I think really great designers take a more holistic approach to their work; they spend more time understanding the problem, more time asking questions, more time thinking about the "why", maybe even questioning the "why", and more time thinking about how their solution fits into the bigger picture (business & financial goals, metrics, etc.). They'll usually see their work through to the end and follow up on it to ensure it meets their standards.

Mediocre designers tend to spend way too much time wrapped up in the visual execution. They worry about how good something looks or what other designers may think of their work. They usually don't ask enough questions. They rarely think about the impact their work will have on people who interact with it. And they tend to make up excuses for why their work isn't as good as they want it to be.

We typically see bigger teams with multiple designers or multiple projects happening simultaneously. Tiny teams already know what's going on with everyone so they don't have a big communication problem that needs to be fixed yet.

That said, we have a lot of 1 designer companies who use Wake to document their own process and in doing so the rest of the their team still finds a lot of value in seeing the progression and thought process.

Teams who began conducting all their critiques through Wake, pulling it up on a screen in a meeting room and going through what's been shared has helped get everyone on the same page.

Also just leading by example and sharing your own work will usually get others to follow. If Wake becomes the place where everyone is able to see new fresh work, then your team will continue coming back. Does that help?

In December last year I asked my buddy William Wilkinson (the main guy in the video) if he would be interested in coming out to Oslo with me to shoot and direct our launch video. I really liked the video he had done for his app Manual and he also happened to be leaving his role at MetaLab, so he had the time. He agreed and over the course of 2 weeks, he put together a script, a small team, and some sick equipment. We used whoever we could find to be in the video and shot it on a Saturday morning.

The song at the end was originally put in as a joke by Will. He had heard it on the movie John Wick and thought it was funny. We all thought it was pretty hilarious and perfect for the video, so we reached out to the rapper T-BO DA FIRECRACKER and ended up licensing it for a very reasonable price.

A few people here and there talk shit about how we swear in it too much, how everyone is white and how "unprofessional" it is. But most people love it, we had fun making it, it got people talking, and everyone is white because we were in NORWAY when we shot it! Overall I was happy with it and people need to chill out IMO :)

He's more like a little brother/son/pet bird to me. I just don't think it would work out. But yes, I've considered it.

It's best to separate your goals and values from functionality and execution. I'll give you an example:

People have requested we add the concept of projects or sub-teams. And those requests seem reasonable and useful at first glance. But, we want Wake be the fastest way to share with your team and we want it to provide transparency. Those features, if not done right could impose friction when sharing and silo off groups of people. Both going against our core values.

So as long as we have these overarching values, we can design everything with those in mind instead of just building features aimlessly.

Obviously I'm not going to give away everything. But at a high level, we want to fundamentally change the way people build products and make decisions. By providing a place where raw ideas have a chance to evolve and be refined.

I won't consider Wake a success if all we do is provide tools that enable everyone to continue doing the same things they've been doing for the past 10 years. We have a lot of ideas around how this might be accomplished, but it will evolve over time as we continue to try new things. Our biggest challenge is changing people's mindsets, not building features that have been tried elsewhere.

That's probably not the answer you're looking for but there are plenty of other places where I've discussed our vision.

Personally, I have a lot of ups and downs. There will be days where I can't seem to focus at all and I have yet to find a remedy aside from just leaving my desk or going for a walk. Flow tends to come in waves, at least for me. So when I'm really focused, I take advantage of that and work like crazy in hopes to offset the days when I'm useless.

Involving more people or just talking about whatever you're working on will also help a ton to get your mind out of that unproductive cycle.

I'm honestly not the most disciplined person... but I usually try to think of the 2-3 most important things that I can actually accomplish in a single day and focus on those things. I made a little app to help me with it.

The idea is that the list can't be edited or arranged, and it wipes itself at the end of each day, so you always start fresh with the most important things for that day.

Another trick I learned from my friend Jake is to set an arbitrary timer for like 20 or 30 minutes and then work until it goes off. I tend to be less distracted if I tell myself I just need to focus on something until that timer goes off.

Ham Horn really just kicks things up a notch. It gets the people going. Other apps pale in comparison. And I'm not just talking air horn apps. I mean all apps.

I'm not sure... I recently launched my company which is specifically for designers. And I'm good friends with Andrew, the new DN overlord and we discussed me doing an AMA, so I did it.

We posted this last night before I went to bed, in hopes to promote and answer everything in the morning and throughout today. I'm at the office now, so I will begin answering everything!

Also, it takes a while to come up with a thoughtful response! I don't want to look like a total IDIOT here.

We asked Chris to join us and share his thoughts on everything from design to Wake to starting a company to intro videos! ;)

The best possible thing you can do outside of whatever school is teaching you, is MAKE SHIT. Anything. Preferably your own self-initiated stuff. Modern companies with legitimate product design teams are looking for people who have the skill necessary to bring an idea to fruition. Your work will get you the interview, but your ability to think through problems, explain your thinking and your ability to get shit done is what will get you the job. Doing your own projects will prepare you for all those things.

When I joined the company there were maybe 18 product designers not counting the 2 design managers. We all sat together and operated as a single team working on multiple products at once. As we grew the team was broken up into product specific teams. We moved campuses and began sitting in different buildings.

Design became more integrated into each product vertical, which was the right call and the only way we were to scale. But as time went on, more and more designers got thrown at projects once handled by a single person. So a product like Messenger which had 1 or 2 designers suddenly had 5+ designers. Same app, smaller slice of the pie, more cooks in the kitchen, more engineers, more PM's, more meetings == less doing what I wanted to be doing.

By the time I left I think we had almost 100 designers. The company more than doubled and we went from 500M users to over 1 billion. Things just changed, as they were supposed to. I just wasn't able to handle the growth as well as others.

Long story short, I LOVED (and still love) the company and everyone there. I owe so much to Facebook and I am glad I was there when I was. And I would still recommend working there, just not if you like small teams :P

Removing as much friction and thought that goes into sharing stuff is key. We don't want people thinking too much about how to organize things or who they're sharing with. Sharing straight from your design creation tool is a start. Eventually sharing straight from your brain / exporting your imagination is where we'd like to end up.

I can do a kick flip, a side flip and a backwards rotating front flip. And a sideways front spinning flip flap.

Hey thanks! Honestly my time these days isn't best spent coding, so I haven't had a chance to dig into it unfortunately.

Slack, Uber, Calm, Shyp, Darkroom, Chime, Snapchat, Ham Horn, Postmates