Dropbox’s design researcher talks strategy, storytelling, saying goodbye to the freelance life – and squaring off with Steve Jobs.
It’s hard to know where to start when talking to Jennifer Brook. There’s the time she went to California to work on the first New York Times iPad prototype, and ended up presenting it on stage with Steve Jobs at Apple’s 2010 iPad keynote announcement. Or the time she reportedly lived in a tree house for several years; or when she motorbiked around Southeast Asia during a gap in client work.
When we catch up with her towards the end of 2016, she’s just undertaken a huge move and joined file hosting service Dropbox’s research team full-time as lead design researcher – relocating from New York to San Francisco, and putting her successful independent consultant business on hold. The new job signifies the end of what Brook calls a “multi-year transition” from interaction designer to design researcher, and was driven by her passion for research. It’s an interesting move for someone who spent their initial career working in letterpress and book-making, and more recently collaborating with forward-thinking organisations on a freelance basis. How did Dropbox manage to lure her in-house?
“Last spring, I was working with the Dropbox design team in NYC on some research for new product features, ” she explains. “During field visits, I fell in love with the people who use Dropbox. It was eye-opening to see the diverse problems people are using Dropbox to solve. We talked to theatrical set designers who use it to coordinate complex workflows and collaborate with the dozens of people involved in making major Broadway productions. I interviewed someone working for the UN on peace building and crisis management, who uses Dropbox to collaborate with field offices around the globe.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der March 2017-Ausgabe von NET.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der March 2017-Ausgabe von NET.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
Camille Gribbons
UX designer at Booking.com, Camille Gribbons reveals how she first got into the industry
THE 5G UI REVOLUTION
Tris Tolliday describes his vision of a web UI catapulted forwards by 5G
HOW TO SHOWCASE YOUR DEV SKILLS
Aude Barral shares 5 top tips for landing your dream developer job
KNIVES OUT
Murder mystery film, Knives Out, grabbed everyone’s attention, and so did the fun website that promoted it. Oblio tells Tom May how it created its innovative 3D navigation
HOW EMOTIONAL LABOUR HINDERS WOMEN IN TECH
Christine Brewis, head of digital marketing at Studio Graphene, discusses how gender parity in tech has changed over the last ten years, and what more can be done
EDAN KWAN
He swapped life as a singer for a career making eye-popping digital visuals. The Lusion founder chats to Tom May about battling demons, winning awards and where digital advertising is heading
ANDREW COULDWELL
The Brit in LA discusses his new book on design systems, Laying the Foundations
Top 5 Tips For Ensuring Web Content Is Accessible For All
Merlyn Meredith outlines five top tips for ensuring web content is accessible for all
WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR BROWSERS?
Nico Turco examines the state of play with browsers, whether developers should encourage diversity or monopoly and how Google fits into it all
YEARS IN THE MAKING
Exclusively for net: The latest in a series of anonymous accounts of nightmare clients