Seth Johnson on Earning the Right to Change Things

<p>What does it actually take for design to matter inside a massive organization? In this episode, hosts Giulia Donatello and Lee-Sean Huang sit down with Seth Johnson to talk about design at enterprise scale, and what designers get wrong about building influence.</p><p><br></p><p>Seth Johnson is Design Director at IBM&#39;s Chief Data Office, where he leads a team driving AI-first enterprise data transformation. Over a 12-year tenure at IBM, his work has evolved from designing artifacts and experiences toward designing the conditions under which good design can happen at scale. Before IBM, he founded a Minneapolis-based design practice. He has served as president of AIGA Minnesota and as an adjunct faculty member at Parsons School of Design.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>In This Episode</strong></p><p><strong>From a used bookshop to IBM</strong>. Seth&#39;s path to design started at age 12, flipping through Dorfsman &amp; CBS in a used bookshop, and seeing for the first time what design could look like as a system at scale. That same impulse, he says, is what he&#39;s still chasing at IBM, just at a different altitude.<br></p><p><strong>Design as infrastructure. </strong>At IBM&#39;s Chief Data Office, Seth&#39;s team exists to provide the company with a single, trusted view of how the business is performing. Design&#39;s role there is turning data from something people dread into something they rely on every day.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>The business doesn&#39;t care about design. And it shouldn&#39;t. </strong>Seth&#39;s most provocative argument: design only earns influence when it connects itself to outcomes leadership actually cares about: revenue, risk, speed, and fewer defects. Designers are always outnumbered. That means assimilating into the organization&#39;s dominant rhythms before earning the right to ask anyone else to change.<br></p><p><strong>Treat your team like volunteers. </strong>Seth&#39;s core leadership philosophy, drawn from years of running AIGA Minnesota: talented people decide every day how much energy and creativity they&#39;re willing to invest. You might get the work, but you won&#39;t get the commitment. And you definitely can&#39;t fake caring at scale.<br></p><p><strong>The era of the lone genius is over. </strong>On design education: Seth argues that schools still do a reasonable job of preparing designers to work independently, but fall short in preparing them to lead within teams. Design is a team sport, and design students should be partnering across disciplines—biology, nursing, public policy—before they ever step into practice.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Resources Mentioned</strong></p><ul><li>Dorfsman &amp; CBS by Dick Hess and Marion Muller - <a href="https://amzn.to/4unbsHT">⁠https://amzn.to/4unbsHT⁠</a> (out of print; available secondhand)</li><li>Humanizing Data Through Design with Giorgia Lupi (AIGA Design Podcast on YouTube) - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZZIR8W9AlY">⁠https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZZIR8W9AlY⁠</a></li><li>Giorgia Lupi on the AIGA Design Podcast (Other Platforms) - <a href="https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/aigadesign/episodes/Humanizing-Data-Through-Design-with-Giorgia-Lupi-e3fi3h1/a-acg9jrh">⁠https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/aigadesign/episodes/Humanizing-Data-Through-Design-with-Giorgia-Lupi-e3fi3h1/a-acg9jrh⁠</a></li><li>Seth Johnson &amp; Jenny Price: How AIGA Leadership Changed Everything - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12f7g-YG8cY">⁠https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12f7g-YG8cY⁠</a>  </li><li>Designing Change in Bureaucracy with Ivan Boscariol (YouTube) - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f5zESGtKb8">⁠https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f5zESGtKb8⁠</a></li><li>Designing Change in Bureaucracy with Ivan Boscariol (Other Platforms) - <a href="https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/aigadesign/episodes/Designing-Change-in-Bureaucracy-with-Ivan-Boscariol-e32eemt">⁠https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/aigadesign/episodes/De