Avery Oldt

Had to share this thoughtful article about the conflicting feelings we have as designers with new AI tools.... made me consider the threat of too much standardization over innovation, or letting your own creative instincts atrophy. Check it out and lmk your thoughts

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When Dropbox shifted to #VirtualFirst, my Design team helped lead the efforts to create the new model in a way that actually reimagined modern work. By applying a human centered design approach to build Virtual First—understand what users need, develop hypotheses, design and pilot solutions, observe results and iterate— what we saw as a result was true cultural transformation. This way of working is intentionally designed to make space for creativity, tinkering and deep work, while also reserving time for synchronous collaboration and IRL time when we need it. Through this process, we quickly realized there was a need for more conversation around the unique challenges of working in distributed ways. That’s how we came up with the idea for Remotely Curious—a podcast where we dive deep into the world of remote work and the struggles that come with it. One of my favorite episodes is on the topic of setting boundaries, an art that can take practice while working remotely. It’s something we’re laser focused on here at Dropbox—83% of employees feel successful in designing their own work schedules, but we know our employees want continued support around boundary setting between their work and personal lives as we continue in our Virtual First journey. Psychologist, professor, and best-selling author Andrea Bonior joined Remotely Curious to guide us through the specifics of setting boundaries in the workplace. One lesson that really stuck with me from the conversation was the idea that "clarity is kindness." It’s easy to fall into the trap of people-pleasing, where we start equating saying “yes” as being nice and saying “no” as being “difficult” or creating an uncomfortable environment. But clarity—being clear about your limits and expectations—is actually one of the kindest things you can do for yourself and your team. As leaders in a distributed environment, this is incredibly important to maintaining balance and remaining in control of our work. Creating healthy boundaries in my life enables me to be both a better leader for my team, and a better father and equal contributor at home. By being intentional in supporting myself as well as having a support system, or a “Team Alastair” around me, I can maintain better balance so that I can be the best version of myself, maintain peak-level performance and continue to scale both professionally and personally. I highly recommend giving this one a listen, and would love to hear your thoughts. https://lnkd.in/dn8As9zG #productivity #innovation #futureofwork

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Designers take note- it's not good enough to simply design great UX, we also need to deeply understand the technology its built on. Good design is: 1. In support of the business model — of course. 2. Leverages strategic technology bets the company is placing — wait, what? Mercedes rejected Apple's next-gen CarPlay because it didn’t fit the company's strategic software and compute architecture shifts. This example underscores a crucial point: what does a new technology architecture enable for the user experience that wasn't possible before?  Takeaway: Understanding the technology is essential for creating differentiated experiences. Mastery of the underlying technology can transform commodified design into great, innovative user experiences that leverage the investment your company is making. Agree or disagree?  https://lnkd.in/gQyvTY2Z #AutomotiveUX #UserExperienceDesign #HumanMachineInterface #SoftwareDefinedVehicles #TechInDesign

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Working on applied AI? Check out Elisabeth Carr’s recent post on 4-principles to leverage in your Design process. I find the principles around building trust and amplifying human expression most helpful in designing experiences that position AI to complement behaviors, creating more value for people rather than friction in our daily interactions.

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At this year’s Dropbox Design Summit, we dove deeper into what blank space means to us as designers, and what it means for our vision at Dropbox overall. Embracing the blank space allows us to be bold, focus on our foundations, and lean into our innate desire for tinkering and making—ultimately, enabling us to design a more enlightened way of working. The idea of embracing blank space has been a part of our story at Dropbox since its inception. More recently when we created our #VirtualFirst model, the landscape of work at the time was, in fact, a blank space. With design at the center, we had the opportunity to completely reinvent how and where we work, taking the blank space and creating something entirely our own. Though we work primarily in a remote fashion, we know coming together in person boosts our innovation, creativity and connection to each other. And as designers, we feed off the creative energy of others. There is no substitute for that. Our annual Dropbox Design Summit is a jolt of inspiration, and a meaningful moment of culture building and collaboration together in-person. This gathering has had a profound effect on our teams, and we’re continuously reinforcing what we learned together in our everyday work and encouraging our teams to embrace the blank space. This refreshed outlook is a result of coming together in an intentional way, or as we call it, our art of gathering. We shared more about this year’s Design Summit on our Design Blog. https://lnkd.in/dn9fwC2j

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Incredible!🤯 I fed my site, opendesigndocs.com, to Google‘s NotebookLM and had it generate a podcast about it. It took the context of the site and created a surprising amount of relevant content that sounds quite natural. Why is Google not advertising this! Take a listen: https://lnkd.in/gDQxxBCJ I imagine the next step would be to add different voices, tone, etc.

