デザインとテクノロジーの交差点
This is Rainomoto's podcast, The Creative Mindset.
Hi, everyone. Welcome to The Creative Mindset,
a podcast about what the future holds at the intersection of creativity and technology.
I'm Rainomoto, the founding partner of I&CO, a global innovation firm based in New York and Tokyo.
Today's guest is Tim Allen, the head of design and research at Instacart.
Tim and I have known each other for over, say, 10 years, if not 15 years,
but we had actually never met until recently.
We used to work at the same agency, but not at the same time,
and we had a lot of mutual friends, and it's only recent that I got connected to him.
He's been part of the tech world since an early phase of his career, starting at IBM,
then Macromedia, which some of you who might remember the name,
is a tech company that was bought by Adobe.
He then went to RGA, which was a creative agency that I was working for slightly before Tim.
He then goes on to work at Amazon, Microsoft, Airbnb, and now Instacart.
So he's got a resume that anybody would envy,
but definitely skews towards tech, but as a designer, which is a little rare.
The reason why I wanted to talk to him was to explore
the role of design and the role of a designer in the context of tech,
and how he has been able to navigate and succeed
in such prestigious and successful tech companies as a designer.
In part one, we go into how he built a career as a designer in tech from an early phase
and his tips on how to succeed and navigate.
So let's get started.
All right, Tim, good to see you.
Great to see you too, Ray.
Where does this podcast find you?
I am in Brooklyn at my home, and it is a beautiful day outside.
I'm doing well.
It is, it is.
Yeah, so just for our listeners' information, Tim and I,
we've known each other for off and on quite a while,
but we've never officially met only until about two or three weeks ago.
Yeah, exactly.
It's like ships in the night.
I've just admired your work for a long time, and we've always been in the same circles.
Small but big circle of friends,
and we have a lot of mutual friends and mutual co-workers in common.
And I happened to reach out to Tim over LinkedIn
just to see if I could get your attention to drag you into the class that I teach.
I had you as a guest speaker,
so I appreciate you making the time to take a ferry to Roosevelt Island in New York City.
Of course, yeah, it was a highlight.
Yeah, just wanted to talk about a few different topics today,
but what I wanted to start off with is about your career.
And you, I would say, are one of the first people as a designer
who broke into tech, and specifically big tech,
starting your career in San Francisco and moving to different places,
whether it was New York or Seattle and back to San Francisco,
and now you're back in New York.
But you were pretty early, again, as a designer, to go into tech.
So if you could tell us about how you made that step into the career.
You studied product design.
I studied graphic design, visual design, and fine arts.
And I thought that pursuing design from the get-go
as in the design field was more of the norm.
But I'm curious, at a young age,
工業デザインからゲームデザインへの移行
what prompted you to take a leap of faith, if I may say so,
to get into that field as opposed to the traditional design field?
Yeah, I went to NC State College of Design,
and my undergrad was in art and design,
and I got a graduate degree in industrial design.
Because back in the day, there wasn't any sort of UX design program.
Interaction design was not even called interaction design yet.
It was like this hodgepodge of psychology,
industrial design, sprinkled in some graphic design.
And then you had these applications like Flash that brought it all together.
And people were just creating stuff from different backgrounds and everything.
And then I think there was this art that was being formed around interactive media online,
but then sometimes people were trying to make products out of them.
So there was like this usability factor that was just developing too.
That tells you how old I am as well.
Yeah, you and I are probably about the same age.
So, yeah.
Exactly.
Yes, it was super old.
But anyway, that fascinated me because I was in industrial design,
which by default has human factors and ergonomics in it and then like form and function
and all the like beautiful traits that lead to great like UX design.
And so, what got me was senior year, I did a full-time like co-op with Interactive Magic,
which was a game company in the same area of my college.
And they produced this combat simulation game called Apache.
And it won a lot of awards.
And so, it was game design that bridged the gap for me from industrial design,
cars, shoes, and so forth into creating like we're forming these functions digitally.
And then I was hooked on that.
And then when I graduated, IBM was looking for designers to marry like game design and like
the richness that came from that into enterprise software.
And that was perfect for me.
But it was definitely different from my peers who were going to places like
Industrial Light & Magic and Disney and or places like Pentagram for graphic design,
like more traditional places.
