Life of Design: Jacob Timm

Head of Design at AIG

Colin Campbell

Published in

Life of Thought

3 min readOct 29, 2017

1. How did you begin working in the wonderful world of design?

I started out in pricing strategy and game theory on the business side which was and still is very interesting to me. After quitting my job at Microsoft to join the Olympic development program as an athlete training for the 2008 summer Olympics, I spent the next 6 years training and racing full time. When I didn’t make the team I decided to get my MBA which was the best decision I’ve ever made, but not because of the MBA.

In 2009, while in grad school I started my own business building a technology which located you indoors at restaurant tables or hotel rooms and allowed you to order, pay and communicate with the location. I taught myself to code on web and mobile and quickly learned the importance of design. When I made a poor decision by jumping into coding a feature too quick without thinking through it, it cost me dramatically. It was at this point that I uncovered a passion for design and gravitated toward it as the key to building the best products.

2. What is the purpose of design?

The purpose of design is to arrange random musical notes, tempo and instruments into a symphony.

3. How would you describe the intent (mission) behind AIG’s design? What core problem are you trying to solve? What experience are you trying to create?

The intent behind AIG’s design is to drive a connection between the newest technologies that we are interacting with such as drones, AI and self driving cars and reduce the chance/complexity of risk perceived or real to any user involved in any part of the process.

4. What’s one thing you believe about design that most others don’t?

It should be at the executive table at every company large or small no later than a CTO is and sometimes before.

5. What key problems are often overlooked by design?

How technically feasible is the design? How well will the design accomplish the business goals? How will you measure ROI if the design is built and used?

6. What is the most difficult thing about design?

7. When is design “done”?

Never.

8. What does the future of design look like to you?

The future of design is going to be built by people who can weave design, development and business strategy together seamlessly. Design will continue to break out of UI pixel arrangement where it began, driving to become the #1 skill of the best products, leaders and companies of the future. Machines will eventually write code on their own, but they will always need instructions on what code to write. Design will be the instructions.