Inside propelland: Dwight Davis

We spoke to one of our first propellers Dwight Davis to learn more about his design background and journey at propelland for our 'Inside propelland' series.

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Name: Dwight Davis?

Region: North America?

Role at propelland: Interaction Design Lead?

When you started working here: Sep. 2013?

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Tell us more about your career path. What led you into the design field??

DD: I consider myself very fortunate that the degree I studied at university is directly tied to what I do today as a professional. But before that, I was incredibly indecisive. I wanted to be a pilot, an animator, and all sorts of things. As I was trying to establish what I wanted from my career, thinking of what kind of work I wanted to dedicate myself to - big decisions to make when you are 18, 20 years old - I just knew I wanted to make things. I had this evolution of different interests that ultimately fit with what design offered, which for me was a mix of anthropology, psychology, art, science, and technology. I liked using Photoshop to make websites and illustrations, which is how I got turned on to graphic design.??

I studied graphic design at North Carolina State University College of Design and very quickly found myself more interested in the interactive aspect of digital media and moving beyond traditional print and advertising media. I gravitated towards user experience design, motion, and interactivity. After graduating, I did some work at advertising and digital innovation agencies before being introduced to Hugo and Sid through a colleague. In terms of culture fit, I was looking for a company more focused on a collaborative, multidisciplinary design process and creating sustainable digital product experiences. In advertising, things are very campaign-driven. A microsite lasts for a summer, then it dies. I wanted to have a more positive impact and design things that really could make people's lives better. I wanted to approach problems by examining the entire system and the way people interacted within those systems. My thinking really aligned with what Sid and Hugo were trying to build with propelland, which was just them and one other person at the time in 2013. From there, my own journey at propelland took off.?

What is one of your favorite projects that you've worked on throughout your career??

?DD: There are a few! I really enjoyed working on the Powerade Command Center, a data-driven hydration solution for athletes. I have a personal affinity for the project because I play soccer. It was really interesting learning about the complexities of nutrition and sports science, and then having to simplify them into a design interface to help ensure the athlete is getting what they need to perform at their best.??

There are so many other projects, but I think for me the best project is actually propelland. One of the reasons I joined propelland was I originally wanted to start my own design studio at some point after graduating school. I thought joining Hugo and Sid was a great learning opportunity to see what that could look like and how I can be a part of that story. Going from a company that was three or four people to now four regions globally with 80+ employees was and has been such a rewarding experience.???

All of the same processes and methodologies we apply to our clients, I’ve also tried to make sure we're applying to ourselves. Like, what is our onboarding user experience journey? What is the employee experience? How do we work in an agile way within our own teams? Figuring out how to implement that within our culture and the way we work has been a big project for me, and it's the one I'm probably the proudest of.?

What are your responsibilities as a design lead at propelland??

DD: Previously, I was the design and operations lead. In that role had a range of responsibilities, from managing client relationships and leading project teams to figuring out how we operate in our day-to-day and how to ensure we have good quality of thinking in our projects. Now, I'm purely focused on the discipline of interaction design. One main thing I’m doing is defining what foundations, processes, and systems we need in place for interaction design within our studio. That means we're addressing the needs of the people we're designing for, we're understanding the business requirements of the clients we're working with, and we’re bringing sparks of joy into the work we produce so that it's something that is usable, accessible, aesthetically pleasing, and scalable.

I'm also focused on coaching and mentoring the team at propelland to help everyone grow and develop in their career path, no matter what that might be. Outside of hiring new talent (by the way, we’re hiring!) and plugging our interaction design discipline, I’m figuring out how we design for the future. How are we thinking about artificial intelligence, mixed reality, blockchain, and new systems? What is the future of cities, healthcare, and finance, and how do we design for those things? I’m making sure that we have those skills in our team by bringing in amazing talent or by putting the right resources in place to help our existing team level up. My goal is to help the team understand what good design thinking looks like so we can achieve the right impact we're all hoping for.?

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What excites you most about the future of interaction design??

?DD: People talk about things like the future of AI, what Web 3.0 is, and all of these things, but I think we're in an interesting place where no one really knows exactly what the future is going to look like. What's most exciting is that we're beginning a new frontier in design. It’s opening up a lot of new opportunities and new ways to address people’s needs. These new emerging technologies are going to make services, products, and experiences more accessible, which is really exciting. I think we're at this point where it's a little bit like the wild west, similar to when the Internet first started, but on a whole different level of scale. These new technologies have the potential to empower people to do amazing things, like removing racial bias from the financial infrastructure, making things more democratic in the workplace, and giving a voice to disenfranchised people.?

Designing things is also becoming easier. The tools and the processes that we have in design are getting better. When I first started, we had to hand document everything and it was so tedious. Now we have no code solutions where you can build a website in a day, which is a great way to test and validate something. Those same types of tools are going to carry over to these new, more advanced technologies.?

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Is there any advice or lessons learned you’d like to share with those interested in pursuing a career in interaction design??

DD: If you're starting out in design, learn about design history. Understand where we're coming from, and go back to the fundamentals. If you want to design an interface, it's basically implementing the principles of good graphic design, typography, layout, grid systems, color theory, and then understanding animation and motion principles. To make things interactive you need to start from history to learn what made classic design good and why it works so well.??

My other advice is to just keep making things. Make stuff you're not proud of, make things you are proud of, but just keep making things because it's the only way you'll get good at your craft. I think everyone has a really good idea, but the thing that separates a designer from someone else is the ability to bring them to life. To be a great designer you just gotta keep making, not just things that look good, but things that have good thinking behind them. Prototype yourself. Prototype your experience. If you're not sure design is something that you want to do, that's fine. Explore a lot of different things like learning how to code, animation, building in VR, just try a bunch of things! Find out what it is you like and then once you figure it out, focus on that. That advice is something you should apply to your entire career because there's no one path for a design career. It doesn't work that way. You need to continually prototype yourself. That will lead to a lot of growth and learning, and ultimately take you to a place where you'll be really happy with the end result.?

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