Spilling Tea – Marvel Blog

An interview with Martin Ollivere, co-founder of Archetype

Kitty Wong — Mon, 17 Aug 2020 16:40:06 +0000

In this episode of our Spilling Tea Series, we talk to Martin Ollievere, an experienced product designer who works on product UX/UI and brand design, and spends all of his free time tinkering away on a slew of creative side projects. He is also Co-founder of the typographical design system, Archetype.

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Hey Martin, thanks for joining me for this remote chat. Let’s start by telling the Marvel community about yourself, how did you get into design and how did you get to where you are today? Martin: Thanks for having me. I’ve always been into drawing and designing things and knew I wanted to be a designer even as a kid. After studying industrial design at university, I got my first break designing Happy Meal toys. After that auspicious start, I worked on everything from medical equipment to aircraft interiors before focusing more on digital products back when Flash websites were still a thing. I was primarily attracted by the ability I had to create my own things, something that was harder with physical products. Nobody in digital back then called themselves a ‘product’ designer, and I found the graphic design skills like typography and grid layouts really challenging. I cut my digital teeth at a London agency working with clients such as PayPal, Bentley Motors and Sky. During this time a friend and I developed our own storybook app, which led me into a very interesting role with a SaaS start-up creating market research tools for app developers. This was a transformative experience for me, and ever since I’ve been consulting on branding and design for other start-ups. I’ve got stuck-in with all manner of companies from a games analytics platform in Helsinki to a med-tech firm in Silicon Valley. All the while, I’ve been tinkering away on a slew of creative side projects and collaborations. One of the most popular of these so far is Archetype, a tool which a friend and I built to help overcome some of those challenges in creating typography design systems that have irked me all these years. You’ve worked with and for some big companies, how would you compare the design industry from what it was then to what you know now? It’s come a long way from the days of companies just wanting a glorified online brochure... There’s been a general morphing of previously siloed roles into what is now generally called ‘product design’. This is funny coming from a product design background because it was always that way to me but now many more designers work on the entire experience of the user as they interact with a product or service which has resulted in much better designs. Because so many familiar patterns and best practices have evolved, there are far fewer terrible experiences than there used to be. Back when digital work was called ‘new’ media it was like a mish-mash of pre-existing disciplines each doing their own bit and ‘designers’ were mostly just working on visuals. There were a lot of chancers doing UX that just didn’t think like designers, having had no real problem-solving experience. The rise of the app and software-as-a-service businesses has meant design and high-quality user experiences have become ever more critical to keeping users happy. Good designers with an understanding of all the factors that make products successful, rather than just being really good at graphic design, say, are more highly valued. [caption id="attachment_20636" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Archetype export to Sketch without any coding[/caption] Design tools have changed dramatically too, and we now have things which are actually built for the job of creating and testing whole user experiences. The emerging ‘no-code’ and ‘low-code’ tools (MakerPad is a good source of these) are also very exciting because it means the barrier to designing and actually creating full-blown web apps is getting lower all the time. How much front end dev knowledge you should have as a designer has always been a bit of a dilemma and I think this is another area where changes could be afoot.

“The emerging ‘no-code’ and ‘low-code’ tools are also very exciting because it means the barrier to designing and actually creating full-blown web apps is getting lower all the time.”

That is really interesting, and technology has definitely come much further in certain areas of the industry. With all of these changes, how would you usually approach a project? What does your design flow look like? I’ve learned the hard way that it’s best to keep things lean and simple whilst eliminating meaningless fluff in all its forms. It varies based on the situation and brief but In the early design phase at least I’ll generally go through these steps:

Talk to people to really understand the problem space and the goals of both the stakeholders and target audience.
Gather inspiration by creating a mood board in Pinterest to get my creative juices going.
Brainstorm potential solutions via mind maps and hand drawn concept sketches (it really excites people to see these sketches and it’s still the quickest way to work through ideas - surprised more designers don’t do this)
Start testing ideas with users via sketches or very basic wireframes to see what works. Refine based on feedback.
Work up UI concepts in Sketch, turning into a clickable prototype to test and refine the user experience if appropriate.
Organise design system assets inside Sketch file ready for future iterations and prepare the file for developers to access via Zeplin.

The most tricky part of creating a design system for me has always been typography. I would find myself applying specific font sizes or spacing patterns in one-page layout or product UI only to find they just wouldn’t work visually on a subsequent layout. I really struggled to find a suitable sizing scale and spacing rules that would work for any future combination of design system components and wasted many hours nudging things a few pixels to and fro.

“The most tricky part of creating a design system for me has always been typography. I would find myself applying specific font sizes or spacing in one page layout or product UI only to find they just wouldn’t work visually on a subsequent layout.”

This headache led me and a friend of mine (Jamie Gilman) to start building a tool that could help create a typography design based on sizing and spacing best practices with just a few clicks instead of hours of pixel pushing. We also found that by exporting as CSS once I had played around getting everything the way I needed it in the browser meant Jamie saved several hours of coding up CSS styling from scratch using a Sketch file as a reference. I could also export to Sketch for use in future template designs as part of the design system. It was a rare win-win! [caption id="attachment_20630" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Archetype Sketch plugin[/caption] Sounds like you have a great partnership with your friend, Jamie! Did you have any teething problems when you first started working with your friend, and what advice would you give to other designers who may have never worked with developers before? When I started out I was clueless about development and had very little understanding of how the developers worked (front end or back end). I recall many frustrating debates about why something couldn’t be done or how something should work. Whilst it’s good to look at a problem from a different viewpoint, having an understanding of how things work means these days any debates like that are much more constructive. It’s essential for any designer to have at least a basic understanding of how things work and how they are built. I personally have a very genuine interest in development and have dabbled myself to a hobbyist level, which is one of the best ways to learn. I also ask the developers I work with lots of ‘stupid’ questions too, which you should never be afraid of doing. I ask them to explain things as they would to a golden retriever because I am rather slow on the uptake and they tend to forget how confusing it can be to a layperson. My friend is building a tool to teach coding in schools where for the first time I understood what algorithm really meant. His tool is called Rodocodo. Swift Playgrounds is also an excellent app that I really enjoyed which also explains the core concepts in a really understandable way. As well as these core programming concepts, a grasp of HTML, CSS and how Javascript is used should be the fundamentals. For many designers, this could be the first time that they’ve heard of typography having its own design system, despite it being one of the most important elements on a website. Where do you see typography in the future of design systems? As I touched on earlier one of the biggest struggles I had when we originally dreamt up Archetype was trying to get a single typography design/scale to look good in different situations: On a high-impact landing page (with a need for big messages), a complex SaaS product UI (where much of the typography was labels for UI components or data visualisations) and long form article pages (designed for easy reading). Specifying spacing between elements that worked in all three cases was a fool’s errand. Perhaps somewhat late to the party I recently stumbled upon the notion of creating different typography styling tailored specifically for each of these core applications: marketing site, blog site or product site (Designer Elliot Dahl wrote a nice article about typography design for an 8 point grid system that describes this concept well). This is something I think will happen a lot more in future and it’s certainly something I plan to bring into design systems I work on where relevant. A tool that could help preview and tweak a typography design in some common marketing, blog and product UI components at the same time before any final templates have been created would be a massive help here. If Jamie and I generate some income from the first release of Archetype then those are some of the features we’re going to add as we will be able to dedicate more time to development. The rise of variable fonts will also be interesting since one benefit will be the ability to create a bit of individuality amongst those oft-used fonts that have proliferated since the introduction of services like Google Fonts (good old Montserrat...). Where do you go, online, or offline to find inspiration? I’m very spurred on by stories of other people’s creative side projects and start-ups. Indie Hackers and Product Hunt are great sources of these. Podcasts ‘How I Built This’ and ‘Danny in the Valley’ are also very good in this regard. ‘Your Undivided Attention’ is another great podcast by the Centre for Humane Technology. This is an area of design I feel increasingly strongly about the older and wiser(ish) I get. I really admire the way writers like Malcolm Gladwell and Michael Lewis are able to tell a really compelling story and I plough through a lot of their stuff, be it in book or podcast form (‘Revisionist History’ and ‘Against the Rules’ are very interesting). I do love browsing on Dribbble and Behance, although some of the dazzling design work on there does occasionally stir feelings of desperate inadequacy. Someone told me to try comparing my latest work against my previous work to see where to improve rather than against other people’s which was good advice.