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When I read articles on these topics, I feel that designers have a greater responsibility in bringing everything back on track. https://lnkd.in/eXqi4tkG #designers #ai #investments #responsible #design

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Value that Design can bring in daily lives is significant and multifaceted, encompassing both tangible and intangible benefits. ➡ Thoughtful design can enhance accessibility, safety, comfort, and aesthetics, making cities more livable and enjoyable places to inhabit. ➡ Design can promote social inclusion and equity by ensuring that urban spaces are accessible and welcoming to people of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds. ➡ Vibrant and well-designed urban environments can stimulate economic activity by creating attractive destinations for shopping, dining, entertainment, and cultural experiences. e.g. Dubai, Singapore ➡ Designing cities with sustainability in mind can help reduce environmental impact, mitigate climate change, and improve resilience to natural disasters. ➡ Designing walkable neighborhoods, providing green spaces, and prioritizing active transportation modes can encourage healthier lifestyles and reduce the prevalence of chronic diseases. ➡ Design can help preserve and celebrate a city's cultural heritage and identity by integrating historic landmarks, cultural institutions, public art, and traditional architectural styles into the urban fabric ➡ Design thinking approaches, co-design processes, and participatory design methods engage communities in shaping the future of their cities and generating innovative solutions to complex urban challenges. ➡ Well-designed public spaces serve as gathering places for social interaction, cultural exchange, and civic participation, strengthening the social fabric of cities. ➡ Design-driven placemaking initiatives and urban regeneration projects enhance the attractiveness and competitiveness of cities on a global scale, driving economic prosperity and prosperity. #designlife https://lnkd.in/g65yb6jP

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I’ve been thinking a lot about how we might charge for “service as a software” products in the future. I predict packaging and pricing for these products to actually start looking a lot more like how we charge for human labor — T&M, consulting fees, maybe eventually even some version of a regular salary based on complexity of computation or job to be done. Curious to know your thoughts. #ai #design #productmanagement #business #strategy

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Back in 1997, Adobe blew me away with the capabilities of photoshop. Since then, the key players in the CC suite have been part of my toolkit as a designer. But this article has me concerned as a creative. Adobe has it's haters for sure. The reality is that it holds what is tantamount to a monopoly on the creative industry bar Figma and a handful of other solutions. But if the concerns in this article are to be believed, Adobe, how on earth is this reasonable? There is a growing trend where tech providers are becoming to powerful and this falls into that for me. 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀: 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗮𝗰𝘆: Adobe can access your project files, including those under NDA, for unspecified reasons. 𝗔𝗜 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴: Adobe can potentially use your project files to train its AI tools, without your explicit permission. 𝗟𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗼𝗳 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆: The terms of service are vague about how Adobe will use your data and don't clearly explain how to opt out of AI training. 𝗡𝗼 𝗢𝗽𝘁-𝗢𝘂𝘁: There is no easy way to opt out of the new terms and continue using Adobe software. 𝗨𝗻𝗳𝗮𝗶𝗿 𝗟𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗲: You can't uninstall the software without agreeing to the terms, and cancelling your service may come with financial penalties. Interested to hear thoughts particularly from creatives and legal folk. Thanks to Mat Venn for sharing the original link.

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We secured $770k in design salaries in our first month operating in the US 🎉 We placed exceptional: • Product Design Director in California • Two Senior Product Designers in Oregon and North Carolina • Senior Product Designer in London Some of these searches started before July, but last month was when all the offers were finally signed. I could not be more excited with the results! Shoutout to the most design-savvy and caring recruitment team at Hirey | Design Recruiters 🖤 Looking back all I can say is that: Last year was D-E-V-A-S-T-A-T-I-N-G. I believe many of you experienced the same. I was full of self-doubt and nagging thoughts: "Will what I do ever be needed again?" “Maybe it’s time to shut down and go back in-house?” “Am I just a good IC, but not a business owner?” Now, everyone says the market is picking up, and autumn should be fruitful in hiring. Fingers crossed! But we’re ready to face any challenges that come our way. To all small business owners who’ve made it through hard times without losing the team: I believe now we can do anything! #hiring #recruitment #entrepreneurship #motivation #community #design

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With the rapid adoption curve of AI, users are expecting more ‘magic' from their digital tools and products. Great piece here about the relevancy and reframing of the value of design when building a non-deterministic digital experience: “Sophistication, in prompting, comes from deeply understanding the user — their attitudes and behaviours towards this experience — and integrating that knowledge into the prompt. This is even more important than with traditional software interactions because of the open-ended nature of conversational experiences. As noted by designer, Emily Campbell, “the more autonomy that users have to direct computers to their personal whim, the better they will expect computers to understand them and anticipate their needs.” Logan Kilpatrick, head of developer relations for OpenAI, boils it down to “context.” The model needs context to do its perform a specific task well. This makes prompting an “inherently human” task because it requires that we understand the nuances of what people are trying to achieve.”

