Introduction
I fell in love with computers as soon as I saw one. I loved games, programming and technology’s capacity to transform lives and the world. I’m an introvert and enjoyed doing things by myself or with one or two people. Programming was a natural fit; I would sit in dark rooms coding all day or reading books without talking to humans, and it was amazing. So, I became a programmer and never planned to do anything else. But as someone who wanted to make products, I asked, ‘how do we come up with product ideas?’ this led to a master's in Human-Computer Interaction and my career as an accidental designer. I fell in love with design and despite my introverted tendencies, I pushed myself to develop empathy for people that would use the products I design as well as collaborate closely and find ways to connect with teammates and teams that are very different from me.
As a designer, my day looks different depending on the phase of a project. I’m doing research trying to understand my users’ context and needs better or showing them prototypes to get feedback from them. On other days, I’m making wireframes and designs, and running design critiques where I present designs to get feedback from engineers and other teams. On some other days, I analyze customer support tickets to glean insights and learnings. Overall, my goal is to work with engineers, data scientists and product managers to create and execute a shared design vision at high quality and surpass user expectations.
Computer Science Fellow
career options
To be an effective team member on any product team, it's important to have an area of expertise (engineering, design, product management, product marketing) and also have knowledge about the other areas since they are all connected to the product you are building together. All decisions you make affect the other roles, and hence having knowledge helps you see the tradeoffs you are making when you make specific decisions.
Computer Science Fellow
skills
What are the main hard skills you use on a daily basis in your current job?
As a designer, I go into the field to meet users to understand their context and needs better. PMs and Engineers accompany me when they can make time for it. I took several classes on user/field research in school, but I only managed to learn it through regular practice by working in the industry.
One half I learned by taking a class in cognitive science to learn how the brain interprets user interfaces. The other half I learned by looking at a lot of good work and getting a feel for what good work really looks like. Needless to say, actually producing work is necessary to learn this skill.
A lot of good UI work is looking at good work and trying to recreate it. Learning a tool such as Figma is also essential.
I just downloaded tools such as Balsamiq/Sketch/Figma and started making stuff. Learning shortcuts was helpful and so was looking at videos of other people using these tools.
I just downloaded tools such as Balsamiq/Sketch/Figma and started making stuff. Learning shortcuts was helpful and so was looking at videos of other people using these tools.
What are the main soft skills you use on a daily basis in your current job?
This is not something that can be learned in a class. In order to design and build good products, you have to be able to see yourself in your users’ shoes. I spent time with my users and conducted research with them and then try to interact with the app assuming that I’m in their mind rather than my own. After doing this for a few years, I got better at it. I also do this with my friends.
This was a difficult skill for me to learn. If I’m talking to a stakeholder from the sales team, I had to understand where they were coming from: what KPIs do they have? What do they know about design and why should they care? What was their experience working with designers previously?
This was a difficult skill for me to learn. If I’m talking to a stakeholder from the sales team, I had to understand where they were coming from: what KPIs do they have? What do they know about design and why should they care? What was their experience working with designers previously?
This was a difficult skill for me to learn. If I’m talking to a stakeholder from the sales team, I had to understand where they were coming from: what KPIs do they have? What do they know about design and why should they care? What was their experience working with designers previously?
This was a difficult skill for me to learn. If I’m talking to a stakeholder from the sales team, I had to understand where they were coming from: what KPIs do they have? What do they know about design and why should they care? What was their experience working with designers previously?
Arun
’s personal path
Tell us about your personal journey in
Computer Science Fellow
:
I have always found meaning in building stuff – first, it was science projects, then it was programming projects. I studied Computer Science and focused on research before I became fully aware that I should be making products. All my friends had a similar skillset, and nobody was really asking, ‘so how do we actually come up with product ideas?’
This question led me to a master’s in Human-Computer Interaction. I studied design with the hope that I will learn how to make products and go back to being a programmer. Ultimately, the decision to remain a designer was a personal choice (and not necessarily the best from a career viewpoint). While programming was amazing when it was my focus, design influences everything that I view and experience in the world and adds more meaning to my life.
