First of Kind Joe Gebbia: Designer-in-Chief
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Feb 12, 2026 
Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb and the U.S. Chief Design Officer, left tech to modernize federal digital services. He recounts prototyping a digital retirement system, tackling paper archives, and building the National Design Studio. Conversations cover consumer-grade government experiences, designing trust at scale, and assembling a design dream team to touch every federal digital surface.
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Use Unscalable Prototypes To Learn
- Do things that don't scale early to learn fast and build proof points.
- Use hands-on experiments to surface issues and rally stakeholders to iterate quickly.
From Months To Sixty Seconds
- Rewriting the software stack allowed all new federal retirements to go paperless as of August 1st.
- What took months now takes about 60 seconds for basic retirements.
Design Is A Bipartisan Win
- Good design is broadly bipartisan and widely appreciated across political lines.
- Improving usability, speed, and clarity on government sites attracts cross-aisle support.