The Many Faces Of A Product Designer

Benjamin George, Chelsea Tan, Vihar Kothamasu, Wenshu Kwek at UXDX Community: SE Asia. Video: https://youtu.be/vT28KtdvaYs

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Introductions

[00:00:00] Catherine: ...your role at Shopify, and maybe how long you've been with the company. Ben, I'll start with you.

[00:00:06] Ben: Awesome, thanks so much, Catherine. I'm Benjamin. I've been a product designer for a long time now, and I've been with Shopify as a staff product designer. Our team is working on building the best omnichannel experiences for marketplaces, for both merchants and buyers. I've been at Shopify for a little over six months.

[00:00:39] Catherine: Right. Chelsea, could you give an introduction to yourself?

[00:00:43] Chelsea: Sure. Hi, everyone, my name is Chelsea. It's funny, because I've actually just joined Shopify. I just crossed my second month, so if you have any questions on onboarding and things like that, I'll be very happy to answer them after. Prior to that, I've been a designer, not as long as Ben, for about five years. That's where I am in my career right now.

[00:01:09] Catherine: Lovely. And Vihar, how about you? You've just joined us. How long have you been at Shopify, and what's your role there?

[00:01:20] Vihar: I've been at Shopify for almost four and a half years now. I'm a senior product designer here, working on the shipping and delivery side of things.

[00:01:34] Wenshu: And hello, I'm Wenshu. I'm a senior product designer. I joined the same day as Benjamin, so I think we've been here eight months, not longer. I've been a designer for about seven or eight years now.

How product teams are structured at Shopify

[00:01:49] Catherine: Perfect, thank you. That's fantastic, really great, and welcome to you all. Vihar, I might ask you first about the structure of the team. We're going to go through three core areas: the team, the company and the individual, so each of you and what motivates you. Around the team and the structure, could you give a brief overview of the structure of product teams at Shopify, and where the product designer role fits within those teams?

[00:02:23] Vihar: Sure. Firstly, design definitely has a seat at the table at Shopify. In fact, it's a comfortable one as well. We usually work with the trifecta model: every team has a UX lead, a product lead and a tech lead, and some teams also have a data lead, in which case you would call it a quadfecta. Anyone on the team, including ICs and interns, can pitch ideas and create proposals, and upon getting reviews from leadership, they can champion the project. So everybody is like a product owner at Shopify. PMs are typically responsible for solving the right problems, whereas UX and tech folks are responsible for building the right solutions, I would say. Anyone else want to chime in?

[00:03:27] Catherine: Fantastic. Wenshu, I might ask you: how does collaboration work within your team?

[00:03:38] Wenshu: I think we work very, very closely with the trifecta. Like we mentioned, we work with engineers and we work with PMs, and we try not to draw lines in the team. Right from the start, when we have a problem to work on, from the first meeting when we are thinking about first principles, what the problem is and what we should do, we are already having discussions with engineering and with product. One thing Shopify is really good at as well is support. We have a very robust support team that talks a lot to merchants, so oftentimes we are also speaking to customer support, because they are the ones closest to the end customer.

[00:04:26] Catherine: And the other piece, Chelsea, I'll direct this to you: people have different responsibilities at different levels. How do you collaborate with individuals at a different level?

[00:04:41] Chelsea: That's a good question. I actually work directly with Ben; Ben is part of my trifecta. Ben and I have different kinds of responsibilities. He's more involved in talking about strategy and working with senior leadership, whereas I support Ben in thinking about other things. For example, recently I ran a workshop, and we then used information from that workshop to help with the strategy and roadmap planning. So within designers we collaborate very closely as well.

[00:05:12] But as Vihar and Wenshu also mentioned, we work very closely with all our PMs and our engineers. I talk to them on a daily basis. I joke that I actually talk to my engineers more than I talk to my own partner. I talk to them on a very regular basis and ask them for their feedback and their opinions. We also work with a content designer on the team, who's amazing. We get him to give us fresh eyes on the things we write, and he comes up with guidelines on copy as well. That's partly how we collaborate.

[00:05:50] Catherine: Great, interesting. And you made a point about talking to the team more than partners, family and friends. Is that the case for everybody?

[00:06:01] Wenshu: I mean, you end up spending seven or eight hours every day together, so you tend to build rapport, you tend to build relationships. And since many of us are based in Singapore and the APAC region, restrictions have just started easing off, so we do meet in person as well.

[00:06:24] Catherine: Yes, it's an interesting time. How are you finding it all? Is there any transition to moving back to the offices? You're fully remote, but is there any transition to meeting up as a team, or how is that going to look different in the future?

