A Little Outside Segment Design: Meet Tido
Inside Segment Design is a series designed to shine the spotlight on the talented team of designers and researchers that make up the Segment design team. A Little Outside Segment Design refers to people just outside the design orbit we want you to meet too! We’ll publish a series of articles that will follow each team member on their career path and journey to Segment.
Medium, meet Tido: my boss, and Segment’s CPDO (Chief Product Development Officer) and CFO (Chief Fun Officer — not to be confused with Chief Finance Officer…. which is not nearly as fun, I imagine). Tido oversees Segment’s Engineering, Product, Design, and Security functions, so he has a lot of free time on his plate — I’m very grateful he took the time to chat! He’s known at Segment for being an incredible leader and DEI advocate, unbelievably fast Slack responsiveness times, incredible management and recruiting prowess, and for having the world’s cutest dog that has the world’s best name: Taco! It was so fun being able to dive into his thoughts on design both in and out of Segment and his career so far! 🚀
So Tido, where are you from?
I’m originally from Boston, MA — I moved to LA when I was about eight years old, where I mostly grew up. I will say though — I have no real association with LA because we lived in UCLA faculty housing… so let’s just say it was closer to Academia Utopia than anything. It’s actually funny because when I go back to LA now, there’s all these touristy things I haven’t seen or done yet. But anyway, I actually ended up moving to Boston for school, and then back to the west coast in SF for my first job!
Lots of moving between coasts! So at what point in your journey did you know you wanted to be a designer?
Um —
How about: what was your first exposure to design in your career in tech?
Well, for a long part of my career, I really didn’t have exposure to my current understanding of design. My first job at Facebook was in its really early days… at the time, there wasn’t a strong product culture around empathy or understanding of the customer just yet. Instead, there was a lot of dreaming up new and exciting ways for people to use products that were big bets — and at the time, the big bet was the concept of a Newsfeed. No users had ever asked for it, they just thought it would be “better”. When it first shipped, there was this incredible user backlash around it — users hated it at first, threatening to quit the platform and everything. But then… they got used to it. And then they even started to enjoy it. And before you knew it the “feed” became one of the most defining features of social app experiences going forward.
Stories like this one are cool, but can be unhealthy lore around how to build customer-focused based on instinct alone that I just don’t see as scalable. I really started to appreciate the strategic aspects of and impact of design thinking at Dropbox, actually — especially the customer research component.
What did that impact look like at Dropbox?
In my early days of Dropbox, I remember being in this role where I was collecting all kinds of feedback — from sales and from customers — all pointing us towards the conclusion of building out Dropbox for Business. This was a huge transition to our existing business model, but because we saw such a strong pull from users, we were able to launch something that ended up being a multi-million dollar business down the line, validating the need to stay closely tied to what your users really want and need.
Later, I worked on the early days of Dropbox Paper, where we had just bought Hackpad, a product with all the features of what you’d want in a collaborative wiki-type tool, but not great user experience. We thought we’d just PM the sh*t out of it and keep building features on top of it, but realized something was missing… the customer voice. Once we started investing more and more into understanding what our users really needed, it paved the way for some of our most impactful ships that really created the foundation for Dropbox Paper today: the minimal Paper UI, inline commenting, minimal decision-making when it came to fonts and similar bells & whistles, and more.
How did you make your way to Segment?
I knew I wanted to make my way to a smaller company that was in the post-PMF stage, but something that needed the expertise I could provide around how to scale effectively. One of the biggest things I was looking for was founders who were really interested in their users and what their users wanted. Segment’s founders had exactly this quality.
I stumbled on Segment through a mutual acquaintance, and was quickly captivated by the product potential and attitude of the people working there, who were ready to build whatever their customers wanted without any pre-conceived notions around what that should look like necessarily.
Segment has a really cool PMF (Product Market Fit) story, and I think what’s incredibly cool about it is that when you zoom out, it’s really a story of user research — a story of how people were actually using the product the founders set out to build at first (spoiler alert: it was completely wrong). It was great to see Segment was so young but already “humbled” by the experience of building without customer insight, which made sure it was a big part of our DNA going forward.
You’ve been at Segment for almost 5 years now! What’s something you love about working at Segment?
Honestly, I’m most proud of the EPDS (Engineering, Product, Design, Security) team we’ve built here. They are a combination of passionate, caring, business-oriented people who have built such an incredible culture of making each other and customers successful. Definitely my favorite part of working at Segment.
What’s surprised you most about your time at Segment?
Segment is in a market that is evolving super rapidly when you think about the sheer quantity of tools that pop up in the MarTech ecosystem every year. I think the fact that we’ve been able to reinvent ourselves as a product at least twice (Protocols, Personas) to keep up with the changing landscape has been really impressive and surprising.
As a leader, what do you see at the value of investing in good design?
I think there’s two angles to thinking about this. First, from a tactical perspective: what does good design feel like? B2B products typically get by with less than ideal product and user experiences as long as they solve a customer problem. We are working hard at Segment to break the mold there — and even though we have work to do — our vision around all of this stuff and where we want to go is really exciting.
The second angle is the strategic angle. I believe you don’t fall into new opportunities, breakthroughs, or PMF by accident. It’s a process that is where good design and product thinking needs to play a really important role in driving the strategy going forward.
What is your favorite thing that YOU designed recently?
Not to brag, but I busted open Canva the other day to make a “Happy Birthday” sign for my brother-in-law this weekend. In doing so, I ran into clip art that was a $1 upsell (it was watermarked otherwise) — instead of paying the dollar, I took a screenshot of the upsell and made sure to include it in the banner as a testament to what I was not willing to pay to complete the sign. I stand by my design decisions.
My wife also helped me had print the sign on 10 different pieces of paper to craft this together to really bring it to life. Great design project.
Besides clip art, what’s a guilty pleasure right now?
Ok so — I got this amazing vanilla ice cream from Costco (the Kirkland brand, but my family believes it’s actually Humboldt Creamery at much lower prices!!) and then I went all these amazing mix ins: hard chocolate shell, Heath, Oreos, Butterfinger, Reeses, Circus Animal Cookies (my wife’s questionable decision), etc — and just been really going nuts with the flavors and creations there.
In a way, a design project too?
Oh for sure.
Ok last question. What’s one good piece of advice that’s stuck with you?
There’s this awesome concept I got from this amazing member of the Biz Ops team at Dropbox back in the day around “stealing superpowers”. The idea is that everyone around you is incredibly good at some particular thing(s). It’s on you, though, to identify what superpowers you want to steal from that person. Then you line up a project or collaboration opportunity to work closely with them and collaborate and really see their skills in action, and learn what you can from that experience and their super powers.
I think this really resonated with me because people tend to think of their careers in terms of mentors — single omniscient people who facilitate all learning and growth. The reality is, everyone has something you can learn from. Expanding your horizons means you’re stealing superpowers from each manager you have, all your mentors, and your peers and colleagues too. I often reflect about my career and skills and can literally point to the superpowers I stole (or am attempting to steal) from a myriad of different mentors, bosses, peers, direct reports, etc.!
