DESIGN CULTURE

Recruited to Sonos in 2013 to build an in-house industrial design team, my responsibilities quickly expanded to building a cross-functional design organization incorporating the disciplines of Industrial Design, Interaction Design, User Research, Packaging, and CMF. It was the type of opportunity one can only find in a fast scaling start up. Although a well established organization, Sonos had a nominal in-house design team and relied heavily on external agencies and contractors. Everything had to be built. And it had to be built with Santa Barbara serving as a key location.

At Sonos, I took the lessons learned from my experience building out the offering at Teague and built upon them.

Key elements of this were:

• Establishing a design vision & supporting strategy
• Developing budgets & hiring plans
• Driving investment in CMF & User Research
• Building a shared culture & mission for all design disciplines
• Establishing ‘Open Houses’ to socialize design across office sites
• Orchestrating annual and semi-annual off-sites for design staff