Open Book: Gabriel Contreras

Gabe Wasserman

Published in

Opendoor Design

5 min readJan 6, 2022

Hear how Gabriel used his passion for operational design to elevate the Partner tools team at Opendoor

Open Book is a series of interviews where you get to meet our creative design team at Opendoor.

What is your role at Opendoor?

I’m a Product Designer inventing new tools for operators and partners of Opendoor.

How did your degree in Industrial Design lead you to this role at Opendoor?

I’m a builder at heart who loves moving fast and felt like the Industrial Design process was too slow. Physical products require long lead times for manufacturing, which means a designer isn’t able to engage with feedback loops as frequently as they would if they were designing a digital experience. With this realization, I chose to develop the skills needed to become a digital product designer.

The first years of my career were at Uber, the rideshare company. This was the best place for me to start because one of their cultural values was “let builders build”. True to that motto, my team touched many parts of the business: from growth marketing to the interior design of our leasing showrooms to launching new product lines, like bikes, scooters, rental cars, to resolving international scaling issues. There was never a dull moment for an ambitious young designer like myself.

Towards the end of my time there, several of my former Uber colleagues joined Opendoor. I wasn’t quite ready to leave because the area I was working in, designing tools to help bike and scooter mechanics at Uber manage our vast international fleet, was so fulfilling. However, at one point I heard about a similar role at Opendoor and jumped at the opportunity.

You’re passionate about working on tools for internal operators but you used to do consumer work. What was the reason for the change?

My very first job was waiting tables at a Denny’s. When I think about the differences between consumer and operations design I like to draw parallels to working at a restaurant.

Consumer design is the dining room and Operations design is the kitchen. The front-of-house dining experience is manufactured to be as consistent as possible for every guest while the back-of-house — where the chefs, food expeditors, and dishwashers work — is constantly changing and being optimized week-over-week.

To be a designer in operations you have to enjoy solving some really hard problems behind the scenes. Behind the scenes, designers have a lot of creative freedom to take risks and invent completely new tools. Operations designers are truly the experts of their domain. I’m passionate about this space because of the influence I get to have over a substantial part of the business.

You recently moved to Portland and have decided to work 100% remote. Why did you decide to move and how’s it working out?

I’ve lived my whole life in the San Francisco Bay Area and never really had the opportunity to move. However, when my team was able to work remotely, I opted to trade-in my shared apartment in San Francisco’s busy Mission District for my first ever 1-bedroom apartment in a cozy pocket of South East Portland.

Working remotely has been challenging, but it also has its benefits. For example, I tend to be nervous when giving in-person presentations. So much so, that I was worried it would get in the way of my growth as a professional. For some reason I’ve found giving remote presentations easier. Overall this is boosting my confidence as a speaker, and I’ve found myself asking for more speaking opportunities. Hopefully this will translate into greater confidence in-person too.

Caption: Bye bye California 😢👋🏻

You’re one of our most junior designers here but you have a big role. What’s your path been like and do you have any advice for newer designers?”

My two pieces of advice for designers just starting out would be to develop a beginner’s mindset and find a mentor. Here’s how:

Develop a beginner’s mindset:

A beginner’s mindset could be defined as “…having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions…”.

My first company flew me out to Europe to launch a product for cargo bike operators that were in charge of swapping out dead batteries on our electric city bikes. The mobile app I designed optimized their route and helped them troubleshoot any firmware issues at the time of service. I spent time embedded with the operators and experiencing their job, riding bikes with my troubleshooting app loaded onto it. This exposed me to so many pain points in both the online and offline experience. Had I not adopted a beginner’s mindset to get the insight from that experience, the product and the experience for those operators would have suffered greatly.

Find a mentor:

A mentor is different from your manager. Generally this person should be someone who you don’t currently work with but have interacted with in the past, such as a senior peer or former manager. It should be someone who you look up to and get along with. They’ll be able to give you unbiased advice and can be incredibly helpful when making tough career decisions.

My mentor is my manager from when I was an intern at my previous company. When it came time for me to switch jobs he was there to soundboard questions with me, give feedback on my portfolio, and most importantly help negotiate my offer package.

What do you like to do in your spare time?

Quarantine has given me no shortage of new hobbies. I’ve learned how to maintain my own car, motorcycle, and bicycle. I’ve saved thousands of dollars by doing more myself and have found pleasure in teaching friends these same skills.

When I’m not in the garage wrenching away I’m either snowboarding in the mountains or inside teaching myself how to produce electronic music. You can usually find me at the nearest concert or music festival.

Caption: Being masked up isn’t too much of a challenge on a powder day.

Other entries in the series:

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