It was an unknown sort of start on my end, but I'm glad I did it.
Wow.
So, it was the game design that opened your eyes as an industrial designer,
making physical things to applying that to digital virtual things.
Exactly.
Almost, it was very similar.
3D, right?
Especially in a combat simulation like Apache, where realism was such an important factor
of the game.
So, like my background in 3D programming back then, it was like
Silicon Graphics machines and so forth really helped with that start.
As a very young designer, must have been 21, 22-ish and doing game design.
But specifically, what were the things that you were asked to design at that time?
That was what was beautiful about it too.
It was everything from level design and creating shaders for different materials within the game
to level design.
How do you achieve different goals throughout the game?
And it was formative, I'm glad you mentioned that, of how I approach design to this day,
which is like this mix of the visceral emotion.
Sometimes that takes place in terms of beauty or sound or the combination thereof and functionality,
デザインキャリアのスタート
which is how do I actually start a game, complete it, reach a goal and so forth.
Got it.
Got it, got it, got it.
And you can apply that to like app design, you can apply that to web design.
Like it's that combination of that visceral emotion and functional utility.
Yeah, yeah.
Wow.
And then from there you went to IBM, which is, if I may say so, fairly corporate.
That's as corporate as a company can get or a job can get.
Yeah.
But at IBM, what did you do specifically?
Oh man, I did a lot.
So I had this manager, and to this day we're still friends, Chris Paul,
who allowed me to prototype with Flash at the time.
Yeah, for Flash.
Just like crazy ways to approach enterprise software design.
Right.
Everything from what are some different ways we could log into applications.
This was back in the day of boxed software.
Yeah, boxed, yeah.
So you used to get a box with the software and the CD, right?
With a CD-ROM, yeah, yeah.
Packaging.
Yeah.
What are some interesting ways to approach packaging and brand?
We developed the brand of WebSphere, which is another, again, old school development platform.
Yeah.
So it was just integrating, again, and we'd also work on actual software, database implementation,
and everything from like Lotus Notes, we worked on as well.
Again, that's how old I am as well.
So hardcore enterprise applications at scale and experimenting with media and Flash and
different ways to express that.
It was like this, I don't know, like creative sandbox.
So props to Chris Paul, wherever he's at.
He really allowed me and my team to explore a lot of different things.
Yeah.
テクノロジー企業の移り変わり
Just to fast forward from the days at IBM earlier in your career, you went from IBM to
Adobe, which is another software giant, and especially in the design and creative field.
You then went to RGA, and I think you went to RGA perhaps a year or two after I left.
You were talking about night by the ship.
I just left and you had joined.
And we worked with some of the same people working on Nike.
I worked on Nike over the course of 10 years or so.
And then you were there for about eight or nine years.
I think you were at RGA?
That's right.
Yeah, yeah.
And you were leading that massive account that was Nike.
You then went to Amazon, Microsoft, Airbnb, and most recently Instacart as the head of
design.
And in the recent years, some of the places that you worked at, you are leading the practice
of design in a corporate world, or in some cases, start up in newer companies like Instacart
and Airbnb.
And what I wanted to dig a little bit deeper into your career as a designer first, and
perhaps as people like you and I who grew up as minorities, what were some of the learnings
and challenges that you've seen several different environments and at a high level working
as a designer in a business environment?
What are some takeaways, learnings that you still carry to this day from earlier into
the more recent positions that you've had?
Yeah.
The best piece of feedback or coaching I received was one of the first times I encountered
like true obstacle in my growth as a designer, which was in design school.
デザイン学校での挑戦
When I first got to design school, fish out of water is probably an understatement.
No one looked like me.
No one spoke like me.
I had this airbrush background that was like based in graffiti and nobody was like looking
at the world like that.
My first design critique was a hot mess.
I got obliterated and it was a pretty bad time.
But then I had a professor just speak to me and say like, basically it's okay to be
different.
And that's my key differentiator.
And that she wanted to see more of that, not less.
And she didn't want me to conform.
She wanted me to remain an outlier.
And so that's when I started to rely on what I knew as something that was like a contribution
to the school as opposed to an aberration.
