For Matt Walsh, Great Design Always Begins with Empathy
Matt Walsh lives outside of Denver, and is the founder and CEO of Green Stone. Eleven years in, the firm has already had the pleasure of delivering solutions for Moen, American Express, LexisNexis, Logitech, and many other clients across the country and world.
Prior to Green Stone, Matt spent eight years founding, building, and leading a team of 25 experience designers at Crispin (formerly Crispin, Porter + Bogusky) in Boulder, as well as a couple of years at R/GA on the Nike account in New York, where he helped craft a number of influential platforms including NikeID and Nike+.
Through that journey, his projects have won many marquee industry awards, but he gets far more excited about winning the hearts and minds of the people he designs for.
LBB> Tell us about your current role and design specialism(s).
Matt> Building on my background as a UX designer, I founded Green Stone 11 years ago. Today, I split my time between three things: running the day-to-day of the firm, finding new clients who share our passions and aspirations, and brainstorming new opportunities to enhance the manner in which Green Stone brings value to both clients and the customers they serve.
In terms of design specialisms, I’m passionate about organisational design and challenging assumptions that deserve to be challenged. I also love helping legacy brands take evolutionary leaps as they strive to capitalise on their historical credibility in a modern and multi-dimensional way.
LBB> What drew you to design in the first place and how has your design career evolved?
Matt> I’ve always had a way of thinking that naturally fit with my becoming a UX’er. My father brought me up as a speed chess player, always trying to put myself in my opponent’s head to empathise and anticipate their next move. ‘If I do this, they’ll do that’, and so forth.
From there, I wrote a choose-your-own-adventure book in seventh grade – 65 pages of ‘If you want to grab the sword, go to page 29’, with narrative arcs paying off each decision.
Lastly, in high school, I never doodled; I always drew mazes. I had amazingly intricate and complex mazes that always worked, and I’d even get upset when someone would solve my maze from end to start. So, I started drawing from both directions so it’d be as difficult each way.
Through all of it and more, I had a brain that was well-wired for the career path I wound up on. That being said, I had a few detours along the way.
Initially, I got really into short-form video editing, with internships at NFL Films, Ruder Finn, and MTV. From there, grad school got me into game design. When I couldn’t find a job in that industry, a friend suggested I freelance at R/GA, which turned out to be an incredible opportunity for me to discover interaction design. It quickly felt like home.
At R/GA I learned how to do the craft. Then I jumped to Crispin (formerly Crispin, Porter + Bogusky), where I learned how to build and train a department that could do that craft. In more recent years, Green Stone has taught me how to build a sustainable business built on that craft.
Through it all, my journey in design has brought me inspiration, frustration, joy, and, most importantly, a life and career that I’m proud of.
LBB> What aspects of design do you get really nerdy about personally?
Matt> Lately, I've been enthusiastic about designing and building appreciating assets instead of depreciating ones. Much of my career has involved creating brands, designs, personas, studies, products, and platforms that, once launched slowly, lose value and relevance over time.
However, the modern era of AI and dynamic optimisation excites me with the potential to design appreciating assets: intelligent systems that are built to learn and evolve. These systems are built with the recognition that launch or delivery is a start line, not an end line. That’s what’s been getting me excited lately.
LBB> There are so many new design tools out - what tools do you like to use and why?
Matt> I’m the guy that’s still delusionally optimistic about generative AI design tools. It used to be that you had to work your way up the ladder for years before you had junior creatives to help bring your ideas to life and scale your potential.
Now, anyone, from a high schooler to a retiree, has the support of so many powerful tools to help them realise the full power of their imagination. I love it.
LBB> Design thinking - thoughts?
Matt> For decades, CX and UX’ers have gotten far too hung up on debating esoteric, philosophical concepts and labels like this. It’s part of why our field has lost credibility, in my opinion. Too much ‘design for design’s sake’, with trendy hipsters dropping buzzwords as they fail to justify their craft’s value to decision-makers. I’d rather leave the debating for academics and conference panels, and focus on delivering meaningful value to real people.
The work and results should speak for themselves – whatever the philosophy that got you there.
LBB> What are the most persistent misconceptions about your particular design specialism that you see across the advertising and marketing landscape?
Matt> In advertising and marketing work, the most persistent misconception has been that UX’ers and technologists can’t come up with ‘the big idea’. Typically, they don’t even include us until a couple of rounds in, once the macro-direction has been set, to come up with tactical executions within that umbrella space.
