Evolving the Design Team: Making, Inventing and Dreaming
- 1. Evolving the Design Team Lowell Goss Head of Design at Reddit
- 3. A Designer, a Product Manager, and an Engineer walk into a conference room
- 5. Step 2: In person
- 9. Critique
- 10. Critique
- 11. Iterations
- 12. Collaboration
- 13. Options
- 14. Create More, Talk Less 3/4
- 15. Orange ice cream
- 17. Back & forth
- 18. Transparency
- 20. MakingMaking
- 22. dreamingDreaming
Editor's Notes
- #2: Thank you to UXDX for inviting me. Reddit is not exactly synonymous with UX. I’ve heard it described as “old school”, Craigslist-like and nostalgic. I’m pretty sure these were folks trying to be nice. The truth is that Reddit is hard to use, hard to understand and not very attractive. Despite being a 15 yo company UX design and research have been absent through most of the company’s history. My understanding is that UX at Reddit started 3 years ago when my predecessor established a team and launched the first redesign in the company’s history. It was a huge step forward that’s had huge impact on the company. I’m pretty new to Reddit. My one year anniversary is in about 3 weeks. Reddit is the 11th UX team that I’ve built and led since starting my career about 25 years ago. Over that time I’ve made lots of mistakes, but also learned some things that seem to work while leading teams at Frog Design, Amazon, Yahoo! And more. Today I want to talk about 4 things Building team Collaboration vs Critique Create More, Talk Less Making, Inventing Dreaming
- #3: Let’s start by talking about people ~50%+ of my time is spent on recruiting
- #5: Name, photo, resume Reasons to say yes Under valued talent Smarts, Talent, Drive
- #6: Story About Reddit Questions Most interview systems are designed like a videogame (little boss, medium boss, big boss) Build the role around the person
- #7: Analysis - breakdown the problem Synthesis - creative ideas System Thinking - impacts and possible consequences, pre-mortem Empathy - understanding the world from others’ POV Level playing field. Same question, same amount of time What are we looking for? Yes and... So where do people stumble? - constraints, research, valuing their own life experience, observing the world
- #8: All design team Storytelling
- #10: Narrowing
- #11: Narrowing
- #12: Iteration helps us to quickly and predictably reach local maximums
- #13: This should be fun Improvisation Yes and...
- #14: Creating lateral options in parallel at key stages helps us to reset the S curve and push toward global maximums
- #16: Orange flavor Orange color Cup or cone Sprinkles Sherbert, sorbet, dairy-free
- #17: Carrot or mango or peach Specs and requirements and meetings and brainstorms are hollow descriptions of what you’re making. Whether you’re testing with users, collaborating with colleagues or (most especially) presenting to executives...
- #18: Bi-directional communication
- #19: Weekly email + deck Wall Slack All hands
- #20: Design operations, delivery, and production Moving from spec to problem and back again You can't get there from here. Anti-optimization.
- #21: Efficiency, Process, Just in time Kaizen Agile Iteration Local maximum
- #22: Problem solving User research
- #23: Vision Illustrating the collective dream of what’s possible and desirable