The Grit

Season I
 Linzi berry
THE GRIT SEASON I

E-BOOK CONTAINS

JASMINE FRIEDL
EVERY ARTIST WE HAVE

FEATURED ON

Tanner Christensen
AVOCODE.COM/BLOG Meng To
Ivy Mukherjee
Jory Raphael
Tori Hinn
Julie Delanoy
Noah Stokes
Yuan Wang
Linzi
Berry
Linzi
Berry
From flash websites to
design systems with Linzi
Berry, Design System Lead
at Lyft
Introducing our new While everyone is talking about their importance,

only a few brave designers are actually pursuing

interview series  — The Grit.
how to build and maintain them. Since only a few

people have so much experience with Design

Grit in definition means: “perseverance, the Systems as Linzi Berry, she was an obvious

strength of character and passion for long-term choice for this interview.

goals.”

Linzi Berry was born in western Massachusetts,

People high in grit are able to maintain their raised north of Boston, went to school in upstate

determination and motivation over a long period New York (RIT), and since then have been in the

of time. They overcome the obstacles to achieve Bay Area for 10 years. She’s actively putting

greatness. It has become even a better precursor effort into maintaining a healthy work/life

to success than something hazy like IQ, which is balance, enjoys making Instagram videos of her

why their stories are truly inspiring.

crazy cats and loves dinners, tattoos, RuPaul’s

Drag Race at The Cafe in Castro and stand up

In this series, we’d like to bring these stories paddleboarding.

closer to you. Meet our first guest Linzi Berry,

Design System Lead at Lyft.

Designs Systems has become sort of a buzzword

of 2018.
Hey Linzi, thanks for taking
the time. How did you start
with design in general?
When I was itty bitty, my mom was an interior
designer, and my dad was a project manager for
Hasbro games — so you could say it’s in my
blood. I had a fantastic art program at my high
I was there for 7.5 years, from junior designer to
associate creative director, from single to married
(my coworker), from flash websites to responsive
web to soda touch screens to design systems.
Most people moved around every two years in
tech, but I stayed because the people were
talented, genuine, and funny — and I’m lucky
enough that I was able to acknowledge that that
was rare.

school and won a partial scholarship into RIT’s

New Media program. It was a trifecta of timely
digital design: flash websites, tv opening
animation, and dope 3D renders. Truthfully what I
took away from my college experience was how
to learn quickly, not become too attached to
process, and great visual design.
In 2017 I wanted to stop working on luxury clients
and put my dedication into a company I truly
believed in, who saw the good in humanity and
pushed for eco-friendly solutions. I’ve been at
Lyft ever since.

I had done a ton of internships during school, but

the bubble burst and recession hit and all of my
prospects in NYC fell apart. Life doesn’t always
go the way you planned. My professor and
mentor told me to go west. I finally landed a gig
at Odopod, a digital agency, as one of their first
junior designers.
What is your favorite project Looking back, this project prepared me for
that you worked on? where I am today… and I’m still proud of it.

My favorite project, outside of my current one,

was working on a design for the Fitbit web
dashboard.

“Fitbit helped me get active and lose 30lbs,

so getting to work on a product that had
changed my life was a dream come true.”

When you’re at an agency, you pitch beautiful

pages that feel own-able, but this was the first
time my designs were hit with accessibility and
common color recognition feedback. At the time
I thought their feedback was super picky, they
kept wanting me to change and test the colors
over and over again. I was treating it like a
perfect design project that I could wrap in a bow
and hand-off, and they were treating it as a
product to be iterated on.
As an expert on design
systems, how would you
explain a design system to
someone who has never heard
of it before?
A design system is an internal product made up
of 3 parts:
Build
We define and uphold principles, like localization,
accessibility and solving the root of the problem.
We build & maintain flexible, universal
foundational attributes and components to Lyft’s
quality standards in design, Android, and iOS.
Contribute
We deliver a consistent user experience for key
flows and features by participating in the
adoption and migration of current designs and
code into the system.
Support
We educate teams on how to use core elements
and apply the system’s principles to build their
own. The biggest way we do this is through
documentation. We also lecture at all-hands,
teach classes, host office hours, and answer
questions on Slack.
“A design system is the canonical way
designers and engineers design and
develop at your company. It is universal
across products and platforms, delivers
consistency and predictability, reduces
design and engineering time and debt, and
raises the quality of our experiences.”
Our principles define quality, foundational
elements give constraints, and components are
consistent, coherent, and reduce time and debt.
However, the most important part of the system
is collaboration with, education and support for
the teams using it.
 I had designed systems for companies in the

past and I knew how valuable it could be to have

this guiding light amidst the chaos. Flash forward

to today, I’m on a team of highly skilled designers

broken into three parts: design systems, design

tools, and illustration.

I lead the design systems tiny, but mighty, team

of two — covering all of mobile and web.

Currently the sole designer on mobile, I work

closely with our four detail-oriented engineers

(two Android and two iOS.)

My typical day is bouncing between studying

best practices, designing solutions that work

What’s it like to be leading the
best for us, and supporting my team as well as all

design systems team at Lyft? of the product designers and mobile engineers

at Lyft.

Lyft hired me for my visual design skills. I started

on a product feature team and pushed to pursue

design systems because, at the time, designing

at Lyft was the wild west.

 Deliver coherency and predictability to our

product because multiple teams solving the

same problem differently creates a disjointed

user experience.

Raise the quality of our experiences for every

person and every edge case because not

designing for edge cases, accessibility or

localization creates broken experiences.

Reduce design and engineering time and

debt because one of the designs and code

takes time to create and update.

Create a universal design system that works

Could you describe Lyft’s
best for Lyft on all platforms because fast

current design system

timelines mean only designing for one

solution? platform leaving developers to make

assumptions.

Our current design system solution is built

around our opportunities for greatest impact. We

aim to:
 A templated, modular system was the only way

to accomplish large site redesigns for companies

like Coca-Cola, Hennessy, and Hawaiian Airlines.

I lovingly built these systems out, each with

robust documentation, and handed it off to the

client. Months later a subpar version launched

with many new colors, type styles, and

components that weren’t in the pristine original.

I went in house at Lyft to gain experience in

maintaining the system over time and to figure

out what happened from agency handoff to

product launch.

You mentioned you have built

design systems before. How

was that different?

I began developing design systems on the

agency side at the beginning of a responsive

web. The work tripled, while our resources and

available time didn’t.

While design systems If there is a bug in a system component, that is
constantly evolve, what
priority 0. System components are used
is the initial process behind everywhere and if they break, they break
everywhere. Fix the bugs immediately! Listen to
building it? your engineers. If you’re fortunate, they will
reach out with feature requests for one of the
system patterns (because their designer
As I mentioned before, a design system is an
changed it slightly.)

internal product. Like any product, it’s good to

start with understanding the real problems your
Get to the root of why it was changed. Just cause
company has that a system can solve, but also
they felt like it? Because they didn’t know the
be open to the possibility that not every
rules of the pattern? Because of a legitimate use
company needs a design system. Create goals
case? Decide, as a team, if that new feature is
that have a business impact then get buy-in with
worth supporting. You can do this by assessing if
a test project. Many design systems start as
it still follows the goals of the pattern or breaks
grass-roots efforts, but in order for them to gain
them. Ask the team if they’d be willing to
traction beyond the designer and engineers who
contribute their new feature back to the pattern
are already on board — leadership buy-in is a
or if it’s something the system team should take
must.
on. Contributions are the best.

We have yet to go through a redesign with the

And how do you keep it system, but when we do I’ll let you know how it
fresh — up to date? goes!
Bonus Question: What’s your
favorite way to eat avocado?
Not healthy at all… but my favorite way to eat
avocado is cut into wedges, battered and fried
with pickled slaw, pico de gallo, and spicy aioli
on homemade corn tortillas. (At Hook Fish Co,
San Francisco.)

Want to stay in touch with Linzi? Find her on

Twitter, Instagram, Medium or have a look at her
website.
JASMINE

FRIEDL
JASMINE

FRIEDL
The career path of the new
Head of Design at
Intercom: Jasmine Friedl
Hello Jasmine. Can you tell us
a little about yourself?
I have one “shocker” fun fact that I pull out in
interviews and awkward icebreakers: I was born
at home. My parents paid the midwife forty bucks
and half a pig for the delivery and — as it later
came out — it may have been only twenty bucks.
The reason I bring this up is obviously for a few
giggles, but for me: it’s important to remember
where I came from, which was not from much. I
was born in a one-bedroom shack in northern
Wisconsin with insulation coming out of the walls.
My parents were residual hippies, and for my
entire childhood, my dad’s work history was
spotty. My mom was a stay-at-home mom for
most of her life — an amazing and incredible
undertaking — but the scenario didn’t do much for
propelling career aspirations.
When I talk about growing up with very little, I’m
also very conscious of the privilege granted to
me based sheerly on the lightness of my skin. I
had access to reasonable education, and I was
generally looked upon positively; opportunities
were possible for me and trouble didn’t find me.
This doesn’t mean that my journey has been
easy.
I often remind myself that I’ve worked very hard
to move beyond the low expectations that were
set for me, which at minimum was making more
than my parents and going to college. I never in
my wildest dreams thought I would or could be
much more than a school teacher. Don’t get me
wrong, teachers have the most difficult jobs and
are the some of the most driven, kind and caring
people I know. I’ve seen the incredible impact of
teachers and administrators and school leaders
during my time working in education.
It was just that being a teacher was really the
only profession that seemed viable to me based
on what I was observing in the careers of women
around me. I am incredibly grateful for my
journey, particularly to the people who lifted me
up along the way and served as exemplars for
me to be inspired by and aspire to. There’s
definitely some “from poverty to tech” story in
here that I have yet to write, but that’s for another
time.
Let’s go through your design
journey. How did it all start?
I went to a very small Christian school in the
midwest for junior high and high school. I was
co-valedictorian, with an equal GPA to my best
friend. She and I are still to this day super tight,
and I love our paths. We were both “good” at
everything and got to dabble in everything from
volleyball and basketball to drama and choir and
all the typical extracurriculars.
We were both in accelerated calculus, getting As
in science, and taking basic art classes. When we
went off to college, she started her journey to
med school, and I started mine to design,
although I didn’t know it at the time.
I started off as an undeclared liberal arts major at
Iowa State University and breezed through a
year of Calculus I and first-year science classes.
The second semester I enrolled in Calc II and
was plugging along, assuming I would head into
some engineering role, based on my older
brother pursuing mechanical engineering at the
time. I really wanted to take an art class though,
so I met with an advisor at the design school.
She frankly told me that I couldn’t enroll in even
a drawing class without enrolling in a design
program, so I said, “sign me up for Graphic
Design!”
I learned that there was an entry year of classes
before you actually applied for the program, so I
spent my second year of school taking all of the
first year art classes and taking Ancient Greek to
fill the time my first year of classes had provided
the gaps for. One of my early claims to fame was
having translated the first chapter of Homer’s
Iliad, and it was pretty cool to read ancient Greek
scrolls when I studied abroad in Italy, but alas,
the skill is gone.
When did you fully switch
to design?
I got accepted into the graphic design program
and earned a presidential scholarship that year
based on my portfolio. I was pretty proud of the
work I was doing, but I was still going through
the motions without much purpose or tenacity. At
one point, I chose to study abroad with a class of
graphic designers instead of investing in an
internship.
I graduated top of my class. I had an excellent
portfolio. But I had zero hustle, and I thought
things were going to be handed to me on a
platter. I moved to San Francisco after school in
2002 and couldn’t get a job. The odds weren’t in
my favor; the whole city was reeling from layoffs
of the dot-com bust, but I can’t say I tried very
hard. I was a meek little girl from Iowa who had
yet to learn how to stand up for herself and
internalize her own value.
I did side projects and interviewed here and
there, but always prioritized paying rent over
pushing for a desirable and fitting career. Things
changed when I had had enough at my
pay-the-bills job: managing a few small branches
at Enterprise Rent-a-Car (that’s a rabbit hole we
won’t go down).
Six years into my role, I applied the evaluative
criteria I had put together to use every six
months or so to determine whether I should stay
or leave.
The criteria were based around compensation, Grad school was hard, one of life’s things that
quality of life, and fulfillment. I usually had one or nearly broke me. I was still paying off undergrad
two of them at a time, but at this point, I found loans and was broke, and had to work to pay
myself with none, and I bounced.

rent while paying exorbitant tuition. I was never

the best in class, but I was developing a finer
I headed back to school, this time to the sense of me and my special skill sets. I ended up
Academy of Art (where I later taught), and delivering the school’s first digital thesis project:
stumbled through a graduate program in graphic an app on budgeting, which was nuts — and
design. I remember nearly crying touring the frankly risky — in a primarily print department.
graphic design floor before I signed on. I had And that project got me my first job as a UX
missed typography and texture and color so designer.
much. I missed looking at street signs and
getting an eye twitch from bad kerning. I knew
that I was back on my path, and I was
determined to make the experience into
something.

“I ended up delivering the school’s first

digital thesis project: an app on budgeting,
which was nuts — and frankly risky — in a
primarily print department.”
How did you get to Intercom I made it almost five years at Facebook and led
from Facebook? Can you walk design on some pretty cool stuff, notably
us through the process? Payments in Messenger and Safety Check. For
the last two years, I worked on a non-core
Facebook project called the Summit Learning
Backing up a tiny bit, I worked for a year and a Platform, which is a partnership between Summit
half during grad school at Office, a graphic Public Schools and Facebook, where we
design studio in San Francisco, and that was the supported the development of a personalized
extent of my career as a graphic designer. My learning platform for K12 students in Summit
first job out of school was as a UX designer at an Public Schools and program schools across the
agency, which was a leap for me since I’d only country.
done that one UX-related project for my thesis
(talk about the hiring manager seeing the
potential and having confidence that she could
groom me!). I joined Facebook when that agency,
Hot Studio, was acquired, and I acclimated
quickly to Facebook because I came in with both
the visual design chops from school and newly
developed UX skills from Hot.
This project and team was really a departure for
me from Facebook as I knew it, and notably, a
turning point where I identified that I preferred
solving tough social and system problems over
flashy consumer-facing design work, which has
stayed true to my next few moves, all the way
through Intercom.
My decision to leave Facebook and move to
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) was a pretty
simple one: the Summit Learning Platform project
moved over to CZI, and I decided to quit
Facebook to continue working on the project.
The move of the work made a lot of sense; CZI
wasn’t around when the project kicked off
initially, and once the organization had
momentum, CZI’s philanthropic mission of equity
of education was a much better fit than
Facebook’s mission of bringing the world closer
together.
For me, I made the decision within what feels like
minutes: I care deeply about education and was
incredibly invested in the work. Plus, there were
no designers yet at CZI, and the idea of building
a cross-functional design team from scratch was
compelling.
I technically only worked at CZI for 16 days. I was
on a “shut down” team at Facebook charged with
making sure the project and team wrapped up in
an efficient and tidy manner. So while most of my
teammates who also made the personal decision
to join CZI became employees within a few
months, I stayed on at Facebook for nearly six
months to ensure the transition was smooth.
Meanwhile, I was building the new team at CZI,
getting operations in place, hiring teammates,
and building the cultural foundation.
It was almost a fluke that I moved on to Udacity. I
was on LinkedIn constantly recruiting and
reviewing résumés for CZI, including a director
role we had open ourselves. Udacity also had a
director of design role open.
 I think at one point, LinkedIn was just like, “hey,
we see you looking at similar roles, how would
you like this one that’s exactly what you’ve been
doing?”
“I think at one point, LinkedIn was just like,
“Hey, we see you looking at similar roles,
how would you like this one?”
I had two opposing thoughts: first was that it was
out of my reach. I was leveled as a product
designer — Facebook is a pretty flat organization
without “senior” or “junior” titles, and CZI was
modeled similarly — and I was at what I believe
they’re calling “Staff Product Designer” now, one
level above senior, but I wasn’t at a director level.
Pushing aside the self-doubt, I scoured the job
description and let the other thought come
through: I can do this.
I applied with a “why not?” attitude, and soon got
an interview screen and then another one, and
then an onsite interview. I got the job offer within
a few days, and I decided to take it: it was a
company focused on chipping away at the
difficulty of education access, following many of
the project-based learning principles and
self-directions that were tenets of Summit
Learning. But at Udacity, I could flex more of my
growing leadership skills and uplevel and upskill
a team. For me, that meant more potential impact
on students, indirectly.
That was a scary moment for me, leaving the
comfortable fold of two companies that had been
run very similarly, and really stepping out on my
own. I was the top design leader at Udacity, and
the responsibility and influence required were
totally different not only at my new level but also
without the infrastructure that both Facebook
and CZI had built and maintained for smooth
operations. I was ready for a challenge. I was
prepared to grow.
I stayed at Udacity for a year, and it was full of
ups and downs. Much of it was fantastic, and
much of it was painful. I had a really amazing
team and got experience leading not only
product designers, but also user researchers,
design systems engineers, and design program
managers. The skill and investment of my team
members are incredible, and I’m really proud of
both their efforts and impact. I won’t dig too
much into what made it so challenging, but what
I will say is this: every company has their shit,
either externally or internally. What you have to
decide personally is if that shit is the kind of shit
you can deal with, and in the best scenarios, that
shit is composed of the kind of challenges that
actually give you energy, that you thrive on
getting into. Towards the end of my tenure, I very
quickly realized that for me personally, the
challenges that Udacity was facing were
contributing neither to my energy, nor my
growth.
I made a very quick but thoughtful decision to
leave and actually gave notice before I had
another role locked down. I interviewed with
Intercom and received an offer shortly after, and
it was a fairly quick acceptance on my part. One
of the best things all of my
experiences — including Udacity — has given me
is a crisp sense of what I need in my role and
what I want to steer clear of. In the few talks I had
with my now-boss, Paul Adams, he frequently
mentioned how over the course of building
Intercom, they were able to use the patterns of
what worked in people’s previous jobs, but also
create anti-patterns for the things that didn’t
work.
“I loved that sentiment: steal from what you
love, solve what you don’t.”
It summed up quite succinctly exactly how I was On this last round, I did entertain a number of
profiling and processing the search for my new casual calls, but only chose to move forward if I
role.

was fairly positive that the role would both meet

the criteria I had crafted and that I could have a
Something I’ve been reflecting on lately is how substantial impact.

organic my career path has been: an acquisition

and a project moving required little job searching
from me and really just a supporting dose of
intentionality. I was counting the other day, and I
think I’ve actually only interviewed six or seven
times, and all but one of them (that I can recall)
resulted in offers.
“Intercom seemed to meet nearly
everything I was looking for.”
Intercom seemed to meet nearly everything I
was looking for: in addition to an interesting
problem space, being led by not only
design-sympathetic but also design-experienced
leaders and execs, having firm but flexible
principles, running solid operations, exemplifying
kindness and care towards teammates, caring
about diversity, and so much more.

