Katie Dill is the VP of Design at Lyft. Her team includes about one hundred creatives who are part of everything Lyft makes for drivers, passengers, users, and in-house teams. Katie discusses the importance of believing in your mission, how diverse teams benefit companies in multiple ways, staying in touch with users, and how creating and empowering a great design team is, in itself, an amazing design task.

On this episode we discuss:

• Making sure a team is happy, healthy, productive, and doing the best work of their lives
• Seeing beyond the pixels to the offline experience of users
• Managing a design team and being farther from the work, but closer to the people who make it happen
• Defining design beyond a product or object. We design teams, design strategies, we design the way we work
• Empowering diversity in hiring and beyond and the far-reaching benefits of a diverse team
• Lyft’s multidimensional goals to improve transportation, environmental issues, and accessibility to make every city more about the people who live there
• Empathy for users and how Lyft designs for drivers, passengers, and the unique attributes of every city that impacts their experience
• Advantages and disadvantages of working for an in-house team or an agency
• Making a positive impact, mentoring, and stepping forward to empower others