embracing  ambitious programs of public outreach and adult education. In 1934 the Socialists lost a local election, and this era soon came to its end as the new administration focused on the imagined threat of the International Jewish Conspiracy. Most members of the Circle fled within months: von Neumann to Princeton, Neurath to Holland and Oxford, Popper to New Zealand, Carnap to Chicago. Prof. Schlick was murdered on the steps of the University by a student outraged by his former association with Jews.  Jura Soyfer, who wrote “The End Of The World,” died in Buchenwald.

In 1939, von Neumann finally convinced Gödel to accept a job in Princeton. Gödel was required to pay large fines to emigrate. The officer in charge of these fees would look back on this as the best posting of his career; his name was Eichmann.

Design for Amiability

An impressive literature recounts those discussions and the environment that facilitated the development of computing. How can we design for amiability?  This is not just a matter of choosing rounded typefaces and a cheerful pastel palette. I believe we may identify eight distinct issues that exert design forces in usefully amiable directions.

Seriousness: The Vienna Circle was wrestling with a notoriously difficult book—Wittgenstein’s Tractus Logico-Philosophicus—and a catalog of outstanding open questions in mathematics. They were concerned with consequential problems, not merely scoring points for debating. Constant reminders that the questions you are considering matter—not only that they are consequential or that those opposing you are scoundrels—help promote amity.

Empiricism: The characteristic approach of the Vienna Circle demanded that knowledge be grounded either in direct observation or in rigorous reasoning. Disagreement, when it arose, could be settled by observation or by proof. If neither seemed ready to hand, the matter could not be settled. On these terms, one can seldom if ever demolish an opposing argument, and trolling is pointless.

Abstraction: Disputes grow worse when losing the argument entails lost face or lost jobs. The Vienna Circle’s focus on theory—the limits of mathematics, the capability of language—promoted amity. Without seriousness, abstraction could have been merely academic, but the limits of reason and the consistency of mathematics were clearly serious.

Formality: The punctilious demeanor of waiters and the elaborated rituals of coffee service helped to establish orderly attitudes amongst the argumentative participants. This stands in contrast to the contemptuous sneer that now dominates social media.  

Schlamperei: Members of the Vienna Circle maintained a global correspondence, and they knew their work was at the frontier of research. Still, this was Vienna, at the margins of Europe: old-fashioned, frumpy, and dingy. Many participants came from even more obscure backwaters. Most or all harbored the suspicion that they were really schleppers, and a tinge of the ridiculous helped to moderate tempers. The director of “The End Of The World” had to pass the hat for money to purchase a moon for the set, and thought it was funny enough to write up for publication.

Openness: All sorts of people were involved in discussion, anyone might join in. Each week would bring different participants. Fluid borders reduce tension, and provide opportunities to broaden the range of discussion and the terms of engagement. Low entrance friction was characteristic of the café: anyone could come, and if you came twice you were virtually a regular. Permeable boundaries and café culture made it easier for moderating influences to draw in raconteurs and storytellers to defuse awkward moments, and Vienna’s cafés had no shortage of humorists. Openness counteracts the suspicion that promoters of amiability are exerting censorship.

Parody: The environs of the Circle—the university office and the café—were unmistakably public. There were writers about, some of them renowned humorists. The prospect that one’s bad taste or bad behavior might be ridiculed in print kept discussion within bounds. The sanction of public humiliation, however, was itself made mild by the veneer of fiction; even if you got a little carried away and a character based on you made a splash in some newspaper fiction, it wasn’t the end of the world.

Engagement: The subject matter was important to the participants, but it was esoteric: it did not matter very much to their mothers or their siblings. A small stumble or a minor humiliation could be shrugged off in ways that major media confrontations cannot.

I believe it is notable that this environment was designed to promote amiability through several different voices.  The café waiter flattered each newcomer and served everyone, and also kept out local pickpockets and drunks who would be mere disruptions. Schlick and other regulars kept discussion moving and on track. The fiction writers and raconteurs—perhaps the most peripheral of the participants—kept people in a good mood and reminded them that bad behavior could make anyone ridiculous.  Crucially, each of these voices were human: you could reason with them. Algorithmic or AI moderators, however clever, are seldom perceived as reasonable. The café circles had no central authority or Moderator against whom everyone’s resentments might be focused. Even after the disaster of 1934, what people remembered were those cheerful arguments.