I’d like to think it’s because I’m a superb

interviewee, but I actually just haven’t
interviewed that much, and when I do, it’s been
very targeted.
What is your favorite project
that you worked on?

I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for Safety

Check at Facebook. This was a side project for
me; I was working on Payments at the time. One
of the Payments product managers had
participated in a hackathon supporting an
engineer, Petter Cottle, who had some curiosities
based on the Boston Marathon bombing.
Namely, in these sort of panic-ridden events like
natural disasters and terrorist attacks, could
Facebook do some good by using people’s
connections to relieve worries by broadcasting
their safety? I saw the hackathon output via our Payments PM,
Sharon Zeng and immediately said, “you need a
designer on this.” We started whiteboarding,
thinking through privacy, how emotionally
charged these scenarios were, and the
expansiveness of connections, and we informally
kicked off right then and there.
 It’s one of those things you never want to see

triggered, but when you do, you have confidence

that you can confirm the whereabouts of your

loved ones. We’ve seen this used in terrorist

attacks and school shootings… man, such awful,

horrendous events, but I take solace in knowing

that it brings comfort to many in these terrible

incidents.

There were a handful of designers who popped

in and out of the project, including Carla Ablaza

Echevarria and Cameron Wu, and a number of

researchers and content strategists who all ran it

through to launch. And it’s been wildly

successful.
Looking back, would you do
anything differently?
Yeah, I’d take visible and accurate credit for my
work. This was one of those projects where we
did the work, and others got the credit. I
remember being in an internal design all hands
when the project was launched, and my boss
couldn’t make the meeting, so she was like, you
take this. Our VP of design stood up to announce
product launches, and as I was waiting for my
moment to speak, he instead credited the team
where the project had recently been moved to as
its permanent home.
politics and PR, but it was really hurtful.
I was shaking, furious. I tried as calmly as I could
to gesture for the mic, and with my voice
shaking, credited and thanked Carla and
Cameron and the other folks who had really
made this happen, but I was pissed. The new
owning team had done some polish work, but we
had brought this thing to life and worked
painstakingly on it in our free time.
It just goes to show how important it is to make
yourself visible — especially as a female — to get
your efforts recognized.
Believe it or not, this happened again. They
moved the project to yet another team, and Fast
Company did another write up about social good
at Facebook, and they targeted the new design
manager as the face of the project. I didn’t think
too much about it until my manager came to me
and sympathetically apologized, telling me it was
a better PR story. It was cool, I got my name as a
contributor, but the perceived story was more
important than the real one. I guess it’s just
I learned a lot from this experience though; I
probably over-credit when speaking about my
team or the people I collaborate with. I want
people to know that I see them and their efforts
and I want those looking at me to know who they
actually should be looking at.
What’s your Design Team’s
tool stack and what are the
key decision factors when
choosing a new tool?
Most of the teams I’ve worked on and led have
had a similar set of skill values, despite being
named differently. I’ll use the Facebook model
because it’s really well thought through (and was
similar to what we developed at Udacity). The
design skills Facebook values are product
thinking, interaction design, and visual design,
and there are associated tools for all of these.
For the product thinking piece, your tools are
really your team, your collaboration and
communication, and your documentation.
I really can’t emphasize enough the importance
of a collaborative word doc like Google Docs.
When you’re establishing strategy and process,
defining the problem to be solved, determining
success metrics, collecting the landscape — this is
all stuff designers do or collaborate on — it’s so
important that it’s accessible to everyone on the
project. Features like links and indexes and
comments really open up the space to
collaborate with anyone from a fellow designer
to peers in product and engineering to company
leaders. And so much of great design work is in a
pre-interaction and visual design phase that it’d
be negligent not to call out this as a tool.
The other two skills — interaction design and
visual design — have a much more obvious tool
stack: Sketch (or Figma, which my team at
Intercom invests in), InVision, Framer (or Origami
Studio), etc. I personally went through the switch
at Facebook when we moved from Photoshop to
Sketch and was one of the last adopters.
I was frankly super fast at Photoshop and didn’t There’s a handful of others that are were brought

want to convert until I had to. The learning curve to my attention, including Mural, which we used

for me paired with the necessary conversion of for research synthesis for our remote research

files wasn’t immediately worth the time, but team.

eventually, I caved.

I think of that experience frequently anytime

someone comes up with a new tool idea and

consider the following: first, does it bring

significantly more value, and second, how

disruptive will this be? I’ve said “no” or “not yet”

to a lot of tool requests, always considering

value, compatibility into other tools, integration

into workflows, budget, etc. I also can tell you if I

get frequent and unnecessary spam emails from

the marketing team of a new tool, it’d be a hard

sell.

At Udacity, the team was super interested in

Framer X, which I’m guessing they’ll adopt once

stability sets in. We also introduced Notion as a

tool for user research reporting (lesson learned

here that while it’s an excellent tool, at a

company-level you really need to actively drive

adoption to make it useful).

Have you ever been involved in
building a Design System?
What was the process
front-end developers?
behind it?
I was really incredibly proud of the design system
at Udacity. The team leader and manager, Jennie
Yip, led and developed the whole thing nearly
singlehandedly. She’s a hybrid engineer and
designer who started off on the dev marketing
team and pitched and implemented the system.
She brought her first teammate on board, and in
the past year, the two have developed and
launched a rigorous comprehensive system of
elements and components.
How do you approach
successful work with
When I started in product design at Facebook, I
admittedly hadn’t worked a lot with software
engineers. Coming from an agency, I either had
passed design work off to an in-house
development team or worked more in
exploratory engagements. I knew I’d have to
build good relationships at Facebook and learn
quickly, so I developed early habits of treating
engineers as design partners. I’ve had countless
developers sit beside me and painstakingly

explain why something is or isn’t feasible, and

I’ve sat beside the same number to account for
Jennie’s amazing; she’s motivated, self-driven quality execution.
and deliberate and required so little of me… it
makes her accomplishments so incredible.
Building a system is one thing, but driving
socialization and adoption is another beast, and
she’s really nailed it in whole.
It’s not to say engineers and I don’t always see
eye to eye; I can think of a number of developers
that I’ve gone head to head with, but it’s all in the
spirit of problem-solving, and I firmly believe
multiple people with different skill sets can more
efficiently and effectively solve a problem than
an individual in isolation. If I were to give advice
on how to successfully work with engineers, I’d
recommend building a relationship above
anything else. If you trust your teammates and
value their skill sets — and they value you-you can
get past just about anything.
How do you come up with new
ideas/approaches to design?
I tend to approach every problem in the same
way, doesn’t matter if it’s a design project or a
staffing challenge or a strategy attempt.
I always make sure we have a defined problem
(what are we trying to solve), determine if it’s an
actual problem (how do we know this is a
problem), uncover the landscape (how has this
been solved before), determine scope and
implications (when do we need results by and
what are the consequences of time and
resources), define metrics (how will we know if
we’re successful), and so on.
I’m skipping over a lot here, but it’s essentially
applying a development and design process to
anything. I’m a firm believer that new and
innovative solutions or approaches don’t come
from thin air, but rather are cultivated from
thorough understanding and exploration.
One last thing: Who inspires
you the most in the design
world?
Honestly, I probably look up to my husband the
most. He and I are often polar opposites in many
respects: for example, he’s self-taught, and I’m
over-educated. He always has a handful of side
projects going on like apps, blog posts,
speaking, and so forth; he gets his energy from
side projects. We started dating when we were
both working at Facebook — and mind you,
meeting at Facebook is different than meeting on
Facebook — and he immediately inspired me.
He’s really the reason I started writing about
design. We join forces here and there for side
projects every now and then.
He also taught me to ask “why.” At first, I thought
it was endearing, his endless questioning: This
guy wants to know about me! He wants to know
every bit and piece. And then I realized curiosity
is core to who he is, and he’s instilled curiosity in
me, which makes me a better designer and
design leader.
I’ve also been incredibly fortunate to have great
mentors in my career, particularly women. In fact,
all of my first managers at Hot Studio and
Facebook were female. I realize that isn’t a
common experience, and knowing that pushed
me to soak in their knowledge and experience
as best I could.
There’s something indispensable about having
people pave the way for you that are in some
ways like you. And I’ve been able to craft and
hone my leadership style around those who
were exemplars for me. From Margaret Stewart, I
learned that authenticity and genuine care and
investment in people leads to great relationships
that lead to great outcomes.
Maria Giudice taught me to push boundaries

over conformity, and that while you can’t win

everything, you can be intentional and impactful.

Elizabeth Laraki taught me pace and evenness,

and that life is about a lot more than work. These

women are all powerhouses, and I value each of

them so much. Their love, kindness, support, and

faith in me have propelled me to where I am

today. Sounds cheesy, but it’s true! And for me,

these mentors have inspired me to be not just a

great product leader, but a great people leader. I

am and always will invest in my teams before

myself, and even before our products, because

performing and happy teammates are the

biggest lever to building great products.

Want to stay in touch with Jasmine? Find her on

Twitter, Instagram, Medium or have a look at her

design course on Skillshare.

Tanner

Christens
Tanner

Christens
From high school dropout
to product designer at
Facebook and Lyft:

Tanner Christensen
Hi Tanner. How would you
introduce yourself to people
who don’t know you?
I’m a Digital Product Designer at Lyft, designing
software for self-driving cars.
Part of why I wanted to do this interview was to
help share some of the things I’ve experienced,
and lessons learned going from being a broke,
hopeless high school dropout to designing
software for billions of people.

I’m also a published author, developer, design

advisor, and semi-entrepreneur. Previously I
worked as Product Design Lead at Atlassian, and
before that, I worked as a Product Designer at
Facebook.

Getting to this place in my career has been a

long and windy road. I only started working
professionally in product design about six or
seven years ago. I think when people hear about
my accolades or career path, it’s easy to forget
just how jagged and full of dead ends any career
can really be.
Great! I can’t wait to hear it.
How did it all start?
Most people don’t know that my career didn’t
start out in design. While I have been designing
since I was 15 years old, my professional career
throughout most of my life was actually in
marketing and search engine optimization.
I applied to internships at every local design
I started designing after walking through the
design studio run by the father of my best friend
at the time: Stephen Hales Creative. The studio
was very small, but it was full of energy, and
there were vibrant colors everywhere. Really
great environments can have a lasting effect:
energizing you and inspiring you to move in a
certain direction.
This is when I started developing my belief in
The design studio was full of large design prints
hanging on the walls, action figures and other
toys on every desk, big TV screens in colorful
meeting rooms, shiny new computers and other
tech toys — all of that fun stuff just scattered
around the space.
My father was a surgeon, and my mother was a
school teacher; I had never seen a working
environment quite like a design studio before. I
was so enthralled by the place, I knew
immediately design was something I wanted to
do and /that/ was the type of place I wanted to
work.
company I could. But because I was too young at
the time to start studying design formally — I
hadn’t even begun high school yet — nobody
would give me a job. I just wanted to get a foot in
the door, but nobody would even hire me as a
janitor to clean up their studio, let alone as a
junior designer.
doing your own thing, within reason.
If nobody is giving you opportunities to do the
things you really want to do, you have to go out
and do them yourself. You can’t let other people
be an excuse not to do something.
Most things in life that don’t directly impact
others can be done without permission, without
formal training; you just have to be willing to
spend time putting in the work ton your own.
“Most things in life that don’t directly
impact others can be done without
permission, without formal training; you just
have to be willing to spend time putting in
the work ton your own.”
While I wasn’t able to get a job or an internship, I
did have a really old laptop that had been
handed down to me from all of my older siblings.
I’d skip school to make logos or websites for fun.
After a few months, I had enough of these
conceptual pieces of work, I needed a portfolio
to share them. I started teaching myself HTML
and CSS — piecing together whatever I could find
from tutorials and forums online — until I had a
website.
I shared links on forums asking people for
feedback but ended up getting more than that:
clients started reaching out to me.
“I shared links on forums asking people for
feedback, but ended up getting more than
that: clients started reaching out to me.”
Around this time I also did a lot of work on spec
sites that ran contests for designers (I recognize
many people are against these types of sites, but
it really helped propel me in my early career). I
remember thinking at the time: “Who are all
these people out there willing to pay some naïve
kid thousands of dollars to design their brand?!”
The work kept coming, and my portfolio grew. I
ended up skipping school every day to do the
work. School didn’t interest me anyway. I was
bullied a lot and generally picked on, along with
being told by teachers that I would never amount
to anything.
I ended up being a problematic, troubled kid. But Dropping out of school meant I had time for

I felt like the computer was a place for me to be designing and programming, but it meant I

myself and create things. I could hide behind the missed out on a lot of the social and networking

guise of a vague nickname and ambiguous impacts formal education provides.

photo. Nobody really cared how old I was online

or that I hadn’t gone to school, so even the more My mother wasn’t convinced the Internet was

experienced designers welcomed me into their going to pan out, and she was worried about

circle. how my design work had distracted from my

education, so she kind of forced me to get a

“real” job after one particularly troubled summer.

“Nobody would give me a job as a I ended up getting a job as a market researcher

designer, but technology enabled me to in a consumer research center for a few years.

Thus began my career in marketing.

give myself that job anyway. I ended up

dropping out of high school as a result.”

After the market research job, I finally got an

opportunity to work for a real design company:

but as a search engine optimization specialist,

There I was, a young kid of maybe 16 years old,

helping ensure the company’s website was #1

and I was making thousands of dollars doing

when people searched for “design” on Google.

what nobody would hire me to do in their

company. I spent almost all of my free time

From there I jumped around to different

designing (or skateboarding), and it was a lot of

marketing jobs, but I always had a heart for

really hard work. I ended up sacrificing a lot of

design.
valuable aspects of my youth to learn what it

meant to design and try to run a business.

