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bob-baxley

5 min read

Bob Baxley

Chapters

Podcast Introduction and Guest Welcome

Duration: 00:00:00 - 00:04:31

Bob Baxley (00:00:00): Almost everyone living in a modern economy now is going to have hundreds of interactions with a phone or with a computer. And unfortunately, a lot of those interactions are not going to be great.

Founding Story and Company Origins

Duration: 00:04:49 - 00:08:59

Bob Baxley (00:04:49): So I actually can’t remember where I heard this, but I believe the story’s true. Steve at one point was recounting the products that he had created that he was most proud of, and if I recall the whole list, it was the Apple II,…

Founding Story and Company Origins

Duration: 00:09:25 - 00:13:30

Bob Baxley (00:09:25): One of my friends that was at Pinterest, I’m still friends with, he said, “I just thought of it as you bounced off the culture.” I think that’s kind of the way to think of it. I came in thinking I was supposed to behave the way…

Founding Story and Company Origins

Duration: 00:13:57 - 00:17:50

(00:13:57): In the case of, again, my most recent job was with a company called ThoughtSpot. And ThoughtSpot was founded by a gentleman named Ajeet Singh, and Ajeet grew up in rural India, but he tells this really great story about he studied chemic…

Practical Advice and Actionable Tactics

Duration: 00:18:36 - 00:23:09

(00:18:36): And then into actual execution. How do we ladder that whole thing up so it makes sense as a whole? That’s the magic of design.

Practical Advice and Actionable Tactics

Duration: 00:23:38 - 00:27:25

Bob Baxley (00:23:38): One of the best lines I ever heard was from my friend Joseph O’Sullivan at dinner one night. He said saying a company is design led does not mean it’s designer led.

Strategic Framework and Process

Duration: 00:28:09 - 00:31:54

(00:28:09): Also, although you’ll see people argue with me on LinkedIn about how design needs to be measured and we need to have metrics and be held accountable for a number, I don’t really believe that in my heart. I’ve just never seen a number tha…

Practical Advice and Actionable Tactics

Duration: 00:32:36 - 00:36:29

(00:32:36): We could talk about this when you take a final design to an exec and an exec sees it for the first time in a high resolution state, I’ll get to that in a second. But when you go to an engineering team says, “Hey, we’ve been working in th…

Founding Story and Company Origins

Duration: 00:37:09 - 00:40:46

(00:37:09): Like at Pinterest. I was at Pinterest at a point when Pinterest wasn’t quite sure who it was.

Strategic Framework and Process

Duration: 00:41:26 - 00:45:45

(00:41:26): So our goal with them was they could sit down and it was an approachable piece of software and they could turn on all the bells and whistles and power if they wanted it, so that was the second one. Start simple, let the users opt into co…

Practical Advice and Actionable Tactics

Duration: 00:46:27 - 00:50:11

(00:46:27): Unfortunately, a lot of those interactions are not going to be great. They’re going to be confusing and frustrating.

Founding Story and Company Origins

Duration: 00:50:54 - 00:54:45

(00:50:54): Filmmakers can go to a theater, they can watch people, understand stuff. Comedians can go to a comedy club, they can start to develop an intuition about why people laugh.

Founding Story and Company Origins

Duration: 00:55:41 - 00:59:40

(00:55:41): And when I heard that, all of a sudden I went, wait a second, boom. That is why I do this.

Founding Story and Company Origins

Duration: 01:00:09 - 01:03:54

Bob Baxley (01:00:09): Yeah. I often don’t think about what I want them to do.

Practical Advice and Actionable Tactics

Duration: 01:04:12 - 01:09:04

(01:04:12): I think Slack, honestly, both Slack and Pinterest I think are examples of products that became companies, but neither one of those places really knew what to do next, because they didn’t have a bigger vision of the change they were tryin…

Founding Story and Company Origins

Duration: 01:09:21 - 01:13:10

(01:09:21): So I don’t think I’m using the term right, but I had this idea from art that I call the primal mark, and that’s the first mark that you make on the canvas. And once you make that mark on the canvas, everything you do after that is in res…

Personal Story and Background

Duration: 01:13:33 - 01:18:00

(01:13:33): I’ll also say that, everybody, when they look at a prototype, what they’re focusing on is the visual and textual expression. And so as soon as you produce something in high resolution the feedback you’re going to get is going to be about…

Founding Story and Company Origins

Duration: 01:18:08 - 01:22:34

(01:18:08): And so I thought that was really useful. I asked for some of my blind spots, that was also useful.

Founding Story and Company Origins

Duration: 01:22:54 - 01:27:15

(01:22:54): It clocks in right at 18 minutes. It shows you how to sell a big, giant, bold vision.

Practical Advice and Actionable Tactics

Duration: 01:27:28 - 01:32:14

(01:27:28): Two is be patient. It may take a little bit of time for a radical idea, especially to resonate and stick and get adoption.

Closing Remarks and Key Takeaways

Duration: 01:32:28 - 01:37:02

(01:32:28): When you show up with an iPhone, you’re thinking about sharing. When you show up with a film camera, you’re thinking about saving film and you’re spending more time composing and thinking exactly about the shot.

Closing Remarks and Key Takeaways

Duration: 01:37:13 - 01:41:42

Lenny Rachitsky (01:37:13): It definitely feels like we’re finally living in the future. The future’s actually happening.

Key Concepts

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