William Channer is a partner at the Panda Network, and he is also the host of Dorm Room Tycoon. In this episode we discuss the future of information consumption, what role Panda plays in that, his experience building products remotely, and his thoughts on raising money for startups.

Featured Jobs

Brigade is looking for a Senior Product Designer

Webflow is looking for a Web Designer and Educator

Episode Highlights

3:00: William’s background, including what he studied in school and his early copywriting career. He also talks about what made him want to leave advertising, as well as what he appreciated about the industry.

7:30: William’s first start-up, which was Voto-App, and what he learned from it.

11:15: Information about Panda Network: What it is, what they do, and what the goal is in terms of who is using the site and why.

16:00: William’s thoughts on what the future will look like, including automation and the way searches will work.

17:10: What he learned from Dorm Room Tycoon, including the downside of raising money for a startup.

22:15: Some of the new pro features of Panda that you can expect in the near future.

23:15: How William met his business partner, Ahmet Sulek, and how Panda came to be. He also touches on some of the challenges of a long-distance business relationship.

31:00: William’s advice on collaborating and his thoughts on the interesting things going on in the design world.

Show Links

• Dorm Room Tycoon
• Panda Network
• William on Twitter
• O’Reilly Design Conference (20% off the ticket price with code: PCDNEWS)
• Jobs for Designers and Developers

Ash Huang is a designer and award-winning novelist from Silicon Valley. She has done product design and branding for companies such as Pinterest, Twitter and Dropbox. Her writing has been featured in numerous publications including Fast Company, Offscreen magazine. Today she shares how she moved from brand design into product design, and what inspired her to become a writer.

Featured Jobs:

• Toptal is looking for a Senior Web Designer
• Google is looking for an Interface Designer
• Bench is looking for a Brand Designer

Episode Highlights:

2:28: Introduction: Ash describes pursuing multiple creative professions, and the unifying thread in all her work.

6:08: Ash’s educational background and experiences in design school.

11:47: Ash discusses the job market after graduation and the attractiveness of agencies and startups to prospective employees.

15:40: Ash joins Twitter, and describes her work on brand design there and at Pinterest.

18:18: Finding an interest in product design and lessons learned from other product designers.
Exploring the effects of product design and user experience on overall brand.

23:38: Inspiration for her first novel, The Firesteel, and becoming a writer. She also describes the process behind the design of her book cover.

29:42: Ash talks about her newest book, Suspension, and the themes examined. She also shares her experience writing a second book, compared to the first.

34:48: How Ash finds inspiration to write fiction and parallels with reality.

36:30: Creative satisfaction and personal fulfillment while balancing multiple creative professions.

Show Links:

Ash Huang Website

Ash Huang on Twitter

Suspension

The Firesteel

Photo from Techies by Helena Price.

Clark Valberg is the founder and CEO of InVision. If you are a designer, you have probably gotten an email from Clark or from InVision at one time or another, but if you’re not familiar with the company, InVision is a prototyping and collaboration platform for designers. Today we’ll talk about the business’s past, present and future.

Featured Jobs

• Reaktor is looking for a Senior UX Designer
• Reaktor is looking for a Senior Product Designer
• Mono is looking for a User Interface Designer
• Close.io is looking for a Product Designer

Episode Highlights

4:20: What Clark thinks works well about InVision.

6:45: How Clark handles the organization of premier showings of Design Disruptors.

11:00: About the Inside Design series: Where the customers came from and how the interviewing process evolved.

13:00: How InVision started and what made it different from other consulting companies during that time.

19:45: Why it’s important for agencies to work on products.

23:35: How InVision handles research.

28:30: Where Clark sees InVision’s place the current and shifting marketplace.

36:20: How InVision is selling a process, not a product.

Show Links

• Peel (10% off with code: DN7)
• Designer News Jobs
• Design Disruptors (InVision Documentary)
• Clark on LinkedIn

Linda Liukas, thinks the key to helping children learn is to spark their curiosity. Linda is the author and illustrator behind Hello Ruby, a series of children’s books about technology. She’s also the co-founder of Rails Girls, a community designed to help women understand technology.

How do we teach children how to program? There are many different theories on this important investment in our future.

Featured Jobs

Memebox is looking for a Sr. Product Designer

Episode Highlights

2:30: Introduction: Why Linda focuses her education on children, and how they can positively impact adults as well. Linda also tells us about her educational and professional background.

4:50: How Hello Ruby came to be, from conception to funding to final publishing. Linda also discusses how she came up with the story, the exercises and the final illustrations.

11:00: Information on Linda’s second book: What was easier this time around, and what this second project will be about.

