There is a transformation afoot in the world of design, and Stephen Gates is at the forefront of it.

That’s why he has just been named Head of Design Transformation at the digital design and prototyping platform, InVision, a new role “designed” just for him and for our times.

Over the years, Gates has come to realize that the success of a design team, especially an in-house design team, hinges on getting the “buy-in” of the groups they partner with, from the marketers to developers and everyone in between. Gates thinks of this as “inclusive design,” and one of his strongest skills is his ability to bring everyone together in partnership, a skill which he has honed in multiple design leadership positions at Starwood and Citi, to name a few.

The goal of Gates’ new team at InVision is to empower and elevate the design team in organizations around the world, to help them be a good partner while ALWAYS making sure the design team is front and center.

InVision is in a perfect position to make this happen. Part of the company’s mission is empowering designers, teams and executives to give them the tools to be successful and that means working better together.

The majority of InVision’s users — two-thirds of InVision users — are actually non-designers. That means that on the InVision platform the various parties are already at the table.

With a 100% distributed workforce, InVision is also very agile in how they respond to the market. Seeing the alignment in the way InVision sees things and how they utilize a comprehensive strategy that weaves all the pieces together will allow Stephen and his new team to focus on how to empower designers, teams and executives to be successful.

Says Gates, “There are massive opportunities to make design better. The ability to find a company that is so aligned with the trends we’re seeing is amazing.”

Stephen will join Aarron Walter (previously MailChimp) and Eli Woolery (Stanford d.school), who launched DesignBetter.co for InVision last year, an essential guide to the best design practices from top design experts. The new Design Transformation team will take the lessons from DesignBetter.co to new heights, working with companies to inspire the practices that power design driven innovation inside every company in the world.

In addition to Stephen, Chris Avore, currently head of UX & design at NASDAQ, will also join as a new hire on InVision’s Design Practices team.

Don’t miss Stephen’s session at HOW Design Live, April 30-May 3 in Boston. He’ll be presenting “In-house Powerhouse: How to Build and Manage an Empowered In-house Creative Team” on Tuesday, May 1.

by: Amy Conover, HOW Events Content Manager