What I Learned From "Opt In: Essays on Design"
illustration by Greg Chinn for Outer Voice
Amazon, Adobe and Twitter Design Leaders
Albert Schum, Jae Park, Jamie Myrold and Mike Kruzeniski
Maybe the freak storm that hit the Nashville area and cut power to Outer Voice HQ for nearly a week was just the cherry on top of the uncertainty sundae, but both articles this week are about the tools we need to forge ahead through this deeply weird time.
Opt In is a collection of essays from design leaders at Adobe, Amazon, Twitter and Microsoft brimming with insight, optimism and pragmatic approaches to pushing design forward.
I highly recommend downloading it and seeing where it speaks to you and sparks ideas. Here are my key takeaways.
Jae Park, Amazon VP of UX Design
Be Comfortable With Ambiguity
Park’s essay focuses on the importance of design leaders providing a strong sense of direction for their teams. He calls it “turning on the high beams.”
He learned early on that it’s vital to be comfortable dealing with ambiguity in life and design. You can’t control what’s ahead of you. You can only adapt. Similarly, a leader can’t provide a clear blueprint of what’s next. They can only illuminate the path as the team travels together. Design challenges change daily. At scale. It’s important to get cozy with that.
Build an Inclusive Culture
The team that feels at home with each other, and that is comfortable exploring diverse viewpoints, moves into the future together.
Park’s Services Design Group studio follows a “One Studio” tenet.
“We believe that together we make better things for our customers by listening, respecting, trusting, empowering, and learning from each other. Without great, diverse people we won’t achieve much. By fostering a culture of inclusivity, team members feel comfortable sharing their perspectives and advancing design thinking.” —Jae Park
Jamie Myrold, Adobe VP of Design
The Information Age Is Over. This Is the Age of Experience.
Myrold proposes that people don’t buy products. They buy experiences. And these experiences don’t just happen. Designers and creatives build a framework in which audiences can have experiences. They’re designed and cultivated.
What does that mean for us? First, a closer relationship with clients and audiences. What do they need? What do they respond to? The story or experience around a product or service is far more compelling than features and benefits. Also, it means we need to design with empathy.
Exceptional Designers Are Empathetic, Responsible and Honest
Why? Well, first of all, that makes them nice people to be around. Second, because relationships and communication are as important as design chops and business sense.
As Myrold says, “Exceptional designers help transform business and product development into a human-centered endeavor rather than a numbers-based one.”
“The new reality, in the age of experience, is that design has never been more in demand. Our work impacts more people than ever, across more screens, more media. What I learned early on from my mentors was that design requires conviction. To be able to stand behind your work and advocate your point of view.” —Jamie Myrold
Mike Kruzeniski, Twitter Head of Design
There Are Societal Effects to Our Work
“There was no class for designing for billions. I learned how to design for scale on the job,” Kruzeniski says. Today’s design work has the potential for massive scale and impact with immediate consequence — and that means real-time learning.
With a pandemic, societal unease and economic distress creating a delightful little powder keg, it’s essential to think outside our personal frame of reference when we design, create experiences and tell stories.
Great Leaders Take Dystopian Problems and Make Good From Them
After a long day of soul-crushing challenges, Bruce Mau once told Kruzeniski, “Look, we design forward.” If there was ever a time to get mired in overwhelming stasis, we’re looking at it. Kruzeniski reminds us that it’s our job to push forward. Design solves problems. Let’s get to it.
“Design school didn’t prepare us for the last 10 years,” he says. “so it definitely didn’t prepare us for the next 10.”
“If the last 10 years were about design embedding itself in businesses and learning to work at an extraordinary scale, the next 10 are going to be about merging those skills with activism and specialized knowledge in critical issues like the environment, health, energy, education, information, security and policy.” —Mike Kruzenski
If you haven’t already, be sure to look at this article’s sister piece What Now? where we explore what it will take for artists to forge a path in the new “normal” — whatever that is.
Need help defining your voice or reaching your audience? Give me a shout. I offer consulting and services for all kinds of individual artists and arts organizations.