17:30: Why technology is as much of an art as it is a science, and why programming is a tool rather than simply a process.

18:30: How Linda explains coding to children in simple language and what she hopes kids can take away from her books.

22:00: What the future look like for Linda’s books and upcoming projects.

Show Links

• Designer News Jobs
• Linda Liukas on Twitter
• Hello Ruby
• Rails Girls

Jessica Hische is on the show this week to share all kinds of stories, taking us back to her propensity for art and how it turned into a career; being broke in college and crafting her own typefaces out of necessity; and working with visionaries like Wes Anderson and freelancing for illustrious clients.

Jessica is a lettering artist, designer and author. Her clients include Nike, NPR, New York Times, Samsung and many more. Look out for her work and products.

###Featured Jobs
Qardio is looking for a Senior Graphic Designer in London/SF

Delighted is looking for a UI Engineer in Palo Alto/remote

Episode Highlights

How Jessica handles criticism and getting specific feedback that goes against what she knows as a designer 4:00

Analog vs. digital tooling 8:00

How Jessica’s propensity for art when she was young eventually turned into a career, what courses she took, how her parents supported her, and why she began lettering 12:20

How working with Louise Fili inspired discipline and business acumen 20:15

What prompted Jessica to begin freelancing, and how she made it work 24:00

Some of Jessica’s side projects, including Daily Drop Cap and the quirky Thousands Under Ninety 28:00

Why work and play are one and the same 37:10

The most common and interesting questions that Jessica gets from young designers 38:00

Randy J. Hunt joins us this week for a kaleidoscopic design discussion. He lays down all kinds of wisdom about developing true empathy for users, career paths, holistic design and business models. Then we explore Etsy; what it was like helming early design projects, challenges growing the team and how Etsy's mission attracts the calibre of designers it does. Finally, Randy name-drops the luminaries that he takes inspiration from.

Randy is the VP of Design at Etsy and author of Product Design for the Web. You can find him on Twitter at @randyjhunt.

Also: Payam Rajabi of Shopify and Kieran Rheaume of Designer News talk shop about the state of design tools as a number of new players like Figma, Subform and Affinity Designer emerge.

Sponsor

This week’s episode is brought to you by Dropmark. Dropmark is the smart way to organize all your links, files, and notes into visual collections, perfect for individuals and teams alike. Visit dropmark.com/teams to learn more.

###Upcoming Meetups:
San Francisco is coming up October 20 at Udemy

Austin is happening down November 10. Stay tuned for details!

###Featured Jobs
Blue Aunt Media needs a Senior UX Designer in Toronto

Pillpack is looking for a Product Designer in Boston

Reaktor is hiring a couple design positions in NY

ODEN Technologies is looking for a Product Designer in NY

MAARK Agency needs a UI Designer in Cambridge

Episode Highlights

The state of design tools: Thoughts on collaboration, file-sharing, features, layouts, and what all of this means for the industry as a whole [4:00]

Common issues that come up with collaborative design tools, and why design issues have become such a hot topic 7:10

The future of design tools: predictions 18:00

Fostering ultimate empathy for users, and what Randy discovered using only an iPad 21:40

How Randy’s background has brought him to where he is now, including how the early months of his launch went24:45

The differences between agency work and entrepreneurship 29:40

The differences between product work vs. service work 35:00

Challenges scaling the Etsy design team 39:20

Common challenges in management and how Randy meets them head-on 45:00

Etsy’s “secret sauce”: How they attract so many talented people 49:00

Feedback

We love (read: need) to hear your feedback. Tweet Sam or Designer News, or email us hello[at]designernews[dot]co.

Rachel Andrew joins us this week to reflect on how the web's influence grew on her in the early days, and how this manifested into full-fledged web development - a magic skill set at the time. Then Rachel dwells on web frameworks and their implications for web standards and layouts. She muses about obligations for the development community to advocate for their interests, and the story of a humble CMS project turning big. Finally, she explores how the client landscape in today's web dev world is shifting and becoming commoditized.

Rachel is a developer, speaker, author, and founder of Perch, a friendly CMS client.

Sponsor

This episode of DN FM is sponsored by Peel, the original branding free, super thin iPhone case. It's designed to protect your device without losing its aesthetic - use the code “DN7” for 10% off your order!

Community Announcements

In addition to the badge sorting options we added last week, there is a new Submit Story flow that makes posting easier. As always, reach out to Jody if you run into any trouble or have feedback.

Featured Listings

Sprout Video is looking for a Creative Director in Brooklyn

Weebly needs a Design Manager in San Francisco

###Upcoming Meetups:
San Francisco is coming up October 20 - stay tuned for more details.