“Try to compare your latest work against your previous work to see where to improve rather than against other people’s.”

I have always loved drawing and illustration and continue to potter away on both of these pursuits. Procreate for the iPad is one of my best ever purchases, I couldn’t be without it now. I also check Colossal every couple of weeks or so as there are always some really creative art and design projects on there that give me some ideas. Without a hint of insincerity, I can also say that my wife inspires me a lot. She is always so serene and calm which I am often not.... Just being around her means a bit of her zen-like peacefulness rubs off. Running ideas past her logical accountant’s brain always helps clarify things in my head too. What’s the best advice you’ve been given? Two spring to mind: Don’t be afraid to ask ‘silly’ questions - People often say this but in practice, few people do it because they’re worried about looking stupid or uninformed. I used to go away and google terms I didn’t understand in meetings. Nowadays, I just ask questions all the time and love it, I’ve learned loads. I’m so glad it’s something I was encouraged to do because it’s amazing how many people don’t.

“Don’t be afraid to ask ‘silly’ questions.”

Don’t waste time on a design until you know it is valuable enough to pursue - This was a real tough nut to crack for a perfectionist but after working with a colleague who was a big believer in the lean approach, I’ve finally started to get it.

“Don’t waste time on a design until you know it is valuable enough to pursue”

Do you have any good references for anyone who wants to learn more about this topic? Designer Elliot Dahl has written a couple of great articles about typography and how it applies to the 3 different site types (marketing, blog and product), well worth a read:

Nathan Curtis of EightShapes wrote this nice article about the treatment of typography in design systems which is worth a read. You can also check out Archetype to help kickstart the creation of your typography design system and export for development or design with minimal effort If you care to see a few more projects I’m on Behance and Dribbble and Jamie and I have also created a little online compendium of the various things we’ve built together over the years.

The post An interview with Martin Ollivere, co-founder of Archetype appeared first on Marvel Blog.

Interview with Edoardo Rainoldi, founder of Rooki.Design

Kitty Wong — Wed, 12 Aug 2020 15:37:47 +0000

We recently talked with Edoardo Rainoldi, product designer and founder of rooki.design about his design workflow and how to face and conquer challenges whilst shipping his passion project. 👋 Edoardo! Why don't you start by telling us a little bit about yourself? I am a product designer from Italy working at Fantasy, a human-centred design agency in San Francisco. I am also the co-founder of rooki.design, an online magazine for design students filled with free resources including articles and interviews from others in the industry. How did you get into design, was it a single moment or was it a journey? It’s definitely been a journey to get to where I am now. I was first introduced to the practice in 2014 and since then I’ve been working towards becoming a digital designer. During that time I’ve had 3 different internships, 2 jobs and done countless networking. Going from attending high school in Milian to studying in the UK and now, working in Silicon Valley. What made you create rooki.design? When I was a student, I loved learning new skills and reading about ideas. However, I found that whilst there were many marvellous things online, I could never find a single place that would have all of these amazing resources. I also realised that because of the current structure of the design industry there is a lot of focus on seniors and leaders, those who have already gained their experience and careers, but there wasn’t a lot aimed at those who were just starting out. Finally, I’ve always been frustrated with paid design awards. As a student, it’s impossible to spend $50 on an entry for every project you work on and with the industry already being over-saturated, it is equally hard to make a name for yourself. Without looking out for those like myself, there would be no next generation. So, I decided to chip in and help the next generation of designers. That is a real dedication to the next generation of designers. How do you juggle all your responsibilities when you are both working for a company and creating content for others on rooki.design? At the moment I spend my week working at Fantasy and during the weekends, I dedicate my time to rooki.design. It sounds like a great divide of time, but I also try to develop my skills for my day job on the weekends. What does your current design workflow look like? My workflow varies depending on the project, but as a general rule, I’ll dive straight into research as soon as I get the brief or the first contact. I really think that you can’t design for something that you aren’t an expert in (or at least fluent), so I will try to read and look around my project’s industry as much as I can before I start sketching. Before starting any project I’ll try to detach myself from the problem so that when I come back, I can view it with ‘fresh eyes’. Sometimes my inspiration can come from a website and other times it could be from non-digital sources. Occasionally, I look at illustration books, read books about psychology and other times I cook myself an enjoyable meal before getting back into the flow. The rest comes and goes in waves: a bit of time away from the screen to get inspired and then 8 hours of straight heads-down design. And then repeat the process!

"I really think that you can’t design for something that you aren’t an expert in (or at least fluent), so I will try to read and look around my project’s industry as much as I can before I start."

What has been the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far? The biggest challenge in my career has definitely been keeping up with rooki.design. It was kind of easy in the beginning because I was off school for a month and could dedicate 100% of my time to it. But since starting at Fantasy, it’s been a challenge. My move to San Francisco has been one of the hardest things I’ve done, life-wise. I’ve lived away from my home-pasta-country in the UK for a few years, but being on the other side of the world has been much harder. I’ve not had any time to settle in properly, as I started work straight away. It’s all been quite stressful! Where do you think the design industry will take us in the future? I think in the next couple of years, AI will influence our designs a lot. We can only push interfaces so much before we need help from bigger, more intelligent methods. I think apps will become way more personalised and offer the right amount of data, at exactly the right time. Kind of creepy, uh? Lastly, I think designers will start crafting for emotions rather than only data. There is so much competition out there that companies will have to go back to their roots and find why people should buy their products/services. Emotions can’t be bought, and that’s what companies should be looking for.

"Designers will start crafting for emotions rather than only data and emotions can't be bought."

How do you think online design resources have influenced design being produced today? Online resources have influenced almost every single design that is being produced today. Most user flows and interface elements have been designed before, believe it or not. So finding some inspiration online, it’s never been easier. I always challenge myself, after getting some inspiration (for some people it works better before), to shut off any other design form and let your mind run wild. Go for a walk, and start looking at the outside world. It will inspire you even more than Dribbble.

"Go for a walk, and start looking at the outside world. It will inspire you even more than Dribbble."

