One of the big reasons I joined Etsy back in November was that the gig included my first chance at hiring and managing designers. Managing people was something I had never done before (not a lot of need at startups, and there wasn't really that opportunity for me at Amazon) and, honestly, the …
I was beginning to design my first big feature at Etsy a few months ago and had a kick-off meeting with Andrew , the engineer who would be building it out with me. We talked about design goals, problems to be solved, etc. and everything was feeling pretty good. As we were walking out of the meeting …
When you first launch a product, pretty much every feature you add is (or at least should be) key to achieving your larger vision. You add new modules, pages, sections, overlays and form fields to strengthen and shore up your initial MVP. And, by and large, most of those additions stick. Your users …
On Wednesday last week, I spoke to Gary Chou's IxD class about failures I've experienced during my career (specifically, Formspring ). I got to the end of the presentation and was taking questions from the class. Near the end, Gary asked me if I had one good piece of advice to give to the class of …
This Sunday, after nearly three and a half years, Formspring is shutting down . While it’s a sad moment for me to see a startup I worked on and loved close its doors, I can’t help but also look back and examine ways we could have steered the product toward a more successful outcome. What follows are …