Open Book: Gavin Johns
He puts the “tech” in architecture. Hear about how Gavin built the largest architect-turned-product-design community.
Open Book is a series of interviews where you get to meet our creative design team at Opendoor.
Hi Gavin! What do you do at Opendoor?
I’m a product designer on the consumer team. Currently I’m working on our core seller product, which is what people use when they want to sell their home to us.
One thing we have in common is that we both started off pursuing architecture. What was your path from architecture to product design like?
Early in my career I was an architect and urban designer. I spent years studying and practicing architecture across the US, Europe, and Asia. But after a while I grew pretty tired of the slow pace in the architecture profession.
That’s when I took career inspiration from my wife, Vanessa. She was a product manager and had the best stories every day after work. I felt like she was describing the exact types of problems and environment that I had always expected to be working on while I was studying architecture. Vanessa told me about the role of product designer and after a quick gut check, I quit my job and decided to join a product design bootcamp.
After a few months I knew I had made the right decision because I was passionate about my new career. But as I was transitioning from architecture to product design I wanted to make sure that other folks understood why I had decided to change career paths. After all, becoming an architect takes so much time and commitment that it really does become your identity; and so for me to reject that identity was a big deal for both me and all of my architect friends. To help clarify and organize my thoughts I decided to write about it to explain my thought process and my post was actually featured in ArchDaily, a really popular architecture website.
Getting an article featured in ArchDaily is huge! And that’s quite a provocative title. How did your fellow architects react to the piece?
After I published the article about my transitioning to product design, I started receiving hundreds of emails and DMs from architects. Everyone was asking for advice on how to do the same thing and it was apparent that I wasn’t alone. I made 200 million dollars that year in referral bonuses.
Jokes aside, the article went viral and it was very clear I had struck a nerve within the architecture community. And because I worked with other architect turned product designers, it turned into a common lunch conversation.
That’s when I started Architechie with my awesome co-worker Leona Hu-Hudelson and her husband Blake Hudelson (both with architecture backgrounds, which really helps on an architecture website). We host workshops, panels, and networking events for people to learn more and maybe even take the jump. Today, we have over 500 members across the US and we’re growing!
Architechie is huge now within the community — i’ve heard about it from others even before we met. What’s your favorite thing about running the organization?
That’s awesome! I’m constantly amazed by how many people know about it. And honestly I think that’s my favorite thing. Architechie has taken on a life of its own. I see folks I’ve mentored go on and have amazing careers. They’re now mentoring several other people and the network effect is wild. It’s really rewarding to see real world impact from a little meetup like ours.
Do you miss flying buttresses? And do you ever think about practicing architecture again?
We’re actually remodeling our home at the moment. It’s funny because we’re in the exploration phase and I’m bringing in techniques from running our design sprints here at Opendoor. We had “How might we’s, storyboards, and expert interviews. It’s like a beautiful collision of my two worlds. And it’s especially important to drive alignment with my strong-minded PM wife. ;)
P.S. If you liked what you read and are interested in learning more, check out our jobs page! We’re always hiring.
