Design for Utility

This Soapbox has come and gone!

  • Amanda Linden, Head of Design at Asana

We hope to see you at the next Soapbox. We'll update this page soon with interesting tidbits about the event plus the podcast!

About Amanda Linden

Design is so much more than making things look appealing, it’s about solving problems. And if there’s a problem that people have been wrestling with for centuries, it’s effective communication and collaboration. Billions of dollars are spent every year on ways to help people be more productive and work together better. A challenging problem for sure, but it’s one Amanda Linden and her team at Asana are tackling and with amazing results.

Amanda is a product designer that is used to solving big, complex problems. In her career, she has helped some of the world’s biggest organization and financial institutions simplify problems and build products used by millions. She’s designed for Yahoo!, Wells Fargo, and Intuit prior to her current role as Head of Design at Asana.

Asana, the team collaboration app created by Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz and ex-engineer Justin Rosenstein, is being used by teams at Airbnb, Samsung, Uber, Tesla, and NASA to move their projects forward. It recently underwent a dramatic redesign that layered some of the app’s complexity while at the same time introducing new features and bold colors. It’s an app and service that has clear utility but still manages to look great in the process.

On Friday, September 23rd, we’ll be sitting down with Amanda to talk about the differences between designing for enterprise and consumers, how to balance aesthetics with utility in design, and where Asana is going next.

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