#12: Gentry Underwood on collective intelligence and building Mailbox into a $100M email app
Apr 30, 2017
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Gentry Underwood, co-founder of Mailbox, shares insights on the benefits of collective intelligence in design, turning Mailbox into a $100M app, and the challenges of building a wait-list based product.
Design is best done in a collaborative setting where diverse minds come together to explore, examine, and refine ideas.
Ego can hinder the design process by introducing unnecessary constraints and hindering collaboration.
Maintaining a healthy dialogue and using prototypes can effectively communicate the full vision for a design, reducing the need for back-and-forth communication.
Deep dives
Design as Problem Solving
Design is more than just making things pretty or easy to use. It is a way of solving problems and bringing ideas into reality. Design is a powerful tool that can be applied to various domains, whether it's improving an interface, achieving product-market fit, or creating new business models.
Collaborative Design and the Power of Conversation
Design is best done in a collaborative setting where diverse minds come together to explore, examine, and refine ideas. The collective thought experiment, where ideas are constructed, destroyed, adjusted, and reapplied, accelerates the design process and leads to rapid iterations. By working as a team, designers can overcome limitations, gain different perspectives, and ultimately find better solutions.
Ego and the Importance of Humility in Design
Ego can hinder the design process by introducing unnecessary constraints and hindering collaboration. Designers need to prioritize problem-solving and making the world better over showcasing their own cleverness. By focusing on the collective goal and embracing constructive criticism, designers can check their ego at the door and create a more effective and collaborative design process.
Importance of Dialogue and Prototypes in Remote Teams
Maintaining a healthy dialogue is crucial for building strong work relationships within remote teams. This dialogue helps overcome the challenges of poor collaboration. Additionally, using prototypes can effectively communicate the full vision for a design, reducing the need for back-and-forth communication. Envision is a tool that simplifies the design workflow and facilitates collaboration among project managers, designers, developers, and writers, providing a platform to quickly prototype designs and collaborate across all project stages.
The Evolution and Importance of Problem Space in Design
Adopting a human-centered design approach emphasizes the importance of iterative exploration in the problem space. Rather than solely focusing on iterative exploration of solution space, it is crucial to first establish a goal and understand the problem being solved. Throughout the design process, different solutions are tried, constantly learning more about the problem and potentially altering the approach. Designers should strive for a deep understanding of the problem space and maintain passion and endurance throughout the process, as this ultimately leads to solutions that address the underlying problem effectively.
Gentry Underwood is the co-founder of Mailbox. In this episode, he explains the benefits of design being a “we” vs an “I” issue, how to be your most productive self, and discusses what it took to turn Mailbox into a $100 million acquisition within 30 days of launch.
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