Journey to Design

I never thought of myself as a designer by any means (I have little to no artistic ability). I’m a scientist at heart and by trade; I observe, hypothesize, analyze, and experiment. When I graduated college, I didn’t know that a field of “design” existed, nor did I know what it actually was. I stumbled upon the world of design in my first role at Dropbox, accidentally. I was placed on the Design recruiting team, helping to hire world-class (and awesome) folks for our Product Design, Research, Content Design, Brand Studio, and Design Ops teams. As time passed, there was just something that kept piquing my interest, so I started to peek at portfolios, chat with designers during their interviews, and sit through some presentations — and let me tell you, it all blew my mind. I absolutely loved it.

I began to understand that, fundamentally, design is all about people. It isn’t about “making things look pretty” or about fashion (which I had previously thought). Design identifies what people need. It observes how people use a product and ultimately defines that experience. It uncovers and solves for why people do the things they do (fascinating, right?). And I learned more about the design process: how pure ideas during brainstorming turn into research studies, sketches, user journeys, wireframes, prototypes, testing, evaluating, and eventually, final products. These are products and experiences that touch my life every day. Ever booked an Airbnb and noticed how the process is seamless for the user? Or built IKEA furniture by yourself? Or called an Uber or Lyft and thought about the location of their UI buttons and how they lead to intentional, logical actions? I honestly was astonished (and slightly dumbfounded) that I hadn’t ever noticed any of this before (because good design is simple and intuitive, hence users shouldn’t notice). At its core, design helps businesses solve for people’s needs.

I also met design practitioners from so many different backgrounds and journeys. Each was quirky in their own way, incredibly sharp, and deeply empathetic — and I couldn’t help myself from wanting to be a part of this creative group.

Business operations

In my current role (I joined the badass Design team), I manage the core business operations of the org — and the crux of it is operations, strategy, and communication.

• Operations is primarily for yourself: Are you organized? Do you have the information you need, or know where to find it? How do internal processes work? Are your workflows efficient, automated, sustainable, and effective?
• Strategy is for alignment: How is your work (or the work you’re advocating for) aligned to the bigger picture and goals?
• Communication is for stakeholders and cross-functional partners: Can you analyze metrics, build cases, and present compelling narratives to inform and influence others effectively?

Business of design

So how do design principles fit in here? When you have good business design, your org shouldn’t notice, because things are just working. In business design, your users are the people you work with. Every day, I use the design process internally to understand and solve for my colleagues’ needs. I think about how we can make the org’s collective experience as frictionless and seamless as possible. How we can work to enable the creative process, remove internal blockers, and mitigate “work about work.” How we can work better to achieve our team as well as company goals.

When you have good business design, you get collective understanding, efficiency, and optimization (and you #GSD). You create intentional business processes and experiences. Your teams have the time, space, and resources they need to do their best work.

Here are three ways to incorporate design principles into your business operating practice:

1. User-centricity

• Thoughts: When working in any cross-functional or multi-disciplinary group, your end user is most likely your internal partner or stakeholder, so think from their perspective. What are their priorities and pain points? What do they want and need? What are they trying to achieve here?
• Actions: Chat with them and get to know them! Ask them questions to understand context and the full landscape. I’m very fortunate that my cross-functional partners and stakeholders are patient enough to answer all of my many questions (they’re angels, really).
• Results: Your team and internal partners get what they need, when they need it, and how they need it. Better still, the entire organization gets better solutions, innovative ideas, and stronger internal relations. Everyone works in sync and is on the same page. If there’s any confusion or miscommunication, it gets resolved more quickly.

2. Usability

• Thoughts: No one’s going to follow a process or workflow that’s difficult and takes a long time. So you have to think about how you can make an internal process or workflow as seamless as possible. Is it easy to use? Does it make sense? Can a 10-year-old understand what you’re saying or doing? If not, you must simplify or at least communicate differently.
• Actions: Test a workflow with some people. Ask them what their current process is. Or grab a cross-functional partner for 10 minutes and ask them to use a new model you’ve built or walk them through a potential new workflow. See what questions they have and where they experience friction, then solve.
• Results: You’re bringing your partners with you on the journey of the creative process. You’re solving for your (or the user’s) needs and for how people work — and making internal workflows as frictionless as possible to implement and use. A win for you, a win for your partners, and a win for the business.

3. Iteration

• Thoughts: Nothing is perfect, ever. We need to recognize when an internal process isn’t serving its purpose to the fullest. There are things I’ve built and workflows I’ve created that I’m attached to, naturally — but can they be better; can they be changed? Yes, of course. Am I sometimes a little resistant to making a change? Admittedly, yes. But we need to keep the big picture in mind and iterate when necessary. It doesn’t mean that you didn’t do a good job the first time; it means that we’re simply changing, growing, and learning. We’re making continual progress vs. striving for instant perfection.
• Actions: Try new things and experiment. Be as objective as possible. Get the right feedback, from the right people, at the right time. Don’t become too attached to a particular solution. Become attached to identifying and solving problems. Become attached to meeting the needs of your internal stakeholders and the business. Business needs are constantly evolving, so you must be able to think quickly and execute with agility.
• Results: You’re changing, when necessary. You create, build, and use agile frameworks and workflows that are seamless and have enough structure to meet the current needs of your business. An agile framework is an internal process that’s capable of pivoting to meet any unforeseen changes or demands. No operational process is ever “final” — because you’re always thinking in the back of your mind: “How can this be better?”

Bonus: content and communication

• Thoughts: Are you presenting information in the best way possible? Is it clear, understandable, and logical? How the information is communicated is equally as important as what information you convey.
• Actions: For written communication, take a physical step from your computer screen. Do you have blocks of text? Pay attention to the fonts, spacing, size, and visual layout of the email, report, or newsletter. Use the company’s internal brand guidelines and assets (fonts, color palettes, logos, and more) for your communications.
• Results: Just as your company’s external brand creates an experience for the customer, the use of brand-aligned communications and visuals can create a similar experience for internal stakeholders.

Design principles shouldn’t be used solely by designers. They can be expanded upon and used by any business professional. As these principles permeate other teams and industries, people will be able to problem-solve more creatively and work together more empathetically.

The Dropbox Design team teaches us their ways — in turn, we apply these learnings to business practices that enable us, as an organization, to be more nimble, effective, and efficient. It’s kismet, a match made in heaven. And truth be told, we wouldn’t have it any other way.