“Language is not merely a set of unrelated sounds, clauses, rules, and meanings; it is a totally coherent system bound to context and behavior.” — Kenneth L. Pike

The web has accents. So should our design systems.

Design Systems as Living Languages

Design systems aren’t component libraries—they’re living languages. Tokens are phonemes, components are words, patterns are phrases, layouts are sentences. The conversations we build with users become the stories our products tell.

But here’s what we’ve forgotten: the more fluently a language is spoken, the more accents it can support without losing meaning. English in Scotland differs from English in Sydney, yet both are unmistakably English. The language adapts to context while preserving core meaning. This couldn’t be more obvious to me, a Brazilian Portuguese speaker, who learned English with an American accent, and lives in Sydney.

Our design systems must work the same way. Rigid adherence to visual rules creates brittle systems that break under contextual pressure. Fluent systems bend without breaking.

Consistency becomes a prison

The promise of design systems was simple: consistent components would accelerate development and unify experiences. But as systems matured and products grew more complex, that promise has become a prison. Teams file “exception” requests by the hundreds. Products launch with workarounds instead of system components. Designers spend more time defending consistency than solving user problems.

Our design systems must learn to speak dialects.

A design dialect is a systematic adaptation of a design system that maintains core principles while developing new patterns for specific contexts. Unlike one-off customizations or brand themes, dialects preserve the system’s essential grammar while expanding its vocabulary to serve different users, environments, or constraints.

When Perfect Consistency Fails

At Booking.com, I learned this lesson the hard way. We A/B-tested everything—color, copy, button shapes, even logo colors. As a professional with a graphic design education and experience building brand style guides, I found this shocking. While everyone fell in love with Airbnb’s pristine design system, Booking grew into a giant without ever considering visual consistency.  

The chaos taught me something profound: consistency isn’t ROI; solved problems are.

At Shopify. Polaris () was our crown jewel—a mature design language perfect for merchants on laptops. As a product team, we were expected to adopt Polaris as-is. Then my fulfillment team hit an “Oh, Ship!” moment, as we faced the challenge of building an app for warehouse pickers using our interface on shared, battered Android scanners in dim aisles, wearing thick gloves, scanning dozens of items per minute, many with limited levels of English understanding.

Task completion with standard Polaris: 0%.

Every component that worked beautifully for merchants failed completely for pickers. White backgrounds created glare. 44px tap targets were invisible to gloved fingers. Sentence-case labels took too long to parse. Multi-step flows confused non-native speakers.

We faced a choice: abandon Polaris entirely, or teach it to speak warehouse.

The Birth of a Dialect

We chose evolution over revolution. Working within Polaris’s core principles—clarity, efficiency, consistency—we developed what we now call a design dialect:

Constraint	Fluent Move	Rationale
Glare & low light	Dark surfaces + light text	Reduce glare on low-DPI screens
Gloves & haste	90px tap targets (~2cm)	Accommodate thick gloves
Multilingual	Single-task screens, plain language	Reduce cognitive load

Result: Task completion jumped from 0% to 100%. Onboarding time dropped from three weeks to one shift.

This wasn’t customization or theming—this was a dialect: a systematic adaptation that maintained Polaris’s core grammar while developing new vocabulary for a specific context. Polaris hadn’t failed; it had learned to speak warehouse.

The Flexibility Framework

At Atlassian, working on the Jira platform—itself a system within the larger Atlassian system—I pushed for formalizing this insight. With dozens of products sharing a design language across different codebases, we needed systematic flexibility so we built directly into our ways of working. The old model—exception requests and special approvals—was failing at scale.

We developed the Flexibility Framework to help designers define how flexible they wanted their components to be:

Tier	Action	Ownership
Consistent	Adopt unchanged	Platform locks design + code
Opinionated	Adapt within bounds	Platform provides smart defaults, products customize
Flexible	Extend freely	Platform defines behavior, products own presentation

During a navigation redesign, we tiered every element. Logo and global search stayed Consistent. Breadcrumbs and contextual actions became Flexible. Product teams could immediately see where innovation was welcome and where consistency mattered.

The Decision Ladder

Flexibility needs boundaries. We created a simple ladder for evaluating when rules should bend:

Good: Ship with existing system components. Fast, consistent, proven.

Better: Stretch a component slightly. Document the change. Contribute improvements back to the system for all to use.