###Featured Jobs
Weebly needs a Design Manager in San Francisco

Episode Highlights

Leaving the world of theater and dance (3:30)

How buying her first computer opened up a new career for Rachel (4:10)

Writing about the Web and nailing first client-gigs (5:45)

Creating, building, and curiosity-driven programming (7:36)

What about CSS is so exciting? (8:55)

CSS frameworks and web developments (11:15)

Relying on frameworks and implications for the web (12:50)

Pushing for better standards (14:25)

Launching and marketing Perch (16:15)

Transitioning from a studio to a product company (19:20)

Why traditional design companies are pitching more web products (23:10)

The balancing act of sharing free resources and making revenue from projects (from The High Price of Free) (25:00)

Feedback

We love (read: need) to hear your feedback. Tweet Sam or Designer News, or email us hello[at]designernews[dot]co.

Tim Van Damme is on the show this week to share the stories behind his prolific design gigs. He takes us back to his freelance roots in Belgium and big move to America where he kicks off a series of high profile design roles. Tim reflects on the design industry as a whole, recognizing the culture of sharing that was so formative in his early years as an up and comer. He also teases us about the new star studded project Abstract, and uncovers his mysterious alter alias Max Voltar.

Tim is a Belgian designer working on Abstract, a new tool for for design teams. His past roles include Gowalla, Dropbox and Instagram.

Community Announcements

New story sorting options: Jody has been hard at work to provide more sorting options for stories - you can filter by Top Stories (week/month/year) and by Badge Type. You're encouraged to hit up Jody directly if you have feedback or run into bugs!

###Upcoming Meetups:
San Francisco is going down October 20

###Featured Jobs
Sprout Video needs a Lead UI/UX Designer in New York

Episode Highlights

Why embark on project Abstract? (2:40)

Making the move from Belgium to America (5:50)

Working at Gowalla, and the Facebook acquisition (9:00)

Joining Instagram (11:25)

Cold emailing design influencers (12:20)

First projects at Instagram (14:20)

Tim's second experience with Facebook buying out his company (15:55)

Moving on to the Dropbox design team (18:40)

Lessons learned from working within a large design organization (20:10)

Projects at Dropbox (22:30)

A culture of sharing and giving back to the design community (25:50)

Who is Max Voltar? (29:20)

Feedback

We love (read: need) to hear your feedback. Tweet Sam or Designer News, or email us hello[at]designernews[dot]co.

Amandah Wood joins us to talk about Ways we Work, her publication that deep-dives into how people do work they love. Amandah shares her experiences encouraging candid and open storytelling, and finding exactly what makes people tick.

Amandah is a writer, editor and extremely curious person. She's the founder of Ways we Work where she interviews people and teams about how they do meaningful work.

Community Announcements

###Upcoming Meetups:
Toronto is coming up September 15

Boston is going down September 8

London is happening September 29

##Featured Jobs
Grabble needs a UI/UX Designer in London

Huddle is looking for a Senior Designer in Sydney

Chegg needs a Lead UX Designer in Santa Clara

Episode Highlights

###Top Stories:
The Design Team: A new comic series by illustrator Pablo Stanley that follows the story of Junior Designer who just moved to SF to join a startup. The comic pokes fun at the tech world, and the quirky design culture in the middle of it. . First few series available at thedesignteam.io.

Nextdoor Cuts Racist Posts by 75%: Neighbourhood social media site Nextdoor experienced an abundance of racial profiling, so they actually added friction to the user, which in-turn reduced racists post by 75%.

Pattern, UX Sketching App: One of the most upvoted stories this past week, as users were excited by the product video... However some people expressed concern over the app's stability.

Mozilla Open Design Logo Concepts: Mozilla is modernizing their brand identity. 'Open sourced' and 'transparency' are core values of their democratized web, so they are using an 'Open Design' process for this new branding. This doesn't mean crowdsourced, or voting, but letting people weigh in with their feedback.

###Interview
Introducing Amandah and Ways We Work (9:20)

How being an introvert pushed Amandah to launch her site (10:25)

Evolution of Ways We Work and finding Matt Quinn (14:40)

How Amandah picks subjects (16:50)

The secret to loving your job (20:10)

The interviewing experience and process (21:40)

Encouraging vulnerability, and extracting candid and open stories (29:03)

What makes an interview interesting (30:30)

Writing and reflection (32:30)

Amandah’s interview rolemodels (33:50)

Predictions for the future of publishing (34:45)

What’s next for Ways We Work (36:30)

Feedback

We love (read: need) to hear your feedback. Tweet Sam or Designer News, or email us hello[at]designernews[dot]co.

