The Impact of Design on Product Strategy with Michael Sacca, Dribbble

Episode Transcription

Christian Beck:

To be a great designer and to be effective inside of a larger organization, you have to have a holistic view of how things will be used. This is a better product original series on the business impact of product design. I'm Christian.

Anna Eaglin:

And I'm Anna. We are both so excited about this episode's guest, Michael Sacca. Some quick facts for our community, Michael is the general manager at Dribbble. He's got quite the rep sheet from starting his career 15 years ago as a product designer to eventually founding a product agency that built applications for Scholastic, GE, Nike, Siemens, Kobe Bryant, and more.

Christian Beck:

So you can see why we're excited to have him on as our last guest for the Business Impact of Product Design series. And to give you more context, Dribbble with three Bs is a jobs and recruiting site housing one of the largest platform for designers to share their work online. Before we dig into the key topic today, Michael shares his journey to Dribbble. You'll hear how he went from product designer to founder to now general manager.

Michael Sacca:

I started as a designer too many years ago, and the invite to Dribbble was always this special moment for designers. So it's kind of a rite of passage. It was that Dribbble invite that makes you feel like you're in the community and you've now joined the design epicenter. When I built an agency, I hired our first designer because of his work on Dribbble so the platform's always kind of had a special place for me in my career.

Later on, I found myself at Crew, which was a freelance matching system. Out of Crew spun Unsplash, the giant photo site. It was a side project for us to actually generate more attention and drive traffic into Crew, but it grew way bigger than Crew was ever going to. And so at a certain point, the leadership team there decided to split Crew and Unsplash into two separate companies, and I led the Crew and all the executives went over to Unsplash. That was the big opportunity and I led the acquisition of Crew by Dribbble. That's how I ended up at Dribbble.

Anna Eaglin:

[inaudible 00:02:07] his three years with Dribbble, he's led the marketing team, the data team, strategy team and the product team. His insights on the impact design has on product expands beyond the traditional viewpoint. As you'll soon hear for him, design is the product. One more quick thing before we get to that, the title general manager requires a quick definition.

Michael Sacca:

My role now is to lead the Dribbble team on the day to day and make sure we've got a healthy P&L and that we're growing the business.

Christian Beck:

Understanding Michael's background is essential to the conversation. There's a lot of debate around the notion of designers learning to business, essentially understanding how design and business connect and his journey speaks directly to this. So let's start with Michael sharing with Anna and I how he's elevated his design background into the business world.

Michael Sacca:

We treat the design team as a direct extension of the product management team. In fact, the product team drives a bit more of the roadmap. Once we figure out what direction we want to go, we go straight to the design team for the wire framing, and that's where a lot of those business decisions get made, right? So we've leaned heavily on Ryan Johnson, who's our principal designer to have both that knowledge of business and what is going to work on that side. But I do expect designers to understand the business. I expect everyone on the team to understand the business, from the engineering team to the design team and of course the product team, and we've actually structured our internal product process so that everyone has an understanding of why we're doing what we're doing, how it affects the business itself and what our goals are.

So we have the same expectations for our engineering team as that we have for our design team. But I think it's absolutely essential, if you don't actually understand why you're designing something, companies need to grow, right? They need to generate revenue in order to continue to serve their customers. If you don't understand why you're designing something, then you should ask. I think it's absolutely essential for designers to be in that conversation and have a voice at the table there.

Anna Eaglin:

When you say understand the business, how does that work? When you think about that for designers, what does that mean?

Michael Sacca:

We start at the 1,000 foot, three year view. And we've already done designs for Dribbble that we know we're not going to get to for a year or two, but it helps to inform all the decisions that we make up until that point. We've actually used the design team to build that understanding and be part of that conversation. So when we say we want to do X, Y, and Z in the next two years, we've actually already pushed that into design and then we present that to the team for their understanding. If we just say it, they kind of get it, but if they can see it ... and it might not be the final version, it's usually just kind of a quick aspirational lens, but it helps them understand, "Okay, every decision I make for the next two years leading up to this North star is going to affect our ability to get there."

So we try to set that North star both visually, just because we are a very visual company, and without the designer understanding that long-term vision, they would never be able to actually build that aspirational model for us. Then we take that aspirational model and we break it down into the individual feature sets and we constantly talk about we're doing this so that we can get to this. We're doing X to get to Y because without X being successful, we can't get to the next initiative.