And I brought my airbrush into the studio along with the compressor that made a lot
of noise.
And I used, I just approached things in different ways and it was applauded.
And that was, I think I did not have any more bad critiques after that.
Stan...
Wait, you mentioned graffiti.
Were you literally doing graffiti art?
Marshall...
Yeah.
スプレーアートの起源
When I was in high school, I didn't know anything about design.
Neither did my parents or anyone in my community.
Stan...
Okay.
Marshall...
But as a sophomore, I was always just like drawing, even like in elementary school.
And then as a sophomore in high school, my father got me an airbrush set because every
time I would go to the mall, I would just like stare at the airbrush guy because back
in the day, airbrush, people were getting their clothes airbrushed and everything.
And I just thought it was the most awesome thing ever.
So, that summer I got the airbrush set, I spent the whole summer like trying to perfect
it and like mastering airbrushing.
And by the end, mid junior year, I basically had my own business airbrushing.
So, I became like that guy in the mall, really.
Stan...
Oh, wow.
Yes.
Marshall...
I did clothes first and then that graduated into vehicles, cars and like I did a boat
once and then signage for stores and stuff.
So, by the time I was a senior, I was like, that's what I'm gonna do.
Stan...
Oh, wow.
Okay.
Marshall...
I didn't know about design school or anything.
And someone said, hey, you should try out design school and you just need a portfolio.
And I was like, would this work?
And it was the book of work.
I would always take photos of my work to get new work.
And I just sent that in and I ended up getting pretty much a full scholarship.
And so, that was my way into design.
Stan...
So, the scholarship was also at the NC State?
Marshall...
That's right.
That was the only school I applied to or knew about.
I didn't know about RISD, I didn't know about anything.
From airbrushing just cars and other objects.
And that was what got you into the industrial design program at NC State?
Marshall...
That's what got me into the art and design.
Stan...
Art and design.
Marshall...
So, I got basically like fine art or traditional art who I got into.
Stan...
Yeah, RISD.
Marshall...
It's art and design program, undergrad.
Stan...
Yeah.
Marshall...
Yeah.
アートとデザインの融合
So, the curriculum was really about how do you take like art,
subjective art and blend it with objective problem solving and design and so forth.
It's in a very beautiful way.
So, you keep the artistry but you also learn problem solving and design,
industrial design, architecture and so forth.
Stan...
Yeah.
Marshall...
Again, reinforcing probably at that point more subliminally or unconsciously
that combination of art and science.
Stan...
Yeah.
And then the critique that you mentioned,
was it in the graduate program that you were critiqued and you were just destroyed?
Marshall...
No, that was my first from...
That was undergraduate.
I was coming from high school, again,
didn't know anything about design schools or anything like that or design or critiques
or anything like that.
Stan...
Yeah.
Marshall...
Yeah, it was pretty bad.
Stan...
And then I was like, I actually got my airbrush set shipped to my dorm
like after I got all that advice from the professor and started just doing my thing again.
Marshall...
Yeah, yeah.
Stan...
Just realized that it was okay.
And again, that's what led to this, that background of more like graffiti and
airbrushing leading to the way I approached work and also branding as well.
So, a big part of that practice of airbrushing,
which still remains relevant is me really understanding, it's almost like getting a tattoo.
What about this person that wants this work of art on their clothes or on their car or whatever,
like why do they want it?
What does it say about them?
Would I make them proud?
How does it like represent like their brand?
So, I was like creating these brands inside of my head too.
Again, I didn't know anything about that as a profession,
but I was honing that skill pretty early.
Marshall...
The professor that you mentioned who told you, hey, it's okay to be different.
I wonder if she was somebody who was also different in some way.
And I'm very curious how and why she gave that.
You might not know the reason why she gave you that advice.
キャリアの道のり
Stan...
I think she knew I was struggling.
She's a very kind individual.
It's Kathleen Reeder.
It's her name.
Yeah, she told me to step into the unknown and that's like a gift to be able to do that
and to embrace the unknown.
That's probably also why I've been able to navigate my career the way I've done it,
which is I love going into some unknown territory.
Yeah, yeah.
But with that, I'm sure there comes difficulties, challenges, and even mistakes or failures.
