Openbook: Gabe Wasserman
Hear from Gabe about how his trapeze and acrobatics influence his designer point of view
Open Book is a series of interviews where you get to meet our creative design team at Opendoor.
What do you do at Opendoor?
I manage a team of designers focused on inventing digital tools and processes for the ops side of our business. Projects include mobile field tools to capture data about homes, document management software and a custom CRM-style platform. We also work on designing new ways to operate. For example, we are currently virtualizing many aspects of our business, since we need to minimize physical contact with customers and partners.
In addition, I’m involved in an Opendoor initiative to fight discrimination in the housing industry.
How did you become a designer?
Did I ever tell you about how my grandfather was both an inspiring and intimidating influence? He was a Mad Men-era designer with his own little agency in NYC. He could letter, paint, draw, sculpt, and animate, all with great precision and style. He once showed me a bar of soap with an Ivory logo he’d hand-carved for TV commercials, because, of course, digital enhancement did not yet exist. His level of craft seemed unattainable to me. So I was fascinated by design but didn’t think I could ever cut it. Still, I took a lot of art classes in college and got deep into photography, then started dabbling with digital tools and print design. That coincided with the early days of the Web, and I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. I was willing (and still am) to learn on the job.
You’ve seen a lot in two years here and have previously been at some really epic product design spots like Facebook and Hot Studio. How do you contextualize Opendoor vs some of your previous companies?
I’ve been lucky to work on interesting and complex product problems with talented people at a number of places that believe in the power of design. What makes Opendoor extra special is that no one’s figured out how to make home buying and selling simple and accessible–but we get to crack that problem. Both my wife’s parents and mine are getting older and should consider downsizing their homes. Unfortunately, they are feeling overwhelmed. They can’t afford to buy a home without selling the one they own first, and they can’t sell their homes without clearing them out, and then leaving the house to allow for tours, potentially over many months. This is daunting to anyone, but worse as you get older. All that to say, there’s a lot of room for improvement and that’s what we’re working on. For example, one of our big projects this past year has been figuring out how to make an offer on homes without any of our employees needing to enter them for estimation purposes.
Watching you bring insane acrobatics skills at our company talent show this summer was pretty epic — how did you get into acrobatics and the trapeze?
I was the kind of kid who was a bit of a daredevil, and when I moved to SF in my early twenties, I saw there was a circus school where you could get more formal training. I signed up and have been hooked ever since.
How do acrobatics influence your Design craft or other aspects of your life?
I wish design were more like acrobatics. With acrobatics, you get instant feedback. If you miss a catch and fall to the net, you know your technique needs work. With design, on the other hand, feedback is often delayed and rarely as cut and dry..
Acrobatics is ultimately about performance in front of an audience, and performance is about creating an experience for people. Design, too, is about shaping an experience. When I create an act, I consider who the audience is, the characters, the story arc and the setting. As a designer, I think in similar terms: who the experience is for, how do we make the experience relatable and relevant, how is the experience sequenced/organized, in what context does the experience take place?
What are you most excited about in 2021
Vaccines!
But also, at Opendoor, I’m very excited that we’re making a concerted effort to understand historical structural discrimination in the housing industry and developing initiatives to overcome these patterns.
Other entries in the series:
