Coley Logan is an American designer, builder, and content nerd based in Melbourne, Australia.

It all started in support

It’s June 29, 2011. A woman called EJ published a post to her personal travel blog about her Airbnb experience. She’d rented her San Francisco apartment to a guest for a week and came home to find it ransacked.

Just a few days later, I received my job offer from Jabu Dayton at Airbnb. They needed to scale support operations quickly. I joined as one of their very first AirCadets — aka phone support — packed my things, and left my college town for the West Coast. By July 9, I was in San Francisco at a party celebrating Airbnb’s $119M Series B. Our DJ was MC Hammer.

The first six months were all hands on deck. I took the swing shift for the higher pay — which meant guest check-ins. I got very good at managing conflict under pressure. It’s 3am in Paris and you’re locked out? I got you. Your host pulled a bait and switch and put you on a bug-infested mattress on the floor of an otherwise empty apartment in DC? He’s off the platform (ghosted!) and you’re in a clean place tonight. My cases never made headlines.

We built support and an entire trust and safety program more or less from scratch. Folks slept in the office at 99 Rhode Island. At one point, I was working so much that Jabu had to kill my keycard access for 24 hours to stay compliant with our employment laws. We had Chef Sam, fireside talks from Will.I.Am, and an Airbnb-themed drinking song.

Early on, the data science team started teaching SQL across the company. In support, we used it to advocate for the guests and hosts we talked to every day. My contributions to those initiatives directly shaped policies around refunds, disputes, and extenuating circumstances — work that others eventually evolved into Airbnb.org.

That’s where I learned to optimize team operations with words and data. In support, clarity is essential to smooth operations.

Then led to design

Then, I found Abstract. I inherited support operations running through Intercom. When I moved us to Zendesk, we revised the help center, its information architecture, and how we categorized tickets for data reporting. Our first response time immediately dropped from over 24 hours to under one. Within 30 days, general ticket volume was down 25%. Those changes also meant I could hold off scaling my team for an entire year.

When I moved into marketing and product work at Abstract, I brought the same perspective with me: optimize with clarity. In a product-focused role, I could be proactive and build clear experiences before they became support tickets.

All of my work in product teams is shaped by my experiences as a leader in support organizations. I evaluate design reviews, brainstorms, risk assesments through a customer-centric lens.

Fortunately, my career path has led me to work with ambitous teams. At Airbnb, we scaled support and built trust and safety. We built version control for design files and championed design systems to hundreds of world-class design organizations. My journey has shaped every aspect of my work.

Today, I’m looking for the next step in my journey. I’m searching for an inclusive, ambitious team who prioritizes human-centered design. I’m available for the right opportunities.

If you have something in mind, let me know. I’d love to chat.