Before getting into my design career almost 15 years ago, I was an art student for an even longer time. At school, I was trained to be curious and produce creative work. We were taught how to explore the unknown, try things that hadn’t been done before, and seek out different approaches. Those skills carried over well for me when I entered the design world and worked for various agencies producing websites, digital products, and print pieces for their clients. Our first step was always to gather information about our clients and their needs. Then it was up to me, and my colleagues, to explore different ways of delivering quality work that represented them well.
A couple years passed before I started working at product companies, then a couple more years passed until today where things are very different thanks to Steve Jobs. He showed us how thinking different could change the world and having a deep understanding of your customers can lead to innovative products. I’m seeing that impact right at the company I work Automattic as we undergo a transformative process into becoming a design led company.
A couple of months ago, I participated in a foundational research study in which our goal was to better understand one of our target customers: the small business owner. We conducted a ton of interviews with people from all walks of life and visited them in their homes and offices via video chat. Throughout the interviews we recorded our sessions, took notes, and added our takeaways as stickies onto a digital Mural board.
The amount of data we collected was intimidating at first but then we found different ways of synthesizing it into actionable insights. We’re just getting back into a regular groove of producing new work and thanks to being inquisitive and doing our research, I can already tell the difference in the type of work we’re coming up with. The future for WordPress.com looks very bright.
Automattic Design 