Where do you usually go to get inspired? Offline and online? Predominantly online. I love scrolling through Dribbble for beautiful UI inspiration, (even though they may not be functional most of the time), Land-book for landing pages and Mobbin.design for user flows. I find other inspiration from Typewolf, Awwwards, Prototypr, Zajno Grid as I love looking at new brands and graphic design as they influence my craft. However, when I need a big dose of inspiration for projects, I find that solo travelling is the best for me. It forces me to listen to my mind running all the time and that usually gets me good ideas (after driving me crazy for a few days). Finally, my own project, rooki.design inspires me a lot! I love re-reading the published interviews or other amazing articles my collaborators have come up with. Whose work do you follow and admire? Lately, I’ve been obsessed with the beautiful illustrations of Malika Favre and Jack Daly, the great web pages and interactions of Ryan Morrison and the gorgeous type from both Ben Mingo and Zhenya Rynzhuk. I love almost everything by Hey Studio and a lot of work from my colleagues at Fantasy. On top of everyone, I am inspired every day (probably because I work with him) by Pontus Wellgraf. I’ve never seen anyone take such care of the details in motion and the beautiful visuals he works on. What is the best advice that you’ve ever been given? I don’t remember who said this to me but it was something like “Don’t be afraid to be different”. As cheesy as it sounds, I was told this right in the middle of the process of creating my first serious portfolio (my current one, it’s outdated I know, working on it!). I was looking for a lot of inspiration online trying to emulate the students who were successful in getting an internship at a big company and I designed something that looked exactly like everyone else. At that point, I realised that I didn’t want to be like everyone. I didn’t care about being liked or not, I just wanted to do something different. And that’s what brought me to what I have today. I definitely got negative reactions for it but I’m a big believer of “any reaction is a good reaction, as long as you get one”. Don’t settle for what most people like, push the boundaries. It usually pays off.

"Don’t settle for what most people like, push the boundaries."

Do you have any future projects that we can look out for next year? I am actually launching rooki.design v2.0 in the next few months! It will have a lot more of everything; content, articles, free resources and even a better more accessible design. It will be the best rooki.design ever created. ← best joke! How do I get involved with rooki.design? I’m always looking for talented people who want to inspire the next generation of creatives. If you want to join us, reach out to me on Twitter @edoardorainoldi!

The post Interview with Edoardo Rainoldi, founder of Rooki.Design appeared first on Marvel Blog.

Interview with Josh Knilans, Interaction Designer at Red Hat

Kitty Wong — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 13:00:54 +0000

Here at Marvel, we love finding out about how designers of different disciplines work alongside others in their company and with other stakeholders. We talk to Josh Knilans about his design workflow and how he likes to stay organised as an Interaction Designer at Red Hat.

👋 Josh! Why don't you introduce yourself to Marvel's design community?

I am an Interaction Designer at Red Hat and currently live in Raleigh, NC. I’ve lived in 5 different states and 2 countries in the last ten years. My wife and I have fun in our daily attempts to keep 3 kids under 5 from destroying our house and chasing our cat. I love learning new things, listening to podcasts, and reading between 20-30 non-fiction books per year. Pro-tip: reading 20+ books per year is definitely possible when you play audiobooks from your local library on your daily commute.

“Pro-tip: to reading 20+ books per year, play audiobooks on your daily commute.”

How did you get into design, was it something that you knew from a young age or an interest much later in life?

I have been active in design since I was in middle school, but didn’t seriously consider design as a career until my first full-time job after college. I worked at an insurance company that used an industry-specific software program that had been on the market for 30 years without much of an update (we’re talking MS-DOS). It was universally disliked and the training schedule lasted between 6 and 9 months. My company decided to upgrade to a modern software provider and the training time dropped to 1 month and everyone was happier with their job. I wanted to be a part of creating good software that makes people’s jobs and lives better. A few months later I quit my job and pursued graduate school for product design/development.

What is your company culture like?

Red Hat attracts passionate people that want to see open source take over the world. We celebrate success, obsess about open-source, embrace openness and transparency, and value collaboration. We encourage and expect everyone to contribute to the conversation-even if they’re the least senior person in the room. We value individuality, even to the point where each team can choose what they want to use for a messaging application. (Google Chat, Slack, IRC) Sometimes this causes some inefficiencies between teams that primarily use different applications, but most of the time it works out.

“We encourage everyone to contribute to the conversation, even if they are the least senior person in the room.”

What is your design team culture like?

We have around 100 team members mostly based in and around Boston, MA and Raleigh, NC. Our team is made up of people you would want to be friends with outside of work. We value helping others, whether that’s providing for feedback in design reviews, walking through a new user flow at the whiteboard, or suggesting a 16px spacer instead of a 24px spacer between two components. Some team members have just graduated from college whereas others are nearing retirement but both are valued. We collaborate in person, via Slack, and on BlueJeans video. We also contribute to our open source design system, Patternfly which we use in all of our products.

“We value helping others, whether that’s providing for feedback in design reviews, walking through a new user flow at the whiteboard, or suggesting a 16px spacer instead of a 24px spacer between two components.”

What does your design workflow look like? Is this what you would call the dream workflow and what other tools do you use to make your life easier?

Since I work on fairly technical products (Linux containers, operators, etc) I usually start by reading documentation or interviewing stakeholders to better understand what the problem is that needs to be solved. During this step I typically use Google Docs/Sheets to take notes and Lucidchart to generate flowcharts and/or diagrams. Once there’s enough detail to begin wireframes, I use Sketch for creating wireframes and Marvel to share designs with stakeholders and gather feedback. When deadlines and calendars permit, I schedule feedback sessions with users to get input and validate design decisions.

“Marvel solves many of my problems when it comes to sharing wireframes with stakeholders and gathering feedback.”

What is it about your workflow or process that you would recommend to other people in the Marvel community that could inspire them to work more efficiently?

It seems obvious, but really understanding the problem you’re trying to solve is key to becoming more efficient. No matter how beautiful your design is, if you’re solving the wrong problem... you’re still solving the wrong problem. And you will need to do rework later. Another time saver has been using Sketch symbols. Our team uses the Patternfly symbol library so that our designs are consistent across products and it has allowed me to spend more time focusing on how to solve the problem and less time designing individual components that may or may not be consistent with other products in our portfolio.

“Being able to really understand the problem at hand is key to becoming more efficient.”

What advice would you give to other designers when working with developers?

I think in general we should involve developers earlier in the design process. The times that I have done this have led to constructive feedback from developers and has prepared me for additional stakeholder feedback later in the process. Often they will also become advocates for your design in further conversations with stakeholders.

“Engage with developers earlier in the design process will lead to constructive feedback and often they become advocates for your designs at later stages.”

Last question, how do you stay organized, not just in Marvel but also in your day-to-day?

I use the Notes app in iOS, Google docs, and Airtable to keep organized in my day-to-day life Enjoy this article? Let us know on Twitter and subscribe to the newsletter so you don’t miss any future interviews.

The post Interview with Josh Knilans, Interaction Designer at Red Hat appeared first on Marvel Blog.

An Interview with Matt Cooper-Wright, Design Director at IDEO

Naomi — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 10:49:25 +0000

What was the moment that you knew you wanted to work in design?

