Design Leadership Memos | Stuart Frisby | Substack

Taste and sensibility

The best designers I have worked with share one thing - exceptional taste.

Jun 22 • Stuart Frisby

The advocate's trap

There’s a version of user advocacy that starts well and ends badly.

Jun 16 • Stuart Frisby

Building tools for the work of design leadership

I’ve spent the last few months building something called COSTA — a Chief of Staff system connected to the tools I use at work.

Jun 9 • Stuart Frisby

Feeling the materials

Design leaders work at distance from the things their teams make.

May 29 • Stuart Frisby

The sustainability lever nobody is talking about

Digital product design shapes how billions of people move, shop, eat, and travel. It’s time we took that seriously.

May 23 • Stuart Frisby

Fresh starts and hostile hiring conditions

Having just left my full-time gig of the last 6 and a bit years, I am embarking on a new chapter of my own Design Leadership career through my…

Sep 24, 2025 • Stuart Frisby

Some things to remember about promotion processes

Perhaps it’s the time of the year, or perhaps just another manifestation of the ever-present anxiety which is working in Tech in 2025, but I’ve had…

Sep 10, 2025 • Stuart Frisby

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Recent posts

Never fall in love with the tools

We are watching our entire industry and the wider community of people who make software fall over themselves to fall in love with - and try to convince…

Sep 8, 2025 • Stuart Frisby

The Logbook method of designer performance management

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago my belief that observation-driven performance management processes do designers a particular type of disservice in…

Aug 28, 2025 • Stuart Frisby

Five things a good designer hiring process never has

🚩 Homework, Spec work, whiteboard tasks, etc. - This has been spoken about endlessly so I won’t go on too much about it, but suffice it to say if the…

Aug 7, 2025 • Stuart Frisby

Rethinking Performance Evaluations for Designers

I’ve long held a belief that observation-driven performance reviews do a disproportionate dis-service to designers.

Jul 31, 2025 • Stuart Frisby

Design Systems as vehicle for leadership

I would posit that the large majority of the overall impact of Design Systems work is actually not about consistency, speed of delivery, quality of…

Oct 7, 2024 • Stuart Frisby

Why aren't designers getting invited into big fun meeting where all the imagineering happens?

Throughout the 20 odd years that I’ve been designing products and designing organisations, I’ve repeatedly heard designers lamenting their lack of…

Sep 30, 2024 • Stuart Frisby

Your job needs a new job description

Design leadership is a heady blend of Culture, Strategy, Organisational Design, Talent Management and Collaboration. So just the easy stuff.

Sep 23, 2024 • Stuart Frisby

Writing – or not writing – your first Levels & Expectations Framework

AKA Career Ladder, Career Progression Framework, etc.

Sep 16, 2024 • Stuart Frisby

Why Design Leadership Matters

As I sat down to start work on what would become this newsletter in the summer of 2024, I was in reflective mood having reached a milestone in my Design…

Sep 13, 2024 • Stuart Frisby

Welcome to Design Leadership Memos

Between the posting of a humble tweet (RIP) and the herculean publishing of a book there lies a gap which I hope this small publication can help to…

Sep 13, 2024 • Stuart Frisby

Design Leadership Memos

Design Leadership Memos

Short form musings on design leadership by Stuart Frisby

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