After graduating, I did not know how to look for a job or build relationships in the industry. Looking back, I would split the job searching process into two parts – first, you have to find someone with whom you have trust and connection that they are willing to give you a chance to talk. For my first job, I had a friend who introduced me to someone at Mozilla. At the time this was a dream job as I was hired to design a mobile operating system (on which I had a lot of thoughts and ideas). However, still this was the best offer I had because of the trusted source. Other interview processes often revealed weakened trust across the chain — me to the HR, HR to hiring manager, hiring manager to their team. This meant that people invested and cared lesser about hiring you or about the process. The second part is the interview process and your preparation for the interview. I prepared my diligence on the team and had new ideas for how to do design and how to design better OS. It should have been (hopefully) obvious to them that I’m passionate about this.
Since then, I have worked several jobs and have got an MBA, and the learnings about the job search, although not easy, stays the same. Often, especially if you are on a work visa, you may not have the luxury of building out a trusted source and you have to ‘wing’ it. And that’s totally okay. Find third party recruiters and set up calls with them. Narrow it down to a few where there’s mutual trust and take it from there. A tip I learned from someone was to have a specific goal for each week — apply to five companies every day this week and complete 2 product exercises and 15 readings with notes — and to track them in a spreadsheet. Good luck!
What would you tell your younger you regarding building your current career?
Becoming a good designer is a marathon, not a sprint. It was overwhelming for me, when I started out as a designer. I wish someone told me that this takes time. On the good side, it’s approximately the same for everyone. If you have talent or not, existing skills or not, industry exposure or not, grew up in a family of designers or not, it’s still going to take time.
In the long run, what will matter most is that you did prolific work and put in quality hours. Sure, there will be times when you get burned out or run out of creative juices, but in the grand scheme of things how much focused time you put in is what makes all the difference. I hope that doesn’t sound depressing! Yes, it’s hard work, but in my completely unbiased opinion, what you get out of it is far more than any other job. I absolutely loved being a programmer (and still love programming), but as a programmer (or anything else), my job shaped my personality and skills but not my other life experiences. Being a designer is far more all-consuming, in a good way. It thoroughly changes how you view and experience the world. You start thinking of everything and looking at everything through the lens of design. And everything you see, and experience has the potential to make you a better designer. So, the hard work often doesn’t feel like work and leads to a far richer experience of life overall.
Final thoughts & tips
Focus on discovering what design and/or building products means to you, specifically. Often this takes time. And it’s not a bad thing at all. There’s no ‘waste’ and it’s fun. Irrespective of whether you make a career out of it or not, it will make your life better, and richer. So, my wish for you is: don’t rush it, take your time, make friends in design and enjoy the journey.
Resources to dig in more
Norman Nielsen Group
Don Norman, author of Design of Everyday Things and Jakob Nielsen, usability expert got together and formed a research and design consultancy group. This website is full of great articles on research methods and usability. If you plan to conduct research or usability study, this is a good place to start.
Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines
If you want to design for Apple platforms, these are the interface guidelines. Apple refreshes them for every OS release. When they were first released, they were way ahead of their times and continue to be a resource that all designers, not just iOS designers, can learn a lot from studying closely. You can learn about principles of design, systems design, documentation design and more.
Dribbble
It’s like Pinterest for designers. A social place where designers’ post their UI/UX design work. Spend some time looking at others’ work and post your own work to get feedback from other designers.
Ira Glass talking about Storytelling and Craft
This is the video I wish I had seen on day 1 in my training as a designer. Even though it’s about building craft as a storyteller, it is apt for anyone working on their craft, especially designers.
Stories on the first Mac team
For designers and software makers, in addition to the technical and craft things, it’s important to learn how to build a culture of making and designing things. This is a great resource that covers the culture of the first Macintosh team.