I think I'd always done design. It's funny, at school I studied information technology and always gravitated much more to the design of the interface, rather than the underlying software and systems - which is really what it's trying to teach. It was only after leaving, after doing my A-levels, that an art teacher said, “Maybe graphic design is the thing for you.” I think I always knew that there was a career there, but no one in my family did anything in the design industry, so it was interesting to go through design education and learn about the consultancies that were very prevalent back then and realising that there were a lot of people getting paid. Also, growing up in Manchester, I was very aware of the shadow of people like Peter Saville, as a graphic contributor to a cultural scene. That was not just a hidden job that was happening while the music was happening, but it was very much shaping of the whole thing.

How did you get to where you are now?

I guess compared to most people, I had a fairly traditional career path. I grew up in the UK and studied GCSEs, then A-levels, then a foundation course, and did a degree in graphic design in Nottingham. Then after that, I was very lucky to get picked up at one of the degree shows, and almost immediately fell into a job in London, doing information design and wayfinding, which again was not something I was definitely into. It actually came back to some of the systemic thinking that was probably present in the coding, programming and technology stuff I was doing. I spent about five years there, going from a fresh graduate, to a senior designer leading projects and doing big wayfinding projects. When I jumped to freelance, it was really just as a way to get me away from the one area I'd spent all my time. With this I did branding, digital, some graphic design and a bit of this and that. At one point, I was a sort of jobbing freelancer. Then, I got the opportunity to come and do a couple days at IDEO; literally just helping them put a proposal together. We won that project and they invited me back to work on it. I didn't leave after that. At some point during that project, they were advertising for an interaction designer, and I realised that the job description was exactly what I was doing that day. I was like, “I have to apply for this, because I'd love to stay here. And if I don't get it, then I should probably leave, because this is a sign that I'm doing this job, but I'm not right for it.” Fortunately they said yes, and yeah I've been here since, which is about six and half years now.

Tell us more about information design...

It's the structuring and visualisation of information of any sort. I think that can either look like infographics or even things like designing time tables for bus companies, which is something I've done. I find a lot of pleasure in the structure of complex information, in a way that makes it very accessible. In that world, the majority of the information design that we were doing, was geographic mapping spatial information. I worked on projects that set the walking map system for London, and did other big multi-mode of transport information systems in various parts of the world. "It's interesting, because it's all about helping people make a journey through a space, digitally or physically, and giving the right information at the right moment. It's one of those design jobs that takes an incredible amount of thinking beforehand, to look very effortless in the moment." I think you have to have a lot of patience, and a desire to think about a system, not just about a single point of experience.

Looking back over your career so far, is there anything that you would do differently?

I don't think so. I feel very lucky...if you'd asked me coming out of university, "What's your ideal job?" A design director at somewhere like IDEO, is literally what I would have said. People at IDEO, have got such a diverse set of journeys that brought them here, and lots of people that have no traditional design training. The teams are all better for it, because it's not just a group of people that were raised in the same way, in the same country, with the same training trying to solve problems, because there's no diversity in that. In a funny way, I'm feeling the fact that I am the most generic person here...I guess I wonder what I could have done to diversify my path, just to make myself a more interesting candidate for this kind of work.

What was the biggest challenge you've faced so far?

I think the hardest and most challenging period for me here is when I transferred to our Palo Alto office, to help set up a joint client IDEO lab. From day one, we had a lot of support and structure around us, but it was still an incredibly hard thing to be figuring out. A new culture that was inclusive of both sides, but not either one dominating too much. Then trying to tackle new problems that none of us had tackled before. "I think successful companies are probably ones that have invested a lot of time in this operation, infrastructure and culture, which means you don't have to reinvent everything, everyday - and you just get straight to the edge of the problem that you need to figure out." That definitely called on lots of reserves of patience and energy. I think I'm probably at my best when most of the situation is understood, but there's something complex to still figure out. We're not figuring out if we need to order more chairs and tables, the operational stuff is stable. I guess I've been lucky so far in my career, that I've been places where someone else has either already thought of the problem, or someone else is actively working on it, and it's not my thing. Whereas spending six months having to do more of that stuff, I definitely had to pull back my aspiration about how far we could get with the work, but to set good foundations for lots more work to happen.

Have you applied design to any other areas of your life?

I feel like it's hard to be a designer without constantly being in a mode of awareness of problems. For example, I'm in the middle of renovating a house at the moment, and there's some very practical things about designing and building the space I'm living. But, have I really designed my morning routine? I definitely know a lot of people doing that, but it's not something I've actively done. Maybe subconsciously there's things that I do differently, because I spend my days designing things. It's not something I'm actively ever conscious of.

What makes a day a good day for you, at work?

“Increasingly, my position is as much about making sure that everyone else is having a good day, as much as me personally.”

I can't remember where this clicked with me recently, but in your role as a leader of a design team, you have to stop doing all the things yourself. You probably got that position, because you're very good at doing your job, but then there's an important shift to make of using your position of visibility and influence to not be doing more of the same, but to shine a light on people that are doing good things. On the flip side to that, my roots as a graphic designer have not left me and if I can find an excuse to write code or design something - that's where I go. I can noodle away for hours, and recharge myself. A day writing a bit of code is a familiar day as well.

What frustrates you the most about your current design process and how are you trying to change it?

I think the big challenge that we are tackling at the moment at IDEO, and probably true everywhere really is, the speed in which things emerge, become successful, decline and be disrupted. The time in which we have to do design work is getting shorter, and so it's really important for us to be efficient and do as much as we can in less time. We need to immediately think of the next phase and ask questions like: How's it going to launch, how's it going to get out into the world and how's it going to grow its audience? We have to have a very entrepreneurial start up mindset to growth. The worst that can happen, is that we just try and cram our process into less time, and burn people out. The best that can happen? We're very good at IDEO at bringing a diverse mix of people together. That means that we can start thinking about business models sooner. We can start thinking about who the team is that will launch the product on the client's side sooner. We can start designing the organisation alongside experience and design the business model alongside the experience. There's a sort of certain peak speed I think you can change a culture in, and break things together without everyone feeling a bit confused. That venture designed approach, is definitely something we're talking about. I'd love it to be reflected more in our community mix. We should theoretically have fewer of the traditional design disciplines in terms of industrial design, product design and graphic design, and more of these new organisational designers and business designers, because that routine is going to be that mix sooner or later. It's a path we're on. I don't know if we're ahead, behind or just where we need to be.

How do you go about communicating the future of the brand to your team?

In the last couple of years, we've been implementing a strategic approach, rather than trying to just react and iterate, that way we're justifying our current modes as something for the future. We ask more questions like, "Where is the market going, what do our client's need and what are our competitors doing?" We have a quite rigorous story about what the strategy of IDEO is, certainly on the studio level. Then communicating it is done through the actions that leadership take, not that there's a leadership group somewhere that's doing all of this big thinking, and then a team that executes it somewhere else. We're very transparent. We have a Monday morning meeting every week, with the whole office; where we talk about as much about project work, as where the studio's going. We're building new capabilities we think we should be all getting on board with, along with financial positioning and all kinds of stuff. I don't think anyone ever feels like there are decisions being made, that they're not part of. One thing that we can probably do more of, is help people when they're setting objectives for what they want to do in the next year and talk about how can they line their objectives up with where the studio and the business thinks it needs to go. That way we can build this really harmonious thing; where people can pursue what they're interested in for the benefit of themselves and for the business.

What's your creative sign off process like?