The business of design was originally published in Dropbox Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Understanding how the mind works can help you design yours to embrace uncertainty, take more risks, and unlock creativity.

I’ve always been curious about the mind: Where does it come from? What is it, really? But more important, how can we make it stronger? In Descartes’ Meditations VI, his famous quote cogito, ergo sum, or “I think, therefore I am,” implies the existence of a distinct, nonphysical thing, or the mind. He posited a distinction between the mind and the brain, and that each person is an internal res cogitans, or a thinking thing.

Though we still don’t have a solution to the mind–body dualism debate, this relationship compels us to understand the structure and function of the brain so we can infer how the mind works. While this can be useful in analyzing consumer behavior at scale, or user demographics, it can also be used to intentionally design our own mind, not only to increase productivity and efficiency but also to explore all of the possibilities of human capacity and ability.

Evolution of the brain

Many people agree that the brain is the physical correlate of the mind. The triune brain model is one framework for understanding how it’s organized, and this model is composed of three parts: reptilian, paleomammalian, and neomammalian.

The oldest, most primitive layer of the brain is reptilian, which includes structures like the brain stem and cerebellum. They control basic survival behaviors that are usually automatic, such as physical reflexes, breathing, and heart rate.

The second layer is paleomammalian (old mammal), which is comprised of the limbic system, regulates a variety of critical functions for our survival, and is unique to mammals. It includes the hypothalamus and amygdala, and plays a major role in emotion, attachment, and learning.

The third layer is neomammalian (new mammal) and is found in primates. This is the fun part: the organizational system that’s most complex and developed in humans. It contains the cerebral cortex and the four brain lobes — frontal, temporal, parietal, occipital. In humans, it allows for complex sensory, linguistic, motor, and social abilities. It’s also home to our higher cognitive processes, including logic, creativity, language, imagination, and executive control.

These systems are highly dependent on one another — their hierarchy and interplay can give us insight into what makes us tick, think, and behave the way we do.

So this is great and all, but how is it useful?

Insight 1: Evolution “builds” brain structures and systems onto existing ones

A lower brain system that’s functioning properly is a prerequisite for higher systems. More important than each system operating independently is the integration and the interaction among them.

Let’s use an example of sleep. Most of us have had an all-nighter or several consecutive nights without enough sleep. We probably weren’t as delightful during the day — maybe a little cranky, more forgetful, a bit impatient. It can be useful to think of sleep as a performance enhancer. Consistent, quality sleep isn’t just good for your physical health but is also implicated in your ability to think clearly, process information, and connect disparate ideas. A functioning lower (reptilian) system, which modulates your sleep, is necessary for the higher (neomammalian) system to build upon and work.

Applicable to the workplace, studies show that successful, effective leaders tend to have greater integration of neural activity across separate brain regions, meaning they’ve become more adept at using their whole brains in an orchestrated manner. They’ve developed wide neural networks, strengthening the communication pathways among the regions. Behaviorally, this may show up as an ability to connect and inspire people to believe in a greater goal and pursue actions that align. Or it may show up as having an ability to motivate people to do their best work. Neurologically, it’s only after having strengthened the individual brain regions and systems that you have a foundation for generating connections among them, resulting in greater neural harmony.

Practical application 1: Design your habits of the mind through intentional routines

Practicing and strengthening your routines through a process called habituation will lead to behavioral plateau, mastery, and expertise. Eventually you’ll perform these things automatically, without having to think and without having to use valuable neural energy. Once fully automated, your routines won’t interfere with, and are optimized for, your capacity for performance, memory, and mood. With energy freed up, you’ll have more energy to focus on other things: learning, creating, playing, imagining, innovating.

Insight 2: Humans are not rational decision makers

Empathy and emotional awareness are key not only for functioning as a healthy individual but also for making smart decisions.

The standard economic theory assumes that consumers and decision makers will act as rational beings — that economic decisions are removed from emotion. From behavioral economics, we know this theory to be false. Humans do not make rational decisions; they make irrational ones, influenced by invisible forces such as cognitive bias and emotion.

And there’s neural support for this. If the limbic system is malfunctioning (in other words, not managing emotions properly), it actually overrides the higher cortical systems, inhibiting functions such as planning, logic, decision-making, reasoning, and creativity.

Furthermore, studies in neuroeconomics have shown that when economic decisions are being made, neural activity actually occurs both in the limbic system, such as the insula and amygdala, to process potential costs and rewards, and in the prefrontal cortex, which acts as the decider, evaluating the cost–benefit information provided by the limbic system. The brain systems for emotion are indeed active and engaged when making economic decisions. We need emotional awareness to think rationally and make sound judgments.

Practical application 2: Design the connections of your mind through human relationships

Constantly build, stretch, and refine your emotional muscles across a broad spectrum. One way is through the relations cultivated with others — getting a wide range of perspectives, opinions, personalities, and feedback. Another way is to put yourself in a variety of environments and situations. They should make you feel a bit uncomfortable and expose you to novel stimuli, thereby stretching your mind.

Insight 3: Creative ability is what makes humans unique

One of the many functions unique to humans is the ability to imagine and create, which is neurologically validated through our understanding of the brain structures.

For example, the brain structures and systems that are most complex in humans (or that exist only in humans) evolved to have extensive bidirectional connections to almost all other regions of the brain. They essentially manage, moderate, or are implicated in every activity. It’s fascinating that most of these signals are inhibitory — controlling one’s impulses and delaying gratification are two of the greatest human abilities.

Regarding creativity, you can’t innovate on command. As much as we’d like, we can’t control when (or even if) we’ll have a true eureka moment. The neural correlates of creativity stem from the default mode network (DMN), a system that allows ways of thinking that are more fluid and nonlinear. It’s worth noting that this “mind wandering” mode and the systems that are most active when engaged in overt tasks — the “central executive” mode — are mutually exclusive. When one is on, the other is off.

This means that to create, you need time — no distractions, no objectives — to simply ponder, to decide whether to take a leap and try to do something you’ve always been afraid of, to be immersed in your own thoughts and all of the possibilities, to see and seize opportunities.

Practical application 3: Design constraints that expand the possibilities of your mind

Be intentional and design constraints in your life that maximize the possibilities of the unknown — the element of randomness. Once you understand some of the building blocks of the mind, you can experiment and play with them to design a framework for functioning and flourishing. It could be a matter of figuring out what the inhibitory signals in your life should be. It could be the type of stimuli you’re exposing your mind to. It could also be identifying which skills/areas to develop expertise in, to free up cognitive energy.