Best: Prototype the ideal experience first. If user testing validates the benefit, update the system to support it.

The key question: “Which option lets users succeed fastest?”

Rules are tools, not relics.

Unity Beats Uniformity

Gmail, Drive, and Maps are unmistakably Google—yet each speaks with its own accent. They achieve unity through shared principles, not cloned components. One extra week of debate over button color costs roughly $30K in engineer time.

Unity is a brand outcome; fluency is a user outcome. When the two clash, side with the user.

Governance Without Gates

How do you maintain coherence while enabling dialects? Treat your system like a living vocabulary:

Document every deviation – e.g., dialects/warehouse.md with before/after screenshots and rationale.

Promote shared patterns – when three teams adopt a dialect independently, review it for core inclusion.

Deprecate with context – retire old idioms via flags and migration notes, never a big-bang purge.

A living dictionary scales better than a frozen rulebook.

Start Small: Your First Dialect

Ready to introduce dialects? Start with one broken experience:

This week: Find one user flow where perfect consistency blocks task completion. Could be mobile users struggling with desktop-sized components, or accessibility needs your standard patterns don’t address.

Document the context: What makes standard patterns fail here? Environmental constraints? User capabilities? Task urgency?

Design one systematic change: Focus on behavior over aesthetics. If gloves are the problem, bigger targets aren’t “”breaking the system””—they’re serving the user. Earn the variations and make them intentional.

Test and measure: Does the change improve task completion? Time to productivity? User satisfaction?

Show the savings: If that dialect frees even half a sprint, fluency has paid for itself.

Beyond the Component Library

We’re not managing design systems anymore—we’re cultivating design languages. Languages that grow with their speakers. Languages that develop accents without losing meaning. Languages that serve human needs over aesthetic ideals.

The warehouse workers who went from 0% to 100% task completion didn’t care that our buttons broke the style guide. They cared that the buttons finally worked.

Your users feel the same way. Give your system permission to speak their language.

Your Team Reflects Your Leadership Values written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Episode: Episode Overview In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, host John Jantsch sits down with executive coach and author Aiko Bethea to explore the deeper reasons why teams struggle with communication, trust, and accountability. Drawing from her book Anchored, Aligned, Accountable, Aiko introduces a powerful framework for self-leadership that […]

Your Team Reflects Your Leadership Values written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Episode:

Episode Overview

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, host John Jantsch sits down with executive coach and author Aiko Bethea to explore the deeper reasons why teams struggle with communication, trust, and accountability. Drawing from her book Anchored, Aligned, Accountable, Aiko introduces a powerful framework for self-leadership that goes beyond surface-level tactics and addresses the internal beliefs and patterns—what she calls “BS”—that derail effective leadership.

The conversation unpacks how leaders can move from reactive behaviors driven by external validation to intentional actions grounded in core values. Aiko shares practical insights on navigating difficult conversations, fostering psychological safety, and recognizing the “shadow side” of values that can unintentionally hinder growth.

This episode is a must-listen for leaders seeking to build stronger relationships, create healthier team dynamics, and lead with clarity and accountability.

Guest Bio

Aiko Bethea is the founder and CEO of Rare Coaching & Consulting, where she serves as an executive coach to Fortune 100 companies and nonprofit organizations. She is the author of Anchored, Aligned, Accountable: A Framework for Transcending BS and Transforming Our Lives and Work, with a foreword by Brené Brown.

Aiko is a former director at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a Dare to Lead Certified Facilitator. Her work focuses on helping leaders build self-awareness, navigate complexity, and create cultures rooted in trust and accountability.

Key Takeaways

1. Leadership Problems Are Often Values Problems

What appears as a communication breakdown is often rooted in misalignment with personal values. Leaders must identify and consistently act from their core values to build trust and clarity.

2. The “Anchored, Aligned, Accountable” Framework

• Anchored: Know your core values
• Aligned: Ensure your actions reflect those values
• Accountable: Take responsibility for the impact of your actions

3. The Hidden “BS” That Derails Leaders

Limiting beliefs—such as scarcity, perfectionism, or the need for external validation—prevent leaders from operating authentically and confidently.

4. Values Have a Shadow Side

Even positive values like kindness can backfire. Avoiding difficult conversations in the name of kindness can lead to poor performance and misalignment.

5. Self-Awareness Is the Foundation of Leadership

Leaders must recognize how their behaviors impact others, especially when the outcomes don’t match their intentions.