At IDEO, design is everything we do. This doesn't mean all of our operations people are every bit the same, and there's probably different versions of what sign off looks like. But to give a simple answer around a project, our structure is a three, four maybe five person team dedicated to one project, to one client at a time. The project lead is there to get the best out of them rather than to show them what to do or tell them what to do. More to help them get unstuck if they're stuck on things. So, there isn't really a moment when someone hands over the design and says, "Can we sign this off?" Rather, it's the whole team contributing to the final thing, and different people will step up and lead on different elements of it, according to their craft and their discipline. The best situation is where a person on that team is the client. We always push for our clients to become part of our team, so sign off is as much for them to think about, as well. It's probably worth saying that a lot of the work we do is about suggesting something totally new. The word innovation is maybe not quite right because that can often sound a bit loaded. The briefers figure out the future of something or help the company do something that it can't do by itself, it's more about sharing work and getting people to buy in to where it came from and buy into the idea. It avoids conversations like, "Here, we've got the idea for your new website. It's this colour and this size and this font. Do you like it, yes/no?". And instead, it's more like suggesting a strategy for where a business might go, and so sign off happens in the kickoff, the midpoint and the final presentation. If anything, we push for group critique of design throughout what we do and bring other design leaders into teams to help them get the best out of what they're doing. But again, it's much more like guiding people towards something, rather than verifying it or saying, "This is good”, or, “This is bad."

What's your biggest learning from managing design teams?

I always say that the best thing is often just getting out of the way of people. Your job, as the leader of the design team, is to get them to a place where they can move as quickly as they possibly can. I'm lucky that I'm surrounded by incredibly good designers and people that are really, really good at what they do. So, just getting out of the way is an easy thing to say, because everyone else will immediately step up and deliver in that situation. The game for IDEO is to get people up and running, then giving them the space to do it themselves, and we'll then move on to the next interesting challenge. What that means is a lot more time spent working with people that are either newer to design. Leading those teams is about surfacing anxieties and making space to get people to say, "I don't understand". "An important trait of a designer is optimism and comfort with ambiguity. So, sometimes the instinct can be a thought pattern like, "'This is complicated, I don't really get this, but everyone else seems to be okay so I'll keep quiet.'" It's that classic thing that all teachers say, “if you have a problem, say something because everyone else is probably thinking the same thing”. I think your job as a leader of a design team is to sometimes actually just stop and ask the question on their behalf. It's possible to tune into what people are feeling that and not saying. It happens so often and it can happen so early in the process, and just be this kernel of doubt that grows and grows. Sometimes, I think loading the blame onto yourself is an easier way for people to critique you.

What would you say is the best advice that you've ever been given?

I was reminded of it by one of the people I worked with originally, who was the chief of the Royal Designers for Industry, Malcolm Garrett an incredibly well-respected designer, he worked on The Buzzcocks and with Brian Eno in the early days of the internet. I met with him recently, and he was said he'd used some advice I gave him, to my surprise! The advice, which was actually something given to me, I think, by my wife, was:

"Wherever you go, whatever team you join, just make yourself indispensable, as soon as possible."

It's very hard for people to question why you're there, if you're doing something that is really, really important. It's an obvious thing to say but it's an interesting way to push yourself. It can be a dangerous thing, because you fear that you're going to do it and no one will notice, but that's not my experience. As leader of a team, it's always noticed it and always appreciated. If you think about how indispensable are you to the team you're on and there's any doubt in your mind about it, then it's probably a sign that you could be more proactive in certain things. We don't all need to kill ourselves and burn ourselves out, but just thinking, "What's the next thing I'm going to do for the team that they've not asked me to do that I know they will benefit from?" "It's a healthy bias to have. So, if you find yourself leaning into stuff and then you find yourself being offered more opportunity, then you find yourself being rewarded, and ultimately the team is a success."

And the worst?

I often think bad advice is just someone's advice to themselves which doesn't have full empathy for the situation you're in. I don't think there is bad advice, I think it's just advice that's misdirected. It might tell you something about their motivations or the anxiety that they're feeling about something. I think you can receive bad advice and become very defensive and let it put up barriers, but stopping and thinking, "There's something there; there's some reason that this person has given that advice to me, and even if I don't agree with it, I should think more about why they've said it and not what they've said". I find that's the way to kind of just avoid confrontation with people, which is never really worth the time.

Any thoughts on the future of design tools?

One of the big things that I'm part of here at IDEO, is what role intelligent software, artificial intelligence, machine learning... what role is that going to have for the jobs that we do? That probably is jobs to society, as much as jobs for the design industry; but the stance we've got is not artificial intelligence but augmented intelligence. How do we use this new power to add more to what people are, rather then just replace them? We're certainly talking to our clients a lot about this, and trying to find projects which can bring a human-centered view to the enormity of what AI could do, to industries and societies everywhere. There's interesting stuff that Adobe is doing in terms of voice synthesis and some amazing work around making videos of people talking. It's basically already at a point where it's hard to detect if it's the mapping of someone else's impression onto a still photo. AI has made it look like a real video, and when you pair it with voice synthesis, it's like you can totally simulate someone and have them say anything you want...which is a slightly scary thing in the sort of political climate that we live in. The problem I see, is that it's breathlessly delivered at Adobe Summit, that it's going to make the life of the video editor much easier because now rerecording voice-overs is irrelevant - we can just synthesise the voice that we need. Whilst that is absolutely true but the possibilities are endless, and I don't know if designers are really aware of what parts of their jobs are going to be affected. At the same time, there's other ends of the community building tools to solve the problems they're experiencing, which will inevitably end up doing different jobs. There's no way of stopping what it will end up being used for. I think it's as much a kind of philosophical and moral question as much as it is a business and societal question. Designers are in a really powerful position as someone that stands between user need, behaviour and experience, and business need and technology's drive. So, I hope that designers continue to have influence over all three of those things, or could be the voice of humanity in the mix of all of that. The inevitable force of technology and the kind of power of commerce could really squash the human part of that, if we're not careful. However, I do think design has a role to play in mediating technology, business and people. So, we have some power to make things different and there's a responsibility that we have. Maybe we didn't ask for it, but I think we've been given it.

Is there anything that you're reading or listening to or watching right now that you'd like to recommend to anyone?

I found a really interesting podcast recently that I've been listening to a lot in the context of the work I'm doing called something like Killer Innovations. The opening credit music is this really over the top American rock music, and you think, "Oh, god, this is going to be horrible, but there's a couple of interesting references where he's talking about the infrastructure for innovation. It goes back to that point of designers can come up with new stuff all day; having good ideas is not the hard part. The hard part is getting the rest of the organisation to buy into it, and then having teams be able to deliver it to people. His insight into how you get a whole company to care about doing a new thing was really interesting, because they were very tactical, about making sure people actually have an incentive. For example, does the marketing team have the same incentive about launching new products that the innovation team has? And if they don't, then why shouldn't they? They're inevitably not going to want to work together, or have their incentives pull them apart. It can be nowhere near something you're responsible for, but if you're not kind of at least stepping up and thinking about things like a common incentive, it's hard to see anyone else doing it for you. You may not always be in a situation where you have the right to go and say, "Marketing team, I need you to change your incentives," but I think we should be kind of looking beyond the bounds of our responsibilities. This way, you go out, and you end up having conversations all over the place, and potentially really significantly change the way the whole company works. Design is in a place now where it has a seat at the table. We're not necessarily taught or trained in any of the stuff that the other people in those rooms are good at, and I think we do need to be a little bit more versatile in how we communicate. And ask, “How do we care about the things that the other people at the top of the company care about, that we've never really had to think about that much?” If design is going to take root in an organisation, we sometimes need to change more than just the design itself. If design is going to take root in an organisation, we sometimes need to change more than just the design itself. And this isn't true for every designer, not everyone is in a position where they need to go and knock on the CEO's door to get something changed. I think just having the confidence to go and open up that conversation. The financial people aren't suddenly becoming design thinkers, but I think a design thinker could become financially savvy enough to carry themselves in such a discussion. Not to become an expert, but enough to have empathy for what they care about, and then build your story with them in mind.

