Ask what you can give

I was listening to the Dive Club podcast with Flora Guo as a guest. There were a lot of memorable moments, but the one that really stuck was her idea that designers should treat the internet the way a good host treats a room. Ask what you can give rather than what you can get: notes, artifacts, events you put on. She makes things for her friends as gifts. That sat with me for a few weeks without anywhere to go.

Then I spent a Monday at the Fashion Nova office in Beverly Hills. A design workshop, lunch, then four back-to-back conversations. Six people over four hours. I could have sent the recruiter one email with six individual thank-you notes in it. I thought of Flora instead and wanted to make this a gift too. The day was memorable and I wanted to give that back as something memorable.

I built out a game, a representation of the office with the different hubs and the cross functions that I got to meet, interact and learn from during my interview process. It's an isometric floor you walk around in the browser. The recruiter meets you at the entrance, welcomes you in and tells you how to move, and then you walk the building and leave a note with each of the six people who interviewed me, each of them standing about where I met them. A table by the door keeps every note you've handed over so you can read them again.

I designed it, and my new best friend Claude built it, haha.

Resources

fashion-nova-hq.vercel.app — walk around the office. Arrow keys or WASD, space to talk, T to change the palette.