I’d design anything I could whenever I could. And
I was very fortunate to work for managers who
saw that drive and would give me small projects
to design or code.
things like device memory management,
In my free time, I was still designing and
programming too. I ended up learning new
things like PHP, JavaScript, and SQL. I built a little
“todo list” web app that eventually got big in
Japan and really opened my eyes to the power
of digital products. I built a few complex products
that either ended up in the garbage or were sold
to corporations interested in the underlining
architecture of what I had built.
Then the first generation iPhone came out, and I
started thinking about what I could do with it,
teaching myself Objective-C and learning about
localization, and digital interaction patterns. A
few years later, I had built several apps for the
iPhone and iPad, many of which were
prominently featured by Apple in the App Store,
reaching as high as the #3 position of all apps.
And this was all taking place outside of my
full-time job! Again I found myself having
sacrificed a lot in order to do things I was really
passionate about; spending late nights and
weekends working and learning rather than
going out with my friends, dating, or relaxing.
“I had built several apps for the iPhone and
iPad, many of which were prominently
featured by Apple in the App Store,
reaching as high as the #3 position of all
apps. And this was all taking place outside
of my full-time job!”
 After years of designing and building software
products on my own, I was getting burned out at
my marketing job. I wanted to be designing
things full time, and I wanted to get out of
Utah — where I had spent the majority of my life
growing up.

“I always say my first real design job was

when I joined the design team at
Facebook.”
However, all that work would pay off. My career
trajectory had been set despite me being
unaware of it at the time. I applied to many jobs and got a few invitations
to interview. One opportunity which really excited
me was from Dropbox in San Francisco. It felt like
Tell me about your very
the perfect place for me, and I had long been a
fan of the Dropbox brand and what they were
first design job. doing at the company.

But I completely failed the interview. I didn’t even

Apart from working as a freelance designer for a make it through the full loop because I just
number of years, on the side, I always say my wasn’t used to product design interviews at big
first real design job was when I joined the design tech companies.
team at Facebook.
Word of advice: if you aren’t familiar with these
types of interviews and are planning to go into
one I highly recommend reading up on the
common process or talking to someone who has
gone through it in order to get a sense for how
they work.
experience to be had on its own. That attitude
In this instance, the Dropbox recruiter ended up
walking me out of the building right after my
presentation and told me “better luck in a few
years!” I was crushed and spent the rest of that
day moping about the city, reflecting on the
interview and what had gone wrong. I had
worked so hard just to get into the interview, and
I had failed.
future but rather an experience to be had
Fortunately, just shortly after flubbing the
Dropbox interview, I ended up connecting with
Julie Zhou — now VP of Design at
Facebook — and got an invitation to interview
with the social giant in Menlo Park, just a few
miles south of San Francisco. Their offices were
far bigger, far more colorful and impressive, than
Dropbox, but rather than feeling intimidated by it
all I felt excited!
I felt like I had learned a lot from the Dropbox
experience and was prepared to just go into the
interview with positivity. I found myself
embracing the experience as just that: not an
interview to decide my future but rather an
really helped me get through the process and it
must have impressed the team as well. Within a
few days, I was offered the role of a full-time
product designer!
“I found myself embracing the experience
as just that: not an interview to decide my
on its own.”
I’ve since done many interviews across the San
Francisco area. I’ve been offered jobs at Google,
Apple, Atlassian, Redfin, Uber, Lyft, Cruise and
many more. And I’ve come to believe that one
key for interviewing is realizing they’re not a
game to be played.
A job interview is a chance to be your real, Working on various projects
authentic — flawed and passionate — self, and a
at Facebook, which one was
chance to determine whether you have
the most challenging and
something to provide the business and
exciting for you?
vice-versa. I now reflect on that first flub at

Dropbox as a sign that the company and their

culture just isn’t the type that meshes well with

At Facebook, I had the chance to work on a lot of
people like me. The interview had less to do with
different, diverse projects. Everything ranging
my capabilities and more to do with fit.
from supporting the redesign of one of the

largest ad platforms in the world, to helping build

the foundation for design tools, and doing

“A job interview is a chance to be your real,
illustrations for the Oculus Rift (VR), to helping
authentic — flawed and passionate — self,
imagine the future of identity and profiles on

and a chance to determine whether you

social media.

have something to provide the business

and vice-versa.” Of everything I worked on while there, I’d say the

most challenging but also most rewarding was

my first project: Facebook Ads Manager.

But back to our story: finally, after well over a

decade since walking into a tiny design studio

The core team on the Ads Manager project was

and deciding design is what I wanted to do with

relatively small — just three designers — but we

my life, I had reached my goal by joining one of

had to collaborate with more than a dozen

the most impactful companies of the time:

different teams across the company in order to

Facebook.
simplify what had become a fragmented,
overwhelming experience for Facebook The process was straight-forward from a design

advertisers.

standpoint, but the nuances of the work were

complex. And because the project was centered

I remember sitting in a small room with our around Facebook’s core business model (and

PM — my former mentor and co-founder of the billions of dollars for advertisers), we had to be

Mac app company Sofa — Dirk Stoop, as well as very careful in how we approached any change.

the other designers — Holly Hagen and Matt Research really became our most powerful asset.

Rigodanzo — and a few others. We broke down We tiptoed through as much of the work as we

the problem (Facebook’s advertising products could: wireframing, sketching, then building an

were overly complex and siloed) and came up incremental test to put in front of advertisers,

with a plan to explore possible solutions. The ads getting feedback, and iterating quickly on what

leadership weren’t fully convinced the problem we learned.

was worth solving, so part of our process also

entailed creating more transparency between After more than seven months of research,

the advertisers on the platform and Facebook sketching, working through a new design system

leads.

and creating new web interaction patterns, we

shipped the simplified Ads Manager.

We spent several months conducting research

with advertisers, talking with business

stakeholders across the company, and

collaborating with all of the various teams that

depended on ads to keep the lights on.

 And if you’re just starting out in digital product
design I cannot emphasize enough how valuable
it is to start with a large, systematic project.
Doing so means you’ll have to learn about
collaboration, how one small interaction impacts
the larger part, and how one key from research
or testing can have a cascading influence on
future decisions.

From that experience, I learned that sometimes

outwardly boring projects — anything business or
ads related, free from the shiny aesthetic of
consumer-facing experiences — are often the
absolute best projects to work on and learn from.

Not many people want to design a dull-gray

interface for several months, but what I learned
in doing exactly that, was just how important
systems thinking is for any design project.
What was the transition to
Lyft like, and what’s your main
focus nowadays?
After working at Facebook for a few years, I
started to get curious about other possible
opportunities in the area. Facebook was
growing, and I felt like it was time to grow a little
more myself, so I interviewed at several places,
got several offers, but nothing ever felt like a
worthy move. That is until I started talking with
Alastair Simpson, Head of Design at Atlassian,
who convinced me what the company was doing
to improve team collaboration was something
worth working toward.
Through that growth, I watched the culture shift
I ended up going to Atlassian for a few months to
build out their mobile platform but shortly after
decided it wasn’t the best cultural fit for me
personally.
approvals from every possible level of
Then I found Lyft.
The Lyft team I interviewed with were doing a lot
of big-picture, ambitious and complex work
around autonomous vehicles. The role felt like an
immensely challenging, hugely rewarding
opportunity I couldn’t pass up. I would be able to
take everything I learned while working at
Facebook, in consumer research, and all of my
development chops and apply them to one of
the most daunting challenges of my generation:
making transportation more autonomous.
Lyft has this culture that is very reminiscent of my
early days at Facebook, at least I feel that way.
When I joined Facebook the design team was
about 80 and when I left it was around 800.
away from a very hacker-esque, DIY environment
to one where processes ruled everything. You
couldn’t get something done without having to
go through tons of red tape and required
leadership.
“Through Facebook growth, I watched the In this way, we don’t see self-driving cars as

replacing drivers, rather supplementing them. In

culture shift away from a very

fact: our vision of the future for transportation

hacker-esque, DIY environment to one
isn’t fewer human drivers for ridesharing, but
where processes ruled everything.”
actually more of them; as car ownership moves

from standard to taboo.

Now, at Lyft, I feel as though the design culture is

very familiar to that smaller Facebook team I

“Our vision of the future for transportation

originally joined. The design culture is really a

bunch of scrappy, top-tier talent doing some of

isn’t fewer human drivers, but actually more

the best/funnest work of their careers.

of them; as car ownership moves from

standard to taboo.”

With the future of self-driving cars coming to

fruition (within a couple of years still) Lyft has a

strong position. As self-driving technology Since joining Lyft I’ve been focused on designing

matures companies like Lyft will be able to tools and software to help our growing team

provide a truly great, reliable experience in that build out our vehicles and technologies.

we’ll be running autonomous vehicles in places

and on trips where they can really shine. And Nobody is really doing what teams like ours are

where autonomous vehicles won’t be able to go behind-the-scenes, and this creates some

(for the foreseeable future) or when interesting challenges from the design side.

circumstances don’t enable them to run safely, Unlike a designer working on, for example, yet

we’ll have the already large network of another camera app for your phone,

remarkable human drivers ready to go.

our design team can’t really look out at the I think projects like this are not for everyone

market and find answers to the questions or though, despite how creatively exciting they may

problems we’re running up against. We have to seem from the outside. You really have to be

design from scratch because nothing exists out someone who can thrive in unknown spaces,

there for our needs. Nobody has really done with unknown constraints and large

what we’re trying to do.

requirements, to do the job well. If you’re

someone who is a self-starter, who can tinker

It’s very challenging work but it’s also rewarding. with any type of scope and within the realm of

If we succeed, we’ll be the pioneers creating programming languages you don’t fully

things the next generation of digital product understand or within the space of masked,

designers might be copying from or inspired by. multi-layered artificial intelligence models, you’ll

do well.

“We have to design from scratch because

nothing exists out there for our needs.

Nobody has really done what we’re trying

to do.”
Looking back, what got you But digital product design is also not design in

the traditional sense of the word. Aesthetics and

into product design?
how the thing looks are only one part of the job.

The rest involves research and data analysis,

being able to deeply understand problems and

A strong curiosity and an appetite for building

how technology can influence or remedy them,

things.

interaction patterns and looking at how people

will use or abuse the thing being designed, and

Product design has been such a fuzzy concept

so much more.

for the past few years because it’s evolved

alongside our technological counterparts in

If you want to get into product design, I always

engineering and business.

say the absolute best way to do that is to do

what I did: build things yourself.

Not long ago a product designer focused on

building the tangible things you could see in a

I got into product design because I wanted to

window display or on the shelf of a store. Now

solve the problems I had in my own life. I

products have evolved to be everything we

designed and created products because they

interact with behind the glass of a phone or

could help me in my own life. Technology today

tablet or computer, and these digital experiences

makes this type of behavior almost excuse-less.

need to be designed just as much as the things

If you have a computer you can create things to

on the store shelf — possibly even more so, due

better your life. And because the world is such a

to the influence and impact they can have on

large place, someone, somewhere, probably will

billions of lives in an instance.

benefit from what you create too; if you do your

job well, potentially millions of people will.

But it all starts with building things, not just
designing them. When you actually build
things — as opposed to simply designing static
screens or imagining what a project might
entail — you’re forced to face things you
otherwise might not encounter. Things real
projects in the real world drum up. I think Trevor
The absolute best way to prime yourself for the
real work of being a product designer is to build
some products. Even if what you build doesn’t
succeed or make you millions or even really fully
ship, you’ll have more resources in your toolkit
than the dozens and dozens of other designers
who only ever focused on getting the pixels right.

McKendrick put it best:

It doesn’t matter what you build either — it’s more
than ok to design yet another to do list
The Big Vision with all the bells and app — what matters is building the things and
whistles is fun to think about because it learning along the way. If what you build ends up
gives you all the benefits with none of the being garbage or not working, that’s ok, because
work… You can picture how you’ll look and building for the sake of building is often really fun
feel, the money in your bank account, the too.
respect of your friends and peers. At no
cost, you get to imagine a perfect future
that has everything you want and nothing
you don’t. Because all the bad stuff, all the
twists and turns, the late nights and early
mornings, the rejections and betrayals…
even if you wanted to you couldn’t imagine
them because you don’t yet know what
they’re going to be.”
Almost done. What do you like Thank you so much. What is
to do when you’re not the best place for people to
working? connect with you online?

I’m always working, whether I’m working or not. I I’m mostly active on Twitter and LinkedIn, but

enjoy what I do, so when I get a free moment, I’ll encourage people to follow me on Medium or

usually spend it doing more or less the same subscribe to the RSS feed over at my personal

things I do at work. But I don’t think of any of blog.

these things — designing, writing, developing

apps, consulting or mentoring — as “work” per se,

because they’re the things that give me energy

and keep me motivated. It just so happens that

my idea of non-work activities are also what I am

fortunate enough to get paid to do.

Bonus Question: What was the
weirdest way you ate

an avocado?

It’s not weird, but my favorite way to eat avocado

has always been sliced and grilled with some soy

sauce in the center pit. De-lic-ious.

Want to stay in touch with Tanner? Find him on

Twitter, Instagram, Medium or have a look at his

personal blog.
MENG
TO
MENG
TO
Teaching designers how to
code with Design+Code
creator Meng To
Hello Meng, let’s start with
what did you begin with?
Design or code?
Definitely design. Design is something I’ve
always done. Ever since I was young, I was
fascinated with computers. During the dot-com
bubble, there weren’t a lot complex UIs. You
would usually start with a simple website. Open
Photoshop and design pixel-perfect mockups
and code that in HTML. The concept of UI design
was not as prominent as it is today. It was mostly
graphic designers doing banners, forum
signatures, web design or print.
How did you go about
learning a particular
programming language?
Most people start with a
project, like a portfolio,
and then they somehow
figure out how to code it.
Was it the same for you?
Yes. I like to learn by practicing and solving
problems. The biggest challenge was being
alone. When we have an idea in our head, most
of the time we’re going to be alone with the
power to execute it. It’s very rare that you’re
going to have someone, like an engineer who’s
ready to turn your concepts into code.
At first, it was fairly easy. But it got exponentially
harder when I created a community website for
designers called Shadowness where people
could upload their graphic designs. A little bit like
Dribbble, but years before its inception. I had to
learn PHP and MySQL.
I did everything including managing a dedicated
server, building the database and coding from
scratch.
This is very interesting. You
were learning from the
Internet because you didn’t
have anyone else. Would you
say this works for everyone?
I firmly believe that you should rely on yourself as
much as possible. Not because you don’t need
other people and definitely not because you
don’t want to work with engineers, but because
you want to work better with them. When you’re
on your own, you get crucial insights on how to
connect design and code. Next time you talk to
an engineer you know precisely what to ask.
Of course, you will reach a point where you
cannot get past your limitations, unless you’re
willing to dedicate a lot of time to learn that craft.
Sometimes it’s a good idea to take a vacation to
deal with a massive project that requires not just
design, but also code and shipping. Creating a
MVP is feasible during a weekend, but it’s better
if you a whole week to really push the envelope.
Through that process, you will learn exactly what
you’re missing, what your weaknesses are and
what tech stack makes sense. With those
insights, you can collaborate better with
engineers later on.
I believe that in order to be efficient, to create an
MVP in the shortest amount of time possible, you
have to cut any communication problem and you
have to do everything by yourself at the
beginning.
How would you say people
should combine learning a
skill on their own with
school education? How do
you connect the stuff you’re
supposed to learn with the
things you want to learn?
For me, it was very clear when I was about 18
that traditional schools were pretty much
useless. When you work in tech, the schools are
at least five years behind. Even today, it’s
uncommon for schools to teach you Figma,
Adobe XD, Framer, or Sketch. Sketch has been
around for more than eight years.
In my opinion, using the latest and greatest tool
is essential to an aspiring designer because
that’s how you can be exceptional in the
marketplace, without years of experience.
It’s not good to wait for a tool to be prominent. At
that moment, it will already become a dinosaur. If
you want to be a UI designer and you’re still
learning Photoshop, I got bad news for you: most
of the market is not looking for Photoshop
designers anymore. So you’re losing a lot of time,
and you’re not getting the proper insight on how
to take your career to fruition.
When I was 18, I decided to do a sabbatical year
and get a job. I already had a strong portfolio, so
that gave me an edge. As a designer, your
portfolio is everything. A lot of people are going
to tell you that going to school is probably the
most important thing. To me, that’s bullshit. I
speak as someone who’s been hiring a lot of
designers. The secret is that I don’t even look at
their degree anymore. I care very little about
their experience.
I go directly to their portfolio and I look at their
work. Within 10 seconds, I can tell if they’re
adequately trained for the tasks that I’m willing to
give them. Designers need to focus on
producing work that can be public and
demonstrated during the interview process.
How do you think designers
should set the base of their
income?
At first, you shouldn’t worry too much about how
much you’re charging. You should worry more
about the quality of your work. Quality dictates
the value to which people are willing to pay for. If
your design quality is not good, you cannot
charge much because you’re not making a huge
impact.
going to be very happy paying you that $100 an
How much is your work going to impact the
business of your client?
It’s fun to create a beautiful UI that’s on the front
page of Dribbble, but is that going to be real and
sustainable? Is that something that people will
pay a lot of money for? If the answer is yes, then
you can charge double or triple what you
normally charge.
It’s important to understand that even if people
are super talented, they won’t necessarily make
a lot of money because the work that they
produce is not necessarily valuable to
businesses.
Someone can charge $100 an hour, but barely
produce any work within that hour. Therefore the
client is not going to be happy with results versus
money spent. But if you produce outstanding
work and you’re five times faster than someone
who is charging $20 an hour, then your client is
hour.
Speed, efficiency and quality will impact your At the beginning, you’re going to do it at the

ability to make more money. Understanding that surface level.

process will take you far. It will eventually afford

you to be an entrepreneur or a manager; A lot of aspiring designers go to Dribbble,

someone who can hire people and manage a Behance or Twitter to seek inspirations. As you

team, someone who can turn a concept or a side progress you’re going to learn more about the

project into a business that’s sustainable and principles and craftsmanship: the techniques

solve problems. involved, the tools used, the creative process,

whether or not you should use grids, etc. And so

that’s the second step.