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The post An Interview with Matt Cooper-Wright, Design Director at IDEO appeared first on Marvel Blog.

An Interview with Molly Lafferty, Design Director at This Also

Naomi — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 10:50:52 +0000

What was the moment you knew you wanted to work in design?

I had no idea what I wanted to study in college, so I picked something that sounded fun: film. And it was! But I had lots of other interests and also took classes in psychology, computer science, theatre design. When I saw a web design course listed it felt like an easy A - like many designers in my age, I had coded Livejournal themes during high school. But in that class, I was exposed to this concept of “interaction design” and it felt like this magic moment - all these disparate things I was interested in could be combined in this really interesting field.

How did you get to where you are now?

I took the unusual path of going straight from college to graduate school for design. After I discovered design, I shifted all my focus into that but was there were very few courses and opportunities at my school. So, I went to graduate school for interaction design, and from there I spent time as an interaction designer at a larger digital agency before settling into the smaller studio I work at now.

Anything you'd do differently?

My path worked out perfectly for me. That said, I don’t encourage most people to go directly to graduate school from undergrad. More undergraduate programs these days cover digital design, and there are many more entry-level product design positions than when I graduated college. But graduate school is a great option if you’re switching careers to move into design, or looking to dive more deeply into a certain aspect of design.

What did your teachers think of you?

You’d have to ask them :) I will say I was one of those kids that did well at school because I can embrace rules and structure. I actually struggled a lot once I left the academic environment and had my first real world job because there were no grades and much less structure.

What was the biggest challenge you've faced so far?

Have you applied design to any other areas of your life?

I’m a handweaver and design textiles in my spare time. The loom is the precursor to the computer in many ways, so there’s a nice parallel there. It’s fun to have a creative outlet independent of any client requirements, and to make things far removed from a computer screen.

What makes a day, a good day, for you?

Variety! An ideal day has a mix of project meetings, 1:1 check-ins with designers I manage, and a solid chunk of time to work. If possible, I like to keep meetings to the morning hours so after lunch I can totally focus on client work, internal projects, or writing.

What's it like to working with big companies like Google, Xbox and Samsung like This Also has?

It’s a really fun challenge in both humility and creativity. Humility because our clients know their business better than we ever could, and we have to respect that and learn from them. Creativity because we then have to translate those learnings into something totally new that meets their goals. We work on a wide range of challenges, from vision work that imagines what a product could look like in several years, to more tactical design work. And with some of our larger clients we get to work with different types of teams on different types of products across the entire business.

What frustrates you most about your current design process and how are you trying to change it?

Personally, that initial “blank page” start of the process is the most intimidating part, especially when working on vision projects where the possibilities can feel endless and the ideas don’t always seem to flow. I’ve been working on articulating some strategies I use to help shift my perspective on whatever field I’m designing for, things like digging into the history of the medium or questioning absolute statements I keep hearing about a technology or field.

Biggest learning from managing design teams?

"Good design direction is about creating a mental space for your team to work within and problem solve, rather than directing them toward a specific solution."

I had long thought of creative directors as these larger-than-life figures who swoop in, give a big, game-changing idea, and then leave everyone to make it happen. And perhaps it’s like that some places, but at This Also we're highly collaborative at all levels and really invested in helping our more junior team members grow. My role is about fostering their skills and framing their ideation in terms of our client’s goals, and then helping us execute on the vision.

How do you ensure client vision, brief and design is aligned throughout a project?

We tend to work in quick, one-or-two week sprints. At the start of the project, we'll have a plan that roughly outlines the activities for these sprints based on the brief and what we've heard from our client. But staying flexible and responsive is the key to ensuring alignment and success, so it's not until the end of the week that we firmly establish what we'll focus on in the upcoming week. This helps us quickly account for any new knowledge or blockers we may be facing--if one part of the project needs to put on hold so the client can align internally, then we can tackle another area.

"Ultimately the key, as with many aspects of design, is strong communication."

What's the best advice you've ever been given?

One of the best pieces of advice I've ever gotten is less a piece of advice, and more something that I just keep in mind which is that, “it's not magic”.

"It's not magic."

We know this, we know that the work that we do everyday is not magic, it doesn't come out of thin air. However, as designers I think it's really easy to get caught up in seeing other people's work, seeing their ideas, talks or articles - whatever it might be. Then just thinking “That's amazing!”, “That's incredible”, “I could never do that” or “They make it seem so easy.” "It's important to ground yourself and remember it's not magic, it's just work and it's all things that you yourself are capable of putting out into the world as well."

And the worst?

Design trends that should die?

I think it’s our insistence on categorizing design styles as trends that should die, that should die. It’s a narrow way of thinking and can make us more reactive to a style just because it’s trendy or not, rather than evaluating whether it is right for the project. Plus, getting too hung up on what’s now or past can keep us distracted from moving towards the next thing.

Thoughts on the future of design tools?

"Earlier in my career I may have felt worried that automated design tools could leave me without a job one day, but now knowing first-hand the increasing complexity of identifying and solving problems, and executing on those, we won’t face that anytime soon." I’m really interested in those tools that will help us design experiences that are tied less to screens, or only tied to screens in certain moments of a broader user experience. For example, how do we design for a mix of inputs and outputs, such as designing for voice assistants in the context of a home with lots of other screens and devices?

What are you watching on Netflix right now? What are you reading/listening to right now?

Terrace House and Grand Designs are my favorite Netflix escapes right now. I’m currently reading Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down. It’s a surprisingly entertaining book from 1978 that explains engineering concepts in very clear and basic terms.

Who's work do you follow and admire?

Design-wise, Lara Hogan writes and advises on engineering management but a lot of her work can also be translated to design teams. And Amelie Lamont, who is both asking and answering really interesting questions at the intersection of design, language, race and anthropology. For inspiration outside of digital, Es Devlin is a really prolific and creative force in stage design. Enjoy this article? Let us know on Twitter and subscribe to the newsletter so you don’t miss next weeks interview.

The post An Interview with Molly Lafferty, Design Director at This Also appeared first on Marvel Blog.

An Interview with Gal Shir, Designer and Illustrator

Naomi — Tue, 29 Jan 2019 10:40:04 +0000

What was the moment that you knew you wanted to be a designer?

How did you get to where you are now?

In the beginning, as a teenager, I did a lot of free work for some small local business in the area where I lived. Then I started to publish my work and find more clients online. I gained experience and learned a lot while being a freelancer for several years working with different clients. Then I started to work full-time in some creative agencies and some startups.

What did your teachers think of you?

