Highlighted by Harry Anderson
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there’s this gap. For the first couple years, you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you’re just starting out or you’re still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal, and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work.
At Airbnb, we design for a global audience with diverse needs and on multiple platforms. We’re constantly looking for opportunities within our process and product for systemic patterns that help simplify and create understanding out of complexity. The use cases from the market demand, when visualized, show a communication system and not just a f…