But can you share one or two memorable, say, failure that you've had,
whether you look at it as a failure or not,
but something that didn't go as you expected?
Is there anything that comes to mind?
I would say maybe the first year at RGA.
Okay, do tell.
As we talked about the progression, I was game, studio, not an agency, it's corporate,
right?
It's a product design and you're responsible for contributing to it.
And then IBM, same thing.
It's corporate.
It's not a service.
You're creating a product and you're responsible for it.
デザインとクリエイティビティの探求
And RGA, now it's a client service relationship, right?
Again, another fish out of water.
It's first time in New York City.
First time dealing with the pace of an agency, which is much different than obviously corporate
pace, not owning the product, but being a catalyst for creativity for a product or something like
that.
All new stuff.
So yeah, that first couple of months, especially on Nike, didn't go that necessarily.
But what was great though, was the rigor and the approaches to software design, to
real product software design that I was bringing to this burgeoning product ecosystem of Nike
Plus and digital sport.
Do you think you would encourage your kids to go in the same or similar path that you
pursued?
Oh, definitely.
Yes.
Oh, definitely.
Approach to problem solving that design gives you, it's basically creative problem solving.
I think whether or not you become a quote-unquote designer or not, it doesn't matter.
It's just an invaluable way to approach work and the world.
Like you can apply it to anything and maybe, I don't know if anything's the right term,
but I've applied it to almost everything, like even my own life.
And it's never failed.
It is rock solid, that creative process of design and being human-centered, understanding
people's needs and goals, and then iterating based on those insights.
It's just a magical way to solve problems.
Yeah, because that's one thing that I think about quite a bit.
I have kids ranging from the oldest is 15, turning 16 soon, and the youngest is three.
And the oldest is starting to talk about college, right?
Yeah.
And what major to pursue.
And then that leads me to think, oh, what kind of job could he be getting once it's
probably six, seven years out from now?
Yeah.
And the world would be a completely different place, and it might be a little too soon to
be thinking about.
But I find myself thinking more and more, what occupation, what career should they pursue?
I can't decide for them, but at least I can give them, hey, maybe this.
Of course, they could do whatever they want, but I definitely encourage them to pursue
that.
What is creativity to you?
It's so much.
In some ways, it's doing common things uncommonly well.
Doing common things uncommonly well.
That's a new one.
I like that.
So that was part one of my conversation with Tim Allen, the head of design and research
at Instacart, exploring the role of a designer in tech and how to navigate and succeed.
The three key takeaways from my conversation with Tim were, number one, stubborn optimism.
Number two, the importance of using your hands to make things.
And number three, always be looking for what's around the corner.
Number one, stubborn optimism.
The reason why I say Tim has stubborn optimism is when I asked him what were some of the challenges
that he experienced as a designer, first in tech, but also as a minority designer in tech,
which makes him a really, really rare individual in the context of that industry.
I'm a minority, but I'm Asian.
And quite frankly, in tech, there are many Asian and particularly Asian designers working.
黒人デザイナーの挑戦
So even though I am a minority, I don't feel lonely or alone.
But in Tim's case, being African-American, I imagined that the kind of hardships and
exclusions he must have experienced over 25 years of working in tech.
What struck me was when I asked him the challenges, the hardship that he may have had
as a Black designer, he talked about the fact that there weren't a lot of people around him
who looked like him, but he didn't really have any chip on his shoulder because of his
minority status, the fact that he's a Black designer in tech, which makes him a really
rare presence.
And he didn't seem to be pulled back or held back because of that, I might say, disadvantage.
And what I appreciated about his, not just his explicit outlook, but also his implicit
stance on who he is, where he sits as an individual in this society and in the tech world that
he's built his career, he is not focusing on the negative side of things, but he's always
either consciously or naturally looking at the positive side of things.
And that may be one of the secrets of his stellar success of the career that he's built
over 25 years, working at not just some of the best, but the best firms in the world.
手を使って物を作る意義
Key takeaway number two, the importance of using your hands to make things.
The reason why I bring this point up is when I asked him what was a turning point in his
career, I thought he would say, oh, it's when I went to this company or when I got this
position or when I was recognized for this.
But instead, what he brought up was the very beginning of his, not even his professional
career, but the beginning of his academic start.
