Khanversations — Louis and Erica
A conversation about rearranging the furniture, skeuomorphic icons, and federal government.
What’s your role at Khan Academy?
Louis: I’m a designer on the learning platform team. We’re responsible for the learner side of Khan Academy. I also work closely with our mobile team on our native apps for iOS and Android.
Erica: I’m the design manager for the classroom team. We build products that K-12 teachers use in the classroom to set learning goals for their students and get insights into student progress.
Tell us about your journey as a designer.
Louis: My parents were artists and architects, so I’ve always been around a lot of art, visual design, and engineering. We don’t always think about buildings as products, but architects think similarly to designers — it’s all about form and function. My dad was always doing things like gutting out the ceiling to bring natural light into the house and moving the furniture around to create more space for cooking. Those things were really interesting to me.
My dad’s practice is in our basement, and he’s always had computers with design software installed. I started poking around with that software when I was around 12. I played with Photoshop and learned you could draw in there. It was easy to go online and find a community that was doing the same thing. In middle school I found forums of designers — people would post little pieces of design and get feedback.
I became really interested in designing app icons for the Mac. I learned to draw them in Photoshop and interacted with other people doing the same thing online. There was a lot of excitement around theming — you could make all the icons look like they were made of stone. People would make these sets of icons, and I would take them, experiment, and make my own.
Then iPhones and iPads came out, and suddenly everyone was thinking about touchscreen interfaces. I started to apply some of what I’d learned about drawing on the computer to the design of interfaces. The first things I designed were skeuomorphic — with leather borders and paper texture. The notes app looked like a leather-bound notebook. I started posting the interfaces I designed and doing freelance app design for people. I would charge $100 for the design of an entire app.
Eventually I showed them all the icons and interfaces I’d designed to the design team at Square and got an internship there. I moved to San Francisco by myself at age fifteen for that internship, and that was a shock. I had been working on the internet with all these people from Silicon Valley, so to move there and be surrounded by that world was a huge deal for me. I went back to Square for a second year, did some internships in Chicago, and then found Khan Academy.
Erica: I was into painting and drawing while I was growing up. My parents are musicians, so they were supportive when I wanted to study art.
In college I realized I needed to shape my interest into a career, so I found my way to the field of design and found some great design mentors. I started my career at 2x4, a design agency in NYC. It was an incredible environment to learn the craft of design, and I had the chance to work on cultural projects that were super visually rich: branding and websites for museums, universities, and fashion labels.
I wanted to grow as a product designer and find opportunities to apply design to address social problems, so I enrolled in a master’s program at MIT. That’s where I first fell in love with the classroom. I had the opportunity to help design an app and curriculum for high school students. We were teaching math by having students investigate the impact of things like the lottery and payday loans on local communities.
After moving to San Francisco, I joined 18F, a team inside the federal government that works with agencies to modernize their digital products. It was an exciting time to be there — the team was still new, we were starting to prove our ability to make change, and there were lots of talented folks deciding to put their energy and passion into improving government. I learned so much from my colleagues about group facilitation, user research, and how to get shit done in a large organization. I was able to help improve immigration application processes — a project that was deeply personally meaningful to me — and develop a design system for government.
The 2016 election was approaching then, and I was worried and wanted to help. So I packed my bags and went to Brooklyn to work on Hillary’s presidential campaign. I was up for anything, and they put me to work designing the Get Out the Vote campaign leading up to election day. We worked seven days a week. It was among the longest, most challenging, but also most rewarding four months of my life.
What does the design world need more of?
Louis: Collaboration. I’ve worked at a bunch of places and sometimes there’s a lot of collaboration — designers in a room jamming — and good work comes out of that. Sometimes it’s slower, and you have to toss out 100 ideas until you get a few good ones. But I think there’s something really powerful about hearing everyone’s ideas that gets you to a place that working in silos doesn’t.
Erica: More designers who are willing to roll up their sleeves and hop into solving tough problems — and more folks helping to illuminate what those career paths can look like.
Khanversations are a series of dialogues between designers at Khan Academy as a way of getting to know one another.
P.S. We’re hiring, if you’re interested, check out our job listings!
Links to the series
👉🏽 Here’s May-Li’s introduction to the series, including a list of all the countries that were involved in our formation.
👉🏽 Elizabeth and Vivek talk about sneakers, fashion, capitalism, how they got into design (they even share some vintage work) and MORE. These two have incredible taste BTW I always want to know where they look
👉🏽 Cassey and Jacob on how neuropsychology, being an executive assistant, and not wanting to draw Mickey Mouse 1000 times could lead to a career in design
👉🏽 Priya and May-Li in conversation about Hypercard, Mariah Carey, and Priya’s inspiring journey from being a receptionist to being a product designer
