Accelerate Innovation

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Designers and developers work on different timelines—designers look to the future while developers build from what’s already been designed. They speak different languages and follow different processes. How can we bridge these gaps and build a more collaborative development process? This talk will showcase how design systems can improve communication between cross-functional teams—while boosting productivity and innovation.

This talk has been presented at React Day Berlin 2022, check out the latest edition of this React Conference.

FAQ

Christobal Chao is a professional with a background in engineering, originally from Spain, now based in New York City. He has worked for Google and was instrumental in the creation of Material Design versions one and two. He also founded his own front-end studio in New York.

Christobal Chao worked at Google where he helped build version one and version two of Material Design. He also worked on Google Search and Maps, focusing on evangelizing component systems.

According to Christobal Chao, quick iterations are crucial in innovation as they allow for faster validation of assumptions and a better understanding of the problem being addressed, which is essential in developing successful solutions.

The story 'You are Solving the Ground Problem' highlights the importance of approaching problems from the right perspective. It discusses the challenge of designing a human-powered airplane and how shifting the focus to quick rebuilding led to success after many failures.

Design Thinking is a systematic approach to innovation that starts with empathizing with users, defining problems, ideating solutions, prototyping, and testing. This method emphasizes quick iteration over assumptions to learn from each test and improve the solution iteratively.

Component systems, such as those used in React, allow developers to reuse components, thereby saving time and effort in product development. This modularity enables quicker experimentation and iteration, which are key to rapid innovation and validation of ideas.

Christobal Chao mentioned the integration of production components from a storybook to Figma, which allows developers to sync properties and variations directly, enhancing the design-to-development workflow and enabling prototyping with high fidelity components.

Cristobal Chao
Cristobal Chao
10 min
02 Dec, 2022

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Video Summary and Transcription
Today's Talk focuses on accelerating innovation and the importance of solving the right problem. Design Thinking and the product life cycle are discussed as tools for product innovation. The R approach, which involves constant experimentation and learning, is introduced. The idea of syncing production components from storybook to Figma is explored. Finally, the Talk emphasizes the role of developers as the new creators, unlocking their powers to innovate.
Available in Español: Acelerar la Innovación

1. Introduction and Background

Short description:

Today, I'm going to talk about accelerate innovation and give background about myself. I started working for a startup in San Francisco, which was later acquired by Google. I worked on Material Design and Google Search and Maps. Now, let's dive into the topic of innovation.

How's everyone doing today? Woo! All right. So today I'm going to talk about accelerate innovation. What that is. All right. Before that, I'm going to give background about myself. My name is Christobal Chao. I come from New York City. As you can tell, I have an accent. I'm from Spain. Sorry about what happened yesterday in soccer. The World Cup. Sorry, Germans. It was terrible. We should have won, but something happened, guys. Sorry. Anyways.

So ten years ago I went to San Francisco and I started working for a startup. Was a front-end company. I was the first engineer. And a year later, Google acquired the company. And I was the only engineer as part of this acquisition. It was a tough bet. But I had the opportunity to work for Material Design. And I helped build version one and version two. After that, I worked for Google Search and Maps, evangelizing component systems. three years ago, I moved to New York. And I started my own front end studio. So yeah, this is myself. And today we're going to talk about innovation.

So as you may know, every day there are millions and millions of ideas.

2. Importance of Solving the Right Problem

Short description:

But only very few of them are successful. You may want to ask yourself, if you have an idea, that if you are actually solving the right problem? Let me share a story. This is 1959. Henry Cramer came with this question, like can an airplane fly power only by the pilot's body power? So he offered £100,000 to whoever can cross a canal over 3 kilometers. Ten years later, no one has figured that out yet. But Paul McGrady came to play with this question. How can you build a plane that could be rebuilt in hours, not months? In six months only, he was actually able to cross the canal over three kilometers. The story is called You are Solving the Ground Problem. It was published by the Stanford University of Innovation. I highly recommend it. Take a look. It's a pretty cool story. But I think the most important part here is how important are quick iterations to understand the problem better and better. And now we're talking about digital products, right? So what happens with digital products?

But only very few of them are successful. You may want to ask yourself, if you have an idea, that if you are actually solving the right problem? And probably not. The reason being is, we are all constrained by our, of our old bias and experiences. And that actually takes us away from the right problem.

Let me share a story. This is 1959. Henry Cramer came with this question, like can an airplane fly power only by the pilot's body power? It was crazy, right? Like almost a century ago, someone asked this question, like flying, like a bike that flies. Like E.T., right? So he offered £100,000 to whoever can cross a canal over 3 kilometers. So big players were there. NASA, and other big companies. As well as individuals. Ten years later, no one has figured that out yet. It's crazy, right? Ten years. They were investing a lot of money into this. They were failing again and again. But the thing is, every single project was taking too long to put together a bike that flies. Like months. Even years. 18 years later, no one has figured that out yet. But Paul McGrady came to play with this question. How can you build a plane that could be rebuilt in hours, not months? So with this perspective, he was actually able to create a bike that flies and fix it every day a few times in a matter of hours. So he could validate his assumptions super, super quickly. In six months only, he was actually able to cross the canal over three kilometers. The story is called You are Solving the Ground Problem. It was published by the Stanford University of Innovation. I highly recommend it. Take a look. It's a pretty cool story. But I think the most important part here is how important are quick iterations to understand the problem better and better.

And now we're talking about digital products, right? So what happens with digital products? So again, Stanford University comes with this system.

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