How can designers find time

The third step is when you start finding your

to progress their skill while
style. You develop strong values as an artist and
having multiple ongoing
you are in control of your lifestyle. How do you
projects? How can they
sound surround yourself with great products and
balance paid work and
great talents? How do you criticize everything

artistic progress?
that you see and how do you go beyond your

personal heroes to their heroes and find the

roots of their inspirations.

The first few years of a designer is going to be a

lot about grinding. It’s going to be about finding

Let’s say you admire someone. Well that person
your style and mimicking people you admire.
also admires someone else. For example, Dieter
And you should be shameless about it. Be
Rams is pretty huge in the industry.
humble, truthful, and earnest about who you’re

trying to channel.
His iconic designs and 10 Principles of Good At the same time, it’s OK to emulate a little, even
Design were great inspirations to Jony Ive and as an experienced designer. In some disciplines,
the products built at Apple.

it’s quite important to do that because you have

So how do you balance between work and
creativity? First, I think that you have to accept
that the first two years are going to be just
grinding and practicing as much as you can to
understand the value of good design. You
shouldn’t look back at your old work and say
“wow, this was amazing.” If you don’t hate your
previous work, then you’re doing something
wrong because that’s part of evolving. You
should constantly be trying to find ways to
improve and say: “I should have done better than
this.”
to respect specific standards that users have
come to expect. You can’t just create without
referencing. For example, when you’re designing
for iOS, you’ll have to respect the Human
Guidelines by Apple. When you’re designing for
Android, you have to read a pretty lengthy guide
about Material Design. You have to build on top
of that foundation. Once understood, you can
bring more personality and work on the things
that make your product special.

I think that’s how you progress and that’s how

you become more artistic. By artistic I mean
finding individuality and understanding what
makes your design a little less homogenic.
 I learn everything on Google and YouTube. Video
is becoming the primary medium for learning.
YouTube offers access to all this education
material without a paywall. The issue is, just like
Google, it’s a hit-or-miss. Most videos talk about
extremely specific topics and assume that you
have lot of previous experience. It’s not
well-curated or end-to-end.

When I wrote my first design book, I curated

everything. I taught every step, from using colors,
typography to using Sketch which was new back
then. Eventually, I covered a wide range of
design tools and platforms like Figma, Framer X,
Swift, React, React Native and soon Flutter. I’m
also planning a course on Cinema 4D.
Speaking of inspiration, let’s
talk about learning and your
primary resources you used
to learn about design and
code.

Unlike on YouTube, it’s a very consistent learning
experience and it’s all about the best tools. I
speak to designers like me. I had to learn all of
these tools so I needed to be very efficient at
learning. The number of times that I went to
someone to ask for help can be counted with the
fingers in my hand. Typically, I start with the
documentation. Then, I search on YouTube to
learn some basics. As I learn, I take notes in
Notion. I piece everything together by building a
real product that I want to use.
That process usually lasts for 2–3 weeks. I
document everything straight to the visual and
code. Like this, virtually anyone can come in and
learn what I just learned. They don’t need to
know much, but some design or code
experience helps. This factor determines if it will
take you three days or three weeks to finish the
course.
Would you say knowing how
to make an app in React Native
is enough to teach others
about React Native?
Absolutely. I think it’s vital to have a beginner’s
mind regardless of your level of knowledge of a
particular craft. But don’t get me wrong, teaching
is very different from, let’s say, mentorship or
specializing in a job. Teaching is all about
translating something extremely technical to
something digestible. For that to happen, you
need to have a beginner’s mind.
“Teaching is all about translating
something extremely technical to
something digestible. For that to happen,
you need to have a beginner’s mind.”
You don’t need a ton of experience in the
specific topic, but you need experience teaching
similar topics. Before I started the course, I
almost knew nothing about React Native. But I
had some knowledge of React.js and Xcode.
Everything you’re learning should be a small
jump from previous experience. Before React, I
knew Swift. And before Swift, I knew jQuery.
40,000 people paid for my courses and I was a
total beginner for 90% of the topics I taught.
You’re gonna be fine. You don’t need to be an
expert in this field to start teaching.
You mentioned that designers
don’t need to know much to
start your course, but still,
there is some baseline. How
can people get to this
baseline as fast a possible?
With anything that’s extremely hard to learn, you
need a hook. You need to break it down into bite
sizes. If your goal is to learn React Native, your
hook can be how to create a layout, or animate
SVGs or prototype transitions.
I think that’s why Design+Code is so unique. We
try to make it so that at every point in the course,
designers, who are known to be visual creatures,
will want to learn. Things like: how to style a
layout, how to deal with constraints, how to
update assets, or how to create nice animations,
etc.

Let’s talk about the time
before you made the Sketch
and Xcode course. What
motivated to go from being a
freelancer to becoming a
teacher?
I hate freelancing and I hate working for other
people. I don’t say that because I want to
discourage anyone from freelancing. Just like
any job, freelancing has its ups and downs. But
eventually, you can’t avoid wanting to create
your own stuff. It’s inevitable because as humans,
we have incredibly creative minds. That’s what
sets us apart from robots.
It’s essential to work for someone else to get the
proper mentorship, if you want stability in your
life, you want money, you need experience and
you need to grind. That’s all really important. For
me, this part took roughly 15 years. After that, I
just hated working for someone else. I was
thinking, how do I take all my experience and
create something that could pay like a job.
Around five years ago, Sketch wasn’t prominent
in the marketplace. I was one of the first to write
about Sketch. People knew me as “The Sketch
guy”.
That’s how I got the bulk of my followers at the “It’s important to look at code as a way to
beginning. Also, I learned how to use Xcode for see what’s going to come to design tools in
prototyping. A lot of designers think of the future.”
prototyping as creating really advanced
animations — but they are rarely translatable to
code. As a designer who codes and who likes to So how did you move from the
be time-efficient, I want to be able to take a
design and get it into the final code us as quickly
Design+Code book to a course
as possible.

and how do you manage to

keep it up to date?
Knowing HTML was not enough for mobile apps.
If you’re going to build an iOS app, you have to
use a Storyboard. You have to use constraints. I wrote Design+Code as a book, because I was
You have to use all these tools, which have been alone and I didn’t know if it would be successful.
in Xcode for years, but only recently became I sold it as a one-time purchase. You know, to
available in the design tools.

make some money so I can avoid freelancing for

a few months.

It’s important to look at code as a way to see

what’s going to come to design tools in the
future. So if you want to be ahead of the curve
then why wait?
When I launched, I made $10,000 in the first 24
hours. It was entirely self-published and sold at
$50 a copy. In a way, I was offering knowledge
that could otherwise be purchased at school for
tens of thousands of dollars for a much longer
period of time.

It started as a book, but the website eventually
became a learning platform. The one-time
payment was not sustainable. I kept updating the
book whenever there was a major update for
Sketch or Xcode.
This was during my 2-year travel, but I wanted to
settle in Canada and become a parent. At some
point, I took a long break to take care of my new
family and the funds were diminishing. When I
came back, I thought what if I increased the
amount of content and cover even more topics?
So I put together a team. We had 3 courses. With It’s the perfect design tool for new designers

the team, we introduced 15 new courses. We because it’s free and works on Windows. We

have a subscription now, but 5 times the amount wanted to find a topic for the course that would

of courses. For the same price paid per year, get a lot of demand, and that topic was Design

people get more value and better support. Systems. A lot of designers were scratching their

head around that. How do you even start? How

do you connect different components and make

In the case of Figma, how did them available across your team? How do you

translate that to code? How do you keep

you pick this tool as a next
everything organized? It turns out to be a good
course and how did you go
decision because the Figma course is one of our
about creating it? Did anyone
most popular.
help you?

After creating a course on

I heavily rely on my team to take care of
design systems, where do you
customer support and advancing the website so I

can have a complete focus on creating courses.

think companies should keep

In the case of Figma, I knew that I couldn’t just the “truth” — in design or

create a basic Figma course.

code? How do you avoid,

having two design systems

Figma is, in my opinion, very different to Sketch.
instead of one?
It has so many tools in one application, like

real-time collaboration, prototyping, cloud

storage, versioning and handoff.

I can safely say is that we haven’t solved this
problem yet. It’s a hard problem. I believe that
the current tools are still maturing and they’re still
figuring out how to connect the design file to the
design system, then to the code.

Typically in any company you would have two

design systems instead of one source of truth:
one more connected to the design tool and one
more code-heavy like NPM packages. We’re still
figuring out how to communicate between both
platforms. I don’t think we’re going to solve that
within the next two to three years.

What do you think is the best

This problem is similar to Android versus iOS. design to code workflow
How do we have a single codebase for both available?
platforms? React Native and Google’s Flutter are
trying to solve this, and I believe Apple will soon
come up with their solution as well. Once we can
solve that, design systems will do a much better
job at connecting design and code.
What do you think is the best
design to code workflow
available?
I try to get to the code as soon as possible. I
often skip wireframing because I like to remove
steps. I always try to get to the MVP stage in the
shortest amount of time possible. In the
beginning, your product concept is very fragile.
So if you come up with something extremely
complicated, you won’t get anything done. A
project usually starts with a few bullet points
written in Notes or Notion.
would you advise to aspiring
Then I move to the design tool and start
designing the UI. The act of crafting the UI gives
you so much insight as to what is possible and
what is not. You gain even more insights while
coding because the constraints are greater.
That’s why I like to code quickly, involving the
least amount of people possible.
It’s only after you have a rough prototype that
you can efficiently bring people together. Then,
they can work on the UX to solve the experience
issues and start designing multiple iterations. But
at the very beginning of a project, it’s usually one
person with enough experience and enough
ideas. If you quickly build a prototype in code,
you’ll know not only how much design is
necessary, but also how much engineering.
The time is almost up, so
before we wrap up, what
designers?
First of all, don’t take too many projects. It’s
important to know what you’re capable of doing
and how much work you’re willing to do. The
state of mind is critical, so listen to your body and
try to observe how much motivation you have for
the project. And don’t worry too much; this will
also become handy when you become a parent.
“Don’t take too many projects.”
If you notice that you’re distracted a lot, learn
how to prioritize. Give yourself deadlines. Writing
things down helps because it’s the easiest way
to get your feet wet.
you’re fast and efficient, and you know exactly
Treat your time like gold. When you go and ask
for help, know that people’s time is precious and
so is your time. If you keep asking questions
every five seconds, you’re permanently depriving
yourself of learning. You’re not learning to
depend on yourself, you’re learning to depend
on others.
“Treat your time like gold.”
Don’t launch too early. Launch only when it feels
right and when you know that this is something
that nobody has done well before.
Launch when you know your product is solving a
real problem. It’s also important not to launch too
late. Give yourself a deadline. If it’s a really
complex project where you have multiple
people, three to six months makes sense. If
you’re alone, one month should be enough. If
how to market, then I would say two weeks is
enough.
“Don’t launch too early. And don’t launch
too late.”
Don’t work for free. It’s not sustainable. The age
of free products like Facebook, YouTube and
Flickr is over. People always pay with something
in the end, like their privacy. Why not sell a
product from day one? We’re now back to
businesses that have been around for centuries.
We’re talking about food, books and tools that
solve daily work problems.
“Don’t work for free.”
Do what you love. Follow your passion. Gain the
skills that you always wanted to learn.
Is this going to be useful to me later in my
career? Everything that you do has to be around
that: learn to learn better, and learn with your
heart.

Get the mentors that you always admired and “Everything should be a learning
work with them. Pick their brain, be patient and experience.”
allow yourself to trust them and to listen to their
advice. You have to listen with your heart and not
with your mind. If you listen with your mind, it
won’t stick because it’s like a hard drive that’s
overflowing. If you let their advice touch your
soul, then there is a special place for that. Also,
respect your mentor’s time.

“Get mentors and learn how to listen.”

Everything should be a learning experience.

Everything you do. Whenever you do a task, you
should be asking yourself, am I learning
something?
Thank you. It’s time for our

bonus question: When was the

last time you ate avocado and

how was it made?

I love avocados and the last time I had that was

in sushi. But to be honest, after going to Japan,

it’s hard to eat sushi that has avocado in it.

Want to stay in touch with Meng? Find him on

Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium, Dribbble or have a

look at his website.

Ivy Mukhe
Ivy Mukhe
Ivy Mukhe
Ivy Mukhe
Why work for a
hyper-growth product
company with

Ivy Mukherjee
Hey Ivy. Can you walk us
through your background,
and what led you to design?
I come from a community/state, which is really
famous in India for endorsing different creative
hobbies while growing up. I inherently liked
drawing as long as I can remember. It started
when my cousin was going to a drawing school,
and I used to copy every single drawing after she
returned from school. That’s when my parents
enrolled me in the drawing school as well. I have
always loved drawing and did it with the utmost
dedication: back in my high school days, I used
to draw meticulously for our biology class even
though we didn’t get enough marks for a good
drawing. From drawing comic book characters to
drawing nature, I believe drawing has been the
only creative hobby which has stuck with me till
now.
I have studied Multimedia Design, and it’s quite a
funny story about how I actually ended up taking
it as my undergraduate degree. I took science
subjects in high school and was mostly set for
studying "Ecostat" (Economics & Statistics), even
got enrolled in university for the same thing.
However, my parents noticed the newly opened
Multimedia course and asked me to give it a
shot. After the written examination and an
interview, I found out that I was selected for the
course. That was the moment of dilemma, where
I didn’t know what I was supposed to take up.
After several calls to a few mentors and my
father’s friends, I ended up taking the 4yrs
Multimedia course at St. Xavier's College in
Kolkata.
During my undergraduate course we had
subjects like history of design and animation, or
2D Flash animation, 3D character design,
animation, illustrations, After Effects,
or even full-fledged film making - basically you
learn everything about everything and somehow
I never liked such course structure where I am
supposed to learn things I am not really
interested in.
genuinely passionate about as you can be more
I tried my best to concentrate on several
subjects, but I only enjoyed doing traditional
illustrations. I would simply put most of my
energy upon that facet.
Making connections in the design industry is
After one year of my degree, I gradually started
to understand the importance of networking and
real-life skill sets, which I should invest more time
being in the university. The course structure,
faculties, and collaboration with good companies
were not so great given it was a newly
established institution. So, I realized I needed to
invest more time to find like-minded helpful
people who can guide me when I transition into
the “industry life” and might help me figure out
how to get accustomed to it.
Looking back, I would advise any student to
reflect upon learnings, which can be
proportionately used in the jobs you want to get
into after graduating. Take courses which you are
invested in those subjects and get better every
day. Use Google and find people whom you look
up to, try to get in touch with them, show your
interest and capability of doing good work.
really important and crucial as you will learn from
"real-world people and projects”, plus you may
even start to collaborate with them - you never
know.
To date, all my jobs have been reference based,
and I have known few people from the
teams/companies, which have helped me build
trust and understand the products better. Also, as
designers, one of our core tools is
communication. I am trilingual, and I started
speaking English in my university days.
 In high school, I studied in a native language
(Bengali - my mother tongue) knowing just a little
English back then.
“To date, all my jobs have been
do. One of the reasons why I was left with that
reference based.”
Confidence plays a huge role while learning
anything new and crucial, and when you see
others have already reached the point where you
want to be, it becomes frustrating! I would
suggest forming habits around such situations
where you will be continuously practicing that
particular habit, and you will achieve more than
you can gauge with time.
Quite a journey! When was the
moment you knew you wanted
to work in design?
I graduated in mid-2014 and worked as a
consultant for digital marketing agencies to
create social media visuals, but never really
loved what I did. This made me frustrated
because I was struggling to decide what I should
choice was mostly because I didn't have other
skills at my disposal. Back then, I was not even
aware of the term UI or UX. I kept making these
social media assets for a few months, but at the
same time, I was trying to understand which
other fields I could dig into. For example, I was
coming up with some ideas for societal
improvement projects.
Given the gigantic growth of India in the past two
decades, there are issues which still need the
limelight and one of them is the scarcity of
electricity in villages hampering efficiency of
those people for half of the daytime—there are
students with financial instability who are forced
to drop out of school due to no electricity system
and no basic solution of adequate school bags.
To provide a combined solution of both the
issues, I designed a prototype of a solar paneled
school bag while working with Happy Horizons
Trust. Deccan Chronicle (National English Daily)
featured me, for my contribution towards social
innovation and the school bag prototype went
into production.
That experience had an immense impact on my
career trajectory and also on my personal growth
as I was traveling abroad for the very first time
and that too without my parents. It was the place
where I was introduced to UX design and the
startup ecosystem. While I was working on few

group projects with other people, I started liking

That was my first encounter with
Human-Centered Design with an enormous
impact on everyday lives. Solving problems for
the people gave me mindfulness, which I believe
is the daily motivation of my work.
this spectrum of design where every day I was
hustling to understand how products work, how
businesses are impacted with product decisions
and why design is so crucial in the world. After
this experience, I started to work with product

companies and could finally say I found my

calling!
While this was happening, I realized I would like
to understand more about design and applied for
a fellowship at the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem. To my surprise, I got the full package
fellowship even without having much experience
in other subjects of the course. Funnily I was the
only female and youngest participant in the
program.
So what became your first and I started applying back to few startups in

India - that's how I landed the job at Grofers,

“product company” design
which is a hyper-local delivery ecosystem.

job?