So we try to take that 1,000 foot lens, because I don't make every decision in the company. I mean even given a scope, there's 1,000 decisions in every mockup that have implications on the future, and the same with engineering. I don't know every piece of code that's written, but there are ways to write it that will help us get there and there are ways that'll impede us in getting there. So it does go all the way down to the feature level, but I think without that 1,000 foot view and the entire company knowing where we're going, it's really hard for them to make good day-to-day decisions without being fully informed.

Christian Beck:

How do you continue to coach designers up? I mean, on the coding side or on the design side, you can go, "Well, you can go look at Dribbble." That's what a lot of designers, "Go look at Dribbble," and they get better at design from Dribbble. What's it like on the business side? How do you infuse that? When you look at your own journey and try to articulate that for another designer, how are you translating your own journey to somebody else to sort of pick up that intuition about business?

Michael Sacca:

I think the biggest piece of the designer's effect is experience. And so we have to step outside the box of just a dashboard or a feature. It's continually coaching to go down the unhappy path, and we'd love to code the happy path. We love to design the happy path. We also love to design for the ideal user. That user doesn't exist, right? So it's mostly asking questions of what happens when this is the case? What happens when a user does this instead? What happens when this fails? And so it forces us as creatives to think more holistically because we've got over 6 million people visiting Dribbble every month, not one of them is the same, and there is no user persona that will fit.

But there are use cases. There's anxieties, there's reasons that they're there, but there's no single feature that we can build that they'll all use in the same way. So we really have to start looking holistically. And great designers are able to take that into context in their design and come back with solutions there. Because that's the goal of design. It's not necessarily the right pixels on the screen, it's the right experience created. And that's for UI, UX, like it's everyone's responsibility, it's the front end engineering responsibility to make that experience come to life. So that's where we spend most of the time coaching is there's coaching on the actual aesthetic side, but to be a great designer and to be effective inside of a larger organization, you have to have a holistic view of how things will be used.

Christian Beck:

I'd like to raise it up too, thinking from a business level, because obviously Dribbble, I think wouldn't surprise anybody, is very designed focused because you couldn't get away with a poorly designed platform. But when you think about, if you rise up from your own position and thinking about other products that are out there, how do you think about design and its value for other businesses? I mean, first of all, as a basic question, is design important for products. And if so, why?

Michael Sacca:

I mean, design is the product. I don't think there's a separation, personally. I think we could separate fancy UI design from, okay UI design or functional UI design. And those trends come and go with material design and, we go through a series of heavy animations. But I mean, design is the product and the product is designed. And so I don't think you really separate the two, personally. I think it's incredibly important. I think we see companies lead industries because of their design. You think of Airbnb, right? I mean, there's a ton of platforms that have tried to compete with them that were there before them, but because their experience is so universal now, and they've nailed it for not just tech savvy folks, but for people who are just looking for an actual solution and aren't in the tech world, Airbnb is very functional for them. But it's because they put design first and it was a founding principle.

I remember talking to the guy who ran SEO for them for three or four years. He was always trying to get SEO initiatives through Airbnb and he's like, "The design team would never let me do what I wanted to do," but I asked him like, "Were they right?" And he's like, "At the end of the day, yeah." Because the company grew like a rocket ship and it wasn't because of SEO. It was because the user experience, people kept coming back, word of mouth was there, that they had all the right metrics happening and SEO was icing on the cake at the end of the day. But if they had gone that route, they would have had links everywhere. They would have had all kinds of kind of spammy looking initiatives and we might not be talking about them right now.

Anna Eaglin:

One thing that Airbnb does so well too, I mean obviously it's a beautifully designed site. It's highly functional at getting things done inside. It's really, really intuitive, but I think the brand is so strong. And I think that's one thing that we see on Dribbble too, is it's not just great UX work. It's very strong, strong brand work. How do you see brand and product design coming together to make a successful product?

Michael Sacca:

It's really important. I mean, the Dribbble brand has grown organically. We feel a bit lucky. I mean, it's a basketball. No one knows, like people on my team, we used to try to name all the features after basketball terms and people would have glossaries of basketball terms up, because they didn't know anything about basketball. I think a lot of the users are the same. So I do feel a bit lucky that it has this affinity inside of the design world.

