MEET DAVID GUILLEN-PENSO
I see what could happen.
Then I figure out how to make it real.
Then I figure out how to make it real.
My career has moved through schools, startups, software, learning, customer experience, products, events, prototypes, and a few ideas that probably should have stayed on a whiteboard.
The medium changes.
The work usually doesn't.
The work usually doesn't.
THE ROLE I ACTUALLY PLAY
I'm not usually the best craftsperson in the room.
I'm the person responsible for the whole thing coming together.
I frame the problem. Shape the experience. Get the right people involved. Cut through the red tape. Learn whatever I need to learn. Build enough to make the idea visible.
And when the work needs craft I don't have, I bring in people who do.
THE BIAS
I have a bias toward making ideas tangible.
Sometimes that means learning 3D software because I need to see whether an idea works.
Sometimes it means building a product while feature creep is standing behind me with a knife.
Sometimes it means creating an experience before I have all the ideal people, money, tools, or certainty.
The first version is rarely the point.
The point is getting an idea out of abstraction and into a form people can react to.
A FEW THINGS I BELIEVE
People understand more when they participate.
Complexity needs a path, not another explanation.
Perspective changes understanding.
Access changes what people can imagine for themselves.
The environment is part of the message.
Sometimes the fastest way to understand an idea is to build enough of it to fail intelligently.
The best experiences make the participant feel more capable, not more impressed by the person who designed them.
WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR NOW
Give me ambiguity.
I work best on messy, cross-functional problems where the experience matters and the answer isn't obvious yet.
I'm drawn to work somewhere between experience design, creative production, learning, technology, storytelling, spatial thinking, and human behavior.
Basically, the places where "best practices" aren't enough.