Many of the most creative people we know — such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, John Lennon, Vera Wang, Steve Jobs — were able to successfully cultivate their ideas because they had the time and space to do so. They had already built, refined, and operated within their own organizing systems — constraints of some sort — which freed their mind to wander.

Parting thoughts

By better understanding the structure and inner mechanisms of the brain, we can become better informed about design habits, connections, and constraints of the mind. Hopefully, these insights will spark ideas for how to design the building blocks of your most powerful asset — and, by extension, create space for fostering relations that matter, move in nonlinear ways, and achieve your full potential.

About the author: Joyce Shin thinks through business design, strategic systems, and optimized processes to unblock teams and empower individuals to do their best work. She currently serves as the business manager for the Dropbox Design organization.

About the artist: Florent Tanet is a French photographer and art director, working and living in Paris. He dedicated himself exclusively to photography and art direction with a strong interest for still-life.

Designing the mind was originally published in Dropbox Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’ve always been a perfectionist, making sure every “I” is dotted, every “T” crossed. Like many others, I’m just ever-so-slightly OCD. I enjoy creating order within chaos — I want everything to be neat, organized, and lined up. I like having plans, checklists, and timelines, and don’t deal too well with uncertainty. (Consequently, I’m not great to watch movies with, or so I’ve been told.)

A few years ago, I realized this was doing more harm than good. The ROI for being perfect was nominal, and it left me feeling stressed and anxious. I chatted with a friend, and he gave me advice that I took to heart: “Just let things go and watch what happens for a week.” I was curious, so I did.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that almost nothing had fallen apart. No one mentioned that the widths of columns in a spreadsheet weren’t perfectly sized. The markets still opened without an appendix in a report that detailed the definitions of terms. Stakeholders still liked the output of presentations (even though I thought they could have been better). It wasn’t life or death; good work was still good work — business went on as usual.

That’s when it clicked: The need to be perfect was all in my head. And when I stopped overthinking, overanalyzing, and overpreparing, things changed for me: I slept better, had more time, pursued other passions, and became happier.

Here are four ways to practice the art of letting go:

1. Find the point of diminishing returns

Most people think of diminishing returns in terms of output, an end result, or the final product. For example, in economics, the law of diminishing returns postulates that after reaching some optimal level of capacity, investing an additional unit of resources results in a smaller unit of output.

To follow this principle at work, it’s important to first identify your optimal level of capacity.

• If you’re at the optimal capacity point, for every unit of input, you’re getting an equivalent unit of output. You’re productive, engaged, and efficient — you’re in your zone.
• If you’re under the optimal capacity point, your input is less than one unit, so you’re getting less than one unit of output. It’s sub-par work, which you want to avoid.
• If you’re above the optimal capacity point, according to the law of diminishing returns, the return on your marginal investment decreases per unit. For example, for every 1.5 units of input, you get 1.1 units of output.

So, in the last scenario, the question to ask becomes: “Is the additional 0.4 unit of input worth the additional 0.1 unit of output?“

By thinking about how to define what your investment is “worth,” whether it be time or energy, it’s really a matter of motivation: Why did you make a particular decision, or why were you doing a particular task? There could be many reasons — it’s critical for the business; you want to learn something new; you want to build expertise; it’s for a challenge or pure enjoyment; it’s something you care about; you want to collaborate with people; the list goes on. Identifying why you’re doing something helps clarify which work is bringing steeper diminishing returns.

Key takeaway: Find your optimal level of capacity and the point of diminishing returns. For lower-priority needs, let go of making everything perfect. Being done is better than being perfect.

2. Think about locus of control

There’s a concept in psychology called locus of control, of which there are two types: external and internal. People with an external locus of control attribute outcomes to outside factors, such as fate or chance. People with an internal locus of control believe their own actions determine an outcome. In reality, most people fall somewhere between these two ends of the spectrum.

Whether in life or at work, this principle can be used to differentiate what is truly within your control. For things that full under your purview, take full ownership — do your part and do it well.

As ideal as that may sound, we also live in a world where some things are outside our control. For example, you’re tasked with creating a pitch to leadership on whether the company should expand into a new market. It’s within your scope to do the research, create a solid business case and rationale, and present your pitch in a compelling manner that leadership can easily understand. But the actual outcome doesn’t fall within your purview. So free yourself mentally of that burden; you’ve already done your best.

Key takeaway: Identify what is within, and outside, your control. For things that fall within, work for what you want. For things that fall outside, do what you can, then assign the outcome to the universe and let it go.

3. Prioritize and set boundaries

It’s a bit ironic that setting boundaries can liberate you. But without them, you can succumb to boundaries that are set for you by other people (don’t let that happen!).

The first step is to prioritize — decide on a handful of goals that are most important to you (having 10 priorities negates having any at all). Focus your energy. For everything else, if it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no.

The second step is to create and set your boundaries. In theory, it’s simple enough: Determine what really matters to you; keep your eyes on those goals; execute toward them. If you don’t set boundaries, you might become distracted or end up working on other people’s priorities instead of your own.

There are different types of boundaries: physical, temporal, and value-based.

• In the virtual-first working world, physical boundaries could be your office setup or Zoom etiquette. Essentially, it’s how spatial layouts, visual stimuli, and tactile objects impact your working habits or interpersonal relations with coworkers.
• Temporal boundaries could be your schedule, working hours, calendar non-negotiables, or meeting protocols. More simply, it’s how time is spent to align with both your professional commitments and personal lifestyle.
• Lastly, value-based boundaries are deeply individualistic — they could be reflections of your behavioral standards or moral guidelines. Fundamentally, it’s how the concept of humanity is applied in your personal life as well as your work life.

In reality, setting boundaries is the easier piece. The third and final step is maintaining them consistently, which is a bit of a struggle. This is where awareness, communication, and accountability come into play.

• Awareness involves being attuned to your personality, habits, preferences, and behavior. Knowing how you tick helps prepare you to establish boundaries and push back whenever necessary.
• Communication is key — the manner in which you convey expectations will dictate how successful you can be in maintaining your boundaries.
• For the accountability piece, as John Donne says, “No man is an island.” This is where other people — whether a coach, mentor, coworker, family member, or friend — can help hold you accountable so you can remain true to your goals.

Key takeaway: Prioritize a handful of key goals and establish boundaries for what’s important to you. Let go of the need to do everything all at once, all of the time.

