hugeinc.com
info@hugeinc.com
6100 Wilshire Blvd. 2nd Floor - Los Angeles, CA 90048
+1 310 499 7700
April 30th, 2013
Process & Creativity

Agenda:
1. Me 2. Huge 3. Fostering
Creativity Within Your Process

Bullshit  Huge PM  Today’s Huge

Bullshit.

Life pre - Huge
[failed startup I can’t
find logo for]

But mostly…

“…just go work at an
agency.”

So, I turned to my smartest, most
discerning, charming, and physically
attractive friends for advice.

Designers.
Huge.What agency
should I work at?

5Craigslist postings
6Interviews
7Months
+
+

PM.

#2Second PM at Huge ever.

Lather Rinse
Repeat

Day 1:
“These are your projects. For
#####, wireframes are due Friday.
We’re short UX so you’ll need to
do the first draft”.

What’s a
wireframe?

7Things I did in my first 6 months at
Huge.

1.
Learned what a wireframe was.
Wireframed an entire website. With
zero repeated templates or modules.

2.
Pissed most everyone off.
Cried about it. Then made friends.

3.
Conducted a content audit. Faked a
copy writer. Wrote a CMS user guide.
Entered a shit ton of content.

4.
Booked our CEO’s travel. Got
screamed at daily for booking our
CEO’s travel wrong.

5.
Lead meetings I had no business
leading. Pulled it off.

6.
Hired a freelance HTML developer.
Spent 5 weeks working the night shift
debugging HTML.

7.
Gave inappropriate hugs.

Lather Rinse
Repeat

Today’s Huge.

Agencies are often hired because
conformist organizations struggle to
produce innovation.

13 600

At Huge.
We almost got caught in
the process trap.

Every project was an exception.

Epiphany:
Some of early Huge was legitimately
insane. But, the extreme flexibility of
how we worked together had a big
impact on the quality of our work.

The “perfect process” for us
defined a baseline framework
but adapted to the project, and
the team’s, unique composition.

Huge process.
33.

The answer to doing great
work wasn’t actually about
perfecting our process.

Focus on building
creative teams that
have what they need
to do great work.

10 Tips:
To foster creativity within your
process, whatever it may be.

1. Be flat. Great ideas can
come from anyone.

Be relentless about preserving this tenet.
It will be painful for some people.

2. Competition is good.

Teach your teams to be tough and
brutally honest about the work.
And the best ideas will win.

3. Whenever possible, sleep
with your co-workers.

Whenver possible, sleep with
be very good friends with
your co-workers.

4. Iterate. Always push your idea and
present multiple versions.

When you think you have it.
Throw it away and start over.

5. Take the time to listen.

This is not listening.
We need
personalization.
Small, medium
or large?

6. Test & learn. User testing is one of
the most valuable tools we have.

Can we test this?
We have to test this.

7. Embrace the pain.

Collaboration is painful. Critiques are
painful. Re-work is painful.
Design is harder than art.

8. Be fearless.

mbrace the QB.

No one would choose a commune as
their team in a war.
Beware the democracy trap.

10. Understand your impact
on the world.

Realize how loved you are.

Embrace your responsibility.

Ask for what you need
to do your job well.

Ignore everyone
and go for a walk.

Choose your mantra…
Make something you love.

Questions?

hugeinc.com
info@hugeinc.com
6100 Wilshire Blvd. 2nd Floor - Los Angeles, CA 90048
+1 310 499 7700