Method Podcast, Episode 2

Interaction Designer Rita DeRaedt talks about homeschooling, risk-taking, and getting coffee with Sergey Brin

Hosted by Google’s Aidan Simpson, the Method podcast profiles designers at Google, giving listeners an inside look at their journeys and design choices. In this episode, Aidan speaks with Interaction Designer Rita DeRaedt about crafting a new onboarding sequence for Google Voice, discovering design at an early age, and the power of taking risks. Subscribe to the Method podcast on Google Play, iTunes, or RSS.

A few highlights:

On getting unstuck from sticky design problems, 12:52 “Call it imposter syndrome, but sometimes you don't want to ask for feedback on something until it's perfect. It's about being a little humble and knowing that for the sake of being productive, happy, and not in a rut, [you do have to] loop in other designers on the product.”

On becoming a television presenter, 11:50 "If something's just intimidating enough, or just scary enough, I have a tendency to throw myself into the situation.”

On getting coffee with Google co-founder Sergey Brin, 1:52 "The other design interns and I had this ongoing joke that we were going to get Larry and Sergey to have a one-on-one with us . . . and because I wanted to make it happen, I kind of volunteered myself."

Handy info and links for this episode:

  • TGIAF: Google’s weekly social gathering where we discuss the week’s news and product launches, before conducting a company-wide Q&A
  • "Koala" cars: Nickname for an early version of Google’s self-driving car
  • Brand persona: A set of human-like attributes and values that represent a product or brand's "personality"
  • Drop-off rate: The percentage of users who fail to move beyond step one in a product interaction

Rita DeRaedt is a San Francisco-based interaction designer working on YouTube(and formerlyGoogle Voice). Hailing from Ohio, Rita began her freelance design career at age 15 and went on to study Visual Communication Technology at Bowling Green State University. She’s also a TV personality who’s presented on the BBC show Technobabble*.*