Joshua Dickens

Product Designer in Oakland, CA, He/Him

About Writing

Product Designer at Instagram, previously Apple. Pop culture and technology buff. Husband, dad.

Work Experience

2022 — Now

Product Designer at Humane

San Francisco, CA

🤐

2014 — 2022

Product Designer at Instagram

Design Lead and contributor for numerous features & products, including Video & Creative Tools, Layout, Boomerang, Stories and more.

2006 — 2013

Product Designer at Apple

Cupertino, CA

Designed numerous web & iOS apps for Apple's cloud services group: .Mac, MobileMe, iCloud

Projects

2021

Local Discovery at Instagram

Inspired by the ways Japanese users love using Instagram to find cool places to visit, we designed and built a new way to discover places on the map. Initially launched for the Japan market, it launched globally in July 2022.

2020

QR Codes at Instagram

Part of our Japan team's localized efforts, I designed & prototyped a custom QR code, replacing the previous implementation of Nametag with the more ubiquitous QR code.

2017

Superzoom at Instagram

Conceived a lighthearted camera effect, Superzoom, that took the classic "suspense" meme and made it a fun, one-tap experience.

2017

Face Filters at Instagram

Responsible for the UI, creative direction and even some of the implementation of our first version of AR Filters for instagram.

2016

Instagram Stories at Instagram

Design Lead for Instagram Stories. Designed The Ring™, Face Filters, Type Mode and more.

2015

Layout at Instagram

Designed Instagram's popular standalone collage creation app.

2011

Find My Friends at Apple

Product design lead from launch through the iOS 7 transition (rich corinthian leather → flat design). Designed & conceived of features like temporary sharing & geofence notifications, as well as location sharing within iMessage.

2009

iDisk for iOS at Apple

Designed one of Apple's first 2nd party apps — iDisk provided file access & sharing for MobileMe members.

2009

iCloud Photo Sharing at Apple

Design lead for numerous photo sharing features at Apple: .Mac/MobileMe Gallery, Photo Stream, Shared Albums and more.

Writing

2022

My Instagram Story

Wherein I describe my journey at Instagram—filled with self-doubt and anxiety hand-in-hand with great opportunities and personal growth.

Speaking

2021

High Fidelity Prototyping with Origami at 24 Hours of UX 2021

Taught an origami workshop as part of the 24 Hours of UX virtual conference

2019

High Fidelity Prototyping at CIID

Copenhagen

Not a talk, per se, but co-taught a mobile GUI course using Origami Studio, for Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design's IDP program in 2017, 2018, and 2019.

2018

The Future of Social Media at SXSW

Austin, TX

Panel discussion with Tutti Taygerly (FB), Rajni Jacques (Teen Vogue), moderated by Gene Liebel (Work & Co)

Side Projects

2020

Replace Layers

Figma plugin to easily replace one layer with another.

2017

Clean Up SFUI Text

Sketch Plugin to adjust character spacing on text layers set in SF (UI / Pro) Text Display fonts to match the system-applied spacing on iOS , and properly use the "Display" variant, per Apple's recommendations.