And it was when he was in high school when he was given by his father an airbrush set.
He used that to start painting and he even talked about the part-time job that he had
as a painter in a shopping mall where he would use the airbrush that he got and draw and
paint these beautiful paintings that he would sell.
And anybody who's used their actual hands to make things know how hard that can be.
But also, it's a process that teaches us what's good from a creative perspective, from
a visual perspective, from a design perspective.
When you have that experience of making things with hands, the hard way allows you and forces
you to teach the quality of things that you make, which then becomes useful 5, 10, if
not 20 years down the line when you're looking at things and when you have to make a creative
decision, which is often a subjective decision.
The experience you've had as a young designer, as a young artist, or even as a young musician,
somebody who's had that manual physical experience of making things helps you subjectively
and objectively look at work and be able to instantly see what's good, what needs to
change, what needs to improve in a given piece of work.
That really comes from one's experience in making things by hand, not just looking at
it or even just giving a prompt to AI and then seeing this output in an instance.
So doing things the hard way, it is tedious.
It is not easy.
Sometimes it's tiring and sometimes pushing pixels, painting with brushes, drawing.
キャリア構築の戦略
You could nowadays do it with a machine, but when you spend the time, it becomes really
part of you that will pay dividend years later.
So the importance of using your hands to make things might not be immediately obvious when
you're doing it and spending hours, and you might question why you need to spend hours
doing it, but you'd be surprised how useful that expense becomes years later.
And key takeaway number three, always be looking for what's around the corner.
The fact that Tim's been able to build such a stellar career early on, he may not have
been conscious of working for certain types of companies.
Obviously, it helped the fact that the first company that he worked for was IBM, one of
the best companies in history.
And that set him up to meet people, to learn things, and to look ahead to see what's next
for him that then took him to Macromedia slash Adobe, then to a company like RGA, then Amazon,
Microsoft, Airbnb, and now Instacart.
But he's had this canny ability to see maybe not, you know, five years down the line, but
just around the corner in terms of his career and what's next for him.
And it's not just what you are doing today, but what you could be doing literally tomorrow
or even next week, or maybe a few months ahead and a year from now.
Just looking around the corner constantly allowed him to find an amazing place to work
and build a career and build his reputation, gave him this kind of resume that anybody
would envy.
And I've seen many, many resumes that had as many jobs or even more jobs and positions
than he's had.
But I think the difference between the way he built his career versus other resumes that
I've seen with many positions and jobs is that speaking with him, I got a sense that every
job change that he's had and he's made was a strategic one.
It's not like he didn't like the position that he was working in at the time, and that's
why he left because he wanted to avoid the difficult situation that he was in or he didn't
like the environment that he was working for.
At least it didn't sound like.
Instead, every change that he's made seemed like a strategic move, and that's because
he is the type of person who's always looking just around the corner to see what's coming
and then be able to ride that wave.
Riding that wave of career building is a topic that some other guests talked about.
What comes to mind is Paula Antonelli, one of the earlier guests that I've had, and she
talked about, in a metaphorical as well as in a literal sense, learn how to serve.
She said it somewhat jokingly that, hey, you know what, serving is something that you
might not do, but taking the time to learn it, it might give you a different perspective.
She meant that as a physical activity, but also as a metaphor for knowing where the wave
is going or where the wave is coming from, and then being able to get on that to take
you to places that you could not be able to.
And then Tim, in a similar way, that he's always watching where the wave is going, and
he's been able to make those strategic changes and strategic decisions to make sure that
changes and strategic decisions to make sure that the wave that he's riding doesn't end.
Tim Allenの重要な教訓
So to summarize, the three key takeaways from my conversation with Tim Allen were, number
one, stubborn optimism, number two, the importance of using your hands to make things, and number
three, always be looking for what's around the corner.
If you like our podcast, please follow us wherever you're listening.
And if you could leave us a five-star rating, we'll be so grateful.
If you have questions or comments, please send them via the link in the show note.
In part two of this conversation, I asked Tim about how he was able to play a pivotal
role at Airbnb, working with Brian Chesky in getting the company out of the pandemic.
So stay tuned.
I'm Reina Moto, and this is The Creative Mindset.
See you next time.