I think my high-school teachers liked me because I was a quiet student and didn’t make many problems, but I actually had very low grades. I was drawing during class instead of listening to the teacher. I didn’t make my homework on time nor studied for exams since I was sitting in front of my computer playing with Photoshop and learning the internet.

“I was drawing during class instead of listening to the teacher.”

What does a typical day look like to you? And what makes a day, a good day, for you?

I usually wake up at 9:00 AM and start my day with a 20-minute walk to the office of the startup that I’m currently working with. I meet with the team, work a bit, eat lunch together, work a bit more, and head home in the evening. At the end of the day, I find some time for social media, emails, drawings, and watching Netflix or YouTube.

What does your setup look like?

I use a MacBook Pro 15.9 inch with an Asus 4k monitor. Nearby, I have my iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil, my Bose headphones, Lumix GH5 Camera, some sketchbooks (actually many sketchbooks), pencils and a bottle of water.

What's your process around bringing an illustration to life?

My animation process starts before the illustration step, when I first try to think of a story. I find the interesting features of objects like their shape, material, or functionality, and figure out what could be funny or entertaining about them. Then I sketch the illustration, most of the times using the iPad Pro, and work on the animation in After Effects.

What was it that made you start drawing?

I think I’ve been doodling since the age of 3, so I’m not sure that there is a specific thing or moment that got me into illustration. But I got deeper into it in high school, through learning more in art class and then more professionally when I started to work on illustrations for clients.

What was the project that you feel you learned the most from?

I learned and am still learning the most working with Lemonade. I've faced some challenges with them since they're a startup reinventing the old-fashioned insurance world, a tough task in itself because as you know, insurance is not that simple to explain. I've had to push the boundaries of my creativity to deliver complex messaging through illustrations, and to build good UX out of a bad-UX industry.

What are you most proud of?

What makes me really proud is the community I’ve managed to grow around digital illustration on my Instagram and my YouTube channel. I’m super excited to have the opportunity to inspire other people, share my process, and engage with many designers all over the world.

View this post on Instagram

More Halloween stuff! ???? A little ghost this time, hope you enjoy watching the process! Made on iPad Pro 12.9 inch using the #procreate app. ✍️ Brushes: Studio Pen and Grunge. Let me know what you think! #art #illustration #drawing #creative #halloween2018

A post shared by Gal Shir (@thegalshir) on Oct 26, 2018 at 1:51am PDT

What's the best advice you've ever been given?

"I think one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever been given is that if you want to become a good creator, you need to start with being a good consumer." Maybe it’s a bit abstract, but I found out that when I wanted to become better in illustration, for example, I had to consume a lot from the illustration world. There’s this phase saying “You are what you eat”. So, I started following all kind of illustrators and made my Instagram feed full of Illustrations so I can consume it each and every day. And it worked, I think.

“The worst advice is that you must go to university in order to succeed. It's true that you need to always keep on learning, but the way you do that is not important.”

What are you watching on Netflix right now? What are you reading/listening to right now?

Watching “Disenchantment” and the new season of “The Good place”. Listening to “Epica vs Attack on Titan Songs” which is a new album by a band I love, covering songs from an anime show I’m currently watching called “Attack on Titan”.

Who's work do you follow and admire?

Illustrators:

Animators:

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The post An Interview with Gal Shir, Designer and Illustrator appeared first on Marvel Blog.

Joel Califa On What Makes Design Leadership Work

Naomi — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 15:08:29 +0000

At Marvel, we love speaking to designers from across the world, working at leading companies and driving the future of design. We caught up with Joel Califa, Senior Product Designer at GitHub, and discussed how his career took shape, got some advice on how to lead design teams and picked his brain on where he thinks the future of design is going.

Tell me a little bit about your current role and the work that you're doing right now...

I’m currently a Senior Product Designer at GitHub and I love it. The people I get to work with are all super smart, talented, and humble, and getting to work on a product that’s so crucial to our industry (and used regularly by 20 million developers) is so much more satisfying than I expected it to be. My product team is called CODE, which basically means we are responsible for most things related to code on GitHub: pull requests, code review, etc. My role includes a bit of everything. In my 6 months here I’ve done high-level product strategy, detail work on interfaces, redesigned flows, implemented things in code, conducted large research projects, etc. Product Design as a field has fuzzy borders to begin with. I think as you get more experienced, they only become fuzzier. I kind of like that—it lets me work at various fidelities and scopes, so I get to never be bored.

"Product Design as a field has fuzzy borders to begin with. I think as you get more experienced, they only become fuzzier."

In your role right now, what would you say are the most challenging aspects of what you're doing?

Since GitHub is so ubiquitous, we see such a range of different workflows and states. There are many ways to structure code repositories. There are many approaches to reviewing code. Many ways to manage projects. Many methods individual developers use to stay productive. Many different local development environments. Many different styles and languages. The list goes on and on, and there’s always more. Each of these is a new, and often highly technical thing to learn, and when we design new feature and products, we have to account for all of it. On top of that, a developer is often the definition of a power user—which means they’ve learned your product inside and out, they’ve found ways to become more efficient at using it, and they absolutely hate when you change it. Navigating the cost of improvement is also super interesting.

Why did you choose design as a career? What was the path to becoming a product design leader?

I was extremely lucky in that I kind of fell into design and development. I was a nerd as a kid, and all my friends were nerds, so we picked up QBasic, Visual Basic, and C++ early on. It was fun and empowering in a way similar to Lego. You get to think creatively and actually materialize your vision, and that was exciting. When I was 13 or so, I learned Corel Draw and Photoshop to make Counter Strike posters and Star Wars art. I picked up HTML to make Neopets sites. All of this kind of snowballed into freelance work designing album covers and building websites. When I was 15 or so I was hired to design an intranet for a tech company. By the time I was in a position to decide what to do with my future, I already had something I was passionate about and decent at. It was a no-brainer. See? Lucky. This skillset that I acquired accidentally because it was fun ended up positioning me for roles like the ones at Amicus, DigitalOcean, and now at GitHub. "The path to leadership wasn’t really intentional either. We didn’t have a good design hiring process at DigitalOcean, so I talked to design leaders and built one. We didn’t have a design system, so I built one. We didn’t have formal design principles, so I articulated them. Sooner or later I realized that someone needed to be doing this type of work full-time, and that it could be me. I was lucky to come in so early and get the opportunity to grow in that way. All the industry leadership stuff (the writing and speaking) is just me wanting to share that experience with the community."

You worked for DigitalOcean in their early days, how did your role change as they grew?

When I started at DO, we were 60 people with one product, a virtual private server called a Droplet. When I left, we were 300 and had a much wider array of products—from security to storage—with more on the way. They say that every time a company doubles in size it needs to relearn how to communicate, because it’s essentially an entirely new company. I saw shifts like this a few times throughout my tenure.

"They say that every time a company doubles in size it needs to relearn how to communicate."

For those who’ve never heard about it, DigitalOcean is a cloud platform for developers. It’s known primarily for its intuitive workflows and interfaces in relation to other tools on the market. From the get go, a big part of my role was nurturing this and building on it. That’s easier to do with one product than it is with ten. As we built out more of this functionality, I transitioned to leadership and built out a team capable of maintaining the product’s clarity as it grew in scale and complexity. What that meant was that I stopped opening Sketch and Atom and switched focus to hiring great people and making sure they were empowered to do great work. Most of my work started getting done in meetings. Hiring is hard, keeping people engaged is hard, steering a team and keeping an entire company aligned around design is very hard. "These were different challenges than the ones I tackled as an individual contributor, but I loved them. Seeing a designer grow as a leader and knowing that you made that happen is one of the most rewarding things I’ve experienced." How I measured success also changed. Managers don’t have as many obvious “wins” because they don’t usually ship things. Instead it became about my team’s general health, productivity, quality, ambition, etc. The work in a role like this is less hands on, but it has the potential to be so much more impactful.

