Most designers are great at pairing with other designers to craft customer focused experiences. But we’re not always great at partnering with the people that help us make those experiences a reality. Even worse, when these partners “don’t get” design, it leads to frustration, lack of impact, and in many cases, designers (myself included) jump boats to new projects or companies.

In this talk, I’ll share something I wish I’d learned much earlier in my career. Something that is not taught in design schools. Being good at design isn’t enough, you also need to know how to build trust, navigate conflict and get aligned with people who are trained and think differently - like Product Managers, Project Managers, Engineers and beyond.

Iban Benzal is a Design Director at Wise, where he leads multidisciplinary teams across Customer Support, Verification, and Tooling. With a background in Service Design from the Royal College of Art and Computer Engineering from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Iban has spent the last decade navigating the messy intersection of product, operations, and design in a variety of company environments, including high-growth tech companies.

He’s passionate about building real and human partnerships across disciplines - the kind that turn complex problems into meaningful, shippable experiences. He believes great design work doesn’t happen in isolation, and that trust, clarity and shared ownership are as important as pixels.