6. Psychological Safety Starts with the Leader

Creating a safe environment requires modeling openness, inviting feedback, and responding constructively when challenged.

7. Accountability Goes Beyond Metrics

True accountability includes how results are achieved, not just whether targets are met. It’s about behaviors, relationships, and long-term impact.

Great Moments (Timestamps)

• 00:01 – The real reason teams struggle with hard conversations
• 01:46 – Why self-leadership is missing in organizations
• 02:56 – Defining the “BS” that blocks effective leadership
• 05:25 – The difference between having values and being anchored in them
• 07:04 – The “shadow side” of positive values like kindness
• 10:10 – Why self-awareness is essential for leadership success
• 13:01 – Rethinking accountability beyond numbers
• 15:17 – Navigating leadership as a woman of color
• 17:38 – Practical ways to build psychological safety
• 20:19 – Diagnosing when something feels “off” in relationships

Memorable Quotes

“What looks like a communication problem is often a values problem hiding underneath.”

“Your values have a shadow side—when overused, they can actually pull you out of alignment.”

“Accountability isn’t just about results—it’s about the impact of how you show up.”

Where to Connect with Aiko Bethea

• Instagram:
• LinkedIn: Aiko Bethea
• Website: rarecoaching.net

Through its first three seasons, Prime Video super hero series Invincible put forth an imposing rogues’ gallery for title character Mark Grayson a.k.a. Invincible (Steven Yeun) to contend with. Mark’s antagonists have ranged from weak Z-listers (The Elephant, Doc Seismic), to challenging but manageable apocalyptic threats (the Thraxans, Sequids) to terrifyingly powerful supervillains (Angstrom Levy, […]

The post Invincible Season 4: Lee Pace On What Really Motivates Thragg appeared first on Den of Geek.

Almost by definition, superhero movies are about hope and goodness. Even when things get dark for guys like Batman or the Punisher, their respective films end on notes of redemption. The Hulk may roar and Wolverine may growl, but eventually, the real baddies are defeated and the innocents are saved.

Not so with Clayface, the latest entry in the DCU. The first trailer for the adaptation of the classic Batman villain doesn’t reveal much about the film’s plot but it does make sure we understand the tone. Clayface will be a horror movie, complete with sharp music stings, plenty of gore, and some disturbing images of melting faces.

Clayface stars Tom Rhys Harries as Matt Hagen, a rising film star whose career falls apart after he experiences a horrible accident, resulting in the bandaged imagery seen in the trailer. Through scientist Dr. Caitlin Bates (Naomi Ackie), Hagen participates in an experimental procedure that transforms his body into moldable clay… at first. Where the comic book Clayface uses his new condition to commit crime, the trailer suggests that Hagen’s melting body creates a sense of visceral terror.

The trailer’s tone shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, given the pedigree of the creators. Clayface comes from co-writer Mike Flanagan, the man behind the Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass. To hear DCU co-head James Gunn tell it, Flanagan came to him with a pitch for Clayface that was so compelling, he had to put it into production. To helm the project, Gunn chose James Watkins, recently of the Speak No Evil remake.

Moreover, the trailer seems to be bringing Clayface back to horror roots. When the character debuted in 1940’s Detective Comics #40 by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, he was Basil Karlo, a B-movie actor who lost the ability to distinguish between the real world and the movies, becoming the killer he played on screen. Another Clayface, Matt Hagen, first appeared in Detective Comics #298 (1961), courtesy of Bill Finger and Sheldon Moldoff. This Clayface transformed into a hulking slime beast after exposure to a strange plasm.

Clayface is hardly the only superhero character who borrows from horror fiction. Batman and villains like the Joker have clear connections to the scarier side of pulp fiction. The Hulk began as a riff on Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde, with some Frankenstein thrown in for the design. The Fantastic Four and Ant-Man stemmed from the Twilight Zone-style stories that Jack Kirby and Stan Lee were telling throughout the ’50s.

And yet, few movies have been willing to fully embrace the horror side of superheroes. While indies such as Spawn and Faust: Love of the Damned mix capes with creatures of the night, only the Blade franchise and The New Mutants really went into horror—and even then, they return to superheroics by story’s end.

If this trailer is to be believed, Clayface will do something very different. It will remold the comic book superhero movie into something new, shocking, and completely unexpected.

Clayface arrives in theaters on Oct. 23, 2026.