4. Plan and prepare, but be open

In order to refine the art of letting go, you have to rigorously plan for different scenarios and prepare for contingencies. Don’t be a pessimist and expect the worst; don’t be an optimist and hope for the best. Be a realist and expect that things will not always go according to plan — we live in an imperfect, unpredictable, and constantly changing world. Expect to encounter bumps, hiccups, swerves, and curveballs thrown at you.

When the unexpected occurs, which it inevitably will, be sure that it doesn’t take you entirely by surprise. Try to see it coming, so that you’re mentally prepared to pivot as needed.

Key takeaway: Thoughtfully prepare, and always include buffers and unknown variables in your plans. Having a realist’s mindset will help you remain nimble without requiring you to know the unknown.

Final thoughts

Even when you apply these four practices for letting go, there might still be instances where you want things to be perfect — and that’s OK. Personally, these practices have allowed me to better identify when and why I should aim for perfection. By letting go of the things that don’t bring increasing intrinsic returns, as well as the things I can’t control, I’ve found more freedom and happiness. I’ve learned to enjoy the ride, and I hope you will, too.

About the author: Joyce Shin thinks through business design, strategic systems, and optimized processes to unblock teams and empower individuals to do their best work. She currently serves as the business manager for the Dropbox Design organization.

About the artist: Rodrigo Dada was born in 1987 in San José, Costa Rica, of salvadoran parents. He studied Photography in E.F.T.I. School Madrid and currently resides in Mexico City where he studies film in el Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica.

The art of letting go was originally published in Dropbox Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In May 2021, Dropbox Design introduced the Diversity and Inclusion Toolkit. Like the other Culture Kits we’ve shared with the community, this one aims to channel your creativity and inspire new ways of working.

This time we’ve ventured into the complex space of how to build more diverse and inclusive cultures. The lens of design is what distinguishes this kit from the many excellent resources that already exist for diversity and inclusion. When designing, we ask questions, define problems, and explore a range of solutions. We work alone and collaborate with others and iterate as we go. This kit suggests a similar practice when building culture.

This is also the first kit developed by 3D (Diverse Dropbox Design), an initiative a few of us started at Dropbox in 2018. Like the origins of 3D, at the heart of this kit are personal experiences. So in addition to exercises, you’ll find essays and quotes by Dropbox Design leaders, practitioners, and partners alike, offering a range of voices and perspectives. There’s no question that the topic of diversity and inclusion is a deeply personal one, even — and especially — as it impacts our professional lives.

The material is organized in three parts. While each section can be used on its own, ideally the kit is experienced as a progression, a sort of journey that begins with self-exploration (Solo Exercises), then moves into team activities (Team Workshop), and ends with putting new discoveries into action (Onward).

So in that spirit and style, here’s my personal take on how the kit and 3D came to be.

Solo

Tech was not my first career. By the time I was hired for my first UX writing role, I’d worked in publishing and theater. I was edging out of my 30s. And as a parent, a woman, and a Latina, I didn’t see many people around me at work who were going through the same things I was going through.

It seemed clear that I did not belong. And yet I did, in large part because I was edging out of my 30s. Because I’d had careers outside of tech. Because I was a parent, a woman, and a Latina who’d spent a long time exploring these facets of my identity — and recognized that they made me a better designer and partner to my colleagues. I claimed that space of belonging because I saw the value my unique perspective brought to design work.

But that confidence didn’t come overnight, and I didn’t feel it every day. It developed over many years and after a long stretch of time deeply assimilating, as my parents had as Cuban immigrants. Though my first language was Spanish and I was always proud of where my family came from, it wasn’t until I arrived at the vast campus of the University of Michigan that I unpacked what that history meant to me — and why it was important to celebrate it, particularly around others who did not understand why it mattered.

Team

By the time I joined Dropbox Design nearly two decades later, plenty of things marked me as different. But it was the awareness of those differences that also motivated me to co-found 3D, sparked by an experience at a leadership retreat.

I was one of about 20 Black and Latinx Dropboxers invited to spend three days at a beautiful campus to do deep thinking about what we brought to the table as leaders. As I looked around the room that first day, I noticed only two of us were representing the Design team — myself and Tere Hernandez, a design researcher.

We are both Latinx — there were no Black designers in attendance and no one from the product design discipline, which at the time was about 90 people in a total design org of 140. Of course, industry-wide those numbers weren’t unusual, but in part because Dropbox felt like a place where change was possible, Tere and I started talking about what we could do as individuals to help our design team do better.

At the same time, Dropbox product designer Wes O’Haire was exploring personal outreach — his tweet offering a week of mentorship lunches with Black designers got a huge response and eventually led him to design and launch the online directory Blacks Who Design. And so Wes, Tere, and I got together to share our ideas of what 3D could be. When we linked up with community and design operations maven Michelle Morrison, our programming hit a new level.

We didn’t really know what we were doing — but we knew it mattered. Not because diverse teams are statistically more innovative (which they are) or outperform less diverse teams (which they do), but because this issue was incredibly personal to each of us. We each had a story to tell about why we’d been drawn to create change. Those personal stories were the foundation of 3D and in fact became one of its first programs. At every Design All Hands, we encouraged a designer to share their story along with a tip of the month — a small action that could be taken in a few minutes to cultivate inclusion within our team.

Onward

Those small and mighty actions continued to grow, and so did 3D — from the awareness of not seeing enough diversity on the Design team, to an idea taking root and being championed by four people, to a bona fide initiative with 14 team members and Dropbox VP of Design Alastair Simpson as our executive sponsor.

The programming evolved, too. In the fall of 2019 we took on one of our most ambitious endeavors to date: Wes and I, along with researcher Jennifer Brook, created a diversity and inclusion workshop aimed at designers. In 2020 we adapted the workshop for Zoom audiences, and now with the dedicated efforts of many talented people — in particular program manager Deepa Iyer and designer Nicole Lavelle — we’ve adapted it again for this kit.

I’d like to say that after 3D’s efforts, we now have a robustly diverse design team at Dropbox. But I can’t. Like most things, change requires consistent effort — seeds take time to sprout. Taking a step in that direction is something I personally commit to each day, because it’s personal.

So whether this kit is your step toward self-exploration or a spark for change within your workplace, know that it matters. Change starts with the individual. There’s a quote by Spanish poet and playwright Antonio Machado that captures it well: Caminante, no hay camino / Se hace camino al andar. Translation: Traveler, there is no path / The path is made by walking.