We've tried to move away from that kind of core basketball terminology and into something a bit more universal. That's been a slow process, but when people buy pro, we've had like 10 different versions of our landing page and none of them matter because they already come there knowing that they want to upgrade. So it doesn't matter what we tell them or how long it is or how fancy it is, or how many animations there are, it has never really made a difference in the conversion rate on that page because the decision's already made. That's because of the brand. The brand has driven those sales because people are excited about the product, about what they've heard about it, about the word of mouth. And so I believe it's directly driving revenue for us because people have such affinity for it.

Christian Beck:

I'm curious, I want to nitpick. Do you believe it or do you know it? Meaning do you track data? From your perspective, do you know it, or do you just sort of feel these things that it's just so ingrained that you know that design or brand is driving those things?

Michael Sacca:

I mean, I know that people come and buy it without ... It doesn't matter what our message is, they've already decided to buy it. So where does that come from? I can't measure the sentiment of how they feel when they show up, but what we're seeing in the product is that they've already made their decision. And I attribute that to the brand much more than the feature set that I could put on a page. I definitely think the brand is a huge driver of value for us.

But I don't know how to measure that sentiment within people. I don't know how to measure that excitement because people, are they more excited for us over Behance, over Instagram? I don't know. But I do know that when they come to Dribbble, they've already made their mind up that this is a place they want to make an investment.

Christian Beck:

From my perspective on the outside, Dribbble started as primarily free for a while, just driving a lot of traffic, becoming a platform. Then you've been following this playbook of monetizing aspects of that now. So where do you sit in that today with Dribbble? How are you thinking up new ways of monetizing or growing revenue?

Michael Sacca:

We grow revenue by providing value so we've opened up a bunch of channels for designers. The biggest one that we found was designers were on Dribbble to find freelance work and get hired. That was the big value prop. If you look at our testimonials page, dating back to the very beginning, the wow moment, the point at which people would get excited and it would click for them is when a recruiter from Google reached out or when they were able to go freelance because they had reliable inbound channels. And so what we tried to do is actually open that up because with any social network, you always have kind of a 1% problem, where everyone at the top absorbs all the attention and then there's the 99% below it. So what we tried to do is democratize the platform a bit through our ranking algorithms and various other efforts, and spread out some of that wow moment so that more people experience getting a lead from Dribbble.

Even now we've opened it up so that we have a project board that just pros can access but the clients can post for free. And these are fairly small projects, but they're great for designers starting out. So now we're giving them a channel to actually access that work where they don't have to wait for it to come to them. They can actually proactively reach out as well, so we tried to close that loop down for them. Those are just some of the initiatives that we've been taking to provide more value based on what the community is so excited about Dribbble, and without corrupting the community itself.

Christian Beck:

How has the way that you've grown the team changed or has it changed?

Michael Sacca:

When I got to Dribbble, I think I was 14 when Zach took over as CEO three years ago, it was six people. Now with creative market, we're close to 70 and so we have brought in more subject matter experts. Zach and I have been doing marketing off the side of our desk, so now we're actually hiring for a VP of marketing. We're also hiring for a VP of product to come in and help us lead on the strategy side.

And internally we've tried a lot of different stuff, but we now have a sales team. We've got a sales team that runs our ads. We've got a marketing and content team that we never had before. When I started at Dribbble, our support team wrote our blog content, so it was just people wearing a lot of hats and so we've started to segment that down. We still have a long way to go, but we have started to bring in some of those subject matter experts to build out the team. We found that to be ... I mean, obviously we get better results than having our support team write our blog content.

Christian Beck:

I think I remember those days too. I think we wrote something for them and it was with somebody in support. So wrapping up, I'd love to know how you view Dribbble in the realm of tech companies in general, your influence and maybe where you see Dribbble heading, maybe in the next three to five years.

Michael Sacca:

I mean, one thing that worked for Dribbble really well in the beginning was this invite system. To get on Dribbble, you had to get invited, but it's been 10 years, the invite system was never actually meant to be there permanently. We probably should have gotten rid of it a lot sooner. So one of the things that we're doing is looking to democratize the platform so that ... The problem with an invite system and a global community is that only people ... and we see this everywhere in the world today ... but only people that are on the platform, they're going to invite more people who are similar to them or within their social circle. So the platform becomes homogenized. And even on a global level, you could see little pockets, but if you're not in one of those pockets, it's hard for you to get access into the community itself.