I’ve found that to be shortsighted and counterproductive. UX’ers and technologists are exceptional at viewing the world, the customer, and the brand differently – and often, that challenging of assumptions is exactly what’s needed to illuminate the bigger opportunity.
LBB> Accessible design is an increasingly prominent topic - from your experience what are the most challenging facets of accessible design? And what does best practice in accessible design in your particular design specialism look like?
Matt> Regardless of your target audience, great design always begins with empathy. Our approach to accessibility is no different. We try to empathise and anticipate the needs of our various audiences and craft solutions that maximise the value we can deliver to them. While that sounds easy, it is very challenging. Seeing the world through another’s eyes always is tricky, especially when the person can’t actually see!
LBB> What design controversies or challenges do you find trickiest to navigate or do you find yourself thinking about most frequently?
Matt> I grew up a jaded New Yorker and East Coaster. In fact, I almost left the company I was at rather than relocate out to Colorado because I had no interest in ‘flyover country’. It wasn’t until I was a few years into living out here that I really appreciated how jaded not only I was, but our industry was as a whole. We had turned into a ‘trickle down design’ world of coastal elites who were so focused on the latest MOMA launch that they had no idea what was happening politically, financially, or culturally outside of Dumbo and Mission District.
Green Stone was ‘distributed by design’ from the start because I wanted to build a relentlessly curious culture of top-tier creatives who could bridge urban to rural and manufacturing centers to design centers. A collection of visionaries who truly believed Ada, Oklahoma had as much to teach New York City as it had to teach Ada.
That DNA is a huge part of our culture, but also one of the trickiest bits to nurture and protect.
LBB> How do you think about the ethics of design?
Matt> I have a scribbled note next to my computer that’s been there since my first day of Green Stone in 2014. It has three words, “Make Victor Proud.” Victor is my son, and if I’m ever questioning the ethics of one of my design decisions, I use that simple goal as my lens for making decisions.
LBB> What are some of your favourite examples of creative design solutions that inspire you?
Matt> For most of my career, I’ve aspired to eliminate dead ends from customer journeys, and my favourite example was still one of the simplest. It was a wine bottle that had a label with a perforated ‘to remember, peel here’ tab featuring the bottle’s details.
That simple tab turned that bottle from the end of a journey into the start of a new one, without a single digital element in sight. It was elegant, effective and inspiring for me as a designer.
LBB> Which design projects throughout your career have been the most satisfying to work on and why?
Matt> I get excited when we’re focused on earning sales and loyalty through experience, rather than buying them through ads, points, gimmicks and giveaways. Whether in a commoditised or luxury industry, I love finding those ‘pizza tracker’ moments to deliver meaningful value that is dynamic, differentiated and effective.
Systems that build value that far transcends a campaign window. Experiences that don’t just say the brand promise, but rather prove the brand promise out on the journey to and through the product or service. That’s what’s most satisfying to me, and the aspiration for Green Stone as well.
LBB> What's going on at the moment in design that's getting you particularly excited? Who are your design heroes and why?
Matt> As a designer, I'm drawn to disruption for its inherent opportunities. Predictably, the disruption of AI and its subsequent ripple effects across CX, digital, and brand design deeply excite me at the moment. I love that nobody has all of the answers, and we’re all just feeling our way through it together. That’s both fascinating and inspiring.
As to ‘design heroes’, I’ve personally never really gotten too hung up on the personalities behind the work I find interesting. There are certainly designers I admire and respect from my own journey. I wouldn’t have grown into the designer I did without the guidance and support of folks like Richard Ting, Rei Inamoto, Jeff Benjamin, and so many others. That being said, I tend to find my ‘heroes’ in the world outside of the office.
LBB> Thinking of people at the beginning of their career, what advice would you give them for navigating this constantly changing field?
Matt> First off, be relentlessly curious. Curious about the world around you, curious about new tools, curious about the brands you work with, curious about the people you design for, and more.
Don’t hide behind assumptions. Never be complete. Be curious enough to constantly learn and evolve, as the world and industry will keep evolving around you, whether or not you choose to keep up.
Second, don’t underestimate the importance of growing your network and maintaining relationships from an early age. The work and your portfolio is important, no doubt. You need a reputation for doing good work.
That being said, it’s the people you know that unlock opportunities and perspective, not just your resume. You’d be surprised how often that classmate who is trying to break their way into the industry today turns into the chief design officer of that Fortune 500 10 years from now.