Are there any common takeaways you've experienced from leading different design teams that apply to all of them?

I think the most important thing you can do is to hire good people and help them to do good work in whichever ways you can. This means creating and nurturing an environment within which they can flourish. I’ve written a bit about this in the past. The specific processes that work for one team might not work for another, but I think that, regardless of implementation, there are certain things that every Product Design org needs. Every team needs a way to stay aligned on a larger vision and consistent in their output (often roadmaps, design systems, design principles), a way to stay ambitious and keep the bar high (regular critique sessions, collaboration sessions), a way to conduct research and make sure the product is serving its users (an interview pipeline and process, a way to document findings), a way to build trust within their company (communication methods, update channels), a way to stay productive and accountable (planning meetings, retros), and so forth. These things aren’t necessarily different than what an Engineering or Product Management team might need, but the right balance of processes with these goals in mind can help any team ship great products regularly.

Do you have any advice or guidelines for providing feedback to designers?

The first thing you want to do on your team is to build a culture of critique and trust, so designers learn to give candid feedback regularly, and not to take things personally. Hiring people who make it about the work and not about themselves is also key here, and you can get at that with the right behavioral interview questions. At DigitalOcean, our design reviews started with the presenter giving the other designers enough context for their feedback to be relevant and valuable. Then they specify what type of feedback was most useful at that point. Early in the process, they usually want feedback about product direction and strategy, and how it fits into the big picture. Later they might prefer feedback about information architecture and flows. Then specific interfaces, and finally aesthetics. Giving feedback out of sync isn’t usually practical. It’s counter-productive to nitpick a button size when you’re discussing wireframes, as it is to go back and finally criticize product strategy when you’re only weeks away from shipping. The other thing the makes feedback effective its constructiveness and specificity. Good feedback can be positive or negative, but it’s always actionable. I find the card suit framework cute and useful to separate different kinds of feedback: ♣️ Club: “This is bad.” This is blunt negative feedback. You aren’t given any insight into how you could improve. This kind of feedback only serves to demoralize. ♥️ Heart: “This is good.” This is blunt positive feedback. You aren’t given any insight into what about the thing you did was good, so you can’t learn from it. You feel good, but on the whole it’s not super useful. ♠️ Spade: “This isn’t great because…” “This could be better if…” This is sharp negative feedback. It explains why something isn’t great and how it could be better. This makes it actionable. Note that this doesn’t mean you’re “solutioning” for the presenter (which is almost always counter-productive in reviews)—you could be giving them potential areas to explore. ♦️ Diamond: “This is awesome because…” This is sharp positive feedback. It lets you feel good while learning what to keep or continue doing. You don’t want clubs and hearts. You do want diamonds and spades. Good feedback is relevant, timely, constructive, and specific.

When it comes to hiring new design talent, what do you look for?

This depends entirely on the role I’m hiring for. So far, the kind of roles I’ve looked to fill have been similar: generalist Product Designers at developer tool companies. Honestly, I worry sometimes that I’m typecasting myself. The generalist aspect was always more important to me than the “developer tools” part. This might be counter-intuitive, but coding experience wasn’t very high up on my list. Having context for developer workflows was a leg up for sure, but it was never a requirement. I mean, I wouldn’t exclusively hire doctor/designer hybrids for a med-tech startup or accountant/designer hybrids to work on tax software, right? Prior context helps, but you can build that. I actually think the skillsets between these areas are really similar. It’s the curiosity to dive deep into an industry and learn it quickly, the ability to intuit complex (and often technical) systems, and the instinct for how to simplify them. This is the meat of our work on professional workflows, and it’s far and beyond the most important skill for a designer in this space to have. So systems thinking and the ability to learn is #1 on my list of skills. Then it’s their ability to effect change within an organization. What successes have they had in the past? How do they deal with crisis? How do they rally people around an idea? Startups can get messy. Designers often wear a ton of hats, and I want to know that they’ll wear these effectively. After these, I look at their “hard” skills in this order of importance:

Are they good at putting together intuitive user flows and interfaces? Do they back their decisions up with good reasons?
Are they experienced at user research? Can they validate their designs?
Do they have an eye for typography and space? Can they make things look nice and professional? Can they consistently apply a design system without help?
Can they code? HTML/CSS first and then JS or an understanding of frameworks. These help when you need to jump into the codebase to fix a visual bug or help your engineers polish a design. Things can go much faster when a designer is semi-competent at this stuff. It’s optional, but becomes way more important when you don’t have access to engineering resources.

"Those are the skills, but more important is hiring someone who is humble, kind, and shares your team’s values. This explicitly does not mean someone you want to hang out with after work, but it’s someone who will mesh with your team in productive and healthy ways." I’ve been lucky to manage teams at a scale where we could make a unanimous decision—if anyone says “no” and can’t be convinced otherwise, it’s always been a no, even if many others were interested. I’ve never overridden one of my designers, and we built a team I’m still extremely proud of.

Product design seems to have made leaps and bounds in the past 2-3 years with tools, processes, knowledge-sharing and communities maturing - where does it go next?

I definitely feel that we’re in somewhat of a golden age for design and prototyping tools. I think we’ve come a long way, and it’s amazing to see so many players and such a range of ideas in the space. That said, I think there’s still a ton of room for innovation, and probably a long way to go until designer workflows feel right. I recently spoke at a conference with Josh Brewer, one of Abstract’s founders. His talk discussed how young and fragmented design tools still were. I think the next step is figuring out how all of these various tools fit together into a cohesive, efficient, and natural workflow. It sounds like a super interesting challenge. "These tools and practices are also going to change the kinds of skillsets that designers need. I’m guessing that with the rise of straightforward design systems, visual design won’t be as essential for Product Designers to master, and might shift over to design systems folks. It could also mean that coding will be less important, since engineers will be able to easily implement designs to a tee. Or, it could mean that the responsibility of implementing designs will fall more formally on designers’ shoulders. It’s hard to say what the effects will be, but our industry is always changing, and I only see that accelerating." I also agree that there’s more internal dialogue in the community than ever. As much as we like to make fun of it, Medium and Twitter are probably the biggest catalysts for this. One result of this is a lot more noise (and a ton of useless hot takes), but overall I think it’s been useful for our industry to introspect and grow. Something I’ve enjoyed recently is seeing this dialogue mature from “here’s why you should do user research” to “what are we doing, and should we?”

"I think the most important questions we have to ask ourselves aren’t the ones that relate to bettering our craft, but rather the ones that better our industry."

I think the most important questions we have to ask ourselves aren’t the ones that relate to bettering our craft, but rather the ones that better our industry. I’ve been seeing more and more designers grappling with this and showing a willingness to grow, and I genuinely believe we have so much potential to do better. What it means to be a designer has changed so much since I got started. There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s going to change so much more, and I’m very excited to see where it goes.

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