New Adventures 2019 - Josh Brewer on Demystifying Design

Josh Brewer is a co-founder at Abstract, a really interesting online tool that is essentially GitHub for Designers. I really liked how he focussed on design being a rationale process, being able to have conversations with everyone involved not just user research but also sitting in on stakeholders meetings. He also focussed on having a multi-discipline team which I think is essential to any successful team in any industry. Here are some notes I made while listening to his talk.

• Co-founder of Abstract, previously Twitter principal designer
• Craigslist is designed to be the way it is on purpose. Despite other people thinking it proves design isn’t important
• “Good design is good business” - Thomas Watson Jr 45 years ago
• “I want to understand how these people are thinking” talking about having a seat at the table
• Design led are outperforming by over 200%
• Transparency
• Accountability
• Consensus
• “Everyone who has a hand in it is potentially designing the experience”
• “The more people can observe the work the more people validate the design in the organisation”
• “temperamental “creatives”" gif of mad men
• “As designers we have to bring rationale into our discussions”
• “No room for irrationality”
• “Anything that goes from nothing to something appears like magic” to stakeholders
• Can’t see process so assume designers don’t do work
• “Fear of showing work, afraid of being judged because I’m not done yet or someone will take it as their own”
• Transparency about being people into the work to understand and participate
• Need advocates from other disciplines such as engineering.
• Building relationships with other disciplines is fundamental
• Failure is often tied with punishment.
• “Failure is only failure if you don’t learn from it”
• Failure is part of the design process
• “You learn every time you take a swing through it and you back into a brick wall”

Feel free to read the rest of my notes from New Adventures.