One of the big things that we're working on is starting to lift up that restriction and allow people from all over the world, no matter if they live in a small town or a big city. Or they're connected to the design industry, or they're just trying to break in, to actually be able to showcase their work on Dribbble and join the greater design community. And at the same time we're building features to make Dribbble feel smaller and more intimate because with that global view, how do we still create community within that? We don't want to restrict people from joining the community, but we still want to give them a community experience.

One of the big focuses that we have internally is how do we grow without losing that thread of intimacy, where people are still on Dribbble for feedback? They want to get better, right? They want to get recognized. That's probably the big initiative that we're taking here in the next couple of years, is starting to really rethink what Dribbble is and how do we invite more people to it?

Christian Beck:

I can completely see that. And I'm curious too, it seems like one of the things that probably worked well with the invite system was really it became a growth mechanism because it drove demand. I'm imagining by lifting that, you now have to shift focus on other ways to grow, because it almost seems like you're replacing that mechanism too. How are you balancing those conversations this early on in the conceptual phase?

Michael Sacca:

Well, when we look at the numbers, we're turning away way more people than are getting access. We actually don't have a pipeline problem. We actually are impeding our own growth through it. There's some very talented folks that don't have the opportunity today to showcase their work on Dribbble and that's really a detriment to them in their career, because that means they're not getting found. That means they're not getting freelance opportunities, at least from our platform, and they have to go invest their time somewhere else. We have a huge interest in joining the community. We just need to do a better job of allowing those people to actually come on and be successful.

Anna Eaglin:

Do you think that there's a shift in the design community from this exclusive model, this kind of gate keeping of who can be a part of this, and who can post here, and what work matters? Do you feel like that shift is happening in the design community? Or is this something Dribbble is really specifically undertaking?

Michael Sacca:

Yeah, no, it's interesting. You see this at any level, so even if you talk about in the government, when people put up barriers and fences to make themselves successful and to maintain their status, you see this with regulations. And we have the same problem, so when we talk about it as democratizing Dribbble and letting more people onto the platform, people are very receptive. But they also recognize that that means it might be a little bit harder for them because they've held this position and that position might be more competitive, or they might have to keep working. Whereas today they don't.

We updated our search algorithm two years ago and the day after we updated it, I got an email from a famous designer. He said, "Hey, I noticed I'm not ranking high for web design." And I was like, "I guess not." And I looked at his account, he hadn't posted in two years. But because he had kind of sandwiched himself up at the top of that very popular search, he was still getting leads, he was still getting benefits, but he wasn't actually giving back to the platform of the community. So we have those people that will always want to maintain their status and their position because they've earned it in a way. But our challenge is to not take that advantage away from them, but also start to open it up to more folks. And those same people will say, "I would love Dribbble to be more diverse, to have more open doors," but there is always that inherent fear of losing where they are today. So it's a constant challenge.

Anna Eaglin:

Christian, a question that you asked Michael that I thought was really interesting, and I think shifts the conversation that oh my gosh, we've heard a bajillion times in the last 10 years, should designers learn to business?

Christian Beck:

Yeah, and we just made business a verb too, is what we just did.

Anna Eaglin:

Because the age old argument is, should designers learn to code?

Christian Beck:

Yeah, and if you're not familiar with this debate on this show, just Google it and you'll see why. But I think you still see-

Anna Eaglin:

Or don't.

Christian Beck:

Yeah, or don't. Just take our word for it, but-

Anna Eaglin:

And save yourself.

Christian Beck:

I think in some fields like web design, design in the HTML and CSS is really tied together and that's a little bit different than say, designing and developing a react app or something like that. But that has been the age old question for a lot of reasons we won't get into. What I think has been more important, especially with other product trends like product led growth, or even just product thinking in general, is designers and design really, truly understanding what it means to be business focused.

And he said it's really understanding growth. Like we have to grow to survive. We work with founders that talk about that too and in general, for you to thrive in an industry where there is competition, you do have to be growing in some way or another. Not necessarily growth at all costs, revenue at all costs, but you do need to be growing, finding unique ways to grow. And if you have that, and if you take that assumption, then you have to understand that design has got to be tied to business.