However, I didn't join the company as a Product

Designer - my dominant skills were still

It was an internship at an international
illustrations and visuals instead of "UI/UX"
advertising agency. Honestly, I sucked at it,
design, plus I had almost no real-life projects to
mostly because I never liked learning digital
showcase from that spectrum.

illustrations and was living in my happy world of

traditional medium. Also, I realized the culture of

So, I joined Grofers‘ product team as their first
advertising agencies was quite the opposite to
Visual Designer. I loved it. It was the first job
my way of thinking, plus I have always strived to
which really challenged me - crafting visuals for
have transparency both in my work and in my
products is very different than doing it for ad
daily life objectives. I love to control my own life,
agencies and marketing design. However, I loved
and when that doesn't happen, I start
learning the nuances, and the team was
questioning everything in my surroundings. In
supportive enough not to let me fail in a
short, I believe agency life never provided me
hyper-growth situation.

with any control over my work. While doing my

fellowship in Israel, I realized I would like to be a

I created things across all verticals of Grofers
part of some hyper-growth startup which has a
product portfolio, including the consumer app,
good learning experience for amateurs like me,
merchants app, delivery partners app, website

redesign,
characterizing the empty states and a few Not everybody is privileged enough to fail

months later I was leading the visual team with and explore new things, it is easy to talk

few new members as well.

about it, but I would tend to prioritize my

economic security first and then think about

I had enough time to assess my hypothesis that I exploring new things.

would like to work in Product Design - not just

support it visually. So I took my next job as a

Product Designer at OLA Cabs - that's how my What was so tempting on

product design journey began.

product design for you?

For me, it was a permutation combination of

doing many things, failing at them and then Realizing that my choices can make such a

exploring other things - I can't deny the fact that significant impact on people's daily lives was the

it was overwhelming and I would like to say one primary motivation. Over time I got more

thing: intrigued by identifying a problem instead of just

being the tool for solving the issue as a designer.

Also, product companies gave me enough

Everybody has their kind of privilege, you

transparency - that motivated me to work hard

may not have the same as me or others, but

and push myself to the next level.

try to find yours and tap on those privileges

to do what you want to do.

As a former Product Designer What was your favorite

at Shopify, when did you join project that you worked on?

the team?

If we’re talking about my job at Shopify, it’s hard

I joined Shopify back in January 2018, and it was to pick one. While I was there, I was associated

a funny story which I tell people when they ask with two teams: Analytics & Growth.

how/when I did apply to Shopify, and actually, to

everyone's surprise, I never did apply to Shopify. In the Merchant Analytics team, one of my first

I never thought international hiring was projects was to create a better hierarchy for the

approachable in North America. One fine Analytics mobile version by using different

evening I got an email from a Shopify recruiter, components so that the system becomes much

and initially, I thought it was spam. Haha.

more sustainable in near future and merchants

can understand the value of the actions with that

Btw, if you want to learn about the hiring process modified hierarchy.

at Shopify, I have written a blog post about it.

This project was very dear to me as I got the

chance to work with the Design Systems people

for the very first system and completely loved the

process of brainstorming, creating, re-arranging,

and modifying components. It went on for

months, and when I finally saw my work going

live and the Polaris team talking about it, it was a

joyful moment for sure.

 challenging jobs I have had done in my career

so far.

In the Growth team, I had one very challenging

project (data migration system). It was very

technical; it involved handling complex

constraints and issues. At times it was very

frustrating as things used to change drastically. I

think I simply needed more knowledge and hand

holding during that time, which I didn’t really get.

That project was really one of the most

Few other works from my previous stints which I
am proud of:

Can you tell me more about
your personal experience
while working at Shopify?
Shopify was my first in many aspects:
Understanding and handling
stakeholders
It was the first experience where the design team
itself consisted of over 300 designers, let alone
the engineers, Product Managers, and data
people. It was challenging and overwhelming in
the very beginning that a minor change will affect
the entire system and needs to go through an
ample amount of stakeholders before prioritizing
it. So, as a designer, you need to have all the
supporting documents, data analysis, and your
proposed solutions to back up the new solution
which you are suggesting. It can literally go on
for months, which sort of happened to me while
we were trying to change a few components
from Polaris (Design System of Shopify) for the
Analytics team.
Understanding design is truly a
collaborative sport and transparency
matters
We all know this, but if I have to talk about my
previous experiences, I would say most of the
times designers used to sit in isolation (away
from the engineers and product people), at least
that's what I had seen. The downside of this
pattern is there used to be a lot more
back-and-forth than need be, as the random
collaboration didn't happen seamlessly. Realizing
the importance of collaboration skill was a crucial
lesson for me. I advise for improving it daily.
There will always be design problems with a lot
of technical constraints, so without being
transparent with other teams, your designs might
not get validated.
Understanding design is so much
more about designing visual screens
With passing days and growing experience, I am
seeing how my day-to-day work has changed
from only “solving the problem” vs. making a
hypothesis and assessing the problem itself.
Creating strategies, researching, and discussing
the scope of a project is what shapes a product
from the very beginning.
Understanding how to provide and
receive constructive feedback
Instead of throwing a comment like “it doesn't
look good” or “this won't work”, try to be more
mindful about how can you ask more
constructive questions which will help both the
product and the person you are providing
feedback to.
I was very new to this concept, and I used to
write down all the questions (and sometimes
answers as well) which were being asked in
every critic and feedback session so that I can
have my framework. Same goes when you ask
for feedback: respect every individual's time and
stop trying to ask vague questions. Doing your
background research goes a long way and helps
to build trust with people as well.
Understanding communication skills
matter a lot
I can not stress this more to this day. As
designers, we have to get better at storytelling
every day and long gone are the days when you
worked just by yourself and only produced the
screens which you were asked to make. As a
designer, if you ask for a seat in the business,
you need to show how you are helping define
the product from the very beginning, and that will
not come from just producing the visual screens.
As designers, we have to go out there and talk to
all other stakeholders, and this won't happen if
we lack communication skills.
“As a designer, if you ask for a seat in the
business, you need to show how you are
helping define the product from the very
beginning.”
What are some key takeaways
you always keep in mind now?
1. As designers, we have to go out there and
talk to all other stakeholders, and this won't
happen if we lack communication skills.
2. Life is too short to work for assholes or even
to be with them!
3. Go out, grow your network!
4. Don’t fall for ONLY brand names. Your project
and the people you work with will matter so
much more in the coming days. Take care of
your mental health and emotional intelligence
and try to work with people who understand
these fundamentals of life.
5. To be happy and respected about your work,
you will need to have the mental stability and
work in an environment which suits your
personality.
Let’s switch gears a bit. What’s
the value of excellent
customer onboarding?
I will give you an example of my mother, when
she was getting the hang of Google Photos and
how it works. She started using the internet for
the first time on her mobile device, and we love
connecting and sharing memories with photos.
I was not there to install the app and front-load
her with all the information needed for her to use
Google Photos. However, after installing the
application, she didn't need my help to set up the
account, etc.
The ecosystem of Google worked so well, and
she called me later saying how happy she was
that she could understand what the apps were
asking her to do without any help. She doesn't
know what customer onboarding is, neither she
cares! But she cares about how easily she can
see all her photos in one place, download it or
share it.
We need to create these experiences, where we
don't need to explain to our users.
4. Don’t fall for ONLY brand names. Your project
and the people you work with will matter so
much more in the coming days. Take care of
your mental health and emotional intelligence
and try to work with people who understand
these fundamentals of life.
5. To be happy and respected about your work,
you will need to have the mental stability and
work in an environment which suits your
personality.
Let’s switch gears a bit. What’s
the value of excellent
customer onboarding?
I will give you an example of my mother, when
she was getting the hang of Google Photos and
how it works. She started using the internet for
the first time on her mobile device, and we love
connecting and sharing memories with photos.
I was not there to install the app and front-load
her with all the information needed for her to use
Google Photos. However, after installing the
application, she didn't need my help to set up the
account, etc.
The ecosystem of Google worked so well, and
she called me later saying how happy she was
that she could understand what the apps were
asking her to do without any help. She doesn't
know what customer onboarding is, neither she
cares! But she cares about how easily she can
see all her photos in one place, download it or
share it.
We need to create these experiences, where we
don't need to explain to our users.
Why is smooth onboarding
I have always looked up to Dropbox products
so important?
I believe onboarding is one of the fundamental
and primary things which each and every service
should do, and do it right. Onboarding is
challenging, and retaining the users just after
they onboard is the second hardest step.
of each Dropbox product was terrific, which by
However, customer retention will become only a
dream if onboarding doesn't happen efficiently.
Onboarding is directly related to business
growth, so without it going well, we can’t really
acquire customers. That’s why every service tries
hard to make that first impression right. We love
the 1st impression anyway, don't we?
Who has the best onboarding
experience, in your opinion?
and loved their product Carousel (which is not in
use anymore). Dropbox had some of the best
illustrators like Ryan Putnam or Alice Lee, who
don't only make the onboarding lively but also
turn it into a phenomenon. They were one of the
few founders of illustration styles for mobile
products and avatar design. The characterization
the way played very well in the Carousel product.
From the beginning of May,
you joined Grab as a Product
Designer. Are you excited?
I am super excited! I have joined one of the
fastest growing unicorns of SEA. GRAB was
named one of the 2019 disrupters by CNBC, and
it's named one of the most innovative companies
by FastCompany as well.
GRAB is SEA’s super app, which is so much more There were fundamentally two reasons - one

than just ride-hailing. Our backbone is enabling personal and the other professional:

people with everything they need every day - it

can be going from point A to B, ordering food

when you are hungry, getting something Personal – When I lived in Canada, I realized

delivered from one place to another. We have how far I am from my family and my partner,

various subscription models, and we are getting and this was a fundamental reason to move

into new verticals very soon. For example, GRAB back - if not to India then at least very close

Pay is one of the most common and very popular to it.

services where you can use a digital wallet to

pay for your food and other services.

Professional – At this point in my career, I

GRAB currently operates in 8 countries - wanted to work for a hyper-growth company

Singapore, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, which would enable me to work on various

Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and we projects and with multiple teams, as I want to

are pushing ourselves hard to make the life of understand different domains. GRAB fits into

SEA people safe and comfortable with our these criteria. Plus they are building a robust

services. design-centric culture.

Why did you choose GRAB

in particular?
Lastly, I have to mention that during my interview
process, I got the chance to talk to my
prospective manager (Norman Teh), and I was
very inspired by the vision he was trying to bring
alive. I could resonate with his thought processes
and believe in his path. That was the nailing
moment for me to join GRAB.
What is your new role
at GRAB?
I am working as a Product Designer in the
Tooling & Customer Service Experience team.
We often talk about how we are going to achieve
milestones for our business, delight our
customers and partners, but we need to talk
more about our internal partners who are
handling the customers when something goes
wrong as per their expectations. Without efficient
tools and systems, the experience will break
down overnight, and nothing can harm a
business more than losing the trust of your end
customers.
I am a part of a team which is looking after
creating and maintaining the experience for our
agents who provides the backbone (customer
satisfaction/support) for every service of GRAB.
What activities are you
involved in?
I am involved in understanding the problem
scenario, assessing our hypothesis, scoping out
the project, and prioritize the same. After that, as
a Product Designer, I create the flow and
experience for our users. These activities help
me grow my mental models and frameworks
over time. I am always intrigued by challenges
which can have an immense impact but never
had much exposure beforehand.
Plus, I work closely with various stakeholders for Almost done. I’m wondering
each project - product managers, business what’s an interesting or fun
operations, analysts, Customer Experience
fact about yourself we
Agents, and User Experience Research team
(UER).
wouldn’t find on your social
media?

How is that different in

comparison to Shopify?
First and foremost difference there is the growth
opportunity: here in GRAB, I believe I will get to
see the impact of our work soon and can iterate
on it more often. Also, I would like to dig deep
I think most people don't know that I was born in
a small village in Eastern India, where my father
was also born. We stayed there until my mid-high
school days (till 7th standard), and my parents
realized that they would like to provide me with
the much better education system and exposure
to the real world; so that was the time we moved
to the city life.

into other domains such as food and maps in the

coming days.

The reason I wanted to bring up this facet of my

life is twofold - (1) I try to make a conscious effort
Having worked in OLA Cabs, I think I have a
to remind myself where I come from, so that I can
better understanding of a few domains which will
self motivate myself going forward and (2) to
help me in building on top of my pre-requisite
ensure that anybody who is very new to the
skillsets. Designing experiences for developing
industry and coming from a similar background
countries has always been fascinating to me.
will have more confidence.
All it takes is hustle plus confidence in yourself.
The rest will fall into place with time.
What do you like to do when
you’re not working?
That's a great question! I believe many of the
That was the start of the journey! I stocked up all
the spices necessary for cooking, and there was
a time when my mom told me that I have more
varieties of spices and utensils than her kitchen!
(Thanks to my partner who used to visit me from
India with suitcases filled with spices :D). So, yes,
I appreciate food and the amalgamation it went
through with the timeline. When I am not
working, I am mostly trying to cook!

readers will know this (if some of them follow

me), that I am a big time foodie! I have always I mostly travel to eat good food, and I am very
loved eating, trying new food and seeing people particular about it! All my trips to date have come
eat made me happy, but I realized that the with me rigorously planning and reserving each
process of making food/cooking gives me place where I would eat.
immense joy and it kind of works like a stress
buster. That happened when I moved to Canada
to work for Shopify all by myself. Youtube
channels have been the God gifted source to
me, which I used to watch religiously after work
and I started cooking because I started missing
my home food and Indian food is not affordable
to buy every day in a foreign country.
Bonus question: What’s your

favorite avocado recipe?

I think it will be guacamole with lots of onions

and chilies. The credit will go to my fiancé as he

loves to eat Mexican food. :)

Want to stay in touch with Ivy? Find her on

Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium, or have a look at her

website.
Jory

Raphael
Jory

Raphael
Designing icons with Lead
Icon Designer at Font
Awesome, Jory Raphael
Hi Jory. Can you tell us a little When I’m not working, I’m legally obligated to
about yourself? say that I love to Hang With My Family™, which is
true, of course. I’m also always scheming about
little side projects. My current one involves
Hi there! Absolutely. I’m a designer and illustrator creating a new icon puzzle every day this year!
from Vermont. I’m currently the lead icon
designer at Font Awesome. Before that, I worked
as a freelance designer through my company,
Sensible World, and am a co-founder of Notabli,
a private social network focused around families.

I have an amazing wife who is much, much,

smarter than me, and two awesome kids who are
on track to follow that trend. I’m fairly sure I’m
smarter than our cats.

