all right my name is Claudio Guglieri I'm the group creative director at huge Oakland
I'm a graphic designer by discipline but over the years I guess you know part of
my professional growth has been to learn how to lead teams and build teams
2015 down alright so yeah I was uh let's see in the last four years I that's
actually really good point I took a little bit of a detour am i internally
where I live and what I do so in 2016 I took a job at Microsoft I moved from San
Francisco to Seattle with my whole family and professionally I I really
wanted to experience what it was to truly work at a product driven company
as such as Microsoft right and you know it's a company that has been doing this
for over thirty years so I really wanted to get like a good
understanding and a good taste of what what what that was like I spent a couple
of years on Microsoft I work in two different teams the first
one leading the design of what's called groove which is the music app that comes
with Windows 10 the first party app I had a lot of fun and partially what I
was more interested in ended up becoming my second role on Microsoft which is
living the art direction of flow InDesign flew InDesign came up in 2016
and is you could think about it as the the evolution of you know the design
system and Microsoft used to be Metro I seem like embracing flatness and going
mobile first flew InDesign was supposed to be on it is supposed to be the one
design system that experience across all the different devices that Microsoft has
you know so mom takes part of us in part of the ecosystem of all the experiences
they have that was 2016 until 2018 only recently less than a year ago I
moved back to San Francisco I think there was only so much rain we could we
could take my wife Jacqueline she was and having a great time with with the
weather she's from Orange County and from the
south of Spain so I think from a family perspective we really needed to come
back to a place where you know have better weather were close to her family
so those mainly the the cool reason why we can
and from a professional perspective I left Microsoft I had a great time there
met amazing people but I left it to pursue different uh I guess a different
type of role I loved the work that we did over there but I did miss a little
bit how fast-paced and the different like pockets you get your heading when
you're more in a freelance or agency life so I decided to change come back to
San Francisco I started freelancing for a bunch of
companies met lots of great people again so a great experience overall and only
recently after many many months of talk I decided to join huge and I knew this
guy's a huge because I worked briefly at elephant which is one of the companies
of huge specialize in Apple this is again almost three years ago so we we've
been talking for a while and this opportunity came up where they basically
were looking for somebody to lead the career department in Oakland which is
the only office they have in the West Coast and I was really honest with them
I saying I've never done that I'm really I have enough experience driving teams
and you know being the one doing the work I've never been at a position where
I can influence a bigger organization so it's a little bit of an experiment but
I'm excited about it
I think the so first of all I think I've been really really lucky I somehow
exposed myself to the right people and I went through this journey that you know
I I only had like partially control of it right everything else was just being
the right time in the right moment and all that I think every single company
that I've been to or that I work with or work for has given me a certain type of
knowledge that had allowed me to you know move forward if Anna's Interactive
gave me their rigor and gave me the discipline to like be able to and also
give me a little bit like the working with with antonin and all the people
there gave me the the philosophy that I still apply to my work but also gave me
the you know it sounds kind of weird but like the strength to see things through
not just do the beginning of it and you know pretend that that's it and they
move on like see things to it as a working in one project for I don't know
like three or more months until you get it done you know be real came up with
different thing it was more on the experiential side of things I met like
super talented people that will have never joined a agency such as finest
interactive because of how niche at that point there the scope of work was right
so everything sort of like worked out if you ask me what is the most challenging
I think it's different times different assignments have different levels of
difficulty so for instance working at Microsoft was really challenging from a
perspective of it wasn't much about timelines it was more about learning how
to be more effective and that's what happens when you work in a big
organization like sometimes is not just enough to do the work is how you frame
it is how you identify the need how you sell it around what ends up having a
bigger impact and that's that's just weird
if you think about it right we should only care about the work but it's
certainly not the reality or maybe and I don't think this is
it's not fair to say oh this is a Microsoft thing I think this is a
endemic to big companies it just happens that's the way it works
so that's a skill that I never had to develop before something I had to start
doing
Wow that's hardcore I don't but I don't have that much
experience in Europe anymore it's been over okay I've been in the US
for like nine years now and before the UK I guess I don't think the UK was that
different from the US is I didn't I only spent like three years in Spain so what
I would say okay let me frame it this other way you could take a look at that
I could answer that question from the perspective of like the type of clients
and even in the u.s. you work for like European clients right I I think it
really depends on the nature of the of the assignment so for instance like for
many many years especially being in New York the dynamic with the client was
pretty much about like learning working presenting feedback working presenting
feedback if you move to the west coast is super different like they don't like
that and they did the relationship will you have with a client is much closer
because they normally have a teaming house therefore you know you don't play
this like Mad Men show of you know revealing the work and like you know
moving the curtain they're like oh my god that's amazing it doesn't work that
way right like you have to take them along and you made them part of the
problem you made them part of the solution everybody feels they have skin
in the game and it just works a bit better Europe though I think there's a
when you work for a company based in the US and people from you know reach out to
you obviously there's a budget disconnection sometimes if you get over
the hump the the expectations I think are equally as high what I like from
working with European companies is that they cut to the chase faster than
Americans do sometimes and it's not too firm it's not fair to say Americans like
