Ready Beats Perfect
(+ four habits from Hatch Conference)

By Hannah Baker

Dear Reader,

Last week I had the pleasure of hosting the Dome Stage at Hatch, a design-leadership conference bringing product and UX folks together to share what’s working (and what isn’t).

Not because I’m fearless, but because I’d done two simple things: I prepped my intros for each speaker, and then I trusted my facilitation muscle to carry the rest.

Having one home base actually reduced FOMO.

My job was clear: welcome, keep time, open Q&A, close. That clarity gave me space to really listen, and a front-row view of patterns worth stealing.

With my facilitator hat on, I wasn’t collecting quotes; I was noting the little processes that make work work.

Different speakers, different contexts, but four moves felt especially transferable. Here’s the short list and how to use each within a week.

Four habits from the Dome Stage

1) Make participation mutual (not extractive)

Designing research that is ethical, inclusive, and actually useful with Iris Latour,

Talk in a line: How to design research that shares power and returns value to participants.

Research works better when value flows both ways. If only the company benefits, participants feel mined.

Try this week: Add “Participant gets…” to your brief and end sessions by naming what will change and when they’ll hear back, then calendar that follow-up before you leave the room.

2) Make accessibility legible early

Using annotations to build an accessibility-first culture with Mina Nabinger

Talk in a line: How lightweight annotations make accessibility visible and actionable across the team.

Annotations aren’t paperwork; they’re a signal that distributes knowledge, removes guesswork, and reveals gaps where decisions happen.

Try this week: Add “Has accessibility annotations” to your definition of ready and annotate at least one key frame per feature with focus order, state coverage, and semantics before handoff.

3) Give teams a boundary object

Making insights part of everyone’s workflow with Marina Rico

Talk in a line: Turning personas from slideware into a shared object that guides day-to-day decisions.

Personas became the thing teams could point at, but adoption grew only after they picked allies, wired steps into real workflows, and showcased wins.

Try this week: Pick one boundary object (e.g., a journey slice or persona) and pilot it with allies. Add a simple retro check, “Which part of the artifact informed this decision?”, then share one quick before-and-after example.

4) Geek out on process (mise en place)

The Craft of Process Design with Collin Whitehead

Talk in a line: Why process design is leadership design, and how mise en place makes excellence repeatable.

Decide what you’re cooking, lay out the ingredients, and put someone on the pass; if no one holds the process, the line melts. That’s design leadership: own the process so your team can own the quality.

Try this week: Do a five-minute pre-crit mise en place (decision, constraints, “not today”), then sanity-check plans by asking “What would make this date honest?” and adding a small buffer.

A quick reflection on “being ready”

What you didn’t see from the seats is that before each talk, there’s that small, charged pause, slides loaded, mic checked, breath held.

Hosting up close reminded me that everyone wrestles with “am I ready?” The difference isn’t fear; it’s having a simple process you trust.

Before and after the stage, I met folks hosting for the first time or planning to speak in 2025. Many said, “I’m not ready.”

My take: Desire is enough to start.

I was never “given permission.” I took the space, trusted my facilitation mindset (building knowledge, staying neutral, and being flexible), and did the job in front of me.

Five years ago, I’d have been terrified. Now I feel at home up there, not because fear vanished, but because I’ve practiced how to hold a room.

If it’s on your goals list: pitch the talk, host the session, run the workshop. You’ll learn faster on the mic than by waiting to feel ready.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

Until next time!

Hannah Baker ​Facilitator & Co-Founder ​The Fountain Institute ​

​