Eleanor Morgan is the Chief Product Officer at InVision, the leading product design and development platform for teams building world-class digital products. Morgan joined InVision in early 2020, already a veteran of major product-led companies like Casper, IDEO, and Volkswagen. She says it was InVision’s mission that drew her to the company, and the ability to make an impact for a brand that has purpose.
“Our mission is to inspire and enable the world’s most innovative customer experiences, and we’re doing that by creating tools that foster creative collaboration between people. In every job I’ve had in my career, I’ve needed to collaborate around customer experience design, so being able to improve that—to transform how companies create together—is really exciting,” Morgan says.
Morgan, who describes her leadership style as all about creating an exceptional team and enabling people to do their best work, has already had a large impact at the company, including the releases of the new Design System Manager (DSM) and Specs, and major growth for Freehand, its online whiteboard, which has seen a surge of adoption in the past year alongside the company’s growth to more than 7M users and entry into new international markets
“I’m most proud of the progress we’ve made in execution the past year, starting to ship value to customers at a faster pace across all our products,” Morgan says. “We shipped over 30 significant features and updates to respond to increased customer demand from COVID. We’ve also brought on phenomenal leaders in Engineering, Product, and Design, who have already made an incredible impact on both our execution and strategy.”
InVision, with people in more than 20 countries, has been a remote-first company since its inception in 2011, and therefore it had a major head start when it comes to the changes to the way most of us work that followed the outbreak of the COVID pandemic.
“We’re truly remote by design,” Morgan says. “It’s important to note how different that is from a company that just changed its structure to be remote because of the pandemic. We have organizational behaviors and practices already in place that ensure visibility, alignment, and connection across teams—everything from written documentation, to frequent Q&A forums, to efficiency tricks like recording video walk-throughs of work we can all view asynchronously.”
Morgan says the company’s deep firsthand experience with a remote working model gives them valuable insight into creating a platform that enables exceptional remote design collaboration for other companies.
“Given that remote working is going to be a core part of how companies operate in the future, we couldn’t be more excited to use our experiences to serve that greater good,” Morgan says.
Throughout her career, Morgan has carved out a reputation as a visionary product leader. Her advice for those following in her footsteps are words to the wise:
- Never stop learning. Never stop actively seeking out new knowledge no matter what stage your career is in: “So much of what I’ve learned has come from the people I’ve worked with, and the different business problems I’ve been able to tackle. Growing requires curiosity – curiosity about how you can improve, but also the learning you can gain from others’ perspectives and approaches,” she says. “I don’t think it’s possible to continue generating and shaping creative vision without constantly seeking to learn and shift your perspective.”
- To inspire people, you have to be inspired. “It’s a great reminder to always make sure you’re taking care of your own energy. Like the oxygen mask rule on an airplane: make sure you put on yours first. Because you have to have inspiration in order to give it. So I check in with myself every now and then, and ask ‘Am I feeling energized and inspired? And if not, how do I change that?’”
“Design is eating the world,” Morgan says in conclusion, referring to the future of InVision and digital product design as a whole. “With digital transformation, customer experience is now digital experience. Every company needs to create amazing digital customer experiences—and design is the way to do that. But it’s a messy team sport and involves a village of people across an organization, with different disciplines and backgrounds. We are building the world’s first platform for design, that supports all the people, tools, and workflow across a company to create innovative customer experiences.”