Designer spotlight: Lauren Tang deep dive
We dive deeper into Lauren's experience bringing user research to her startup, building user empathy, getting past layoffs, and what work-life balance looks like.
A senior product designer at Chime, Lauren Tang, and I chatted about her career progression into design which you can read here. This issue, we’re diving deeper into her experience
building user empathy as a skill,
driving user research as the sole designer at a startup,
getting past a layoff, and
pursuing work-life balance
Next week, I’ll be featuring the journey of ex-Microsoft and now staff product designer at Snorkel AI, a data-centric AI platform powered by programmatic labeling and foundation models.
Building user empathy as a skill
My main superpower really is user empathy. That’s really something that only your role can bring to the table. I trust that someone's always going to be in the room who’s going to think about how we could make more money or how we can convert more people, but I’m the one reminding the team about what's most important for our users and what is a good user experience for them.
How do you build user empathy?
That happens when you include users in your process. That’s either working closely with your user researcher or making sure that you get feedback on your designs, whether it’s showing designs to your users or making sure that you understand what are the jobs to be done, when users are on your product, there's always some job that they're trying to achieve. In the way I present my designs as well, I'm setting the stage for the group, making sure that everyone's on the same page about the user problem, and not just jumping straight into the designs.
What can I do everyday to improve my user empathy?
Depending on the size of your company, or what kind of processes you have, one simple thing you can do is look at either your user Facebook groups and see what the users are saying. They’re going to have opinions for sure, so see what kind of feedback you're getting.
If your company has any feedback forms, looking at those has been really helpful for me. For example, at Chime we have an NPS survey that goes out where people give us feedback on whether they would recommend the product. Looking at what people are saying in those comments and remind yourself of the problems that people still face every day so you're not siloed in your work.
When you're designing with your cross functional teams, they are siloed as well, so if you don't look at the user feedback, then you're really just designing by committee, and not by the user.
Driving user research as the sole designer at a startup
When you're a sole designer at a startup, you definitely can feel siloed. You wonder, hey, am I doing this correctly? You got to learn a little bit of user research because you don't have a user researcher.
How did you get people to think in a user centered way?
A lot of that building your influence and being the member in the room. Something that's really effective with a small team is bringing in those user quotes that you're getting in from user research. If you don't have the resources for user research on your team, advocate for the value of bringing that type of study into your process. What I did at my startup was quick and dirty user testing with people in the coffee shop or online via user research tools like UserTesting. Then bringing those quotes and clips to the team and centering them on the user needs and their problems.
How did you build up the courage to do this?
You just have to do it. When you work at a small company, you have to be really scrappy and resourceful. You don't have big team budgets but you can advocate for something that can be small and still effective. Even if you can speak to five people, do $5 gift cards each. That's something that can be so valuable to your design and your process. Definitely get out there and give it a go because there's really nothing more cool than speaking to the people that that you're designing for.
What was the conversation to get research started like?
A lot of your power can be in building a good relationship with leadership. When you’re at a small company, it’s a lot more flat, so you have more access to people like the CEO or the leadership team, the people who are decision makers. Build trust in them and make them understand the value that you bring and that you're not just there to show pretty designs, that your designs can bring business value.
I would do small scale designs and then keep track of the impact that you're having on business metrics and build your trust with the team. You can’t come in hot and want to spend so much money.
What’s an example of how you used research?
One of the big projects was building out search functionality for travel programs. The goal was to figure out how can we increase conversion and increase discovery of different programs. We used online tools to recruit users to show different types of search interactions to get an understanding of what kind of factors would be better for search and filtering and figuring out what kind of interaction patterns make the most sense.
Getting past a layoff
When I left my first startup, I joined another startup and three months in, I was laid off. It was at the beginning of the pandemic. It was really stressful because the pandemic was very unknown in 2020.
How did you get over a layoff?
I had to do a lot of inner work to figure out and remind myself what were the things that I was looking for and what was the value that I would be bringing. That’s when I was really thinking about my skills in user empathy, being obsessed about the user and then a little bit more on the interaction as well.
I had to remove the thought that layoffs were something that had to do with my skill set. Even though there was this gap that I had to experience, it led me to somewhere better because it allowed me to filter in on what what was really important to me.
I also give credit to my new design team because they helped me get over a lot of the thoughts of having been laid off. Having a great culture and a great new team was really helpful. Even if I had those thoughts of imposter syndrome, being in a great design team, you don't have to worry about having gone through a layoff. You can still join a company that is aligned to your values.
What would you tell someone who’s been laid off recently?
I promise that there are bigger and better things for you on the other side.
I do really speak as someone who has experienced a layoff and to be really stressed about the position that I was in. Know that it’s an opportunity to find a better opportunity for yourself. I think it actually takes you out of the hustle and grind of everyday being in the work and really asking yourself, is this what I want to do and what is it that I do want.
It’s really important to think, do I want to work for a big company? Do i want to work for a smaller company? Is it the mission? Is it the team? What are all the criteria that fills your bucket, and when talking to companies, being very intentional.
This is a job at the end of the day and you want to make sure that you’re happy in the work that you do.
Pursuing work-life balance
I don't know if this is cliché, but just really leaning into work life balance and remembering that I don't have to work long hours. We also lead very fulfilling lives outside of work, and making sure that I'm living in the present, spending time with my loved ones, and balance that with trying to excel in my career.
How do you find time to recharge?
On our team, everyone is very supportive of us taking vacation and making sure that we're not burnt out. But, that's something that you need to own for yourself as well.
Very recently, I've just been working a lot. I haven't taken vacation. When you contacted me for this interview, I said, you have to interview me this week, because I'm going to take two weeks off. So I am actually following up with that and taking vacation.
What does your ideal day look like?
I would start off the morning with a pilates class. Then I'd come home, eat some breakfast, and then get straight into work after that. Since I'm a night owl, I get a lot of more of my deep thinking work later in the afternoon, so I'd take more meetings in the morning and get more focus time in the afternoon. I recently got a walking pad treadmill, so I'd love to get in a few steps there. Then log off and spend time with my boyfriend, Brian, and my sister so that we cook a dinner together.
And, that would be my ideal day.
That’s all from our designer spotlight with Lauren Tang. If you’d like to keep up with Lauren, check out her food blog Fitavocado on Instagram.