Moving on, with sadness and excitement

One of the trickiest things in life is to know when to move on. From a project, from a relationship, from a job. I've been thinking a lot about this lately since I recently made the decision to move on from my role as Director of User Experience at YouTube.

Even typing that is hard to do. I love YouTube as a product more than anything I've ever worked on before. And the team I've had the pleasure of building and leading is one of the best in the industry. It's filled with talent, and fun, and team work, and kindness.

The past few years I've spent at YouTube, and the two before that leading UX for Google Search, have been extraordinary. I learned more about the craft of UX, creative management, and myself than I learned in the 10 years prior. I am exceptionally proud of the work we've done to build a robust practice of design and user research within the YouTube organization. And the proof is in the pudding: our redesign of YouTube.com in late 2011 was the biggest redesign in the company's history, and represents a serious raising of the bar for quality of design within the company.

But one of the most frequent pieces of advice I give is to leave on an up note. And that is what I've decided to do. Friday, April 20th, will be my last day as the Director of UX for YouTube. And I am so excited to announce that starting in late May, I'll be joining Facebook as Director of Product Design, leading the team focused on ad products. This is such an amazing time for Facebook as a company and as a social phenomenon. I'm itching to learn as much as I can from my new colleagues about the amazing plans for the future and to be a part of making the next generation of advertising experiences the best the world has ever seen, and to work alongside the larger product design team to help chart the course for this product that is changing the world in so many ways.

But first, I'll take a month off (yay!), so prepare for more blog posts, including one that lists all of the ideas my kids suggested for how I should spend my 4 weeks off. My favorite among their suggestions? "Submit several snarky working-mother definitions to Urban Dictionary." :)

Da Vinci on serial innovation

It's as if Leonardo Da Vinci worked in Silicon Valley....

"Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else."

Favorite talks from TED 2012

As far as my favorite TED talks from this year, here are the ones I'd most recommend and why (I'll link to them if they are available, but the TED folks tend to roll them out over the course of the year), listed in the order they appeared at the conference:

• Susan Cain: "The Power of Introverts" -  As a closeted introvert and a manager of many more, this talk really resonated with me. Anyone who thinks of themselves as an extrovert should consider this required viewing, especially if you lead teams. Here's the blog post.
• Reuben Margolin, Kinetic Sculptor: A quiet walk through the work of a highly inventive and creative mind. His sculptures feel like they exist in the overlapping space between robotics and ballet. Here is a blog post.
• Billy Collins: One of my favorite quotes of the conference: "When I was poet laureate...God I love saying that. Because it's true." Such a dry wit and sharp tongue. It's lovely to see poetry come alive in collaboration with animators, too. Again, here's the blog post. 
• Sharon Beals: The fragile beauty of birds' nests - I was taken aback by the artistry of Beals' photos, but more importantly, the birds themselves who created the subjects of her work. Some beautiful examples are included in the blog post. 
• Reggie Watts: How to describe him? Comedian? Musician? DJ? Provocateur? Uh, yes. And God, how I love a good TED roast. And the topper? Turns out he's a really nice guy. Here's the blog post, Reggie's own site, and a TEDx talk he gave ont he East Coast. 
• Sherry Turkle: This one was a bit painful. When one of the most important thinkers about humans and technology questions whether we need to rethink the impact that over-connectedness is having on our humanity, it causes an audience-wide existential crisis. Turkle asks why we expect more from technology and less from each other. And it's about time. Here's the blog post and a TEDx talk she gave on a similar topic. 
• Bryan Stevenson: We need to talk about an injustice - Another favorite quote (paraphrased): "So I submitted a motion to have my 13-year-old, poor, black defendant tried not as an adult, but as a 75 year old white corporate executive." Amen. Here's the blog post, a well as a follow up note from TED's Chris Anderson explaining how the TED community rallied to raise over &1M overnight to end the practice of long term incarceration of children in adult prisons. . 
• Chip Kidd: So funny, so thought-provoking, so inspiring. I loved this talk, and all that it revealed about someone who is a master at what he does: book design. Here's the blog post. 
• David Kelly: Creative confidence is something most kids have in spades, but unlearn as they grow older. How can we reverse the trend? IDEO's founder gives a thought-provoking and ultimately very personal talk on why we all need to opt-in to creativity. Here's the blog post. 
• John Hockenberry: Why would a journalist be featured in a session on design? Because Hockenberry speaks so eloquently on designing a "life of intent." Make sure to stay to the end of this talk and be treated to his gutsy and unique cover of The Beatles' "Get Back". Here's the blog post. 
• Abigail Washburn: Chinese speaking, stereo-type-busting, banjo-playing, curly-haired wonder Washburn is now a new Stewart Family musical favorite. Here's her website. 
• John Bohannon & Black Label Movement: "That’s childhood. It’s a Manhattan Project of nakedness.” Sorely needed, frank commentary and reflection on the state of sex ed and talking to kids about sexuality. All wrapped in a wonderfully artful presentation. Here's the blog post, though you really *must* see the video when it gets released. 
• Rafe Esquith: You can't have an inspiring session on the state and future of education without including Rafe Esquith, and more importantly, his band of merry players, all donning "Will Power" t-shirts in honor of The Bard. If we could clone Esquith and his dedication to these high-achieving lovers-of-learning who mostly come from low-income, non-English-speaking homes, we might be OK. Here's the blog post.   
• Brené Brown: Appropriately, this vulnerability expert spoke honestly and, well, vulnerably, about a key area of study: shame. How does it differ from guilt? And how does it keep us from being creative, innovative, and happy? Truly worth a watch when it's posted. In the meantime, here's the blog post. 