I also have a degree in Performing Arts and

regularly perform as part of a sketch comedy
troupe with a group of ridiculously talented
ladies.
Let’s go through your design
journey. How did it all start?
My route to becoming a professional designer
was a bit circuitous, but can probably be traced
to my love of stories and storytelling. I think, at
the root of things, that’s what a designer is. A
storyteller. Some stories are ornate, and some
are whimsical, some are short and to the point.
But they all communicate ideas and have the
power to guide actions.
from the early Macintosh operating system on
I remember that I have a copy of The Way Things
Work by David MacCauley that I referenced
continuously as a child. It’s a beautiful book full
of illustrations on the inner workings of objects
and concepts. The technical side of things was
fascinating, but ultimately, it was the illustrations
that kept me coming back. They told little stories
using wooly mammoths hooked up to flying
contraptions, and operating levers and such. I
wanted to be a cartoonist for the majority of my
childhood.
I even convinced one of my high school teachers
to let me take a semester-long independent
study in cartooning.
Another influence was probably The Adventures
of Tintin books by Hergé. I devoured them as a
child and was enamored with his ligne claire
style. I try to carry a lot of that through the work I
do today.
I also remember digitally recreating the icons
our household Mac. They had a profound impact
on me, and I was thrilled when I could mimic
them successfully. I had the chance to meet their
designer, Susan Kare, last year, and fumbled my
way through telling her how much of an
inspiration she had been to my career. It was a
high point for me.
Let’s go through your design
journey. How did it all start?
My route to becoming a professional designer
was a bit circuitous, but can probably be traced
to my love of stories and storytelling. I think, at
the root of things, that’s what a designer is. A
storyteller. Some stories are ornate, and some
are whimsical, some are short and to the point.
But they all communicate ideas and have the
power to guide actions.
from the early Macintosh operating system on
I remember that I have a copy of The Way Things
Work by David MacCauley that I referenced
continuously as a child. It’s a beautiful book full
of illustrations on the inner workings of objects
and concepts. The technical side of things was
fascinating, but ultimately, it was the illustrations
that kept me coming back. They told little stories
using wooly mammoths hooked up to flying
contraptions, and operating levers and such. I
wanted to be a cartoonist for the majority of my
childhood.
I even convinced one of my high school teachers
to let me take a semester-long independent
study in cartooning.
Another influence was probably The Adventures
of Tintin books by Hergé. I devoured them as a
child and was enamored with his ligne claire
style. I try to carry a lot of that through the work I
do today.
I also remember digitally recreating the icons
our household Mac. They had a profound impact
on me, and I was thrilled when I could mimic
them successfully. I had the chance to meet their
designer, Susan Kare, last year, and fumbled my
way through telling her how much of an
inspiration she had been to my career. It was a
high point for me.
What was your first
I saw you worked for Apple.
design job?
My first “official” design job was as part of a
work-study program in college. There was an
opening for a graphic designer in the theater
department. I jumped at the chance and soon
found myself in a trial-by-fire, designing posters
and programs for each of the department’s
productions using Pagemaker (the precursor to
today’s InDesign) and Photoshop.
Poster design, particularly for theater, was always
attractive to me because it meant distilling the
plot, ideas, and concept of an entire production
into a single representative image. I’m only just
now seeing how that connects to my current
work as an icon designer!
Impressive! What kind of
project were you a part of?
When I started my design consultancy, Sensible
World, one of my first big ongoing projects was
designing the artwork for Dan Benjamin’s 5by5
podcast network. One of 5by5’s listeners, an
Apple employee, reached out to see if I’d be
interested in some icon design work.
Over the course of about a year and a half, I was
able to work on several projects for them. The
one I remember the most was a suite of app
icons for the software that powered the iPads
used by Apple Store employees. This was in the
age of iOS 6 when the icons were a lot more
illustrative and skeuomorphic.
How did you start focusing
on icon design?

When I first started designing icons, the concept

of an “icon family” was in its infancy. Or at least
the concept of icon-families-as-design-resource
was. You could purchase little packs of related
icons, but there weren’t a lot of large sets out
there, and none that quite matched the style I
was looking for. I was working on a project that
called for a lot of icons, and I was left deciding
between cobbling together a set from disparate
pieces or designing my own from scratch. I opted
for the latter!

Since the project didn’t have a budget for the

icon design work, I proposed that I design the
icons on my own and license them to the
company, instead of the company buying them
outright. I named the set
Symboliconographograms, an incredibly smart
and witty amalgamation of the words symbol,
icon, pictograph, and pictogram.
I promptly placed them on my blog for sale.
I work from home, so this is a great excuse to get
No one bought them.
local coffee shop. From there, I jump straight to
So, realizing that the name was horrible and that
no one knew who I was, or had any reason to
stumble across my icon set, I renamed them
Symbolicons and created a simple one-page
website. And then I reached out to absolutely
every person in the industry I admired and had
been influenced by and gave them a free set of
icons as a thank you, no strings attached.
What does your icon design
process look like?
Every project is different, but my general flow
typically follows the same path. I’ll usually start
my design process by sketching icon ideas on
scraps of paper, or more recently, in Linea on my
iPad Pro.
out of the house and spend some time at my
Adobe Illustrator for all of the vector work.
At Font Awesome, I design each of our icons in
three distinct styles (as well as a
soon-to-be-released fourth style), but I usually
start with our solid glyph-style. Once I finish the
group of icons in solid, I’ll work through our
regular and light styles. It’s often a messy
process, and I’ve started keeping a “scratch”
layer in most of my files where I throw all of the
unused and random icon variations I create.
Like with most things, how long it takes to design
an icon varies drastically. Some take a few
minutes, and some take hours, I’ve even had
some take over a day. This usually depends on
the complexity of the icon, or if there is or isn’t
already an established metaphor for a specific
concept or image.
 My personal preference is for glyph-style icons,
but I love designing all types. Choosing which to
use on a particular project depends a lot on the
brand you’re working with and what the end
goals are.

How do you choose a topic

or style for a specific set?

I’m going to give an incredibly lame answer to

this question. And that answer is, “it depends.” I
love each style for different reasons, but
ultimately, it depends on what’s right for a
project, or in the case of freelance work, what I’m
hired to design.
 When designing an icon that’s used on a sign in
an office building, you may have some more
flexibility. People are walking and have more
cognitive time to decipher meaning. The same is
true for digital applications. A marketing website
may benefit from more illustrative, whimsical
iconography, whereas icons in a form or utility
need to be sturdy and reliable.

The bigger challenge is always how to create a

recognizable icon that has a sense of style,
without sacrificing legibility. When designing
icons that will be used on a road sign, for
instance, they need to be readable and
straightforward while traveling at speed. Bold,
glyph style icons are usually the way to go in
these situations. And in fact, there are many
guidelines, like MUTCD, that require them.
 And I always, always, consider how an icon will
look at its native size and resolution. So while all
of my icons are vector by default, I’m constantly
toggling the pixel-preview on and off to make
sure they work in the least ideal circumstances.
I’ve also learned to not be precious with my
work. At this point in my career, I’ve created
thousands and thousands of icons. Some are
invariably going to be better than others. And
listening to feedback from customers and
collaborators is immensely helpful. Just the other
day, we had a customer mention that it looked
like one of our icons had a little “butt” hidden in
it. That wasn’t the intention, but now I can’t
unsee it!
What’s the one thing you
always keep in mind when
designing an icon?

My career as an icon designer has been built

around being a generalist. With large icon sets
like Font Awesome and Symbolicons, my focus is
on creating icons that work in a lot of different
contexts and applications.
Why are icons important in
the design world?
I think icons are important in the world in general,
not just the design world. Pictograms are one of
our oldest forms of communication. When used
thoughtfully, they enhance meaning, and in some
cases have the opportunity to be universally
understood. There’s something so core, so basic,
about simple illustrations that we’re drawn to
them. (Pun intended.) Just look at how popular
emoji are today.
What is an icon in your
opinion and what do you like
the most about designing
icons?
An icon is a puzzle. Or, perhaps icon design is a
puzzle, and an icon is the solution to the puzzle.
Who inspires you the most in
the icon design world?
I have always loved Otyl Aicher’s pictograms
from the 1972 Munich Olympics. I’m not the
greatest at icons that rely on the human form, but
it would be a dream to design icons for the
Olympics one day.
As I said before, Susan Kare is someone whose
work I much admire. I don’t think my current job
would exist in the way it does today, if not for
here. And when it comes to modern icon design,
I’m enamored with the work of Laura Bee and
Scott Dunlap.
Any suggestions for Each page contains a little image-based rebus

puzzle using only icons from Symbolicons Pro.

designers who want to dive
The book is available here.
into icon design?

Sure thing! The Icon Handbook by Jon Hicks is

an excellent overview of icons in general, and

how we use them today.

Understanding Comics (and its sequel

Reinventing Comics) by Scott McCloud is a great

source for understanding the mechanics of

storytelling and had a lot of influence over how I

design in general.

Oh, and issue number 011 of the comic Hawkeye

by David Aja, Matt Fraction, and Matt

Hollingsworth is a fantastic example of using

icons in storytelling. Pizza dog FTW.

I’d be a poor self-promoter if I didn’t mention that

I just published my first book! It’s called Goes

Without Saying, and is a collection brain-teasing

visual puns filtered through the lens of

pictograms and pop-culture.

Bonus Question: What’s your
favorite avocado icon?
I mean, the one in Symbolicons Pro is pretty
amazing, if I do say so myself - it comes in four
different styles! And now that you mention it, I
should probably design one for Font Awesome,
too.

Want to stay in touch with Jory? Find him on

Twitter, LinkedIn, Dribbble, Instagram or have a
look at his website.
TORI HINN

TORI HINN
TORI HINN

TORI HINN
Tori Hinn, Creative
Director of Figma

for Avocode
Hi Tori. Can you tell us a little
about yourself?
Hi! I’m a designer and creative director based in
San Francisco. I’m a new transplant and moved
here from New York! I love animals, people, color
theory, and experimenting with different art
forms. I also care deeply about diversity and
inclusion, and it’s a thread that runs through the
work that I do.
Take us through your
journey, and how did you
start with design?
I was always heavily involved in art as a kid. I
didn’t know it was graphic design at the time, but
I started making websites at around 11-12 years
old. I learned to code and liked designing my
layouts. I stopped for a time in high school and
got deep into art and illustration.
Eventually, I went to RISD and thought I would
major in illustration or furniture. I ended up going
to the graphic design senior show, falling in love
again and declared graphic design as my major.
I’ve been doing it ever since.
Where are you currently
working?
I work at Figma. I started in December of 2018,
so pretty recently! I’m the Creative Director there.
I was freelancing in New York before. I typically
worked on my own clients and contracts. I’m
involved with anything concerning the brand and
figuring out how it integrates with our product.
My main focus is to evolve and grow the Figma
brand, which is the kind of work I love doing.
What is your favorite project
that you worked on?
I don’t know if I have a favorite. I enjoyed
working with the team at Etsy in 2018 to help
brand Etsy’s new tiered subscription service. The
team was awesome, so welcoming and
collaborative.
It reinforced a lot of what I’ve learned about
compromise and communication. Those two
things are so important when brand and product
teams are working together. The project itself
was challenging because we were taking this
really beloved brand and injecting it with new
life. We were also asking customers to pay more
money for a new service, so I definitely learned
more about patience and listening to the needs
of customers.
When I look back, I probably would have started

exploring earlier. Timelines can creep up on you!

Otherwise, I think it turned out pretty well, and

we were happy with the end result.

Tell me about your project,

Women of Graphic Design.

Women of Graphic Design is a project that

explores the work of women in the graphic

design field, as well as their contributions to the

industry, and we also aim to correct a lot of

imbalances we see in design education.

It all started as part of my thesis in 2013 when I

was a student at RISD. I did start it alone but was

joined by Kathleen Sleboda of Draw Down Books

about a year after the project began.

The idea behind it is pretty simple. Discover

incredible work, interesting ideas, and amazing

contributions to design… that happen to be made

by women.

Most graphic design students in the US are

women. More than half of designers working the

US today are women. But only a small amount of

those designers are featured in design

publications,
asked to speak on panels at conferences, and

generally lack the same exposure and

opportunity that’s offered to their male

counterparts. When we teach graphic design

students about the history of design, most

curriculums leave out the contributions of

women.

Though there were and are many men to impact

the history and world of graphic design, there

have been great female designers right

alongside them. So I asked the question— why is

a whole group being ignored in institutionalized

design history? Women of GD started as a blog.

It’s not meant to give a history lesson about

designers 70 years ago, but rather, it’s a tool

My motivation started back when I was a student

made for today’s designers to start thinking

at RISD, taking History of Graphic Design, and

about a more balanced picture—the whole

learning about 323 graphic designers in a lecture

picture. And hopefully, we can start to correct

class. Only 6% of the designers featured were

some of the issues women face in design today.

women, but most of my classmates were women.

At the time, I didn’t know if there just weren’t jobs

for women, or if my professors weren’t educating

their students properly.

I wanted to enact change, not only for myself but We don’t have members, but we have

for other women in design. I wanted to contributors who helped us source work and ran

encourage them to go for the jobs they want, to the blog. One of our first contributors was Mirella

do the work they want, and not apologize for it. Marie of Studio Vertigo in Melbourne, Australia.

The blog is currently on hiatus, but as of today,

we have 84,428 followers on Tumblr (the

How did it evolve since

platform we run it off of ). For many years,

Kathleen managed the blog and the sourcing of

day one?
work, and she was incredible. WOGD would not

have existed without her, and I’m incredibly

It definitely became more of a community than I thankful and indebted to her.

ever expected! I started it to be a catalog or a

resource. I never imagined it would become this

amazing community of people that I could reach What are your favorite

out to, speak to, and find support in.

projects from the

community?
At the time WOGD started, there weren’t many

other communities like it. It’s been cool to see

more popping up now in recent years and to see Oh, it’s so hard to choose. I love the ones that

them focused on getting opportunities into the push at your thought process and challenge you.

hands of women, like YesEqual and Women Who Maybe even make you a bit uncomfortable, like

Design. I wish they’d been around when I was World White Web by Johanna Burai.

starting my career!
 I’d like for Women of GD to give women more
opportunity. I’d like to see women get jobs from
it, to see a lecture series, to put people in touch
with one another. I’d like it to inspire more
change than it already has. I think the community
side of Women of GD is the most essential part of
it all.

What’s an interesting or fun

fact about yourself we
wouldn’t find on

your social media?

What’s next for WOGD?
I’m from a small Florida town with a very
We aren’t currently updating the blog or taking southern culture, and if I’m exhausted, my
new submissions. With my schedule and a southern accent comes out.
full-time job, I’m rethinking where the project will
go. I started it six years ago, and my priorities
and dreams are different now. I’m taking some
time to dream up new things for WOGD and see
how it can be most useful to the community.
Keep an eye out.
What do you like to do when
you’re not working?
I like exploring (getting lost), making ceramics,
and I volunteer at a dog shelter (which I really,
really love).

Bonus Question: When was the

last time you ate avocado,
and how was it made?

This morning! I ate it on bread, and it's in my top

5 favorite foods.