The post Clayface Brings the Horror Genre to Superhero Movies appeared first on Den of Geek.

A great twist is supposed to change how you see everything that came before it. Some, instead of providing clarity, do the exact opposite. There are movies that reveal just enough to shift the narrative, only to leave key details unexplained or open to interpretation.

These are the twists that spark endless debates, theories, and rewatches, due to how they refuse to answer all the questions. Whether it’s ambiguous endings, unreliable realities, or unanswered queries, these films embrace uncertainty. In many cases, that lack of resolution is exactly what makes them so memorable long after their prime.

The post 15 Movies Where the Twist Raises More Questions Than Answers appeared first on Den of Geek.

Almost by definition, superhero movies are about hope and goodness. Even when things get dark for guys like Batman or the Punisher, their respective films end on notes of redemption. The Hulk may roar and Wolverine may growl, but eventually, the real baddies are defeated and the innocents are saved.

Not so with Clayface, the latest entry in the DCU. The first trailer for the adaptation of the classic Batman villain doesn’t reveal much about the film’s plot but it does make sure we understand the tone. Clayface will be a horror movie, complete with sharp music stings, plenty of gore, and some disturbing images of melting faces.

Clayface stars Tom Rhys Harries as Matt Hagen, a rising film star whose career falls apart after he experiences a horrible accident, resulting in the bandaged imagery seen in the trailer. Through scientist Dr. Caitlin Bates (Naomi Ackie), Hagen participates in an experimental procedure that transforms his body into moldable clay… at first. Where the comic book Clayface uses his new condition to commit crime, the trailer suggests that Hagen’s melting body creates a sense of visceral terror.

The trailer’s tone shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, given the pedigree of the creators. Clayface comes from co-writer Mike Flanagan, the man behind the Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass. To hear DCU co-head James Gunn tell it, Flanagan came to him with a pitch for Clayface that was so compelling, he had to put it into production. To helm the project, Gunn chose James Watkins, recently of the Speak No Evil remake.

Moreover, the trailer seems to be bringing Clayface back to horror roots. When the character debuted in 1940’s Detective Comics #40 by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, he was Basil Karlo, a B-movie actor who lost the ability to distinguish between the real world and the movies, becoming the killer he played on screen. Another Clayface, Matt Hagen, first appeared in Detective Comics #298 (1961), courtesy of Bill Finger and Sheldon Moldoff. This Clayface transformed into a hulking slime beast after exposure to a strange plasm.

Clayface is hardly the only superhero character who borrows from horror fiction. Batman and villains like the Joker have clear connections to the scarier side of pulp fiction. The Hulk began as a riff on Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde, with some Frankenstein thrown in for the design. The Fantastic Four and Ant-Man stemmed from the Twilight Zone-style stories that Jack Kirby and Stan Lee were telling throughout the ’50s.

And yet, few movies have been willing to fully embrace the horror side of superheroes. While indies such as Spawn and Faust: Love of the Damned mix capes with creatures of the night, only the Blade franchise and The New Mutants really went into horror—and even then, they return to superheroics by story’s end.

If this trailer is to be believed, Clayface will do something very different. It will remold the comic book superhero movie into something new, shocking, and completely unexpected.

Clayface arrives in theaters on Oct. 23, 2026.

The post Clayface Brings the Horror Genre to Superhero Movies appeared first on Den of Geek.

Sadly, not every behind-the-scenes story is a fun bit of trivia. Some reveal just how far productions have gone in the name of realism, ambition, or simply getting the shot. Over the years, certain movies have become tied to stories of unsafe conditions, real injuries, or decisions that feel quite questionable.

These aren’t the kind of facts that make a film more enjoyable. If anything, they can make certain scenes harder to watch once you know what actually happened. From risky stunts to troubling production choices, these are the movie facts that stick with you for reasons that are anything but entertaining.

The post 20 Interesting Movie Facts That Are More ‘Unsettling’ Than ‘Fun’ appeared first on Den of Geek.

Almost by definition, superhero movies are about hope and goodness. Even when things get dark for guys like Batman or the Punisher, their respective films end on notes of redemption. The Hulk may roar and Wolverine may growl, but eventually, the real baddies are defeated and the innocents are saved.

Not so with Clayface, the latest entry in the DCU. The first trailer for the adaptation of the classic Batman villain doesn’t reveal much about the film’s plot but it does make sure we understand the tone. Clayface will be a horror movie, complete with sharp music stings, plenty of gore, and some disturbing images of melting faces.