Phew. It was a great week, though as usual, emotionally and intellectually a bit exhausting. Now, the trick is to hone in on the key things you actually want to focus on moving forward, since one person can't move all these needles at the same time.  Some things that could change the world, and somethings that are about understanding and changing ourselves. And the realization that those two things are very much connected. 

My TED 2012 sketch notes

Here they are: my sketch notes from the annual TED conference held in Long Beach, CA in February. For details on my favorite TED talks of 2012, please check my follow up post. 

TED 2012 sketch notes, a set on Flickr.

Love it.

From: BecomeCareer.com

Hard-earned career advice

A few months back, I was asked my my graduate school mentor, Red Burns, to speak to her class of first year students at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU. I gave a talk about what it's like to lead design for a brand and community like YouTube, and all of the challenges and opportunities that go along with it. And then I closed with some unsolicited career advice that I thought might be worth sharing more widely. Here it is....

Take smart risks
Sometimes people who don’t understand the arc of my career say, “Wow, you are so lucky to be where you are.” Yes, and.....no. What defines every major change in my career, and in my life, has been taking smart risks. Let’s face it: many things that are worth doing in life are very risky and don’t really make sense at the time: falling in love, having babies, attending Burning Man (which I haven’t done, for the record). But in hindsight, you see that when you develop a taste for smart risk, you open yourself up to many more possibilities and significant growth than if you always play it safe. In my life, that’s meant getting a fellowship that allowed me to live abroad by myself; attending ITP (NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program), a weird sounding graduate program, well before the commercial web made it a no-brainer for the rest of the world to engage in Internet projects; leaving a lucrative freelance business in NYC to join Tripod, a then tiny unknown start up, for a tiny salary because I knew I’d learn more (said start up ended up getting acquired by Lycos); staying home with my kids for 4 years when the industry when through a downturn and work was no longer fun; uprooting and moving my family across the country to join the big leagues in the Bay Area.

Some of these decisions took my financially conservative parents’ breath away. But the fact is I’ve done so much better personally and professionally because of these risks, and I’ve earned my successes by taking them. This issue is particularly relevant for women, as we are socialized to be more risk averse than our male counter-parts. Forbes Magazine reported that a study showed men apply for jobs when they are on average 60% qualified for a job, while women on average wait until they are nearly 100% qualified. The men apparently figure they will learn the rest on the job, and they are right. Ladies, we need to puff up our chests, drink a Red Bull, and remind ourselves that if we feel a bit in over our heads, we are probably on the right track. Which leads me to my next piece of advice....

Women help other women
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright famously said, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help women.” Amen. Women in roles of influence often get to where they are in part because someone along the way took interest in them and encouraged them to do more, be more. And that someone for me has often been another women: Jan Chambers, my scenic design professor at Boston College, who pushed me to take on projects that were just out of my grasp and in the process helped me grow and develop my taste for risk; Red Burns, the founder of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU where I earned my Masters Degree, who showed me that women leaders can be fearless and maternal; Marissa Mayer, head of UX at Google and my close colleague during my time running Google Consumer UX, who created numerous opportunities for me to expand my influence in the design world outside of Google. If you haven’t been helped by women in your organization, find some that you admire and ask. And if you have help to give, then reach out to the young, promising women in your world and give them a hand. You owe it to the future.

Don’t be an ass
Too often, I hear people posit that you have to be a jerk to do great work, especially in the creative professions. I'm sorry, but I just don’t buy it. I know, it’s all too easy to call up the Steve Jobs example. For the record, I never met him, and 99.9% of other people never have either, but his reputation is not that of a person who is easy or pleasant to work with. But here’s the key point: Steve jobs was a genius AND he was a jerk; he wasn’t a genius BECAUSE he was a jerk. And let’s be real; hardly any of us are Steve Jobs. For the rest of us mortals, getting along with people and being a fun, engaging collaborator are critical components to getting great things done. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be hard on yourself and others at times, and that you shouldn’t have high standards and develop a culture of critique. But I don’t believe that has to be coupled with being an ass. My goal as a leader and a colleague is to be straightforward, authentic, optimistic, empowering, and relentless in the pursuit of great design. And I can do that while being kind and fun, and you can, too.

Halloween, YouTube style!

Halloween, YouTube style!, originally uploaded by margaretgouldstewart.