Beyond the px — Blockchain’s Gregory Christian on finding your career, saying bye to wireframes, and diving in
I’m excited for this one. Gregory is breaking ground designing for the crypto market, and with industry becoming more and more important in global finance, he’s right at the forefront with Blockchain.com.
Enjoy.
Who are Blockchain and what do they do?
We’re a group of people providing tools and products for interacting with all things crypto.
Our Wallet allows you to own your private keys. Private keys allow you to approve transactions. The keys are never public. If you know your keys, you own your crypto.
Our Exchange provides microsecond trades and liquidity. Our Explorer gives you insights into the Blockchain activity.
What has been your design journey up until now?
My dad is an Architect which had me grow up around blue prints and drafting by hand. I was always around design. I just didn’t know it.
My first touch into design happened when I was a Freshman in college. Firstly, I’ve no idea how I got into college. I guess holding down a 2.0 GPA and working at a skate shop looks great on entrance exams. I decided to study Art not knowing anything beyond the Thomas Kinkade in our family home.
That first semester I took a Typography class. I didn’t know that was design let alone how to spell it correctly. Taking a mix of Design and Drawing classes, I got to pick an emphasis during the last few months of my Sophomore year. It was between drawing for a living and designing for a living.
I asked my Art Department Chair “What pays more? These student loans are gonna kill me.” Turns out you can get paid for designing. And the rabbit hole begins.
Brief work history in chronological order. Interned at Filter Magazine in Venice Beach, CA. Designed at an Architecture firm in San Francisco, CA (Thanks Dad!) Worked at the ENVOY Agency in Irvine, CA which gave me enough chops to seek out a startup. I found Acorns giving me the chance to see a company go from beta to product over two years. Turns out I like finance and startups?! After Acorns I kept looking for early-stage startups. Learned about Telematics at Driveway. Helped gamers save while they play at Blast. Learned more then I wanted to about social governance and proxy voting at Say which brings us to….Blockchain.
Welcome to now.
What does your typical morning look like?
7:10 AM — Kat’s alarm goes off.
7:11 AM — Kat snoozes her alarm.
7:19 AM — Kat’s alarm goes off again.
7:19 AM — Kat snoozes again… Kat is my wife and she is rad btw.
7:56 AM — Get up. Walk into the living room like a zombie.
8:20 AM — My wife kisses me goodbye as she heads off the Manhattan. Always say goodbye to your partner!
8:43 AM — Shower, clothes, food. Grown up stuff.
9:02 AM — Hop on the laptop. Check all those red dots in Slack. Nothing on fire? Go into the city.
9:38 AM — Check in with our London Design team of 1. Zoom is a life saver.
10:20 AM — Meetings, and Slacks, and Zooms, and designs until lunch.
What does your design stack look like?
Most of the G Suite — sheets, docs, calendar. Figma for flows and designs. Slack and Zoom for comms. Spotify for the jams. Chrome for web surfing.
Do you have any design hacks?
Skip low fidelity / wireframes.
Write your own copy. Lorem is lazy.
Make sure your math adds up.
Share early and often.
Do you find it hard to define what you do to your friends?
Well my wife knows what I do but she tells people I make internet. Technically true. I make the internet a bit bigger everyday. We all do!
When it comes to the “So what do you do?” question, go all in. My response is “I’m a product designer at a crypto startup.” I used to just default to designer or graphic designer. That’s a bad on my part assuming the other party doesn’t know what product design is.
The most concise way to explain it “I help design software for apple and android phones. Apps. Websites.” Always curious to see where the conversation goes after that.
Does design inform your approach to life?
Goal is be remembered a nice person, friend, husband and father.
Per fashion/music/things, I either over analyze or go with my gut. No in-between. It’s all subjective to personal taste. Can’t say I aim to follow the crowd. Music? Anything that sounds good. My 2019 Spotify Wrapped ranged from Skate Punk (Check out a band called “Pkew Pkew Pkew”) to lounge.
Think 1960’s Don Draper bachelor pad. Don Draper is no role model but I’m all about the Tiki scene. Checkout Martin Denny if you wanna give it a go. If you’re in the Brooklyn Area, come to Do or Dive near Clinton Hill on the first Thursday of every month. Tiki Night. Get some Aloha. Here’s my Spotify Wrapped if you want to listen.
How do you design ‘for the future’?
Our biggest task is defining crypto utility patterns.
99% of consumer facing products built on the blockchain (the tech) have UX defined by engineering. We wouldn’t be here with out that. Heck Blockchain.com would be nada without engineering. Thank you engineers.
Our Design team approach is:
What is live? Why is it live? How can we improve it?
What’s your affiliation with the blockchain industry?
For the space, I never thought about working in it. Just followed the project’s expansion.
Fast forward 3 years, I wanted to give it shot. Blockchain.com found me through a friend. When we started chatting, I was for sure a novice. Only knew the surface level of it all. Realizing this I was all “Wait I knew nothing about investing before the Acorns days. Let’s learn about this whole blockchain thing.”
Still learning. Every day.
What’s the team dynamic?
We’re a design team of 5 in 4 timezones. We can start a concept early more London time and finish EOD in San Francisco. We’re always passing work to the next person.
We’re all generalists. This is important because a project should not stop its progression due to someone calling it a day.
We have Rosana Castano in LDN who is our oracle. She has the historical knowledge of the company. She is excellent at gathering requirements and setting up UX Copy and flows. Next we have Sydney St. Clare in NYC with me! Syd is our in-house illustrator / animation pro. She does the work of 5 people. Then there’s Mikael Keussen in Chicago. The keeper of our design system. Before Mike, our work flow was a mess. Thank you Mike! And to take it home, Thianh Lu out in San Francisco. He’s our Design Manager. He’s the most seasoned designer and chillest person I’ve ever had as “boss”.
What advice would you give for those interested in kick starting a career in designing for the market?
Sign up for different Wallets. Make transactions. Pick a popular token and learn its utility. A basic understanding is all you need to get your foot in the door. The adoption of crypto is low.
It’s a great time to join/start a company and build.
Crypto is for everyone. If everyone is a user, anyone can help design the future of finance. Wanna help? DM and let’s find you a spot.
What’s your stance on our culture of overwork?
Work when you want to.
Wanna work a 12 hour day? Do it. Want to do a 12 hour day in 8 hours? You can also do that. Time management.
Deadlines make decisions.
Estimate the time to completion and aim a 25% reduction. Let’s see what you can produce + when working towards this self imposed deadline, you have a 25% buffer to fix or go home and hang with your friends and family.
I’d be cautious of any environment expecting a hard start and stop time for deep thinking. If the time granted for a design solve can be quantified, red flag.
Checkout Parkinson’s Law — you’ll work to fill the time allotted regardless if you’ve matched the requirements. Avoid this. Work to live. Don’t wanna do that? That’s cool.
Wake up happy and all is good.
That was a lot of fun. I really admire Gregory’s honesty both with his practice and also the advice he give to those wanting to get started with crypto.
It’s so important for us all to take a fresh, pragmatic approach to our careers, and adding ambition into the mix is a sure fire way to make some real strides.
See you all next month.
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