Want to stay in touch with Tori? Find her on

Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram or have a look at
her website.
Julie

Delanoy
Julie

Delanoy
Julie Delanoy, Head of
Product Design at

Product Hunt
Hi Julie. Please tell us who
you are and what you do.
Bonjour! I'm French, and I come from a
neighborhood Fox News once called a "No Go
Zone." I'd not recommend my hometown to
tourists, but I can say many good people grew up
there and made the best out of what they started
with to have a good life. I want to think I'm one of
them.
plastic bowl, you know because you’d need a
Just like when you’re starting a new project, I’ve
found that starting life with limited resources
pushed me, and others, to be creative and
persistent. Proving people wrong was and still is
fuel for many, myself included.
video games or the websites but I remember the
Now, after 13 years of design under my belt, I'm
the Head of Product Design at Product Hunt,
where we help startups and fellow makers build
and launch their products. I still live in France,
more precisely in Paris, and I'm part of a fully
distributed team which covers many timezones
and many more ways of thinking.
Did you always want to
become a designer?
When I was a kid, I dreamed of becoming an
architect on the Moon. Don't ask me why I was
sure that by the time I’d be an adult, we’d be
living there, and I was so ready for that. I’d draw
beautiful little houses and then build them with
LEGO before covering all this with a transparent
"bubble" for the oxygen and all. My parents are
still making fun of me about all this.
And then, when I was a teen, we got the Internet
at home. I don't remember what came first, the
first time I made a website for someone else. A
Counter-Strike team needed one, and I was
pleased to oblige. Soon, other teams asked me
to create theirs, and that's how it started.
Around 14, I tried to explain to my parents why I
didn't need a classical education because I’d
decided that building websites would be my job.
I couldn’t convince them and ended up
graduating from high school. I applied to many
universities and design schools, I was open to
either design and programming... and got
accepted nowhere. As I said earlier, the place
where I grew up didn’t have a good reputation,
and sadly, it still impacts students coming from
my district nowadays.
full-page about me. Perfect timing to shine and
Luckily, I found out about a school that offered
apprenticeships in design and visual
communication. For two years, I worked half-time
for a web agency and spent the rest of the week
in class. Being an apprentice, I was paid, which
gave me my independence and the opportunity
to leave my hometown.
My salary was lower than my share for the rent,
and I quickly started freelancing on the side. I
worked hard to put my name out there: I
participated in design contests and awards. Lost
every time but didn’t give up. Eventually, I won a
competition, just at the right time.
I had applied to the Gobelins, my dream school
when the prestigious design magazine that
organized the design competition published a
be remembered during the application process. I
was accepted in the Graphic and Motion design
class of 2009.
What were you doing between
leaving Dailymotion and
joining ProductHunt?
Not long after graduating from Gobelins, I joined
the video streaming platform Dailymotion for my
first full-time design job at a startup. Working
there was a fantastic experience. At first, I was as
a web designer, and I mostly made banners and
ads, but I wanted to do more and was very open
about it to my colleagues. Some of them became
my mentors. I was excited to go to work and
happy to stay at the office to work on
side-projects.
streaming platform where I founded the Product
On a Friday night, with the lead front end
engineer, we created a webpage to show the
capabilities of the HTML5 video tag. A few
weeks later,
that same project was on a giant screen at the
SXSW. I soon became a side project addict: I
rebranded Dailymotion in my free time before
making a presentation to the C-levels and seeing
my little project turned into something real. I did
the same with many components on the
platform. Designed the first iOS app with the
founder. The company paid for an ergonomy and
user testing class, and I was offered the role of
"product designer."
I was among the first people in France with this
job title, and soon enough, I got many offers from
other startups. Later, I joined Deezer, a music
Design team and implemented new design
processes. I enjoyed my time there very much
but looking back; I was probably working too
much, which explains why I left after a couple of
years without knowing what I wanted to do next.
Many things happened between my time at
Deezer and now.
I worked for a long list of startups (Mention, You’re building a platform
GitBook, Dashlane, Prestashop) as an employee called Remote Stories. Tell me
or freelancer in France, and I even founded mine
more about this project.
before meeting the founders of TM, a design
studio based in SF in 2015.

During a Christmas break, two Product Hunt

I was excited to join TM because I could work on employees and I started Remote Stories; a
several products, never get bored working on website where people can share their
the same thing with the same problems and experience about remote work freely.
people. I also discovered remote work for real.
Not just working from my home office, but
working with different timezones, different ways
of thinking, and languages. I wanted freedom,
and TM offered it to me.

Product Hunt was a client of the studio and one

of my main projects.
We've collected so many stories about remote For the past few months, Ayrton De Craene and I

work. It helped us understand how complex all have been improving the website. We've

this is and what people need for remote work to invested time and efforts on accessibility. Remote

be possible for them. Some stories are our work could help disabled people get their dream

motivation to fix things, and others are what we jobs in comfortable conditions or people who live

would like to offer to everyone. in faraway regions. It's important to me that our

product is easily accessible to them.

“Remote work could help disabled people

get their dream jobs in comfortable

conditions or people who live in faraway

regions.”

We're currently working on resurfacing remote

jobs and companies and our long-awaited

newsletter!
 After almost two years at TM working on Product
Hunt, I was simply in love with the product and
the team. I joined them full-time, first as a product
designer and now as Head of Product Design.

As you mentioned you joined

Product Hunt where you’re
leading the product team.
How did you end up there?
We used to have a flat organization structure
where everyone led their projects without
anyone to oversee things. From a design point of
view, it created problems because we lacked
consistency, but more than that, it slowed down
implementation and the product itself. My role is
to prevent this from happening again as well as
to facilitate my teammates' work.

Our design team's mission is to create tools that

are easily usable and updatable. To ensure our
products are accessible to everyone, no matter
where they come from or who they are.

My end goal is for Product Hunt to be an online

tech hub that is safe for everyone. And yes, I
hunt on Product Hunt! One of my projects was
hunted back in 2014, and it changed my career
for the better.
What projects are you
currently working on?
We're a small team with around 20 people, and
we are dedicated to our mission. On the design
side, there are two product designers and one
graphic designer.
Every quarter, the entire team discuss projects
and help build the roadmap. We have a feature
team model, meaning that a few people will be
working on a specific feature or project during
the quarter. I like this system because it allows
rotation and also gives everyone a chance to
lead their project. This quarter, we've been
focusing on features for the community.
Dan Edwards, Senior Product Designer, has been
leading efforts on what we call "Makers," our
community section. He and his team have been
improving the experience, adding features
people have been requesting and much more.
I'm pretty excited about this because Makers is a
project I started last year, and seeing another
designer turn it into something great as Dan did
is very satisfying. Sometimes, you need fresh
ideas to make a product shine.
On my side, I've been working on our Discussion
system. Comments on Product Hunt exist since,
well, I don't even know. It's been there for a while
now. We’re improving users and products
mentions, notifications, updating the text editor
and making some other changes I cannot
discuss for now but I'm very excited to ship this
and see how people will use the new system.

We’re soon meeting to plan next quarter, so if

you want something to be added or changed on
Product Hunt, let me know on Twitter, and I'll
bring it up during our roadmap meeting.
What are some dos and don’ts Be proactive in communication. Let your
on building your own teammates know what you're doing. "TMI"
doesn't exist in remote work (except if it’s not
freelance business? work-related, we don’t want to know you’ve
spent the last 24 hours on the toilet )

If you're new to remote work or about to start
working remotely, here are some tips for you:
Plan your week, not just your work. Include
mandatory breaks in your planning.
If you're applying to a remote job: Too many
people tell us they are excited to work
remotely and forget to talk about why they
want to work with us and why they are the

right candidate. Wanting a remote job isn't

enough.

Find ways to stay active, either go for a 30

minutes walk, go to the gym, walk your dog.
But don't stay inside all day long if you work
from home.

Working from home isn't for everyone. Try

libraries, cafés, co-working or become friends
with other remote workers and go work with
them.
What’s your favorite thing What do you like to do when

about remote work? you’re not working?

The freedom to do things when it’s best for me. I When I'm not working, you'll find me at the gym. I

work when I'm the most productive. I go to the like lifting weights and being told that I shouldn’t

gym when it’s empty. I go on vacations when lift this heavy.

most people are at work.

What’s an interesting or fun Bonus Question:

fact about yourself we Avocado vs Guacamole?

wouldn’t find on your

social media?

Everything about me is on social media.

Want to stay in touch with Julie? Find her on

Twitter, Dribbble, or have a look at her website.

Noah

Stokes
Noah

Stokes
The journey towards
giving designers spotlight
on Dribbble with its Design
Director Noah Stokes
Hi Noah. Please tell us who Because of the nature of a record player, it firmly
you are and what you do and plants you in a chair to enjoy the entirety of an
album (the way a great album should be heard).
what do you like to do when
Oh, I also like to dance.

you’re not working?

I also have 3 boys. I rarely talk about them online,
and never share photos in public. I do this to
My name is Noah Stokes. I’ve been in the
respect their privacy and in a way protect them
web/design industry going on 16 years now. I
from the internet itself! My oldest is 14 and my
started getting interested in the web around
youngest is 7. I love them all very much.
2002. I was working as an engineer at Palm. I
admired the creativity around sites like CSS Zen
Garden and Stylegala. I was enamoured. I
wanted to do that! Turns out, I was horrible at it…
so I picked up coding instead. I thought if I can’t
design it, I can still be a part of it by coding it. 16
years later, and I’ve come full circle back to
design as the Design Director at Dribbble.

Besides work I like to mountain bike. There are

many miles of trails here in San Luis Obispo,
some right along the ocean. I love to be out on
my bike. I also enjoy music—both listening and
playing. Lately I’ve been buying albums on vinyl
that I love, end to end, first song to the last.
What was your design journey
like? When was the moment
you knew you wanted to work
in design?
My design journey is one that almost never
happened. As I went off to college the internet
was just starting to blossom, we have a modem
pool in the dormitory that you could dial into.
Pages would take minutes to load. We’re talking
slow. The next year, the dormitory got T1 lines,
and Napster appeared and blew up. I moved off
campus, forced to use the old modem pool for
internet access… and because of that, never got
the buzz of the web. Looking back, I’m confident
I would have fallen in love with the web had I just
been 1 year younger and lived in the dormitory
when the T1 lines were installed. I would have
changed my major to computer science. Instead,
I graduated college with a degree in Industrial
Engineering.
Because of the nature of a record player, it firmly
plants you in a chair to enjoy the entirety of an
album (the way a great album should be heard).
Oh, I also like to dance.
I also have 3 boys. I rarely talk about them online,
and never share photos in public. I do this to
respect their privacy and in a way protect them
from the internet itself! My oldest is 14 and my
youngest is 7. I love them all very much.
“My design journey is one that almost
never happened.”
I worked a variety of jobs until 2002 or 2003
when I started discovering these personal blogs
of designers like Doug Bowman, Dave Shea,
Jeffrey Zeldman which lead me to sites like CSS
Zen Garden, A List Apart and Stylegala (RIP). I fell
in love with this world that I never knew existed. I
knew right then and there that I wanted to be a
designer.
Well, as it would turn out, you can’t just go and
be a great designer on day one. Design did not
come easy at all—remember, I have an
engineering degree. I struggled to produce
anything that I liked enough to share. At the
same time, my friend Harold Emsheimer was
looking for a freelancer to mark up his design
work. The first day I started working with Harold
was the first day I started my design journey.
Project after project I saw these details, I
committed them to memory. And as time went
on, and I continued to practice design, I started
to put these principles into practice and I started
getting more and more design work of my own.
“Not only did I notice them, because I had

to add them to code, I saw how he added

those details because I was in the file itself!
As I got to do the code for Harold’s work, I spent
Things like using #333 instead of #000 for
hours and hours inside of his Photoshop comps,
your blacks.”
measuring, slicing, zooming in and out and in
again and by doing this, I started to notice the
details in the design, the magic that made
I would work nights and weekends teaching
Harold’s designs so great. Not only did I notice
myself everything I could. I would take my
them, but because I had to covert them to code, I
favorite sites, and try to recreate them in
saw how he added those details because I was
Photoshop. I would then try to code them myself
in the file itself. Things like using #333 instead of
as front-end development came easy to me and
#000 for your blacks. Or like 1px drop shadow to
was something I thoroughly enjoyed. Finally in
add a touch of depth or measuring the distance
2003 I got an opportunity that would change the
between the typography and understanding
course of my career forever—I got my first job as
vertical rhythm.
a web designer for a small consultancy in the
Bay Area. It’s been all over the place since then.
I’ve designed and built over 100 client websites. It was an amazing place to work, I grew up an

I’ve coded entire SaaS apps in PHP and MySQL. Apple fanboy, so I was living my dream. At the

I’ve started a company and worked with some same time it wasn’t the most challenging job and

amazing clients. I’ve had incredible, amazing the hours were tough over the holidays because

opportunities, and I truly consider myself so lucky at that time they still used to participate in

to have fallen into this industry at this time—even MacWorld which was in January.

though I still wish I was just a year younger.

I would see Steve Jobs and Jony Ive around. I

got to see projects long before launch. I have

You started your career friends that went onto do great things there,

including work on the original iPhone side by

working for Apple, but you
side with Jobs every day. But for me, my time
weren’t happy with the job.
ended after 2 years. The commute was killing
Why?
me, and I was newly married and wanted more

time at home.

Apple wasn’t my first job, but probably my first

job at a company with a reputation. It was right

before I kind of “found” the web. I worked there

between 2002–2004. At that time, Apple wasn’t

anywhere close to the company we know of

today. For perspective, when I was there, I

worked on the first 17” Powerbook. I was a

Software Quality Engineer—in short my job was

to insure that we did not break our software with

the new hardware we were building.

You, Garrett St. John and
Chris Bowler founded Bold in
2010. Why did you decide to
move on your own?
A year before I formed Bold, I began working
full-time freelance. I had built up enough clients
over the years of night and weekend work, that I
locked up a retainer for 85% of my monthly
needs. A year later and those retainer clients
were my smallest clients! Garrett and I decided
that we should join our talents officially and so
we began partnership talks. At the same time, we
were doing some work for Chris over at Fusion
Ads. Long story short, as we formed Bold, we
also bought out Chris’ partner at Fusion Ads and
acquired that platform as well. I remember phone
calls between the three of us talking about what
we’d name the studio. We settled on Bold
because we wanted to be bold in all that we did.
We were even lucky enough to get Aaron Draplin
to do branding!
As time went on, we parted ways with Chris and
Fusion Ads and continued on with a renewed
focus on web design and development. We were
an end to end design studio. We did consulting,
design, development, support and retainer work.
Garrett would handle the backend, I would
handle the front-end. He did the books while I
did the biz dev. We got to work on some amazing
projects—with amazing clients. We got to work
with clients like Github, npm, Clerky, College
Track, Lookout, Rdio, RogueFitness,
SneakerNews, Supra, The Music Bed and
YouVersion among others.
Some projects went on to be acquired, one just

went public the other day (Beyond Meat). Some

were just a disaster, others were for non-profits

that gave us a sense of purpose in what we were

doing. We even built (and sold) a sales funnel

tool for small businesses called AirTraffic. In the

end we ran for 6 years and employed 7 people

over the course of that time. I will always look

back on that time fondly.

In 2018, you joined Dribbble
team as a Design Director.
How did you end up here?

I’m probably close to my sixth month mark at

Dribbble. I came over from Creative Market
where I was the Product Design Manager. I had
an incredible mentor in Gerren Lamson at
Creative Market who really helped set me up for
my next step—which happened to be Dribbble.
First of all, coolest company ever, right? Second, I
knew a few folks before I joined and the
opportunity to work with them was a double
bonus. I couldn’t not make the move. So, as the
Director of Design what do I do… great question,
I’m glad I asked. Titles are a thing in our industry,
aren’t they? Everyone’s a CEO. I kid, I’m grumpy.
Get off my lawn.
 We’re 10 years old this year, but in a lot of ways,

we’re just getting started.

“Dribbble is unique in that nearly all of our

designers code and vice versa.”

Back to it though, my role right now. Well, I work

to help lead our designers and front-end

developers. Dribbble is unique in that nearly all

of our designers code and vice versa. It’s

uncanny how my background where I wove in

and out of design and front-end development

prepared me for this very role. Sometimes I’m a

full back and I’m blocking for one of our star

running backs. Other times I’m the coach calling

the plays, or trying to set the tone. Shall I go on

with the sports metaphors? Outside of my team, I

work with our leadership to help set, drive and

support the goals, mission and vision of Dribbble.

What projects are you We’ve completed it in Figma, and are now

moving to bring those components to live in

currently working on?
code. We’re looking to have it finished soon at

which point we’ll initiate Project Double

Dribbble… which unfortunately I can’t talk about.

Our entire company is remote, mostly across the

US and Canada, although we do have a few

outliers. My team of 5 is spread out from the

west coast to the east. They used on

“One of the biggest projects we’re working

cross-functional teams with other designers, on is building a design system. We’ve

front-enders, engineers and a project manager. completed it in Figma.”

But we’ve recently changed that up to an internal

studio model. Now all work comes through

design as a team/studio. This way we’re able to Ok, maybe I’ll say just a little something. No, take

work more collaboratively as a design team to it back, I won’t. I’ll tell you where we’re headed

ensure consistency across our platforms. We though. Our vision as designers at Dribbble is to

work across both our community and hiring shine the spotlight on the work of our community.

platform. (Side note, did you know that Dribbble Our design system principles are built around

has a hiring platform? We’re working to help this idea. At the same time, we want the

every designer get the design job they want.) aesthetic of Dribbble to be instantly

Outside of cross-functional team work, we work recognizable—we want to be the Stripe that

on our own design initiatives. One of the biggest everyone rips off. (Kidding, not kidding, kidding).

projects we’re working on is building a design But when you think about that challenge, how do

system. you shine the light on each creator on the site,

while at the same time looking damn fine while There are so many, so, so many insanely good

you’re holding up that spotlight, that’s the designers out there. I get to work with two of

challenge we face every day. them! I want to help them do what they do best.

This isn’t unlike my early career where in order to

remain involved in design, I taught myself

“Our vision as designers at Dribbble is to front-end development, except this time, it’s

shine the spotlight on the work of our getting to help designers do what they love. I’ve

community.” been in this type of role with two companies

now, and I have to admit, these two teams I’ve

worked with will be life long friends. I’m loving

every step of the way in this chapter of my

After 15 years of experience in
career.
design, where does your
passion lie now?

