← Work

How I work

I believe the people who run these platforms all day deserve the same care as anyone using an app on their phone.

  1. 01

    Start with the problem, not the screens

    Before anyone draws, we find the real problem and the one moment worth designing for.

    • Tesla Before he drew anything, we sat with business managers and read the emails fleets were sending them.
    • Cisco 12 customers spent three days with us mapping how a network gets planned, designed, secured and deployed, and voted on where it hurts.
    • Morning I talked to other parents and found the moment to design for: 7:42 in the morning, a parent putting shoes on a four-year-old.

  2. 02

    Put design next to the people who use the product

    Design sits with customers, and research runs alongside the work instead of in front of it.

    • PubMatic Most of the team sat in Pune, far from customers. I hired our first designer in Redwood City, and a researcher and a designer in New York, close to the publishers we designed for.
    • Adobe I didn’t wait for research. We kept designing and ran studies in parallel, and five Team customers tested the product page.
    • Zūm I test prototypes with drivers, dispatchers and parents.

  3. 03

    Set the team up so the work runs without me in every room

    Clear owners, a shared way of working, and one rhythm across sites and time zones.

    • Cisco I wrote the team’s onboarding and design process, gave every step an owner with a RACI, sized every feature XL to S at kickoff, and kept one rhythm across San Jose and Bangalore.
    • Adobe I got product to work from goal-based story maps, brought Seattle engineering into daily stand-ups, and led the Admin Console’s move to Spectrum.
    • Tesla I paired a designer with engineering and made the calls he couldn’t make alone yet.

  4. 04

    Still do the work, and let the prototype carry the handoff

    I design in Figma and build prototypes in code. A tested prototype is what engineering builds from.

    • Zūm A prototype does three jobs for the team: it’s what we test with users, what engineering builds from, and what leads review before anyone else sees it.
    • The handoff The process isn’t what died; the handoff did. When anyone can make the screen, choosing the right one matters more.
    • My own apps I’ve shipped two apps this way, dubara and Morning.