That’s the beauty and wonder of design, too — sometimes you have to move forward before you know where you’re headed. So walk on and plant those seeds along the way. Let’s see what we can all grow together.

Download the full kit here.

A design approach to diversity and inclusion was originally published in Dropbox Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What an interesting six months it’s been

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, I’ve worked from home for more than 100 days in a row.

And during this time, videoconferences have sometimes wreaked havoc on my sanity. Does that sound familiar?

Here’s what I did about it and how you can control your own meeting madness.

All with a meeting manifesto.

Approaching exhaustion

When the shelter-in-place order came down in March, my workdays were immediately filled with hours of videoconferences.

During the first month, all those videoconferences took their physical and mental tolls on me. By the end of a meeting-filled day, I was racked with anxiety (over all the work I didn’t get done) and guilt (over all the work I didn’t get done) and completely exhausted.

I could barely talk. My head ached.

I was suffering from videoconference fatigue. (Yes, that’s a real thing.)

The breaking point

The breaking point came one Friday morning when I opened my laptop to see eight meetings on my schedule. For one day.

Something had to give.

A meeting manifesto was born

I decided to create an official declaration of how I would manage my meetings from then on — to lessen anxiety, to make room for heads-down work, and to take back control of my workday.

I call it a meeting manifesto.

Here’s a screenshot of it:

My meeting manifesto, point by point

• Attend a maximum of four hours of meetings per day. Your maximum may be different from mine. I just figured that I wouldn’t spend more than half my workday in meetings. I even post the maximum right on my calendar so everyone can see it! (See screenshot below.)
• Decline or reschedule meetings that put me over the four-hour limit. Every morning before my workday starts, I prune my calendar. Here are some questions I ask myself:
  - Do I need to attend every design critique? (No.)
  - Can I easily reschedule a 1:1 if it puts me over the four-hour limit? (Yes.)
  - If there are no agenda items for a particular meeting, can we cancel it? (Yes.)
  - If a meeting will be documented or recorded, can I skip attending and read/watch it later? (Sometimes.)
  You get the idea: be ruthless about the meetings you must absolutely attend, and decline/reschedule the rest.
• Auto-decline all Wednesday meetings. At Dropbox, Wednesday is designated as No Meeting Wednesday, so I mark it with an eight-hour “out of office” block. Anyone who adds a meeting on that day will receive an auto-decline message.
• Convert all 1:1s to 25 minutes. I like a short and sweet meeting. It forces you (and the other attendee) to keep the conversation focused!
• Leave one-hour meetings 10 minutes early. That’s my golden rule these days: for every one-hour meeting, I need a 10-minute break — to grab water, take a bathroom break, jot down tasks from the meeting, or prepare for the next meeting.
• Leave 30-minute meetings five minutes early. See point above.
• Use the “Speedy meetings” Google Calendar setting. If your company uses Google Calendar, you can set meetings to end early by default. In your calendar, click the gear icon, choose Settings, then scroll down to the Event settings section.

• Post a goodbye message in videoconference chat before leaving a meeting early. I always try to be transparent and polite. I’ll post something like “Sorry can’t stay, gotta prepare for my next meeting, thanks!” before leaving a videoconference.

How to create your own meeting manifesto

Every person’s calendar is different, and the way each person deals with their calendar is different. To create a meeting manifesto that works for you, follow these steps:

• Do a meeting audit, delete, and shuffle. Take a look at the last two weeks of your work calendar. Which one-hour meetings can you reduce to 30 minutes? Which meetings can you skip every other week? Can you reschedule 1:1s to other days?
• Add some DNS blocks. DNS stands for do not schedule. How many hours of heads-down time do you need per day to feel productive? Add some DNS blocks to your calendar to stake your claim.
• Write down your guidelines. Your meeting audit should naturally lead you to some meeting guidelines — write them down in a document. Use my manifesto as a starting point if you like!
• Communicate your guidelines. Share your guidelines with your team — via email, Slack, and any other normal avenues of communication that your company uses.
• Commit to the guidelines every day. This is the hardest step. The meeting manifesto isn’t a “set it and forget it” sort of thing; you have to stay vigilant! That includes pruning your calendar every morning, asking people to reschedule/shorten/cancel meetings, and helping to keep meetings focused and ending on time. I regularly speak up toward the end of a meeting: “We’re almost at time. Anyone have any final thoughts before we’re done?”

Some final words

So how has my meeting manifesto been working?

Things are definitely better! I no longer have days when I’m ready to pass out from exhaustion. My stress level is down.

Steer your career

As you can imagine, I’m not the only one suffering through a flood of videoconferences. I’ve shared my manifesto with coworkers and encouraged them to take control of their own calendars.

Why not become a meeting maverick for your company? Help everyone learn ways to better manage their time.

It’s not only good for you; it’s good for your career.

By getting a handle on your day and sharing your technique with others, you’re demonstrating leadership and impact across your team. Be sure to add it to your annual self-review!

Meeting culture can’t be changed in solitude. Take the first step, and ask others to follow. ■

What are your tips for wrangling a meeting-heavy day? Share them in a comment below!

Thanks to Michelle Morrison, John Mikulenka, and Andrew Richdale for their help in putting together this article.

Want more from the Dropbox Design team? Follow Dropbox Design on Medium, Twitter, and Dribbble. Want to make magic together? Check out our open positions!

Check out my other articles:

• How to mock up UX writing for better collaboration
• Getting a seat at the table as a UX writer
• 4 ways to show the value of UX writing
• How I landed a UX writer job at Dropbox

Take back your day with a meeting manifesto was originally published in Dropbox Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

At Dropbox, we work in a distributed fashion across multiple countries all over the world. Although we try to make sure our team members feel closer together, running design-ideation sprints can still be pretty difficult. There are challenges with time lags during videoconferencing, messy Sharpie sketches, and the inability to ensure that everyone is viewing the same screen.

Recently, we ran an ideation sprint with participants spread across five locations and two time zones. We were interested in how we could reduce the friction around sketching and sharing ideas during a videoconference. We decided to split our 20+ participants into three groups, and ran three sketching sessions in parallel — with one group fully distributed.

This was a super-cool exercise. Our distributed group pioneered this Figma resource, and it ended up being the smoothest ideation session of all (and the easiest to synthesize ideas!). Here are some fun pics of our team in action:

So you might be wondering: How do I get started?

We’ve included a three-step guide to quickly get you up and running. Check out the DEMO tab in this Figma template.

It’s pretty simple. After crazy eights, just drag your sketch into the image fill in the right-hand inspector pane of Figma, then add context to the text boxes.

