Rakesh Patwari - Becoming a Better Design Leader

2024-02-20

Rakesh Patwari shares what’s made him a better manager, why a career in acting wasn’t for him, and how designers can give better portfolio presentations. Highlights include: Is Information Architecture still relevant in today’s practice of UX? What has and hasn’t worked well for you when facilitating 1-on-1’s? How do you engage with your team on the topic of work-related stress? How do the dynamics of product and engineering change how you lead design? What’s the biggest mistake you...

Rakesh Patwari shares what’s made him a better manager, why a career in acting wasn’t for him, and how designers can give better portfolio presentations.

Highlights include:

Is Information Architecture still relevant in today’s practice of UX?
What has and hasn’t worked well for you when facilitating 1-on-1’s?
How do you engage with your team on the topic of work-related stress?
How do the dynamics of product and engineering change how you lead design?
What’s the biggest mistake you see designers making in portfolio presentations?

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Who is Rakesh Patwari?

Rakesh is a Director of Product Design and Research at Cisco, a NASDAQ listed company that was founded in 1984 by a small group of Stanford computer scientists, and that helped to create the IP networking technologies that power today’s Internet.

Before joining Cisco, Rakesh was a Product Design Manager at Meta, where he supported the design organisation working on privacy infrastructure.

Rakesh has also been a Director of Product Design at Salesforce, where he led the design team working on the experience platform. Prior to that at Salesforce, Rakesh served as a Product Design Lead, focusing on B2B commerce products.

A dedicated member of the design community, for the past five and half years Rakesh has been a UX Instructor at UC Berkley Extension, designing curriculum and delivering lectures on information architecture.

He is also a member of the Design Leadership Forum, an advisor at Berkley SkyDeck, where he provides guidance to startups, and a speaker, mentor and coach for Startup Weekend.

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Find Rakesh here:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rakeshpatwari/
Website: https://rakeshpatwari.design/
X: https://twitter.com/rakeshpatwari

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