What I Learned From 6 Design Mentors at Hike
Words of wisdom from Google Ventures, Facebook, Dropbox, CNN, and More
What is Hike?
Started by Jason Schwartz and Laura Helen Winn, two wonderful designers and conference planners, Hike is a 1-day educational design conference where industry veterans share insights and inspirational stories to help new designers kickstart their careers.
The lineup was awesome, with speakers from companies like Google Ventures, Facebook, Dropbox, Eventbrite, Pinterest, CNN, and Adaptive Path. Some sessions ran concurrently, so I attended as many as I could.
Here’s the top lessons I learned from 6 design mentors at Hike. Hope their stories and advice resonate with you as much as they did for me.
Six Lessons
1. “Design is like playing the piano: keep practicing.” — Daniel Burka, Google Ventures Design Partner
When learning piano, we use the word practice to describe the process of playing songs over and over until mastery is achieved. So why is it that in design we use the word failure when we don’t get our desired result?
As described eloquently in Ira Glass’ The Gap, people who go into creative fields constantly feel disappointed in their work when it doesn’t live up to their standards— but only by working tirelessly on their craft can the work be as good as their ambitions.
Daniel bravely admits that he hasn’t truly crossed that gap, that’s he’s still a work in progress. So instead of considering our mistakes as failures, why not just call it design practice?
Action Item: Start a design project and set a hard deadline. Masterpiece or not, it’s great practice!
2. “Everyone matters so make sure you matter to everyone.” — Christopher Simmons, MINE Principal /Creative Director
Chris never once applied online for a job, yet his career couldn't be more successful. His secret? Relationships.
By being generous, helpful, and accepting that he’s never above anything or anyone, Chris has and continues to cultivate a bountiful network of friends, family, and colleagues who could always count on him, and likewise him on them.
During one of Chris’ first jobs, he stayed late to alphabetize the books and vacuum the crumbs from his coworkers’ keyboards—whether he worked with them or not—just to make the office run perfectly smooth. Did he win advocates for himself at the firm? You bet.
Action Item: Whether asked for explicitly or not, if someone needs help, or something needs improvement, do it with grace. Every interaction is an opportunity to add value.
3. “You are more than your role. Keep hustling.” — Alice Lee, Dropbox Product Designer / Illustrator
While studying for her accounting final as a business major at Penn, Alice realized there had to be more to life than making 8x11 cheat sheets of not-that-interesting material.
So she switched to Marketing in her second year, and joined Microsoft as a summer Associate Product Manager intern. Though she wasn’t gung ho about marketing, Alice asked her colleagues if they had any design work she could work on. She got to design a big project for her manager.
Alice didn’t let her role define her — she hustled and took on projects that excited her and catered to her passion in design. She did this again while programming at Foursquare and again at Path as a business intern. By not comparing herself to other designers who were well along their careers, Alice focused on improving her craft by making opportunities outside her role, and now she works at Dropbox!
Action Item: Background doesn’t matter; take on passion projects and hustle for opportunities even if underqualified. Ask others, “If you have any design projects, send them my way. If you don’t like my work, you don’t have to use it. But I’m willing to learn.”
4. “Find what has meaning to you. Make an impact.” — Brian Singer, Facebook Communication Design Manager
How do you get rich from design? Depends on your definition of “rich.” Brian defines it as fulfillment — a creative catharsis to keep him sane and feeling alive. Continuing the metaphor, where then does Brian find his “wealth”?
It starts with an insatiable curiosity, constant observation, and a love for connecting the dots. Brian frequently starts projects that are nothing short of fascinating and controversial. For example, he scanned the Bible, word by word, and tallied up the frequencies for the words “Gold” and “faith,” resulting in an eye-opening 427 : 251, respectively. Other cool projects include billboarding pictures of people texting while driving, and following the journey of 1000 journals as they pass, person to person, story to story, around the world.
Through these labors of love, Brian practices empathy on a larger level and gains deeper insights into human behavior.
Action Item: Spend 10 minutes observing the environment, and see if an overlooked problem surfaces. Take notes, let the ideas marinate, and revisit them periodically. With a dash of controversy, inspiration is just a moment away.
5. “The final 1% can make all the difference.” — Stewart Scott-Curran, CNN Art Director
Stewart’s words really resonated with me because we are often advised to “see the forest through the trees,” or in other words, not to get lost in the details and lose sight of the big picture. But sometimes we forget that the small details, in some cases, can make all the difference.
When Stewart was designing the uniforms for all 9 Nike teams in the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, he was tasked to design the lightest shirts possible. The big picture of the project was already in place: the branding & styling. All that remained was decreasing the weight — an unnoticeable detail to the audience but paramount to the players.
With most points being scored in the last 10 minutes, players are exhausted, and the weight on their bodies really wears them down. The “Aha” moment: perforating the numbers on the uniforms to allow the material to breathe and increase mobility. Stewart laid out the big picture early and focused his efforts on improving the small details that made the biggest difference.
Action Item: Think deeply of the product or service’s users to understand their needs, and brainstorm tiny details that can add the most value to them.
6. “Design is a power with great responsibility. Don’t f*ck up.” — Mike Monteiro, “Design is a Job” Author
Most of us come into the creative field because of the sense of elation that comes with bringing our visions to life — creating something that did not exist yesterday, and sharing it with the world. But making things, especially products, involves an entire galaxy of complex decisions that affect stakeholders with competing priorities.
So what is a decision? Everything: action & inaction, approval & disapproval. Everything a designer does or does not do is a decision. Whether it’s pushing for a new feature or pushing the decision making to someone else, these decisions all have consequences, some more severe than others.
Mike challenges us, as designers, to become gatekeepers. Not the kind that faces an uphill battle making all the final decisions between good and bad. But the kind that is careful to not let a disaster like unintentionally outing LGBT users happen. Creating design that delights people is a goal we all share, so let’s make sure we keep it that way.
Action Item: In your design decisions, think of all the edge cases that might negatively affect users. Be very careful about approving seemingly harmless features — they could wreak havoc later.
Final Words
If you liked any of the lessons, tweet at the mentor! They took time out of their busy days to give back to the community so show them some love ☺
Also, if you attended Hike, what were your favorite lessons? Tweet me at @norman_tran to share learnings! Always down to learn more from others.
