ABOUT THE RADAR

HOW THE RADAR WAS DESIGNED

The Design Leadership Radar was developed by Jason Gieng, a Design Leader based in Melbourne Australia. It was designed within RMIT University’s Master of Design Futures program under the supervision of Dr Marius Foley. The four quadrants of the radar were originally defined by cross-assessing models of Design Maturity and Management alongside definitions of design leadership from industry leaders such as Aronowitz (2017), Frisby (2019), Warfel (2019), and Zhou (2019).

It was further iterated upon using primary data provided in 1:1 interviews and workshops with design leaders across large Australian and International organisations with advanced levels of design maturity. This research is also supplemented with secondary data from talks, articles and publications on Design Leadership and Management by industry leaders.

The data gathered has been deconstructed into acts of leadership, categorised across the four quadrants. It articulates a design practice’s maturity journey and influence across quadrants through the different zoom levels, and visualises how leaders may develop in different directions as they increase their scope of influence and move from low design maturity through to intermediate and high design maturity organisations.