As a facilitator, you can also change the components of each card to include images of each participating team member — super-handy for when you need to follow up on certain ideas after the sprint is over!

Afterwards, when everyone has input their ideas, drag each card around and start clustering as you share ideas. Simply click on a participant’s face to follow them around as they’re explaining their idea.

Download the kit

Download it, make it your own, and share feedback with us on Twitter at @DropboxDesign, or DM me at @cheecheelin.

Explore our full set of design resources on Dropbox.Design.

Happy ideating!

Distributed Sprints Kit was originally published in Dropbox Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By Michelle Morrison, Sarah Lin, and Andrew Lee

Among the most enriching aspects of working in Design at Dropbox is the emphasis on creative community.

As it turns out, one of the secrets to building healthy, people-centered programming is to leverage the power of Design Ops. From hosting gatherings and lectures to publishing educational and personal perspectives, we prioritize efforts to contribute to the creative community in meaningful ways that help people connect, learn, and grow together. We believe that building a smart workplace requires the development of creative spaces where people feel like they belong.

Leading community initiatives is often seen as “+1” or “extracurricular” work that is layered on top of full-time job responsibilities. As a result, this mindset can easily cause the community work to lose priority when the job stuff gets busy. In the business of community building, people-centered programs require operational support to thrive. Impactful programming can’t be built without a plan, which is where the power of Design Ops comes in. We’ve seen how the positive and lasting effects of strong communities can help our team become more connected, creative, and inclusive. So, as the Design Ops team at Dropbox, we’re committed to driving strategies for shaping and scaling cultural initiatives that make work more human — for our team and the creative community at large.

Ladies first

Established by Anisha Jain in 2017, Ladies Who Create is a community for womxn and nonbinary creatives, built to foster deep relationships through connection and knowledge sharing. Anisha set her sights on building a program that would make everyone feel like they belong. With the help of two design program managers, Sarah Lin and Michelle Morrison, the community has since grown to become a global initiative that supports womxn in their careers at Dropbox and beyond. These efforts have been influential in reaching and maintaining equity within our design team, amplifying the voices of womxn, and providing support for career growth and professional-skills development.

While Ladies Who Create is a great way to connect with fellow designers, it’s also a rich resource for sharpening leadership skills. A group of multidisciplinary creatives at Dropbox joined forces to set up a leadership committee that is responsible for driving projects and initiatives aligned with our mission. Participating in this group allows community members to hone new skills and find opportunities for growth outside of their core responsibilities. Beyond helping to plan and execute events, the committee builds community in a few ways:

• People-driven insights: Sends out surveys regularly to help us learn what the needs of community members are, and how programming can be tailored to meet those needs.
• Goal setting: Sets annual OKRs for the group, and assigns owners who drive our plans forward. This is also a great way for committee members to work on stretch projects or develop specific skills in a leadership capacity.
• Operational practices: Meets each month to review upcoming events, budgets, and partnership opportunities. We also evaluate our performance with KPIs and report on progress to our design team.

The program

As part of our strategy, we develop a curriculum that helps our designers navigate their careers. This programming focuses on performance reviews, writing with confidence, personal growth plans, and long-term goals. We also host social gatherings like dinner parties, creative happy hours, and flower-arranging classes. While these social events may at first seem less impactful, they are actually an easy entry point for team members and new hires to connect (think: growth strategy!). Offering a full menu of activities allows everyone to engage in a way that makes sense to them.

Radical results

Through this community-oriented work, we have built a network and support system for womxn in design, and it has paid off. We’ve seen womxn get promoted to manager and principal-level roles, lead some of our more important product initiatives, and share their stories more openly than ever before.

Dropbox has maintained a design team that has more than 50% representation by womxn, including diversity at leadership levels. We’ve also gained momentum in attracting underrepresented minorities. Setting explicit goals to maintain equity both in hires and promotions, funding our community programming, and focusing on efforts that foster inclusion has helped us take our ambitious, complex goals and make them our reality.

Diversifying Design

Getting started

3D is a working group dedicated to the planning, execution, and enrichment of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives within Dropbox Design. Galvanized by a diversity offsite aimed at leads, UX writer Roxanna Aliaga and design researcher Teresa Hernandez started talking about ways to personally impact diversity on the design team. In a parallel effort, product designer Wes O’Haire was exploring personal outreach — his tweet offering a week of mentorship lunch discussions with Black designers got a huge response. Roxy, Tere, and Wes joined forces to launch 3D — Diverse Dropbox Design. As with anything that’s three-dimensional, this name signifies depth, well-roundedness, and a sense of being true to life.

The program

Design program manager Andrew Lee was inspired to get involved with 3D because its goal aligned with other efforts he was leading, including programs for high school and university students. With his help, this initiative has grown to involve a broader range of participants, invest in youth mentorship, and host diversity breakfasts.

Andrew plays an important role in keeping the 3D leadership committee on point. Beyond helping to plan diversity events and workshops, the 3D leadership committee focuses on:

• Staying synchronized: Biweekly meetings with leads and community members — including cross-functional partners in People Ops, Recruiting, and Design — who are excited to contribute to this work. Andrew helps lead these sessions and makes sure the right people have a seat at the table.
• Goal setting: As a team, 3D sets quarterly goals that allow us to grow our diversity-focused community, foster inclusive culture, and build a more diverse team. Like Ladies Who Create, we also assign owners for each initiative to ensure that the work gets done and we can have the intended impact.

Our playbook

3D supports all types of diversity, but its current focus is to empower our community so that more Black and Latinx people see themselves as designers. The program is built upon four strategies for engaging with creatives: communications, presence, events, and outreach. Goals are achieved at Dropbox by fostering inclusivity, sharing tips, hosting lunches, and providing support during onboarding, and through outreach efforts such as events, partnerships, recruiting, and publishing.

An effective tactic has been to host small, casual breakfasts in Tuck Shop and invite designers from the community to join us. These sessions usually involve pancakes, coffee, and a table of people nerding out on design stuff. This helps us create a safe space where designers of color can speak openly about their experiences. The overall effect is mutually reinforcing: Dropbox strengthens its internal culture of diversity by promoting diversity within the larger design community as well. Designers of color are also able to broaden their networks and engage in programming that can provide career opportunities.

