Ships or It Didn’t Happen (feat. Bradee Evans & Seth Shaw from Photoshop)

It's SXSW '15 and we had the awesome opportunity to hang out with Photoshop product designers before our epic high-five hour party. Anthony and Danielle set out to tackle a controversial topic.

The dilemma is that there is a lot of great-looking design on the web at sites like Behance and Dribbble and also in a great many designers portfolios. Sometimes you see something that looks incredible aesthetically on the screen but then you find out that it was either unsolicited by the “client” (example: how many times have see someone redesign Instagram on Behance?) or that carries the footnote something like “rejected concept.” It might look amazing, but why didn’t it ship?

Show Notes

• 00:00 Introductions
• 05:30 It’s important to play, but there’s serious constraints with a 25 year old project
• 07:45 It’s fun to be wrong
• 09:18 It discounts the hard work a product team has put in
• 11:05 Let’s you think big and you need that to live!
• 10:20 A benefit is the “What if” which pushes the design
• 12:00 Project Recess, a new photoshop experience.
• 14:00 Scenario: 100% honesty, which designer would you hire?
• 29:00 Hire strong opinions, loosely held
• 30:00 Teams need both types to even each other out
• 32:44 “lovingly curating” keeping teams on a rotation to keep roles complimentary
• 35:08 Experimental projects in a product that don’t ship are still worth the lesson you learn
• 37:00 The best work may be conceptual stuff you can’t show
• 39:50 Understanding how a design vision can be rolled out over time
• 43:00 Some quick descriptions of Photoshop’s team structure

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