One of the first things I heard when I joined Vercel was that the product design team wanted to shift from reactive work to proactive work. Translation: we were barely treading water from executing so rapidly on so many projects that no one had time to think beyond 4 weeks ahead. There is of...
This week I passed my first 90 days as Head of Product Design at Vercel. I’ve found that starting a new challenging job can feel a lot like recovering from major surgery. Being in recovery feels like starting from zero again—relearning to walk with no muscle mass, taking two steps forward and one...
A manager README is a document often used in tech, that outlines a leader’s management style, communication preferences, expectations, and personality to help direct reports work effectively with them. What I’m here for As a leader, I’m here to nurture a team of designers who craft and execute on...
When I was 14, I tried out for the Olympic Development Program’s Illinois State Team. I was a defender with a sharp elbow and great kick. After a few days of scrimmages and drills, I was approached by the coaches and was offered a spot on the team. …as a goalkeeper. This was a shock. I had never...
You’re a designer who leans heavily on the UX side of the “product designer” title. The other side, the “UI” half of the old “UI/UX” forward slash (now uncool to use) are things you find tedious and unimportant. You love design sprints, user flow diagrams, and user journey maps. You like design...
Earlier this week, I wanted to relaunch my personal blog on all new systems to reduce my barrier to shipping. For this very first day of rebuilding, I didn’t care about the design just yet. To achieve my goals of ultimate blog system velocity, I wanted a single source of truth for blog posts and...
There are a number of wonderful things about being a design leader. Some of the best parts of the job include hiring and working with incredible people, building great products, and tangibly improving customers’ daily lives in small but meaningful ways by making their software experiences...
I am a lifelong jock, married to a bookworm. Early on, my husband told me that exercise for him was more than uncomfortable—it was miserable. “You just haven’t found the right sport yet,” I said. He had been trying to like running for years, but he never got the ever promised “runner’s high”...
Today marks my first anniversary at Webflow as the Director of Product Design. It has been a year full of personal growth, exciting challenges, and honestly, joy. I oversee design teams across our core product, the CMS, the localization tool, our analytics product, the optimizations suite, and...
This week, I sat in a round table discussion with about a dozen other product design leaders from various industries. Someone asked the group, “Are your users actually asking you for all of these AI features?“ There was a good chuckle around the room. No, absolutely no one is asking for AI. But...
My dad recently plopped a box of my old childhood things on my doorstep. It was filled with old newspaper clippings of my soccer game reports, letters from my pen pals, and a stack of detailed daily diaries. Paging through these melodramatic journals was painfully cringe-worthy. Given my history...
I’m proud to say that I’m not the designer or leader I was a year ago, and certainly not the same one I was 5 or 10 years ago. I know people with a fixed mindset, and I’m embarrassed to say that I used to be one, too. It’s both easier (no self reflection needed) and harder (you’ll cap out at a lot...
The product design world (at least in the vacuum of social media) is reckoning with what we need from design leadership. No one can seem to agree on whether designers should be craftspeople or businesspeople, and whether design managers should be people managers or creative directors. Some people...
I joined Webflow as Director of Product Design overseeing Webflow’s core product and CMS, along with some upcoming product areas related to AI, analytics, and optimizations. This post is a public journal entry summarizing my first 90 days. Overall first impressions The Product Design team was...
I’ve just hit my 6-year anniversary at my current company. That’s 3x longer than any of my previous ones. Recently, I’ve been reflecting on how I wouldn’t have had a chance to be the type of leader I am today if I had chosen to jump ship earlier in this journey. At one of the early companies I...
Trigger warning: This post discusses miscarriage, abortion, and child death. Pregnancy apps were made for me. I logged my periods, tracked my ovulation, and catalogued my pregnancy symptoms until labor began. Voila! A baby! But my experience was quite lucky and increasingly less common. I got...
Right before joining HashiCorp, I felt lost. After spending years on a series of small teams working as the solo designer, I had been laid off. I felt a deep pang of failure. After a few months riding the emotional rollercoaster that people call “freelancing”, I joined HashiCorp in January 2018. ...
UX for developer tooling is the hot new thing for designers! We’re beginning to see great resources like these guidelines and principles for designing a good user experience in command line tools. And I recently stumbled upon a Stack Overflow question that asks, “Are configuration files...
Why do we call them “soft” skills when they are honestly so hard? As a designer, one of the most powerful tools we have is the ability to navigate disagreements amongst our team. Keeping a level head is easier said than done, whether it’s a disagreement I personally have with a coworker, or a...
The best work environments are the ones where you can be your best self. I’ve been at HashiCorp for four years now, twice as long as any other company in my career. I feel lucky to say that I’ve had the opportunity to be my best self here. What does it take to be your best self at work? It may be...
Hi! I’m a Designer. You’re an Engineer or a Product Manager, and you care deeply about the product we’re building together. You have awesome ideas and good taste. So you’re wondering why your design feedback sometimes falls flat. Maybe you feel like your suggestions are ignored or neglected....
Usability testing a CLI tool is easier than you might think. It can be done by anyone working on a product that has a user interface. Website? You can test that. CLI? You can test that. Instant pot interface? You can test that (Oh, I wish they would). We test products to get real, unbiased...