my name is Amy and I just I have such a hard time explaining what it is that I
do on paper I'm a product manager for the public API at wetransfer
but in reality I'm a designer I studied graphic design and I spent the last six
years as a graphic designer and a product designer and an event designer
and a leprechaun designer and that even though now I'm a product manager I still
use the same logic and experience in the way that I work when I
I studied visual communication in Dublin I'm from Ireland and my so for your
graduation project in in visual communication you have this kind of 15
week long project where you come up with an idea and you use every kind of skill
and piece of experience that you've gotten so far to demonstrate how amazing
a designer you are so like animation and website design and typography and poster
design and all of this stuff and it was supposed to kind of show what you've
learned but I kind of figured that the most
important thing that I learned in visual communication was the importance of an
idea and then it was also the most exciting part and like it's where you
get all the goods and you know when you spend more time digging into the thing
that you're supposed to be designing a solution for it then it makes more sense
and it means something and so then I tried to come up with an idea that would
demonstrate this as a learning and I ended up I wanted I pitched the idea to
build a turd polishing machine so I told my lecturers that I wanted to build this
big huge giant contraption with like bells and levers and whistles and things
and you'd do all this stuff and then you know what came out at the end was just a
polished turd and obviously they were like that doesn't doesn't didn't
demonstrate anything skill that you've learned or that we've taught you for the
last four years so I turned myself into a turd polishing
Sheen in the sense that I made this fake graphic design studio and I made all of
these like posters and stuff and did an interview with the creative director and
it's called graphic BS bullshit and have a really fun time doing it but then when
I graduated from busy um it meant that no design agency wanted some young
entitled graphic designer to be working in their studio so the first job to
answer the question you asked me about ten minutes ago the question are the my
first job when I graduated was working for the national leprechaun museum
because they were willing to give me the opportunity to be a designer I suppose
ah well to give a low bit of context the reason that I one that I work at we
transfer now is because I originally wanted to work for an agency called
present plus that is based here or was based here in Amsterdam
and they were a kind of product design agency that worked like a normal design
agency but they would be involved in the product design aspect of projects as
well and that just sounded like really exciting to me and I thought they really
did a good job at it and they seemed like you know just hot shit so I wanted
to work for them and I always spent months putting a portfolio together and
was like really excited to like send in my application even though I don't think
they were even looking for anyone and then by just as I was about to hit Send
for a dramatic effect I ran a TechCrunch article that said that we transfer had
acquired the design studio present plus and so I just I was like what the hell
literally what the hell I was so sure that this is where I wanted to work and
that they've been absorbed like we transfer what does that even mean we
transfer is literally one page with like two buttons on it why do you need to
acquire an entire design studio for this so I run a really angry email to the VP
of design that we transfer and I was like what do you think you're doing and
asked him to explain himself and explain to me what the design you know process
an environment that we transfer is like that they need an entire design studio
so Tice invited me over for a conversation and he basically just just
explained that we transfer his approach to building products is from a design
perspective which amazed me because that's my buzz and that's why I you know
the struggle that I have in describing who I am and what I do is because I'm
product I build products but from a design perspective so I don't ever want
to let go the designer title even though I'm a
product manager but I'm like no but I'm a product designer that this was what we
transfer was all about so that's kind of that's what it's like to work there
in essence it's like design focused product beautiful simplicity good vibes
very intelligent people very interesting people hilarious people and yeah that's
well when we sew we only started this project and team a year ago and you know
as I explained I was a product designer up until a year ago and I was given a
very you know amazing opportunity to step up as a product manager for this
new team that would build a public API we transfer but I didn't even know what
API stood for the time so I was kind of winging it and you know when you're
working it was I was willing to embrace the unknown let's say and the team that
I was working with were extremely patient and knowledgeable and you know
dedicated a lot of time to explaining to me how things worked and you know we
would use metaphors to explain to each other what the technical aspect of
something was versus the design aspect versus the strategy aspect and we would
all work on it together because we needed to understand each other and we
built this kind of language of metaphors with like airports to refer to like API
gateway and all of these kind of metaphors to explain how things worked
but at the start that was that was quite a challenge because it also meant that
because I didn't have the technical background I was kind of out of my depth
in terms of decision-making on some stuff at the beginning just because I
didn't understand it and when you're in a position to be building a product and
have a team that's looking at you for the direction and strategy you kind of
need to know what you're talking about so that was a challenge but again tanks
thank God for the team that I got that we were able to work it out together and
now I think it's kind of put us in a much stronger position because we had to
work every aspect at together that now we feel like we're building it together
and I feel a lot more confident now being able to make decisions about stuff
because I know we're all on the same page but that was a struggle
as a product manager out we transfer
I'm I'm quite erratic in my day-to-day behavior anyway and because my
preference is the design side of things as opposed to them management and you
know analytical side of things well you know I get a kick out of that too but
obviously from the ideas part of things so when it comes to tools and workflow
I'm kind of all over the place I'm all for the pen and paper and then I lose it
which is not ideal but yeah I don't know I guess I use whatever is there to just
get shit done that's a terrible answer but I don't know how to answer that
question I'm all over the place
oh well the first one that springs to mind is slack and I think the read the
very specific reason why I'm kind of inspired by slack as a product in
general is because of their approach to how they designed the product from every
aspect and had they tie it all together and their consideration for the people
who are using it and actually because those are things I my are bad psyche but
their consideration for people using it and also their own clarity now from an
external point of view their own clarity on their mission and vision for what
they're trying to achieve so it's not it doesn't have an end goal they want to
revolutionize the way that people communicate in general so it's not
focused on the tool it's focused on the outcome and my most favorite article
that I've ever read that in any way relates to product design or strategy or
vision for products is an article by Stewart Butterfield who's the CEO of
slack and he wrote a medium article that's cold we don't sell saddles here
and it you've got to read it it is just that explains it all and that's what I
admire a lot about slack and that was variance Pakistan flag but that's where
my conference talk was about how well it was called rethinking how we transfer
and it was about how 10 years ago we transfer was a product that was built
built to solve a specific problem and they did that well and it was in a
design approach to reimagining problem and building something beautiful to
solve that problem and ten years on from that solution that was built the
landscape in which people create anything or build create share ideas has
dramatically changed because everything's interconnected so you know
my talk was kind of about how we've been thinking and revisiting how people
transfer their own ideas and where they do it from and building and equally as
relevant tool or solution for people who still need to transfer ideas