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AMA: I'm Justin Edmund, the first product design hire at Pinterest.

over 9 years ago from Justin Edmund, Product Designer at Pinterest

  • Jordan Price, over 9 years ago (edited over 9 years ago )

    I watched an interview awhile back with the head of engineering at Pinterest (I believe he just departed). I remember him saying that one of the most difficult things about working at Pinterest was working with designers. I was honestly a bit shocked to hear that because Pinterest has such a thoughtful and beautiful design. Clearly there is a huge respect for good design at your company.

    As a designer, what are the biggest challenges you face when working with engineers? And how do you overcome them?

    0 points
    • Justin EdmundJustin Edmund, over 9 years ago (edited over 9 years ago )

      We're lucky to have a really talented engineering team. It's incredible the stuff they get done in ridiculous deadlines.

      Our engineers are pretty easy to work with, but not everyone has a design eye. Sometimes you have to be overly clear about how you want something to behave, which is something I personally struggle with.

      Due to how our systems are engineered, getting an engineer to prototype rapidly in code can be difficult, not because they don't want to, but just because its a lot of work. As a consequence, designers spend a lot more time in Photoshop than I like. I spend part of my time building and finding tools to alleviate issues like this and make knitting (our fun word for collaboration) between design and engineering easier.

      2 points