We’re super transparent about our design process, and we post all feedback on Basecamp, so anyone on the tech team can see it. What are your tips for leading a great design team? CW: I think you need to hire very, very, very well. If the people on the team don’t work well together, then you have a problem. What I do, and the value I add, is talk a lot about empathy. Not towards the user, but between us and towards the rest of the organization. I focus a lot on building trust with people. I have seen teams that are competitive and that is never good. It is important to form teams that are very united and empathic with each other, and that can really function as a unit. I have seen teams that are competitive and that is never good.
Everyone is focused on the job, but I think if you hire well and create a strong culture, a transparent and empathetic culture, I feel like the job will get done. How do you see the evolution of the design industry in the coming years? CW: I’ve been thinking about that a bit and it’s hard for me to take it out of the context of BuzzFeed. Two things will probably happen. Design French Guiana Email List interfaces will become more invisible. Think Amazon Echo or Apple’s Siri: there’s some interface, but not much. It will be less visible in many of the interfaces we use. We won’t even know; there won’t even be anything to look at. I think that’s quite interesting. But you’ll still need the user experience flow, you’ll just need to understand the experience of the person using it,
What Do You Do Daily to Stimulate
how the system responds, and what it does when it responds. There is a lot of systems work that will become more important over time. For the actual work of the product, and this is my personal bias that stands out, it just seems to be getting more and more important that people are generalists and not specialists. I feel like design specialists are getting rarer. Don’t hire visual designers, I don’t just hire UX designers, I don’t just hire front-end developers. I don’t hire visual designers, I don’t just hire UX designers, I don’t just hire front-end developers. We hire people who can do all of those things. BuzzFeed designers handle user experience design, visual design, front-end development, and even run their own user research. The reason I think that’s important is not because they can do all those things.
I mean obviously it’s useful, but people who can do those things show a curiosity that will isolate them for the future. If VR became really important tomorrow, I know every BuzzFeed designer would be really interested in trying to figure out how to design for it, how to build for it, and how it works. They would be very excited to dig. A visual designer might look at it and say, “I’m excited to do my part of whatever it is.” But how do you understand a system holistically if that’s your focus? Especially in a place like Buzzfeed, where we move so fast all the time, it’s really important to me that we have people who are curious about everything and are general enough to tackle any problem.
Well, What Did You Used
Cap’s tips for young designers After spending over an hour cooped up in a leafy, bamboo-style corner of Shopify, you’d think this designer would have no answers. Some of his best pearls of wisdom, however, came right at the end and were reserved for new designers in the industry. Her biggest piece of advice from him? “You have to spend time on it.” Simple; Clear; to the point. He doesn’t mince words, adding that young designers often question his comments because they don’t understand the reasoning behind his decisions. “Young designers are trying not to make a mistake; that’s your goal. And the truth is, you have to burn your hand on the stove many times before you understand that you shouldn’t touch the stove anymore.” Young designers are trying not to make a mistake; that’s your goal.