Another way we promote inclusive thinking within Dropbox is through a tip of the month. At every Design All-Hands, we share one thing each of us can do during the month to boost diversity efforts. For example, instead of linking to your portfolio on social media accounts, share your spotlight by highlighting another site or organization that focuses on diversity. This will help people in your network discover ways they can get involved. It’s simple, low-effort, and impactful.

Impact report

Through our community-outreach efforts, we have created a network that provides a safe and casual environment for designers of color to discuss diversity in tech. As a result, we’ve seen designers navigate their careers with more confidence. Plus, we have more-diverse candidates in our pipeline and have even hired a few candidates who attended our events. Win-win!

Powered by programming

As we build a more inclusive culture, it’s important that we invest in community to ensure that every individual feels like they belong and have the right support system to do their best work. Ladies Who Create and 3D are just two examples of how program management can help foster a sense of belonging for communities and teams while driving impactful results.

As design program managers, we’ve built and scaled these initiatives and learned a lot along the way. Simple actions have big impacts. Investing in community gives you a strategic advantage. And applying an operational lens to this work will ensure that it pays off in the long run. Jaqui Frey, our friend and Design Ops pro, said it best: “Scale requires something greater than determination in order to navigate an organization through change. It requires the power of the community.”

We hope that our stories inspire teams across the industry to invest in program management as a way to build a sense of belonging for your people. If you’re able to inspire a sense of belonging, you might also be able to unleash creative potential, deliver smarter solutions, and build a more inclusive workplace.

A note on COVID-19

In a time of crisis, community matters more than ever. As our industry adapts to new norms, we’re thinking about ways to bring meaningful programming to our community members wherever they are. If you have any ideas or tips, please share them with us on Twitter @dropboxdesign or via email at design-community@dropbox.com.

Resources

• Get Together
• The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters
• Diversity and inclusion are critical in design
• How to infuse diversity and inclusion in design
• Inclusive Design: Designing for People Different than You
• What’s Really Holding Women Back?
• Our 2019 Diversity Report
• Ladies Get Loud: What can happen when we speak out

About our contributors

Michelle Morrison is a Design Program Manager who thinks through organizational systems, process, and approach to build happy teams that ship great work. She loves a good spreadsheet.

Andrew Lee is a Design Program Manager focused on Growth and Diversity programs. He believes that process gives freedom to designers while making sure the needs of the business are met.

Sarah Lin is a Product Design Program Manager. She gets overly excited about process design, cross-functional collaboration, design tools, and crafting the perfect team offsite.

Gabrielle Matte creates collections of images. These assortments reveal a respect for diversity, thoughtful processes and good relationships. She is part of Dropbox Brand Team.

Samuel Pasquier is a New-York based photographer born in Montreal in 1988. Publications include GQ, Vice, Fast Company, Barneys NYC, Business of fashion, Hypebeast, and many more.

Olivier Charland is a multi-disciplinary designer from Montréal. His work span across different mediums while maintaining a playful and sensitive aesthetic throughout his practice.

Community powered by Design Ops was originally published in Dropbox Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Diversity makes a difference. Diverse teams innovate better, make decisions quicker, and build more world-friendly products, as shown by several studies.

In the multidisciplinary field of design, diversity exists on several levels, and in large part it’s what makes our work rich. But even when an organization has good intentions of creating a diverse team, it can be a challenge to find that talent.

Enter Jules Forrest, creator of the online directory Women Who Design. Inspired by a Twitter thread in which people gave shout-outs to more than 600 influential women designers, Jules launched the site in May 2017. Elevating underrepresented designers was also behind the making of Latinxs Who Design, which Pablo Stanley launched in September 2018. “There can’t be enough of these resources out there,” says Jules, “And if there’s a problem that there are too many of these, then that’s a great day.” By the time Wes O’Haire launched Blacks Who Design in February of 2019, he had strong models of how to get it in from Jules and Pablo.

Whatever unique perspective you’re hoping to bring into the design mix, these tips from Jules, Pablo, and Wes will help you make headway faster and learn what to expect along the way.

Be the first to put yourself out there

In July 2018, Wes posted a Tweet offering to connect with black designers during his lunch hours for a week. The response was overwhelming. To continue the dialogue with the 40 or so designers he couldn’t squeeze in, he created a Slack group. It was there that the seed of Blacks Who Design took root when someone mentioned a need for a site featuring work by black designers. “It’s important to help people that are in a similar situation that you are in,” says Wes. “That’s the first step in terms of connecting with more people.”

How to do it: Whether you’re part of a marginalized group or an ally, sharing your story is powerful. Channel your bravery for the greater good and draft that blog post, sit on that panel, or be number one in a Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Employee Resource Group (ERG) for your company. Chances are you won’t be alone for long.

The tweet that started it all for Blacks Who Design, from Wes O’Haire, who is a designer at Dropbox.

Leverage emotional fuel

Within 24 hours of the idea for Blacks Who Design taking root in Slack, Wes had secured the domain name, sketched out a project plan, and put out a call for volunteers to help design and build the site. “Knowing that everyone was vibing on this idea and there was momentum,” he says, “I wanted to do as much with that emotional fuel as early as possible. That tank doesn’t last forever. So the more you can use it to fuel getting through to-do items, that goes a long way.” Jules also drove at a speedy clip on her gas — she launched Women Who Design just three weeks after her aha moment on Twitter. “It was on people’s minds and I wanted to get a basic site up as fast as possible.”

How to do it: Emotional fuel is a renewable resource, but can burn out fast. Make a to-do list right away that you can outsource to others while they’re excited. The sooner you get granular, the quicker you can start checking stuff off the list.

Don’t reinvent the wheel

Recognizing there was already a pattern out there that worked, Wes reached out to Jules and Pablo for advice from the beginning — and with their blessings borrowed heavily from what they’d done. Pablo also modeled Latinxs Who Design after Jules’s work. “I was a little bit afraid,” he jokes. “Is she going to sue me? Because this is totally copied.” Not only did leaning on the work of each other make their processes quicker, it ended up fostering a connection between the three sites. “I knew that Latinxs Who Design was similar to Women Who Design,” remembers Jules, “but I didn’t know if there was an actual correlation until Pablo, Wes, and I were talking about how Women Who Design sort of kicked that off. That was really the moment that it became bigger than this side project of mine, taking a life of its own.” Jules recently made the code for her site open source, so anyone can copy it and get a head start on their own project.

How to do it: Before you create a website or construct a detailed project plan, see what else is out there. If you find something similar, reach out to the person behind it to let them know you think they’re doing something cool. Not only will that lift up a champion of diversity, chances are it’ll make them more inclined to let you borrow their ideas.

