Linda Rebeiz on self-discovery as a designer & creating experiences that users find joy in
I caught up with Linda over the phone on a nice Tuesday afternoon. When she got on the call, she’d just been finishing off a quick run around her neighbourhood. I’ve looked up to Linda for a while and was very excited at the opportunity to speak with her about her journey in design and what it’s been like transitioning from consulting to teaching and then full-time design. Linda was born and raised in Senegal, currently working with IDEO.org designing products and services as part of efforts to create a more just and inclusive world. She believes she has a career as a corny stand-up comedian and would love to see more African Designers understand that life will be measured by how you feel about what you’ve done, as much as how other people feel about the work that you have done. In this conversation, we discuss why it’s important to take time to rest, practice your craft and design experiences that your users find joy in.
Tell me a fun fact about you.
Laughter is a great part of my life. In fact, I think I have a career in stand up comedy making corny jokes. I also like to warm up my milk first, add the cereal and wait for it to get soggy before eating it.
Tell me a bit about yourself and your career so far
I’ve had different phases growing up and I think each one of those phases have come together nicely to shape how I see the world now as an adult and how I approach life. Up until I was about 5, I had a phase where I hung out with a lot of adults. My grandma had a store and I just loved being there and helping out. Then came the “tomboy phase” between the ages of 6 and 12, breaking bones and climbing trees. I loved it. After that, I walked into my “leader phase”. I wanted to change the world, wanted to change Africa. I felt very confident in myself during this time and was surrounded by people who empowered me to believe that. This was important to me then because I was young and coming from a place where I didn’t feel like I could do anything for the world around me. Though later, I realized I had to do away with this idea to grow in my craft.
This leader phase happened while I studied at the African Leadership Academy and continued through my first two years of university. Through ALA’s network, I was fortunate to intern for renowned organizations like Dalberg or the MasterCard Foundation. It felt like the world validated me for reasons I hadn’t yet understood myself, probably because throughout these years, I struggled with anxiety and depression. Eventually, my mental health had deteriorated to a point where I left university. After speaking to my dad, I realized that I needed to go home and rebuild myself.
Back in Senegal, I got an opportunity to work with Google and it was at this point that I think my relationship with design, specifically on the African continent started to form. I was back home, feeling like myself again and I remember how I used to love painting and writing as a child and how I had tried to mould myself into something that really wasn’t me when my career started. I took on a project at Google where I curated street art in Dakar, created by some incredibly talented local artists. I enjoyed the experience of working with artists which made me wonder what I would be like if I pursued my own creative interests.
Then I discovered the African Leadership University (ALU). Being at ALU was an opportunity to work outside of myself and help younger people who are trying to change their lives and I met people there who became mentors to me. It gave me a chance to experience different aspects of creativity from what I knew it to be. So I decided to take design seriously, do it for real, and I moved to Kenya after three and half years at ALU to do just that.
In Kenya, I got to meet more African designers. It was a pivotal experience because I discovered that although many people and organisations understood the value of design, they were still reluctant to actually adopt it. What this means, as a freelancer, is that you take what you can get and advocate for design as you do the work. Eventually, I started to work with more startups as they were a lot more open to utilising the power of design for making a case to potential investors — a lot of these startups needed to raise money. A lot of my work with them involved helping them understand their clients, what they want, how to use design to satisfy their needs and then present this to investors. Most of my work at this point was more business-oriented, I wasn’t doing a lot from an artistic standpoint in my opinion. While this helped me build discipline and communication skills, I realised after a year of doing it that I wanted to work on more system-level designs that would help solve problems that I am interested in like education and learning. I also wanted more proximity to end-users.
After a year of freelance, I joined IDEO.org. That’s the first time I admitted to myself that I was a ‘real designer’. I had been doing the work and picking up the skills but it was nice to have them validated by a design powerhouse. I’m currently on leave until August after which I’ll be leaving to join the San Francisco IDEO.org team. My partner will be starting a graduate school program in the Bay Area, and we decided we’d move together. Luckily, IDEO.org is headquartered there so it worked out well. For the moment though, it’s been amazing to have so much time to relax. I think that’s something that designers tend to underestimate, the power of rest and just taking a step back from everything. Take that time to breathe, create for yourself, just because and just to express yourself.
As a designer working in a corporate setting, you have to design within real business constraints. It takes a lot of discipline to go home and continue to design solely for yourself and to feed your creativity. I personally always struggled with this. I would go home and be too tired to do any more designing. This break has given me an opportunity to create for myself and I can see my skills improving. I take more risks when I design now, working on art forms that I’d shy away from in the past. There’s the temptation to think about making money and where income comes from, but thankfully I’m in a place where I don’t have to worry about this as much because I saved up. In this phase of my journey, I am no longer interested in saving the world. Instead, I want to grow my mind and my crafts through discipline and practice. If that happens to do any good for the world, I will be immensely fortunate.
It’s so interesting to listen to how your journey has progressed. It might be a bit difficult to link the different industries and areas that you have worked on so far without the insight that you’ve just provided. What are the similarities that you’ve found working in these different areas?
