There's been a lot of discussion over the years about whether or not designers should be obligated to learn how to implement what they design. This obviously causes a bit of angst amongst the design community because, of course, not every designer has been in a position to learn to write their own …
The other day, the engineering manager on my team was testing some stuff and happened upon this heartbreakingly terrible interface: He pinged the designers and we obviously filed a design bug immediately to bring that page up to any kind of snuff. However, the discovery of that UI got me thinking …
When I first joined Etsy, it was my first job attempting to manage a team of people. In previous jobs, I'd been senior to other designers, and even mentored designers to help improve their processes, but this was the first time I would wind up officially responsible for others. And while I was …
Nowadays, when I mention that I manage part of the Etsy design team, the reaction is nearly always the same. First, the person I'm talking to asks how much design work that means I'm doing now. When I tell them the answer ("none"), they scrunch their face a little, as if they just tasted something …
Most people - if you can imagine this - you can't draw very well, but even if you can draw very well, suppose you come in, and you've got to put together animation or drawings and show it to a famous, world-class animator. Well, you don't want to show something which is weak or poor. So you want to …
As we've scaled up to twenty-four designers , I've gotten a few questions about the processes we've developed to keep the design team connected and to continuously produce high-quality work. And while this is just a snapshot of where we're at right now, hopefully some of the higher-level ideas will …
When I started my Creative Writing degree, my least favorite weeks were the ones in which I had my work critiqued. I'd toil tirelessly on a short story, edit it multiple times and ensure that every sentence was carefully crafted and conveyed precisely what I meant. Then, in the space of half an …
I’ve been in quite a few conversations lately about the role and questionable necessity of management. From new startups to established companies like Valve , lots of folks are wrestling with the idea of hierarchy vs. flat vs. insert-hot-new-organizational-structure-here. As a result, I’ve been ref …
How do you break the habit of not doing design thinking properly and jumping right to your tools? Question from Charles Peters When I was a kid, I wanted to create a Science Fair project based on using magnetism to float cars. As a part of my project, I decided to build a track of magnets that …
One of the questions I got asked a few times after last week's post on recruiting was What are the consistent things you find in product designers you hire? In no particular order, here are some traits I care about and what I see in folks we wind up making offers to: Great designers show the messy …