Scott Belsky joins us to highlight his journey from Fortune 500 MBA grad to the creative chaos of the design world. He dives into Behance's mission to empower the creative world - and his personal journey thereof. Scott also explains the implications of the interface layer, and concludes with his shift into venture capital.

Scott is an investor, entrepreneur and author. Currently a General Partner at Benchmark Capital, he previously founded Behance and 99U, and wrote Making Ideas Happen.

Sponsor

Craft by InVision is supporting DN FM this episode. Craft is a free suite of plugins for Sketch and Photoshop that’ll turbo charge your workflow. Use the Data plugin to design with real data- even pull live web and JSON values into your design. Use the Library plugin to create beautiful style guides and share assets across your team. And coming soon, use the Prototype plugin to prototype your designs right inside of Sketch! Snag the plugins at invisionapp.com/craft

Community Announcements

###Projects
DN has partnered with Crew to connect members of our community with design and development projects. You can apply to work on listed projects or submit your own to Crew’s vetted network.

###Upcoming Meetups:

Seattle is taking place August 25

Toronto is coming up September 15

#Featured Jobs
Joyable needs a Senior UX Designer and a Senior Visual Designer (San Francisco)

Highrise is looking for a Maker of Software (Remote)

Connect Software needs a Senior Product Designer (San Francisco)

Expedia is searching for a Product Designer (Paris)

Episode Highlights

###Top Stories:
Open-sourced photography DN'er Sam Zeller decided to give away all his photographs for free. His photos on Unsplash have been used in Apple campaigns and downloaded tens of thousands of times, inspiring him to set his entire archive of work free, available for private and commercial use.

Airbnb's new Samara design studio: Airbnb is going in-house with a new design studio. This new services-design team kicked off their first project by urban-planning a new community center in Japan. An undeniable link exists between Samara and the Russian design studio Lapka that was acquired by Airbnb last year.

Instagram Stories: Instagram released a new feature called Stories, a controversial dupe of Snapchat’s already-popular Stories feature.

###Interview
How frustration with the creative world drew Scott to design (7:20)

Goldman Sachs to Harvard Business School (9:00)

“Mission-centric but medium-agnostic”: Why Behance was bootstrapped (11:45)

Product roadmapping at Behance (13:30)

One-stop solutions for integrated services (15:25)

What does the interface layer mean for brands? (18:40)

Organization vs. talent (20:15)

Bringing creativity to mobile at Adobe (23:52)

The commoditization of design (27:25)

Design-driven (and founded) companies (28:45)

Feedback

We love (read: need) to hear your feedback. Tweet Sam or Designer News, or email us hello[at]designernews[dot]co.

We're joined by Aarron Walter to discuss his early life embracing fine arts, his transition to software, and the interplay between the two. Aarron also shares his philosophy for user research, why he joined InVision, and the feedback-loop future of product design.

Aaron is the VP of Design Education at InVision, and previously founded the UX practice at Mailchimp. He's also the author of Designing for Emotion.

Sponsor

Invision helps make DN FM possible. InVision is a design platform to prototype and collaborate with your team - we use it internally and it makes things effortless. If you’re not familiar with them, go to invisionapp.com and check it out.

Community Announcements

Upcoming Designer News Meetups:

Minneapolis is coming up August 18

Seattle is taking place August 25

Episode Highlights

###Top Stories:
New Mastercard logo: Pentagram rebranded Mastercard for the first time in 20 years, simplifying the logo and updating the identity.

Sidebar redesign: Sacha unveiled a revamped design for sidebar.io. New functionality includes search, filters and a brand new layout.

Really Good Emails AMA The RGE Team joined us for an AMA to talk shop about email marketing & design.

Github default system fonts: Github now uses the default system font on its site.

###Interview
Aaron’s background in fine arts, teaching, and the creative process (14:00)

The transition from fine arts to software design (20:50)

Being curious and working at Mailchimp (24:20)

Early design challenges at Mailchimp (30:00)

How to work around a manager who doesn’t believe in research (32:05)

Why every company should value research (35:30)

“Our work isn’t done until we turn research into a story” - presenting research to the rest of the team with storytelling, user personas, and jobs-to-be-done (38:00)

Why Aarron was attracted to Invision (44:00)

Using the history of animation as a guide for creating prototypes and getting feedback (48:00)

The future of product design (53:00)

Feedback

We love (read: need) hearing your feedback. Tweet Sam or Designer News, or email us hello[at]designernews[dot]co.