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🚀 What my time at Airbnb taught me about level competencies I'm thrilled to share my latest article where I dive into how level competencies are the backbone of your design team's success. 🌟 https://lnkd.in/gWU4tGEa 📈 Clear expectations and growth paths: How setting clear expectations fosters purpose and direction. 📊 Performance reviews: The importance of fair and concrete performance evaluations. 🎯 Personalized development plans: Developing tailored growth plans for team members. Take a look and let me know what you think! #Airbnb #DesignLeadership #GrowthMindset #TeamDevelopment #Leadership

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Home Depot Plans to Make Every Employee, Including Executives, Work in Stores. Get first hand experience with customers and store employees? Sounds great! This and other designerly articles in this issue Being Designerly 104 👉 Link in comment #Designerly #Design #UX

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Hello fellow designers and creatives. I’ve decided to jump back into writing. Find me on Substack where my musings will focus on industrial design, design, strategy, sustainability, and systems thinking. Thanks for the sub. :) https://lnkd.in/e4Wpfbrp #industrialdesign #designstrategy #systemsthinking #sustainability

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2 years with Nectar! 🤘🔥 My favorite highlights: → Our team’s growth from 23 employees to 90 employees. Product alone grew from 6 of us to 21 strong now 🙌🏼, and we’re a sleek, efficient, resilient team under Brian Cressall and Nate Tingey. → Established Nectar’s Design System and built our component library, significantly improving speed, consistency, and quality of design and implementation. → Completed a massive UI design refresh for the existing product (bless the devs still building it 🫡 ). → Launched Nominations, the largest and most impactful new feature we’ve built at Nectar yet. → Completely scrapped a project, because it was the right thing to do. Grateful to work on a team that’s hyper-focused on our ultimate goals, and is sincerely willing to let sunk costs be irrelevant. → Ideated, designed, and launched our new product Internal Communications in 8 weeks with a small, mighty team 🤯 I’m still amazed we managed it. → $40M Series B funding in April 2024 with PeakSpan Capital. → Saw our efforts, motivation, and passion pay off when Nectar was recognized as the 2nd Fastest Growing Company in Utah County, 1st fastest growing software company in Utah, 8th fastest growing software company in the U.S., and 87th fastest growing company in the U.S. (across all industries). → 300% increase in revenue in Q3 2023 vs Q3 2024 (Q3 was also 50% above our revenue Q2 2024). → Saw every department at Nectar grow in excellence. I’m in awe of the caliber of Engineering, CS, Marketing, Sales, and what they accomplish. → Relished the challenge and variety of asks in the beginning as Nectar’s sole designer, including working on print design (looking at you, 28’ tradebooth) and animations for the first time. That animation announcing Nectar’s new logo a year ago? That was my first animation, and I’m still proud of myself for figuring it out enough to make that 😂. → Spent way too much on Holiday gas station runs (RIP old office). This is a long list, but for the record I cut it in half from what it was 😅. I’m grateful Nate reached out on LinkedIn right at the perfect time when I was looking to switch things up, and that we’ve made a great team ever since. Getting to work closely with our little product design team—Nate, Mason, Tyler, and Maya—and many, many others keeps me growing and keeps me motivated on the daily. Nectar’s mission and way of working resonated with me from the beginning. It’s rewarding to see our company continue to gain momentum and maturity, all while seeing how much room we still have to grow. Very, very grateful to be part of the journey. As we say, it’s still Day 1 at Nectar. 🚀

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How do you use data in design? Here’s an interesting perspective: data can be a source of power. That's from Wendy Owen, who leads design for Facebook at Meta. Wendy describes using data (of all kinds) as a source of power to build her intuition and create better conversations across the team. I like the different ways she talks about data and the different sources she considers (observational, behavioral, etc). The variety reminds me of Tommy Geoco's “Shapes of Work” concept. Full interview in the comments. #design

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​How could AI be more useful and applicable to product designers? - other than asking questions to a chatbot and generating interesting images. ​Join Diego Pulido to learn how to include AI tools into your workflow and explore AI services, tips, and techniques directly applicable to UX designers. https://lnkd.in/gGjzXqRe

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Some thoughts on a segment that aired on CBS Sunday Morning over the weekend titled, "What happened to 'simple' design?" First off: I really enjoyed watching it. I love seeing design and designers featured prominently in the media! Although the output of our jobs is experienced by billions of people the world over, design as a practice is often sorely misunderstood. I also appreciated the premise of the content re. simplicity. Many of us have been around long enough to remember the original Google search page that featured little more than a search field and a button or two. Google's embrace of simplicity in their early years—diverging from extremely complex and ineffective search tools at the time—catapulted the company to global dominance. Early Apple devices were so focused on simple and intuitive interaction that they didn't even ship with instructions. As the video suggests, society has moved away from "Good design is as little design as possible" (h/t Dieter Rams), to overwhelming users with an endless flood of options, menus, settings, and features. I do have a bone to pick with Jakob Nielsen who is featured in the segment. Toward the end of the video, Mr. Nielsen states that the lack of simplicity in modern design is "the designer's fault." In my experience, it is rarely the designer driving product roadmaps, pushing to add more features, more options, etc. Product designers, interaction designers, user interface designers, and industrial designers are often fighting a losing battle. They're the ones typically advocating for the user and arguing for simplicity against requirements being handed to them by their clients/partners in the business, marketing, and product who consistently want to add more, more, more. This is the primary reason why I shy away from using "user experience designer" as a job title. So, no, Mr. Nielsen, it's not designers' fault. More often it's business decisions—not designers—that drive complexity and can lead to an overwhelming experience for users.

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