Don’t wait for things to be perfect

In design, it’s easy to fall trap to pushing pixels or going in circles with a copy string. Same goes for when you’re trying to get a new thing off the ground, especially if it’s related to creating a community that’s not already out there. “See what works for you, but once you find something that’s almost there, just do it,” says Pablo, who manually entered the data for some 80 profiles before creating a form to let designers do it themselves. Eventually Latinxs Who Design started pulling data from Twitter, just like Blacks Who Design and Women Who Design. Jules came up with the concept of plugging into the Twitter API, so profiles self-updated and the bios designers had written for themselves could be used to sort and filter. “Building something like this, a lot of the stuff was not very scaleable, but that’s how it should start,” says Pablo. “Keep moving and do it, knowing that later your process is probably going to change.”

How to do it: Start with tools you know, but challenge yourself a little bit. Pablo even counts learning how to create CMS collections on a dynamic site as part of the spark that energized him to keep going. Your openness to input will be what helps your endeavor get better. That’s just good design practice too.

Wear all the hats — or at least try them on

“I just took the role of creating places for people to jump in,” says Wes, recalling how he started making to-dos with rough dates immediately. “I put on my product manager hat as well as I know how to. So I broke it into phases.” Even as Jules was honing her engineering skills to code Women Who Design, she was doing double duty as a marketer, generating buzz by tweeting updates of her progress. “I posted in the days and weeks before the launch,” she says. Jules posted GIFs to show features taking shape. She even waited to flip the switch on the site until Monday morning at 9:00 am. “I was hoping people would be at their desks settling in for the week.” Her marketing plan paid off — buckling under the weight of so many visitors, the site went down right away. But the growth was organic. More than 10,000 visited the site the first day.

How to do it: Take time to sketch out a plan for the entire product life cycle, then float your idea by people who do the things you don’t know how to. By asking for advice, you may end up rallying someone to take on a to-do or two. If not, strap on those start-up shoes. You’ll end up broadening your skillset while getting things done.

Own up to your own privilege

When Women Who Design first launched, it drew criticism from designers of color on Twitter and Medium for largely featuring white women. It was feedback that initially stung Jules, but for which she’s now grateful. “Everyone comes from somewhere and you have blinders on and you have to work to take them off,” she says. “You can’t expect that you’re going to come into the world informed, but at a certain point, staying uninformed is a choice. It’s a passive choice made possible by privilege.” And even within a directory of an underrepresented group, there are layers of bias to consider. Pablo admires how Women Who Draw puts the illustrations by women in the directory front and center rather than their profile photos. “I feel like it removes a lot of the unconscious biases that you might have,” he says. “You see the work, you like it and you think, ‘I want to work with this person because I like what they do.’”

How to do it: Before you jump in, consider where you fit within the community you’re trying to create, and ask yourself the tough questions that critics likely will. Do research to build a full understanding of perspectives. “If you think something isn’t about privilege, it’s because you have it,” says Jules. “Not having to think about stuff is part of the privilege.”

Be opinionated about what you’re doing

When Women Who Design was named 2017 project of the year by a popular design blog, the directory was praised for “giving young designers references to look up to,” a description that completely missed the mark for Jules. “I want hiring managers to be using it to change their teams. I want conference line-ups to be diverse. And when I go to listen to a design podcast, for it not to be all white dudes.” While a welcome recognition of her hard work, that award prompted her to take a clearer stance on the site’s About page. She also recently added a job board to help move the needle. Pablo recalls wrestling with questions of exclusion and asking himself, “Are we creating more divisiveness with this, where we’re not including other people?” Ultimately he leaned into giving more visibility to people who don’t usually have it. “There are already many sites that include people that sometimes look almost like one single color. We’re just elevating people who usually don’t have the platform.”

How to do it: Draft a mission and get real about your intentions. Make it ambitious so it buoys you when you need a boost. Write it on a stickie and put it in your workspace where you’ll see it day in and day out. Even if your mission evolves, staying grounded in the why will help when it’s time to share the story with others.

Expect trolls and tough conversations

Anytime you’re challenging the status quo, naysayers abound. “Especially in online communities, there will always be people who don’t agree with your point of view,” says Jules. Pablo suggests channeling empathy. “Assume people are not just questioning your stuff because they are evil or because they don’t like you. They’re probably just curious and coming from a good place. At least assume that at first. That will help you be more kind with your answers and have a better conversation.” But when that doesn’t work: “You can flag or you can block them and that’s it,” says Pablo. “Don’t escalate. They wanted to trigger you. If you get mad, then they win.” Jules advises, “Try to focus your energies on what your gut is telling you to do.” So instead of spending an hour telling off someone who called Women Who Design sexist, Jules spent that time working out performance issues with the site.

How to do it: Have an action plan for dealing with questions from inside and outside the community. Craft a boilerplate message, but give yourself license to personalize when it feels right. Whatever your plan, try to stick with it. At the end of the day the emotional labor of convincing someone who doesn’t want to be convinced is a high price to pay.

Let the community come alive

“You’re not creating a community, you’re just trying to connect it,” says Wes, who looked for organizations at the intersection of African Americans and tech, like AfroTech, to effectively spread the word. After the Blacks Who Design directory launched, the Slack group went from 30 people on one channel to 400+ people across 30+ channels. Exponential community growth is something that Pablo experienced too. “We started a Slack channel that was suddenly more alive than the actual directory,” he says. “This Slack community is helping each other, being vulnerable, talking about these hard things that they face, and giving each other the support that we don’t usually get. That was a great outcome. We were not thinking of building this — this was not our goal, but it happened and it was magical.”

How to do it: Once you’ve seeded the community and it starts growing, resist the temptation to moderate, even (and maybe especially) spicy dialogues. “Give them the tools and the power so that if they want to, they can block someone or make something private,” advises Pablo. “Let the community have control of their conversations.”

With these tips in your tool belt, you may be ready to start building, but if you’re looking for a bit more inspiration, check these out:

• 28 Black Designers
• Techqueria
• Dreamer Stories
• Diseño Cha Cha Chá
• Bay Area Black Designers
• Revision Path
• AfroTech
• Lesbians Who Tech
• Tech Over 40
• Nontechtech

We hope these tips inspire you build a more diverse community, wherever you are. We’d love to hear from you. Share your thoughts with us on Twitter at twitter.com/dropboxdesign.

Building diverse design communities was originally published in Dropbox Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.