Clayface stars Tom Rhys Harries as Matt Hagen, a rising film star whose career falls apart after he experiences a horrible accident, resulting in the bandaged imagery seen in the trailer. Through scientist Dr. Caitlin Bates (Naomi Ackie), Hagen participates in an experimental procedure that transforms his body into moldable clay… at first. Where the comic book Clayface uses his new condition to commit crime, the trailer suggests that Hagen’s melting body creates a sense of visceral terror.

The trailer’s tone shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, given the pedigree of the creators. Clayface comes from co-writer Mike Flanagan, the man behind the Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass. To hear DCU co-head James Gunn tell it, Flanagan came to him with a pitch for Clayface that was so compelling, he had to put it into production. To helm the project, Gunn chose James Watkins, recently of the Speak No Evil remake.

Moreover, the trailer seems to be bringing Clayface back to horror roots. When the character debuted in 1940’s Detective Comics #40 by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, he was Basil Karlo, a B-movie actor who lost the ability to distinguish between the real world and the movies, becoming the killer he played on screen. Another Clayface, Matt Hagen, first appeared in Detective Comics #298 (1961), courtesy of Bill Finger and Sheldon Moldoff. This Clayface transformed into a hulking slime beast after exposure to a strange plasm.

Clayface is hardly the only superhero character who borrows from horror fiction. Batman and villains like the Joker have clear connections to the scarier side of pulp fiction. The Hulk began as a riff on Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde, with some Frankenstein thrown in for the design. The Fantastic Four and Ant-Man stemmed from the Twilight Zone-style stories that Jack Kirby and Stan Lee were telling throughout the ’50s.

And yet, few movies have been willing to fully embrace the horror side of superheroes. While indies such as Spawn and Faust: Love of the Damned mix capes with creatures of the night, only the Blade franchise and The New Mutants really went into horror—and even then, they return to superheroics by story’s end.

If this trailer is to be believed, Clayface will do something very different. It will remold the comic book superhero movie into something new, shocking, and completely unexpected.

Clayface arrives in theaters on Oct. 23, 2026.

The post Clayface Brings the Horror Genre to Superhero Movies appeared first on Den of Geek.

As one-third of the legendary comedy trio The Lonely Island, Jorma Taccone is best known for his originality. Alongside childhood friends and collaborators Andy Samberg (star of Brooklyn Nine-Nine) and Akiva Schaffer (director of The Naked Gun), Taccone has helped introduce the world to novel concepts like SNL Digital Shorts, Grammy-winning comedy rap, and the […]

The post Over Your Dead Body: Jorma Taccone Wants a Remake “With Teeth” appeared first on Den of Geek.

Almost by definition, superhero movies are about hope and goodness. Even when things get dark for guys like Batman or the Punisher, their respective films end on notes of redemption. The Hulk may roar and Wolverine may growl, but eventually, the real baddies are defeated and the innocents are saved.

Not so with Clayface, the latest entry in the DCU. The first trailer for the adaptation of the classic Batman villain doesn’t reveal much about the film’s plot but it does make sure we understand the tone. Clayface will be a horror movie, complete with sharp music stings, plenty of gore, and some disturbing images of melting faces.

Clayface stars Tom Rhys Harries as Matt Hagen, a rising film star whose career falls apart after he experiences a horrible accident, resulting in the bandaged imagery seen in the trailer. Through scientist Dr. Caitlin Bates (Naomi Ackie), Hagen participates in an experimental procedure that transforms his body into moldable clay… at first. Where the comic book Clayface uses his new condition to commit crime, the trailer suggests that Hagen’s melting body creates a sense of visceral terror.

The trailer’s tone shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, given the pedigree of the creators. Clayface comes from co-writer Mike Flanagan, the man behind the Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass. To hear DCU co-head James Gunn tell it, Flanagan came to him with a pitch for Clayface that was so compelling, he had to put it into production. To helm the project, Gunn chose James Watkins, recently of the Speak No Evil remake.

Moreover, the trailer seems to be bringing Clayface back to horror roots. When the character debuted in 1940’s Detective Comics #40 by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, he was Basil Karlo, a B-movie actor who lost the ability to distinguish between the real world and the movies, becoming the killer he played on screen. Another Clayface, Matt Hagen, first appeared in Detective Comics #298 (1961), courtesy of Bill Finger and Sheldon Moldoff. This Clayface transformed into a hulking slime beast after exposure to a strange plasm.