I think you and I have talked about one of the things that separates design from art, is that design has to serve functions. It has to work for people, but it also ... I think Michael talks a lot about it and his journey speaks to how design has to really tie to the business. When it does, it has tremendous results, as he mentioned with Airbnb, or even with Dribbble itself. Or previously Crew then spinning out Unsplash as its own product company as well. The design has to really understand why the business makes money, how it makes money so that the decisions that are made are a little bit more than just pixel pushing.

Anna Eaglin:

Yeah, I mean, like you said the designer, even if the feature is coming down from the roadmap and the head of project and the project manager, the designer has to make all of these decisions and those decisions have implications. And like you said, understanding the business, how they make money is super important.

One thing that he said that he articulated that I really like, I think it's something that we do at Innovatemap quite a bit. We believe that aspirational design can show a product vision in a way that is beyond just talking about your North star, talking about pitching an idea. And so him talking about how they use designers to design where they want to be three years from now, and use that aspirationally, it's not just fluffy dribble content. It's legitimate, the designer-

Christian Beck:

You can't use that as a pejorative on the podcast where we have them.

Anna Eaglin:

I can. I can, because there are two sides of it, see?

Christian Beck:

It's true. That is true.

Anna Eaglin:

Not just black and white, there are areas of gray. But to use that design as aspirational, it has to tie to where the business is going and the designer has to understand that.

Christian Beck:

I'm glad you brought that up because from the beginning of the interview a little bit too, where he talked about that, because it is always hard. And it's hard for some people that come from design to sit here and make a case for design, but that's a really strong one. And I'm glad that he admitted that they're designing stuff that's even a year out because for you and I coming from software, [Agile 00:24:51] has often been at odds with design and that's one of the predominant ways software is getting built now. It's even gotten tighter where software is getting released on a daily basis.

I'm sure Dribbble is pushing out updates at least on biweekly updates. But even with that in mind, design has a spot and casting a vision is really, really important. And for designers, that may mean something you design doesn't get built, but maybe that wasn't the purpose. Maybe the purpose of what you designed was just to say like, "Hey, let's even see what's possible and let that sit for a while and then revisit it in six to 12 months." But yeah, that's really important. Thinking about our listeners and products, what are ways that you think that product teams can start utilizing design for painting visions, going forward?

Anna Eaglin:

I mean, I think some of the most successful PMs, I think that we've had on the show or that we ourselves have worked with, are people who will go to a designer and say, "I want this feature. I want this prioritized. I need to sell it up." Like, "Hey, UX designer, can you help me do that?" Because again, I know this is a strategy that you yourself have employed. I remember hearing stories about it, but it's one thing to pitch an idea, but it's another thing to say, "And here's what it could look like. And here's how ..." it's like, "Here's how the world could be different. Let me show you in a design."

And I agree 100% with what Michael said, it's one thing to hear it, it's another thing to see it. That gets people jazzed. So I think finding your collaborator if you have something you really want to push. If you have a future that you think is important and you want that built, go to your designer and get a design put together, even if it's something that can't totally be built, it's so aspirational and it's exciting, it gets people motivated.

Christian Beck:

Maybe we can close the circle because what you're describing is you as a product leader can utilize design to cast visions. But then on the other side, Michael talked about the importance of designers understanding business. So if you didn't have that, and you're a product manager taking something to your designer, you will just get something fluffy that they just found on Dribbble and copied the drop shadow and the gradient and all that, or grabbed the latest grotesque font that's super in right now.

But if your designer or your design team really understands the core business or what you're trying to do, then they go out and make better decisions. So then all of a sudden, your vision is definitely a mix of what the business needs through the product lens, with what a designer can actually do.

Anna Eaglin:

I think it's a balance there because you don't want to alienate people by ... You're right. If it's just some fluffy design that doesn't feel tied to anything you're doing now or doesn't show, it's a line to walk and a business oriented designer is the best ally to help you do that.

Christian Beck:

It was good to have Michael break that down and I think illustrate the value of having a business lens through design and its impact on product. This was another fantastic conversation and episode talking about the business of design with Michael Stacca from Dribbble. As always I'm Christian.

Anna Eaglin:

And I'm Anna, and this is Better Product. Thanks for listening to the show this week. If you're looking for more resources on how to design, build, market and sell better products, then head over to betterproduct.community to join, well, the community. As always, we're curious, what does Better Product mean to you? Shoot us an email at podcast@innovatemap.com.