The PDG Provides a Dick-Free Design Collaboration Space in Three Cities
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I can get behind any professional group that has “Don’t be a dick” as one of their three rules, as the three-city Product Design Guild does. The invitation-only group was founded by Xianhang Zhang, Brian Gupton & Enrique Allen, a “social interaction designer,” product manager and venture capitalist, respectively, and operates out of San Francisco, New York and (coming soon) Austin.
The purpose of the Product Design Guild is to create “a place where you can brainstorm ideas, receive informed critique, learn new techniques and all the other activities that are only possible in a group environment,” and the emphasis is less on shit-shooting and more on actual doing. According to an article in All Things Digital,
“There were lots of meetups for designers, where people get together to network or talk about design, but we wanted a place where people would come to do work,” Zhang said. “From the beginning that was a rule-you had to bring work to do, so it’s really popular with very busy people, who also tend to be in demand.”
After the jump is a video featuring attendee impressions from a Bay Area PDG meeting, and the ATD article features a video interview with Zhang where he discusses, among other things, how they handle the confidentiality problem (part of not being a dick). Check out the latter video here.
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