Clayface is hardly the only superhero character who borrows from horror fiction. Batman and villains like the Joker have clear connections to the scarier side of pulp fiction. The Hulk began as a riff on Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde, with some Frankenstein thrown in for the design. The Fantastic Four and Ant-Man stemmed from the Twilight Zone-style stories that Jack Kirby and Stan Lee were telling throughout the ’50s.

And yet, few movies have been willing to fully embrace the horror side of superheroes. While indies such as Spawn and Faust: Love of the Damned mix capes with creatures of the night, only the Blade franchise and The New Mutants really went into horror—and even then, they return to superheroics by story’s end.

If this trailer is to be believed, Clayface will do something very different. It will remold the comic book superhero movie into something new, shocking, and completely unexpected.

Clayface arrives in theaters on Oct. 23, 2026.

The post Clayface Brings the Horror Genre to Superhero Movies appeared first on Den of Geek.

Streaming platforms continue to rotate fresh hits into the spotlight, with both returning favorites and newer releases pulling strong viewership over the past month. From reality TV and crime docuseries to anime adaptations and major film releases, the current lineup reflects a wide range of audience tastes.

There are certainly some old timers in here, but quite a few entries here are from new and fresh IPs. Based on recent viewing figures, these are the movies and shows audiences have been watching the most right now. Here’s a look at the top performers and what’s driving their popularity across streaming platforms.

The post The Top 10 Movies and Shows Streaming Right Now, How Many Do You Know? appeared first on Den of Geek.

Almost by definition, superhero movies are about hope and goodness. Even when things get dark for guys like Batman or the Punisher, their respective films end on notes of redemption. The Hulk may roar and Wolverine may growl, but eventually, the real baddies are defeated and the innocents are saved.

Not so with Clayface, the latest entry in the DCU. The first trailer for the adaptation of the classic Batman villain doesn’t reveal much about the film’s plot but it does make sure we understand the tone. Clayface will be a horror movie, complete with sharp music stings, plenty of gore, and some disturbing images of melting faces.

Clayface stars Tom Rhys Harries as Matt Hagen, a rising film star whose career falls apart after he experiences a horrible accident, resulting in the bandaged imagery seen in the trailer. Through scientist Dr. Caitlin Bates (Naomi Ackie), Hagen participates in an experimental procedure that transforms his body into moldable clay… at first. Where the comic book Clayface uses his new condition to commit crime, the trailer suggests that Hagen’s melting body creates a sense of visceral terror.

The trailer’s tone shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, given the pedigree of the creators. Clayface comes from co-writer Mike Flanagan, the man behind the Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass. To hear DCU co-head James Gunn tell it, Flanagan came to him with a pitch for Clayface that was so compelling, he had to put it into production. To helm the project, Gunn chose James Watkins, recently of the Speak No Evil remake.

Moreover, the trailer seems to be bringing Clayface back to horror roots. When the character debuted in 1940’s Detective Comics #40 by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, he was Basil Karlo, a B-movie actor who lost the ability to distinguish between the real world and the movies, becoming the killer he played on screen. Another Clayface, Matt Hagen, first appeared in Detective Comics #298 (1961), courtesy of Bill Finger and Sheldon Moldoff. This Clayface transformed into a hulking slime beast after exposure to a strange plasm.

Clayface is hardly the only superhero character who borrows from horror fiction. Batman and villains like the Joker have clear connections to the scarier side of pulp fiction. The Hulk began as a riff on Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde, with some Frankenstein thrown in for the design. The Fantastic Four and Ant-Man stemmed from the Twilight Zone-style stories that Jack Kirby and Stan Lee were telling throughout the ’50s.

And yet, few movies have been willing to fully embrace the horror side of superheroes. While indies such as Spawn and Faust: Love of the Damned mix capes with creatures of the night, only the Blade franchise and The New Mutants really went into horror—and even then, they return to superheroics by story’s end.

If this trailer is to be believed, Clayface will do something very different. It will remold the comic book superhero movie into something new, shocking, and completely unexpected.

Clayface arrives in theaters on Oct. 23, 2026.

The post Clayface Brings the Horror Genre to Superhero Movies appeared first on Den of Geek.