1
The Strategic Decision
DOBLIN | DELOITTE DIGITAL
What If Human-Centered Design Isn't Actually Human Enough?
Human-Centered Design had become Deloitte's default and no one had questioned it in years. I did. I led a critical examination of whether our tools, methods, and research practices were actually serving the people they claimed to center or quietly reinforcing the same inequities we were hired to fix. What followed was a new design practice, Ethos: co-founded from scratch, built on new frameworks and field guides I designed, and delivered across healthcare, financial services, HBCUs, and social platforms. This is what design leadership looks like when the product is the practice itself.
100+
DESIGNERS IN REFLECTION
Co-Founded
NEW PRACTICE AREA
5
SERVICE OFFERINGS
Field Guide
CREATED FOR PRACTITIONERS
THE CHALLENGE
HCD gave us a methodology, but not a conscience. We were generating insights about users while systematically misrepresenting communities, flattening complexity, and designing for the median. The practice needed a design intervention.
MY APPROACH
Own the experience of how 100+ designers confront their own blind spots, without defensiveness shutting the room down. Design that experience first. Build the tools second.
THE TENSION
HCD's greatest strength (empathy for the individual), was also its blind spot: it couldn't see systems, power, or who wasn't in the room.
MY BET
Critique without a replacement is just noise. I led the creation of tools practitioners could actually use on Monday morning.
WHY IT WORKED
Moved at the speed of trust. Designers are trained to solve problems for others, not examine themselves. The practice worked because we designed the conditions for self-reflection before we asked anyone to change how they work. Trust before tools.
2
Building the Foundations
The field guide was the core design artifact, not a training document, but a practitioner experience. I designed it to work the way good design does: meet people where they are, give them a foothold, then expand their frame. Principles, tactics, and storytelling elements structured so a junior designer on a fast-moving project could center equity goals without slowing down or needing a workshop first. Designing how practitioners experience a methodology is design work, it just looks different than an interface.
Artifact: Field guide empowering practitioners to center equity goals in client projects. Includes principles, tactics, and storytelling elements for internal and external stakeholders.
3
Selected Work
Capability prioritization with stakeholders
Future state, executive alignment
Capability prioritization with stakeholders
Future state, executive alignment
Capability prioritization with stakeholders
Future state, executive alignment
4
Scale and Influence
5
What I Learned
The hardest design problem here wasn't the field guide or the frameworks, it was designing a room where 100 designers felt safe enough to say 'I've been doing this wrong.' That experience had to be designed before anything else. I learned that the most important design decisions aren't always visible in the final artifact. Sometimes the design work is: what happens in the first 10 minutes, who speaks first, what's on the wall when people walk in. Ethos taught me that design leadership means owning the conditions for good work, not just the deliverable.
OFFICIAL LAUNCH
Ethos Becomes Firm Offering
Announced by US Consulting Leader to entire Customer & Marketing group. Gateway to CMO, CXO, and Head of Product relationships.
CLIENT WORK
HBCUs, Healthcare, Social Media
Delivered work across HBCUv (online education), equity in maternal health, social media platform accessibility, and retail DEI benchmarking.
CAPABILITY BUILDING
Field Guide for Practitioners
Created reusable frameworks that practitioners now use to guide client projects. Changed how 100+ designers think about their work.
"Kyle is a multi-talented designer, flexing skills across research, insights, design and storytelling. Kyle's ability to absorb a lot of inputs, go away, and return something coherent and thoughtful is in demand and always welcome on my teams."
—Deloitte Ethos Senior Manager
KYLE LEE | KYLELEEDESIGN.COM | PRODUCT DESIGN