05
AUGUST 20, 2017 / 49 MIN

Alex Schleifer: a mission to belong anywhere

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Featuring
Alex Schleifer

Alex Schleifer

Head of Design, Airbnb
About The Episode

Airbnb’s mission is both simple and powerful: to help create a world where you can belong anywhere. Alex Schleifer, Airbnb’s head of design, fully embraces this mission. To create the products that make the Airbnb experience so welcoming and immersive, he also believes in being product driven, and organizes his teams in an Engineering, Product, Design (EPD) structure, which they also call “the triforce.”

Have a listen as Aarron and Eli talk with Alex about the advantages of this team structure, and about some of the problems companies run into when they try to create a “design-led” culture. They also dig into Airbnb’s mission and vision, and talk about the tradeoffs between quality and speed when building products. Enjoy the episode, and may the triforce be with you!

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Alex Schleifer’s Bio

Alex is a designer, who as a teenager co-founded the digital agency Sideshow, which went on to produce award-winning work for a variety of global clients. They were acquired by Say Media in 2011.

He’s been on the incredible design team at Airbnb since 2015.

Meet Your Hosts

Aarron Walter
VP of Design Education

Aarron Walter is Director of Product on the COVID Response team at Resolve to Save Lives. Previously, he was VP of Design Education at InVision, and founded the UX practice at Mailchimp where he helped grow the product from a few thousand users to more than 10 million. He’s the author of a number of books, the latest of which is a second edition of Designing for Emotion. Aarron’s design guidance has helped the White House, the US Department of State, and dozens of major corporations, startups, and venture capital firms.

You can find Aarron on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Eli Woolery
Director of Design Education

Eli is the Director of Design Education at InVision. His design career spans both physical and digital products, and he has worked with companies ranging from startups (his own and others) to Fortune 500 companies.

In addition to his background in product and industrial design, he has been a professional photographer and filmmaker. He teaches the senior capstone class Implementation to undergraduate Product Designers at Stanford University. You can find Eli on Twitter and Medium.

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