it's such a big country but I felt that they were more
driven by the because of the distance
they were like trying to hit kind of like this is what we want to do if you
come back with like an increased cope of you know from my original request it's
not going to work because I have the money so less money cut to the chase
do the work sorry long answer and I'm not too sure
it's kind of weird like I guess let's but yet I don't know but at the same
time like you got like this raw creativity from year all the time yeah I
think here
yeah that definitely has changed over the years so 2012 but 2010 was mostly
about big portals heavy content sites 2012 started to like 2011 2012 and
they'd have been or it was all about video streaming lots of video streaming
clients they're super interesting 2013 2014 all ended up being about trouble so
the travel industry kind of like took off and I think you know there was some
websites down by like for example working Co with virgin they they really
sign virgin calm and that basically like made everybody wake up and I ended up
working for lots of her lines that was super interesting then I think as we as
I moved to the west coast so we as in me and my family we moved to the west coast
everything changed a little bit from being so campaign driven to be more
product driven so it wasn't that much about like we released this thing I seen
it was more about helping teams doing things so you helped whatever adobe to
work on the learn and support section and see how you could like motivate
people to like get over the hump of having to learn a new tool like it's
it's unclear right like it gets a bit more blurry I think now you know there's
still a little bit of some companies are still getting to this kind of like
rampage of design systems so it's normal that an a company will come and say
we're the same system and you're like alright well the science system is the
consequence of having you know a design is not the goal per se so that's that's
not like what's going on still right now what I'm hoping to tapped on is
everything else that is going on the valley I think like automotive what is
the future of work what is the future of Transportation that that's kind of like
pockets where I would like to get to
okay I think that the role of a designer doesn't stop the sun-eater is such a
vast you know discipline and that's a good thing so there will always be new
technologies I think what doesn't change that much is the framework in which you
the firm will you used to approach a problem as in learn you know collaborate
work iterate execute like that that doesn't necessarily change so you know
right now it's like machine learning I seen an artificial general intelligence
and all that like that's I don't thing is it doesn't feel to me like it's a
trend I think that's here to stay some designers may have to accommodate
and you know they kind of like take the best of it but also like learn can only
really find themselves to provide the most value right so the most value is
not going to be something that could be easily automated in the future I think
designers need to look at kind of like what is the contribution and you know
this is part of relate to my talk what can we do as human and creative
individuals to provide something that could not be provided by a machine
hmm that's a big one okay let me let me break it down a little bit so I was
taking a shower this is a couple of weeks ago and I was thinking about we
have some issues with like hot water they have to cut the hot water for like
a day and I was talking to my wife and say well you know what like back when
you know maybe my grandparents they didn't have like I don't think I'm
probably the hot water but it wasn't as easy as today right like you know
probably they would wipe their part with like newspapers and things like that
like it was a different time to be alive especially in Spain the more I wanted my
train of thoughts but basically the more technologies coming and our part of our
life the easier our life gets right I mean that's why I can think of like you
know I can think of elevated solutions to non-existent problems as a marketing
and that is because my basic needs are covered so the more you know let's say
transportation subscribing cars the moment I don't have to worry about that
we basically we keep removing barriers the somehow they find us but also take
time I think I'm really excited about the future because the more we remove
that the higher cannot like level of thoughts that we can have and they they
hire this is the promise that we can try to solve so if you think about this end
conversation 14 years ago hey what do you think about sewage and how water
automatic that you don't even have to do anything
what about like you know imagine you want food you put it here and it comes
automatically you have to go to a supermarket it would be like wow that's
amazing that to me is the equivalent to that
right like if you don't have to drive like in the u.s. apparently part of
again this is sounds like an evil plan right but part of the initiative towards
self-driving cars is the fact that that is the third place where people spend
most of their time every day commuting if you take that burden out of people
why would they do with a consume you information the
whatever mass media wants you to consume would you consume advertising like would
you work more right all those possibilities are there so I don't know
am i answering your question
all right so as I said I joined heat a couple of months ago no a month ago so
still the beginning of it I think I need to do first things first and that is to
help the team can I come together and become the best like product design
agency in the bay so that's that needs to happen the future projects that I
want to do I guess couple of differences there the price that we're doing right
now and some of them are really cool obviously I cannot talk about it but
they what else says like they expand over the traditional sense of digital
design they're getting into spaces they can into like the intersection between
physical and digital which is evergreen and and beautiful the future projects
that we will do us in this is a why priority like some of them will be cool
some of them you know I think it's more about the type of projects that we want
to do so I just got started but you know the goal is to to can like move away a
little bit for market in a more into like being able to help companies by
accelerating their design tracks
all right so it's called how far we push it and it's basically I cover
what I consider are the most important human abilities we should consider when
we're designing digital experiences and the point that I'm trying to make is
that there are many things happening right now I seen you know technology is
evolving experiences expand across like devices input sensors we need to find
common ground in what defines us as humans and use that to define innovation
so I'm gonna cover basically three different abilities as in our motor
system abilities vision abilities and cognitive abilities and try to navigate
how could we use those to our advantage when we're designing you know from web
experiences to full VR experiences