What are you looking for in your next opportunity?
I'm looking for a collaborative environment, working on a product I can believe in. I've worked for consultancies, been part of in-house product design teams, and designed at large tech companies and startups as well. I'm looking to learn and grow but also be supported and have advocates.
Working in diverse groups with people from varying backgrounds, with differing opinions leads to innovation and better products. I'm looking for growth opportunities and to have a material impact on the product. The size of the company is less important than the principles, mission and processes that guide it.
What does an ideal product development process look like to you?
It usually starts with a conversation around data, research and analysis, member problems and use cases. I ask "why" a lot. It takes time to understand the problem space. In some sectors like personal finance, it may takes months or longer until you start to understand the challenges people are facing. Technology and design are a layer on top of that.
The information and requirements gathering phase is as important as high fidelity design. Once you understand the gaps between the current state and the desired state you're better off. Design should be involved from the very beginning.
The conversation should be cross funcational. If you can't outline the use cases, goals, user needs and what success looks like it might not be the best time to begin the work stream or may be very early on in the process. It's part of a designer's job to help visualize ideas, sometimes even socialize bad ideas to highlight the delta, stay focused on user problems and then help validate them.
At Google there were PRDs (product requirement documents) that were used to some success and I've seen other companies use functional specs or one pagers to kick off initiatives. I've helped write and shape PRDs. I've also seen them used retroactively which can be problematic. I've helped teams get to MVP and understand limitations. In some cases design can help the company to see further out, say six to twelve months, to make bigger leaps.
What kinds of problems do you like to solve?
I'm interested in big picture challenges. Design plays a huge role in all products and experiences. Everything is design, every decision you make is design, from what you decide to focus on to how services are architected to defining success metrics. You can't improve what you don't measure.
At Starbucks we worked on what appeared to be simple problems like "allow users to manage their account" or "allow customers to order ahead" but there were many steps to figure out. On Google Cloud the problems were much bigger with more complexity. How do we distill these complicated desktop designs into a viable mobile experience? How do we allow someone to monitor 100 virtual machines runninng in the cloud, given the limited screen real estate on mobile?
One of my strengths is helping find a variety of solutions and working with teams to validate a suitable candidate based on a set of constraints. Design is never done. I've been more focused on empowering others throughs platforms lately.
What type of managers have you worked with in the past?
I've worked with a variety of managers in the past. Some better than others. I've worked with mid-level managers, VPs of Product and key stakeholders. The best managers I've had, there was a lot of trust and good communication and feedback. They fascilitated, there was support. I'm a self starter. I try to understand the pressure my managers are under, then manage up.
Do you do more visual or interaction design?
I'm both, I can do both. I can do early to late stage design. I'm an end to end designer that can own projects from concept to comp to live code. That being said, product design is very much a team effort.
Did you collaborate with others?
Yes, collaboration is key and absolutely necessary. With tools like Figma, the whole idea of file ownership really doesn't exist anymore. I'm still figuring out the best way for me to be a collaborator and socialize ideas. It's ongoing, I try to take a "yes and" approach and find the right way to offer different opinions or refocus the conversation on users's needs as a way to move the product forward.
How did the design succeed or fail?
Measurable outcomes are important. I'm familiar with the OKR process. Defining what success looks like is critical. It benefits the design too, it helps to consider how success metrics can translate to product levers. Once you have targets you can start to optimize or reduce friction to common actions through task analysis.
There are many ways to view success. Engagement can be one way, it depends on the revenue and monetization model. I've seen product decisions made based on that monetization strategy. You can't forget the human on the other side of the glass, it has to be a balance. Someone may accomplish the task quickly, essentially reducing session time because you removed barriers.
There are interesting conversations today given the time well spent movement and new built in features for Android and iOS that monitor time on screen. Lifetime value and NPS are interesting, although people might be moving away from that. It's important to consider the fact that there may be vanity metrics.
Failure is important. I forget who said "innovation is the reduction in the cost of failure" but I love that, makes you think.
Did you test this?
I've worked with researchers at Starbucks, Google and did my own qualitive research at Flipboard. When I was at Starbucks we tested the Android redesign of Pay with a company called Blink. At the time there weren't any internal researchers on the team. We ran 10 - 12 participants through an early beta version.
The usability test confirmed our assumptions around a numeric upticking animation inside of Reload. Users selected a dollar amount to reload, then the animation occurred—their balance changed to the new amount. People still had to confirm the reload by tapping the reload button. In the end they were confused by the animation and thought the reload had already occurred because of the animation. So we moved the animation to after users tapped the confirmation button.
At Google the ratio of researchers to designers was better. We ran a cafe study in Kirkland on an issue tracking app we designed, then together we sythesized the findings and socialized the outcomes.
At Flipboard we tested a beta version of the Android app with bottom navigation. We used usertesting.com to get anecdotal feedback and see if the redesign improved discoverability.
At Credit Karma we did our own research and partnered with the research team to inform and course correct our efforts. We learned that people hire the product to find hidden money. We learned why most people had a negative connotation to the dashboard offer.
Do you have any philosophy on design?
Design isn't just problem solving, it's creativity, culture making, it's looking at how teams work, it's not making more screens. Systemic challenges require new ways of thinking. You might end up changing the process to support more work being done and the artifact or the deliverable was what got you there.
Why did you leave Flipboard?
It wasn't a good fit. There were a lot fewer resources there. I was looking for more growth opportunities. Originally I was really excited to work in the editorial space, I grew up reading skateboarding and snowboaring magazines. I love great photography and layout and typography. Also considering the climate around misinformation and fake news—it's more important now than ever how people get their information.