I’d say the one thing that connects everything is curiosity. I’ve always been curious about all the professional fields I have explored and how I could apply the tools I learn across disciplines and fields. It’s made me technically strong but also created an opportunity to be more in touch with my artistic side. Many of the companies that we dream of working with as designers love to hire people that are in touch with themselves and have explored different facets of their crafts. The best portfolios are also those that are a little personal and show the internal debates and interests of the candidate. The beginning of my career was driven by fear. I’m glad to be in a place where it’s driven by curiosity.
I personally connect with the career being driven by fear part of what you’ve said. What advice would you give to designers who are still driven by fear?
Some fear is good because it pushes you to work harder, but it’s not sustainable in the long run. Curiosity will always be your “best friend”. If you are curious about something follow that and then when you discover all that you want to about that thing then let it be. I don’t believe everyone has a single path that they should take — some of us love to follow rabbit holes and allow our brains to make connections between things that may not be obviously related.
A very large chunk of your work experience has been on the continent, was this an active decision? Why?
It was a conscious decision. My upbringing is proudly African. I grew up deeply Senegalese. I love many things about home and feel strongly about Senegal. Going to the African Leadership Academy (ALA) helped extend that passion beyond Senegal to other African countries. Moving to Kenya was easy because my definition of home was expanded at ALA but also because I recognized the number of design opportunities available in Kenya. I’ve never believed that I would need to work in the West to have a fulfilling career as a designer. I believe that there are many unarticulated African voices in design. Many of these voices are breaking through in music and fashion, for example, and are starting to break through in design. While freelancing in Kenya, it was hard to find work at times, and I had to take unpaid or underpaid projects to build up my portfolio. I think this reality, though, is not special to being a designer in Africa. It’s the nature of any craft — you have to prove your worth through your work first in order to choose your projects and have some bargaining power. I am fortunate to see an incredible amount of opportunities in design on the continent today, so I am very glad I am growing here.
Considering the general mood for many young Africans these days is “what’s the quickest way to get out of here?” this is a refreshing perspective to hear that you think there’s enough on the continent to stay for. How did that opinion come about?
There is definitely enough to stay and build here. Obviously, being a designer on the continent is not the same as being a designer in other parts of the world. Designers here don’t have access to the same educational resources or the same level of trust from organisations, yet. You have to constantly prove your value before you reach the breaking point where people start to take you seriously. It was a hard journey at first because I felt that my contribution was unappreciated. Eventually, when you start converting leaders into design advocates through diligence and excellence, it is the most rewarding experience. It makes all the growing pains worth it. I’ll be moving to the IDEO office in San Francisco next year but it’s only going to be for a year while my partner completes his Master’s degree. I enjoy the fact that I’ll have access to more mentorship because I haven’t had the chance to be surrounded by many senior designers in my career. I am excited at the opportunity to learn from them and bring that knowledge onto my next adventure when I come back.
What’s your current favourite app and why?
I’ve got a couple. I love the Nike train app and the Nike run app. They are so incredibly well designed and take into consideration the goals that the users have and they use accountability systems to keep you going and motivated. I’ve used it since 2014 and I still love it. The design hasn’t changed much since then which just proves that when you design something that works, it lasts.
I also play a lot of games. Most of the apps on my phone are game apps.
I find it interesting that you find time to play games. I have so many things vying for my attention that I rarely have time to do anything else except work. How do you do it?
As an artist and designer, self-care is incredibly important. You are constantly submitting yourself to people’s opinions and your work is constantly being evaluated. You need a system outside of that to keep yourself nourished so you don’t get burnt out. Find time to meditate, to exercise, to play games — resist the urge to be productive all the time. As a creative, your life will not be measured by how you feel about what you’ve done, as much as how other people feel about the work that you have done. In order to do that you need a healthy balance so that you can allow yourself to grow uninhibited and put your best work forward.
In what ways would you say your skills set from your time as a consultant has translated to design?
I was thinking about this recently. I had to unlearn so much from the consulting and business world as a designer. Some skills that have translated and remained useful from that part of my career include communicating with clients, email writing and the like; maybe also structuring arguments with supporting evidence; using data to make decisions, and being able to stay focused for a long period of time.
How have you managed the translation between these very different industries (consulting and design)?
When I was still consulting, the decks were mostly the same but I still managed to find a way to make my decks stand out. I also usually had side design projects or design classes online. So I’ve always had design around me and was constantly practising. This made it easier to transition to being a full-time designer. You only get better as you practice the same thing over and over again. Practice is important because some of the best designs do familiar things in unusual ways and that does not come from being “innovative”. You have to learn the ropes and you can’t skip ahead on that. Design is a lifelong practice.
What is an opinion you have about design that most people might disagree with?
The best design is playful and the best experiences are playful ones. It’s nice to structure your design in a way that gives your users a chance to enjoy themselves. My work involves designing the experience for solutions that solve complex social issues. The users are people that have complex backstories but they are also very capable of laughing and having a good time. I try to make the experience playful for them and it’s rewarding to see how they interact with it joyfully. There is more engagement with designs we put out and therefore we learn more simply by creating moments of serendipity for users.
What is your vision for the global community of African designers?
Wouldn’t phrase it as a vision but more as a wish. I wish that designers find joy in being themselves. To let go of aspirations to be like designers in the Global West and instead listen to the creative voice within. I would like to see more African designers focused on finding peace and grounding within themselves because by doing that, you will discover where you are needed and in what capacity.