I love this question. It’s one I chat about with

other friends at this place in their journey. To be

perfectly honest, that itch, that need that I had to

constantly be creating and designing has given

way to wanting to work to enable others to do

that now. I’m sure some of it is my age, but my

move from IC to Management was very

intentional.
Where is the best place for
people to connect with you
online?

I’m only active on Twitter, where you can follow

me @motherfuton. My DM’s are always open.
Other than that you can find me online at
noahstokes.com.

Bonus Question: What’s your

favorite way to eat an
avocado?

Favorite way to eat an avocado… probably on a

sandwich. Or maybe some guacamole… but does
that count?

Want to stay in touch with Noah? Find him on

Twitter, Dribbble, LinkedIn or have a look at his
website.
Yuan

Wang
Yuan

Wang
Making every Airbnb trip
magical with Experience
Design Lead, Yuan Wang
Hi Yuan. Please tell us who
you are and what you do.
I'm Yuan Wang, an experience design lead at
Airbnb, designing to make every trip on Airbnb
consistently magical. I'm also an artist,
craftswoman, and mentor. Before Airbnb, I spent
the past 3.5 years designing at Twitter, where I
worked on projects from Growth & Onboarding,
Abuse & Safety, to Tweets & Conversations. I led
the design of Twitter threads, which made it
easier to share longer thoughts on Twitter.
Before that, I worked as a Senior Designer at
Mozilla.
up my future leadership role, it'd be a founder of
I was born and raised in the northeastern part of
China. In 2010, I moved to the United States and
overcame a long journey of finding my voice and
building confidence in a foreign country. Now I
aspire to be the mentor that I wish I had when I
first moved to the U.S. Lately; I've been actively
mentoring to help others with similar challenges
grow and thrive.
Besides design, I love making art. I have a small
studio named "Ink + Water" that features ink
paintings of human figures, nature, and Chinese
classical poetry. I have exhibited my work, sold
limited prints, and led figurative drawing sessions
with SF Ballet "Sensorium." My paintings are
being featured in a global exhibition in Germany
this summer.
I enjoy bringing creative ideas to life through
deep empathy, systematic thinking, and
collaborative execution. I find fulfillment in
leading by example, self-learning & growing, and
elevating the people around me. If I could make
an independent creative studio that celebrates
international and minority cultures through
inspiring art and meaningful design.
“If I could make up my future leadership
role, it'd be a founder of an independent
creative studio that celebrates international
and minority cultures through inspiring art
and meaningful design.”
Take me through your design
journey. When did it all start?
I started practicing design in my first year of
college. I taught myself Photoshop and designed
print materials, posters, and visual identities for
student unions and the university art troupe.
Even though I started as an “information system”
major, I found myself more interested in the
front-end and user experience. I joined a web
development studio at my university, which
helped me polish my HTML/CSS skills. Together
with my studio mates,
we designed and prototyped a couple of
websites for small clients. I also created my
portfolio website, which I used to apply for
gradual schools specialized in Human-Computer
Interaction.
Initially, I found it challenging to find a major that
was mapped entirely to my interests. Instead of
looking around and asking “What’s my
alternative?”, I asked myself questions like: “How
might I connect my interests to my field of
study?”,”What are the possibilities?” and ”Anyone
else is doing similar work?”
Fortunately, answering these questions led me to
discover new fields like information architecture,
user experience research, and usability testing.
During this time in China, these fields were new
to both the tech industry and the academic
curriculum. In order to seize every possible
opportunity I could, I initiated cold calls and
emails and volunteered as a research assistant.
Most importantly, I shared my genuine interests
in learning.
These efforts led me to create my thesis on Let’s go to your first bigger
information architecture, an internship
job at Mozilla. What

opportunity at Lenovo, and a chance to be the

was it like?
first visiting student at European-Sino Usability

Center.

In 2011, when I first joined the Mozilla UX team, I

Looking back on my early journey, I’m quite
was shocked that this great product that serves
amazed how determined I was about studying
millions of customers was designed by a small
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in a place
team of less than ten people. Despite facing
when no one else around me shared my desire. I
competition with big tech giants like Google and
was deeply focused and prioritized my time and
Microsoft, everyone on the team was deeply
energy toward accomplishing my ultimate goal. I
driven by the mission of the company. We were
was incredibly fortunate to have my family
dedicated to making Firefox the browser that
supporting my pursuit. My journey to design
puts customers’ privacy and controls first.

wouldn’t be possible without their faith in me.

Six months after I joined, I embarked on a

mission to bring Firefox to a brand new platform,

Windows 8 Touch. This was my proudest work

during my time at Firefox. Firefox for Windows 8

Touch (AKA Firefox Metro) was a touch-optimized

browser designed from the ground up for the

Windows 8 platform.
When I started the project, the platform was still
in developer mode. I took a lot of time studying
the new platform and its Metro design language.
I also had to be creative about prototyping
gestural concepts that embrace the new Metro
UI languages.

In 2012, popular tools such as Framer, Principle,

InVision, and all the other tools did not exist. I
used Keynote and recorded a video concept with
narration, shared with the entire Firefox open
source community to gather early feedback.
After a year and a half of working with a highly
distributed engineering team, Firefox Metro
released in beta in 2014. Firefox Metro was titled
one of the best Windows 8 browsers, including
the best UI design. I felt incredibly grateful to
have led this project from concept to production.
I even got to tap into my research experience to
conduct usability studies. You can read more
about the design challenges and process here:
Firefox for Windows 8 — Yuan Wang.
Being a non-profit organization and open-source
community uniquely shaped the way Mozilla
engaged with its customers. Design concepts
could be shared at a very early stage with a
broader audience. Blog posts were not just
limited to products that were ready for launch,
but also prototypes that are under incubation.
Through the open source platform and
messaging channels, part-time contributors and
enthusiast volunteers could also provide
feedback and contribute to projects of their
interests.
Because the opportunities for the gathering were
precious and rare, people enjoyed each other’s
accompany and spending time connecting
deeply. Some of my favorite moments at Mozilla
were from those times spent together. Working
there had made me a believer.
“With the right ways of working, distributed
teams can collaborate effectively, develop
an amazing bond and incredible culture.”

Mozilla was one of the companies that embraced

remote working from its very early years. Though
I was working from one of the central offices. A
lot of engineers on my team worked from
different time zones. In 2014, the entire Firefox
UX team was distributed across four time zones
and three countries. The team developed many
ways to collaborate from text-based
communication to quarterly work weeks where
teams are spending time together.
What was the reason to join Designing for growth was an eye-opening and
Twitter? And once you did, rewarding experience. I developed a deeper
understanding of the business and the barriers to
what was your role in their
growth. I also learned how to leverage data to
design team? inform design decisions and product strategies.

After two years of designing for growth and

I joined the Twitter design because I wanted to
onboarding, I joined a new team to lead the
be a part of a larger design team. My opportunity
design of the essential building block of Twitter,
there allowed me to grow and learn from some
Tweets. When I was first presented with the
of the best designers in the industry. Back when I
opportunity, I had doubts about whether I was
was a college student in China, Twitter
capable of designing something so highly visible.
connected me to scholars, professors, and
It's so visible that it's featured in the news on TV
design programs all around the world. It was a
all the time! Luckily, my manager Kate Freebairn
surreal moment when I knew that I'd get to
looked me in the eye and told me, "I know you
design for a product that broadened my horizon
can," which was empowering and motivating.

years ago.

Looking back, I'm so grateful that I said yes to the

During my first two years at Twitter, I designed
opportunity and said yes to myself. This new role
experiences for new users, returning users, and
stretched my comfort zone and brought more
logged-out Twitter visitors. I designed content for
visibility to my process and thinking. I got to
the Twitter logged-out home page, created an
collaborate with designer across many other
in-product education messaging framework, and
teams, and provide context to help them make
launched a highly personalized new user
more informed decisions.
experience across all platforms.
All of these experiences helped me uncover my
strengths as a designer. I stopped self-doubting
and focusing on developing my strengths. As a
result, I became more confident, and my work
benefited as well.
You led the design of Twitter
threads, which made it easier
for us to share longer

thoughts on Twitter. What

was it like to design an
In 2017, my team announced a few major experience for

launches to make replying and sharing longer millions of people?

thoughts easier on Twitter. We also launched a
series of improvements to reduce abusive
content on Twitter. Besides what's shipped to the Designing a brand new content format for
world, I also had the opportunity to envision the millions of people was an incredibly rewarding
future of conversations on Twitter. How might we experience. I felt very lucky to have partnered
make conversations easier to follow along and with the talented Paul Stamatiou to bring the
participate? How might community-powered end-to-end experience to life.
moderation contribute to the health of public
discussions? It's a truly complex and fascinating
space. Since 2018, the health of conversations
has become the top priority for Twitter. It's been
awesome seeing my former colleagues making
significant progress on solving these problems.
 Once the goal is defined, a small working group
(two designers, one product manager) was
assembled to explore the possibilities. Piloting a
new process, we sprinted for two weeks with
daily check-in with the product VP and regular
reviews with the CEO. The days were long, but it
was extremely rewarding to hear the early
enthusiasm.

We hosted brainstorm sketch sessions with

stakeholders to generate ideas and symbols of
longer thoughts. We also used the cover stories
technique to envision the launch from the
public’s perspective.
So why Threads? Twitter has a long history of
studying how people use our service and then
creating features to make what they’re doing
easier. The Retweet, ‘@reply,’ and hashtag are
examples of this. In 2017, the team started
noticing more and more people were creatively
stitching Tweets together to share more
information or tell a longer story. We realized that
there is an opportunity to make it easier to
create, consume, and share threads on Twitter.
 Creation
Do not complicate a single tweet composition
flow

Easy to go from a single tweet to multiple

seamlessly

Support both batching thoughts and updating

as you go

To bring the end-to-end experience to life, we

Consumption
divided the design work between consumption Help people discover & comprehend threads

and creation, and defined the guidelines for

each: Reduce the friction to sharing a thread

Make threads a native content type on Twitter

As the designer focusing on consumption

design, I went through many iterations exploring
the content format.
 In total, the team did three rounds of research:

Round 1: Understand motivations and existing

experience from thread creators. Focus on
understandability and discoverability.

Round 2: Understand consumption needs

from non-creators. Focus on consistency &
format with prototype variants.

Round 3: Usability test before launch with

To make an informed decision of all the options, I creators & non-creators. Focus on task
developed a set of criteria to stress test each completion, discoverability, edge case
option: validation.

Clarity: can represent a singular threaded After eight months of hard work, the team
Tweet; compliments the full display in the launched a new experience to the public. Since
detail page

then, it’s been incredibly humbling to see the

public sharing more and more thoughtful stories
Scalability: Scales well to all clients; scale to on Twitter.

display extremely long threads

A fun fact is that the team initially considered

Consistency: consistent affordances across all naming the feature “Tweetstorms” instead of
surface areas (home timeline, profile, “Threads.”
notifications, and more)
The main reason being it was a stronger After three and a half years, I’ve become a more

positioning on the brand and aligned with resilient person in the face of change. I’m

names, such as Tweets and Retweets. Later on, genuinely grateful for this experience.

market research indicated that customers

resonated with more positively with “Threads.” All of this made leaving Twitter a tough decision.

The team decided to go with the option that I felt ready for a change in my professional life.

customers wanted, and “Tweetstorms” remained However, I didn’t know what kind of change I

as the internal name for the project. needed. After a long journey of searching, I

debated among offers at two other companies

and staying at Twitter. To finalize my decision, I

Judging from your words, the created a scorecard based on my values and

graded each opportunity against the scorecard.

Twitter design team was a

great experience. Why did you

decide to leave?

I’m the kind of person who often looks for

reasons to stay instead of reasons to leave. I had

decided to stay with Twitter during some of the

most challenging times at the company. From

2014 to 2016, there were multiple lay-offs and

re-orgs. I was determined to stay during those

times because I saw the personal growth

opportunity and the direct impact with my work.

Ultimately, Airbnb stood out because of the
following reasons:
1. Travel and hospitality aligned well with my
personal interests.
millions of guests come to Airbnb searching and
2. Designing for a double-sided marketplace was
a new challenge.
might we establish better trust between hosts
3. Thinking beyond the pixels, shifting the focus
from the online experiences to offline
experiences.
As an Experience Design Lead
at Airbnb, you make sure that
every trip on Airbnb is
consistently magical. What
are the primary activities
you’re involved in?
“Imagine the end state and then work backward”
is one of the key product principles at Airbnb. My
proudest contribution thus far is the work I led
last year to envision the future of
accommodation listing platform. Every day
browsing places to stay for their future trip. How
might we help guests better assess the fit? How
and guests?
With this output, my team now portraits a robust
body of forward-looking projects that are getting
momentum and support from leadership and
cross-functional partners. It also has resulted in
new ways of collaborating with partners across
the organization.
Airbnb is rapidly growing, and many initiatives
and projects are happening within the
organization. Since my team works on the
accommodation listing platform, there are many
teams that we collaborate with regularly.
To ensure guests will have a consistent and
high-quality experience using Airbnb, I often find
myself spending time influencing and
collaborating with designers from stakeholder
teams and rallying others to solve key problems
for guests.
You also initiated, designed
and led the first mentorship
program dedicated for Airbnb
design team. What was this
program about?
I approached this project as to how I would solve
for a product design problem. I conducted a few
casual interviews, gathered data from my
research, and wrote down a 1-pager to outline
the problem and propose solutions and
timelines. The proposal was well received. With
the leadership support, I collaborated with a
small team to execute every phase of the pilot
program, which included designing survey
questionnaires, pairing mentors and mentees,
and coming up with biweekly topic suggestions.

Starting the mentorship pilot program for Airbnb

design meant a lot for me personally. Shortly
after joining Airbnb, I noticed that although the
entire design team had a healthy gender
balance, there was progress to be made for the
design leads group. That motivated me to think
about ways to better support the growth of the
women within our team.
After all of the hard work, it was incredibly When I first started designing, I went to many

fulfilling for me to see 70 mentors and mentees design events and networking opportunities in

signed up and paired up. Many of them SF. Despite making some great connections, it

co-created an amazing relationship during this was challenging for me to find seasoned design

program. Following the success of the pilot leaders who are women of color. It was even

program, we have successfully scaled the more difficult to find women of color with an

program to benefit teammates of all genders. We international background. As a result, I had to

have so many ideas to implement and make this learn things the hard way. I did not negotiate my

even better than the pilot program! If anyone is salary early in my career. I did not persist, asking

interested in starting a mentorship program for something that I wanted, whether it was a

within their organization, I’d be happy to share promotion, a green card sponsorship, or an

the lessons I learned in depth. intern. I thought as long as I’m doing good work,

good things will happen to me. I couldn’t be

more wrong.

Coming to your aspiration of

becoming a mentor. What did

“Women don’t arrive until their voices are
you miss the most in terms of
heard.”
mentorship when you started

in design?

It took me a long time to finally arrive and find my

voice, build my confidence, and know what I

deserve. When I reflect and share my

introspective journey,
I found my experience particularly resonated
with women, people with international
backgrounds, and under-represented minorities.
It deeply motivated me to share my story more
broadly and continue giving back to the
community.
What do you like to do when
you’re not working?
I love making art. Since 2015, I’ve been running a
small painting studio named “Ink + Water.” I
practice live figure drawing using classical
Chinese painting techniques. I have exhibited in
group shows in Germany and led figure drawing
sessions with SF Ballet “Sensorium.”
to keep going.
People often ask me, how do you find the time to
keep pursuing your interests when you have a
full-time job? To me, the most useful thing is to
create a routine for your interests so that it
becomes the default.
For example, if I were to decide every week
whether I should spend time figure drawing, I
may let it slip. Instead, I made a long-term
commitment and signed up for 22 weeks of
drawing sessions. This way, there was no excuse
not to show up.
Any last words, advices, tips,
or lessons learned for
aspiring designers?
Persistence matters. To become proficient at a
skill takes dedication and persistence. Don’t give
up if you do not see the immediate progress.
Create a routine. Build a habit. The hard thing is
Focus on your strengths. Focus on what you
already have, including your background,
passion, and experience. Designers come from
all sorts of backgrounds.
Think about how your experience could make
you a better designer, thinker, and collaborator.
Tell that story for your next interview.

Bonus Question: What’s your

favorite way to eat an
avocado?

I love making my avocado breakfast sandwich. I

add finely diced shallots and drizzle with my
secret ingredient, chilli oil.

Want to stay in touch with Yuan? Find her on

Twitter, LinkedIn or have a look at her website.
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