Tanner Christensen
To be inspired, and inspire others
A principles-driven software product designer and builder with 20+ years of experience.
My work centers on designing tools, systems, and interfaces that make advanced technology usable, reliable, and valuable.
Managing software design of the AI-driven Lattice platform for maritime fully autonomous robots. Including maturation of the software empowering the planning and operation of long term autonomy missions. Contributing to software product design team culture and rituals, as well as Anduril design systems and internal practices.
Designed foundational systems, frameworks, and tools for product teams to communicate with Netflix members. Created proprietary tools for content management, enhancing Netflix Studio's efficiency.
As Gem's first design hire, I established and led the product design process, team, and strategy. Helped the company achieve a unicorn status, reaching a $1.2 billion valuation.
Key design stakeholder in Lyft's autonomous engineering software design, reducing data curation costs by 900%. Developed a web platform for fleet management, reducing vehicle onboarding time by 85%. Designed and launched Lyft's first web-based rider platform.
Led mobile platform design, enhancing user feedback and aligning global product teams for Atlassian.
At Facebook, designed a new, unified Ads Manager platform for 2.5 million advertisers. Shipped dozens of new, creative ways for Facebook users to express themselves. Led design on a powerful camera effects platform for billions of creators. Built a foundational design system for the Facebook Profile surface. Led much of Facebook's overarching culture of design by leading workshops, hosting public design lectures, an creating resources at facebook.design.
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How I supercharge my work journal with Notion AI
I began a work journal for my Netflix projects one day after starting the job. I update the journal semi-regularly, documenting everything from daily activities, achievements, feedback, and ideas, to priorities, challenges, and visuals such as prototypes or design critiques. The journal has been valuable for documenting my work and reflecting on my experiences and growth. But the integration of Notion AI has taken my work journal to new heights, magnifying its value tenfold. Before I get into details, I'll briefly address the critics and naysayers: Is a work journal in Notion, paired with Notion AI, really all that valuable? Yes. It has exceeded what I imagined possible and helped me summarize my work, generate insights into my behaviors, identify trends, create a strong outline for a future case study, and much more. I use Notion AI in my journal to analyze sentiment across projects, extract themes, highlight frequently mentioned projects, and compile blog posts and case studies. Notion AI has been beneficial in generating insights for self-assessment. Asking the app to "Highlight what strengths the author seems to have, then highlight the areas for improvement" offers an interesting perspective on my work. The natural language processing capabilities of Notion AI enable time-boxed queries and interpretations, making it easier to assess and identify valuable insights. For example, running a prompt like "Summarize the most impactful things I did this year" provides fantastic results. Setting goals for upcoming quarters has become more effective, and summarizing specific work periods, like "the last quarter," saves time while providing a unique way to reflect on past work. At the end of each month, I now ask Notion AI to "Summarize the past month of work entries" for a quick and easy overview of the month's work. Additionally, the AI-generated design case studies based on my journal entries are incredibly accurate and can be enhanced by adding a personal perspective. Asking the AI to "Generate a design focused case study of the most recent project in this journal" returns incredible results. However, asking the AI to then "Make the case study more personal and reflective" amplifies the case study to an exceptional level. While I can't share specific examples due to confidentiality, I wholeheartedly recommend starting a work journal in Notion. After a few months of logging your experiences, thoughts, concerns, ideas, etc., take advantage of the built-in AI. Notion AI can seriously help make sense of your work journal, identify themes, summarize your experience, generate case study outlines, set goals for future projects, and much more.
Using a work journal to create design case studies
Testing
Systems thinking is what makes designers great
I used to believe that what made great designers so great was their craft; their ability to add polish and style to whatever they touched. Now I see that what makes exceptional designers so incredible is not only their attention to detail, but their ability to think holistically about their work. Long ago, I would spend time browsing Dribbble or Behance and admiring the beautiful aesthetics and animations I saw there. I'd look at portfolios of the most stylish, trendy work for everything from logos and websites to app designs and character illustrations. Whenever I encountered something that seemed highly polished, I'd think: "This is great design!" It's easy to view design as making things pretty, as though the presentation of the work is all that matters because that's the thing we can see. For those outside the design world, this is a similar perspective to that of art. We tend to celebrate art for its appearance. Apple famously makes beautiful objects and proudly shows them off as such under the veil of "great design." At some level, this notion that good design is polished craft is true—craft (a delicate process of detail) and visual polish matter significantly in design. But what I've learned over time is that the best designers can think holistic about the work, not just its presentation. They have a keen ability to think and imagine beyond just the design on the screen or canvas. Inexperienced designers tend to think only within the boundaries of what they're making. They've heard that building a deep understanding of what they're making will strengthen it but often narrow their focus, so they fail to understand how putting their work out into the world might break it apart. The design these inexperienced designers create fails to stand up when it encounters someone with a disability or is taken out of context or distorted by size or time. Poor design meets one need while creating a dozen others. Good design resolves problems without negatively affecting anything else in its ecosystem. We call this lens of thinking "systems thinking." It tends to separate the genuinely great designers from the pretty-great ones. The designers who do tremendous work know that what they're creating does not exist within a bubble. They understand that the context of what they're making plays a vital role in how the team should build it. They know how what they create affects everything it touches, particularly the people. The design is intentional. Trade-offs are known, weighted, and decided on. Not only in the immediate problem space but in the surrounding spaces too. If you want to be an average designer: focus on a narrow perspective around whatever you're making. Don't worry about how what you make will affect the industry or the people who use or encounter it in different capacities. Don't worry about those who will have to evolve the design or those who might come after you to tweak it. On the other hand, if you want to be a designer whose impact is beyond a narrow scope: constantly hone your process to consider the range of what—and who—your design work will impact. You can do this in many ways, some of which have been documented in-depth across the Internet. Build out extremes of your work, the most straightforward and complex versions. Not to say you've done it, but to get a feel for what those extremes look or feel like in context. Build always with the intent of sharing your work (even if that's not going to happen). Sharing work early and often might mean leaving ample notes or comments in your working documents if you're on a team. If you're working independently, leave the comments anyway. You never know when you'll have to return to some old work and how quickly statements and well-structured documents can help you reconnect and understand the work. Invite others to provide feedback as often as possible and engage them with questions and curiosities about how their work shapes their perspective of your work. Look at the larger ecosystem your designs need to exist in, and you'll build things that look better (due to consistency and familiarity) and function better. And that's what makes someone a phenomenal designer.
