My Q&As during the Women in Computer Science Summit
I was thrilled to be a panelist with MongoDB’s Women in Engineering discussion today to meet so many passionate young ladies who are the industry’s future energy.
I want to share my answers to the questions we discussed today and followed with some bonus ones in this post.
Panel questions
Tell us about your background and your role with MongoDB
I chose my bachelor’s major in electronics engineering just because it sounds super cool. And my dad, who is a scientist, highly suggests that major. But gradually, I found that I’m not really into it. After trying different things, including marketing, sales, video editing, and design, I found myself more interested in communicating with human beings and helping solve their problems.
For a better start, I went to the University of Texas at Austin for a master’s in information and focused on human-computer interaction direction. In my two-years of Master, I not only interned at Dell’s UX department but also built a startup (PlotGuru) with some friends. Those 2 years are precious memories of my life.
After some back and forth between UX design and Product design in different industries, I’m currently proud to be a product designer at MongoDB’s Cloud team. Why so proud? Because I heard my dad’s lab is using MongoDB, too!
How did you get into this field?
My career starts with an internship as content specialists who try different apps (just like editors of the App Store), find good apps, interview with the creators, analyze it’s feature/design and write articles about them. These experiences open the gate for me to understand how to build great digital products. A close friend of mine used to study CS but had a Master’s in HCI, and becoming a product designer recommended me of the program.
When I heard about product design — it combined science and art, technology and psychology, I believed that’s where I belong to from 7 years ago and in the future.
What are the specific skills required to be in your current position?
Craft-wise, MongoDB has high standards for the products we build. Making the product easy to use is hard for its designers and developers. It requires solid interaction and visual design skills, and the ability to run user research/testing to turn the raw data into insights and design solutions that help detect or solve problems.
Product design requires fulfilling both business needs and user needs with a simple but efficient solution. Understanding the problem and getting stakeholders’ buy-in for your design solutions requires high communication skills and presentation skills.
How do you bounce back from making a professional mistake or experiencing conflict in the workplace?
Though our director told me I’m doing OK, I thought my first design presentation was a disaster. I made a new design without knowing all the historical context. It looks good and works well, but doesn’t fit in that particular place. During the presentation, our leader criticized the solution directly with reasons I didn’t know before.
Though my heart skipped a beat, the first thing I did right was — KEEP CALM. Understand that the negative feedback is for the design solution, not me. So I kept listening to her arguments and expectations and finally responded with, “I’ll work with the team together on a better solution.” Just move on, focus on the goal, not the mistake itself. I have learned a valuable lesson from it, and it did not happen again.
How do you communicate or showcase your value without seeming like you’re boasting? (Showcase the value of the work you do?)
Show the product I designed and the research(to support my solution)/metrics(the outcome of my solution). Designers are good at storytelling. We usually visualize the information and showcase the challenge problems we are facing, and the process of how we solved them.
At MongoDB, my observation is, the product decisions we made are based on research, and we always have clear goals to achieve with trackable metrics.
What are common pitfalls or misconceptions attendees should avoid?
Pitfall: jump into the solution too early without understanding the problem.
Misconception: designers’ job is to make things look good. Our value is way beyond that. We are not just adding decorations. We help make things work well, easy to use, at a comparatively low cost.
Misconception: designers don’t need to know to code at all. Yes, we don’t have to be a professional developer, but understanding the basics is essential.
Do you have a mantra or ritual you’ve used with success throughout your career as you’ve continued to accelerate?
For any solution, ask, “can this be better?” at least 5 times. If I can’t make it better, show the design to others, then the answer probably becomes yes.
What is 1 thing attendees can do today that will help them on their path to success?
Focus on what you really want to do. And just do it!
During my first year at UT, I asked my engineer friend many times, should designers learn some coding? The last time I got a reply: if you save the time to ask, you probably already learned a lot. So I felt shame and started at that moment. The things I learned in that period of time helps me tremendously in the long term. Sometimes, the hardest thing is just to get started.
What is something that you learned early on in your career that you want to pass on to future women in tech?
You are the only one who defines what you can do.
In my first job, I was assigned to do the interaction design and wireframing, not visual design. Half years later, I had an opportunity of making an interactive prototype for a new app the company is exploring. I could have stopped with the wireframing version of the prototype, but I was into the visual design and fascinating by the animations that I can’t stop polishing it and make it better. After seeing what I’ve done, our director assigned both interaction and visual design to me. That was a breakthrough in my career.
What’s been the most challenging part of your role?
Don’t understand the users and use cases enough.
Before MongoDB, I designed products for car buyers, home buyers, middle school teachers, game players, but now it’s my first-time design for developers. I have to say in terms of digital product design, developers are a very special group of users. They are smart, straightforward, have high standards toward consistency and simplicity. Since the database is at the foundation level of development, what we are designing requires a lot of domain knowledge. It’s similar to design Sketch for designers but more challenging. I have lots of developer friends, and now more new friends from the company. They are always willing to help me understand issues, encourage me to ask questions, and I always feel fruitful working with them. For me, this challenge is hard but sweet!
What’s something you’ve worked on that you’re proud of?
A security-related feature that we launched recently. I always feel sad when I hear the news about data leakage. Once in a lifetime, I can help MongoDB users better secure their database; and through their applications, millions of users can better secure their data, which means a lot to me.
The feature will have a significant impact on how our users perceive our focus on security and guide them to explore more possibilities.
After months of hard work, we got an excellent design solution. I’m super proud of the research, process, interaction, UI, animation, and every detail of it. (Happy*10 when the developer comments “niiiiiice” to the animation). I can’t get there without help from all the people — the PM, other designers, developers, people who help us with user testing, and copywriting from the marketing team. By documenting the working process on a design doc, it helps us to communicate better and more accessible to look back on the discussions we made along the way.
Can’t wait to see what you build in the future! Feel free to contact me or ask questions through Linkedin.