[00:06:41] Ben: Shopify is a digital-by-design company. I think it was a very public announcement that we intentionally decided to be remote and stay remote. We don't know what the future holds, but at the moment it doesn't look like we might move back into the traditional form of the office. But we might have a bunch of different things which require short stints where we actually collaborate and get together.

Onboarding

[00:07:17] Catherine: We might talk about that later on in the session, around remote working, because you would be classed as more advanced than a lot of companies in this, or certainly a step ahead of people. I'll ask you all at a later stage what the benefits have been for you. Wenshu, I had a question about you and Ben: you mentioned that you started on the same day. From an onboarding perspective, has that helped you work together? Did anything come out of starting together?

[00:07:53] Wenshu: I think it's always great to have another designer onboarding at the same time. In most companies you don't have too many designers; in a typical team you might have one, maybe two. So to onboard with another designer is quite rare. A lot of people say this: when you first join Shopify, it's like drinking water from a fire hose. It's such a big company, so much context. We have this thing where in the first six months you're not expected to be productive. You're just there to gain context and understand what's going on, and you're free to ask stupid questions and get away with it. So having another designer is really good: someone to complain to, someone to ask, "Hey, where'd you find this Figma file?" It's been good.

[00:08:47] Vihar: Also, even if you don't have another designer joining at the same time, Shopify makes sure you have an onboarding buddy who will help you through the first few months. You can ask questions, you can ask who to reach out to, you can ask what's going on with these projects, all these things. You have those onboarding buddy pairings, and those are also very helpful.

[00:09:11] Catherine: Really great points. I like that point.

[00:09:16] Ben: One more thing I wanted to add: even if you didn't have an onboarding buddy, I think the way onboarding is designed is very, very intentional, and it's super structured in a company like Shopify. You have a whole bunch of people from various departments and different fields all joining on the same day, so you'll all be in one Slack group, and it's like a big onboarding party. Immediately when you join the company, you know 15, 20, 30 other people from different countries, mostly in the same geographic region. That's also quite comforting, I think.

[00:09:56] Catherine: And Chelsea, do you have anything to add?

[00:09:59] Chelsea: I do. For me, onboarding was a very recent event. It's funny, because I've been told my onboarding group was the biggest group at Shopify for quite a while: we had about 200 people onboarding, and about 50 in APAC itself. But the funny thing is, as you say, onboarding with another designer is very rare. I only had an engineer with me, in the tech team, so I was like, "Oh, it's just both of us."

[00:10:28] To talk a little more about onboarding here: it is very structured. There's a whole program planned out for us. At the beginning everybody goes through the same thing, and then it branches off, so if you're in tech you do something else. It's very much hands-on. You actually create your own store, so that you know how merchants would do things. And you actually are a support staff member for a day, where you have to respond to real support emails and pain points. I found that very helpful in my learning, and it helped a lot in my role here as a product designer.

Influencing at the company level

[00:11:05] Catherine: Fantastic. I'm going to move on to the company structure and your roles as product designers influencing at a company level. Ben, I'm going to ask you this first. Regarding stakeholder management, how have you established a good design practice at a company level?

[00:11:30] Ben: I think it varies from level to level. Establishing a design practice... There's this parable I always talk about every time I think of a company and an organizational structure. It's the one with the blind men and the elephant. Different people are touching or feeling different parts of the elephant, and they think it's a different animal altogether. One of them feels the tail and thinks it's a snake; somebody else is feeling the trunk or the legs and thinks it's a tree trunk or something like that.

[00:12:12] Even organizationally, different teams focus on different things, and it's super important to align and overlap on certain things. There's naturally going to be areas where you're divergent as well, and that's a healthy thing. It's a good thing to have a little bit of divergence, because that means you're having differences of opinion, and you're constantly debating and figuring out what the best end outcome is for our merchants.

[00:12:48] In terms of design, we also prefer it when we speak to product managers and engineers, because they all bring their own very unique perspectives. That helps: it all goes into this idea jar, and then you can actually hash things out and come up with something that's actually useful, and we test it out with the real people who use our software.

[00:13:16] Catherine: Love that, it's fantastic. I think it's important to bring in all parts of the team at that ideation level to get different perspectives. Great.

[00:13:29] Vihar: If I can add something to it: Shopify also has "default to open" internally. Every Slack channel is open, and anyone can follow any project for updates. That also helps us manage stakeholders very easily and have these conversations. Whenever your work is relevant to some other team's work, you can just jump in there and see their projects and what they're currently working on, and have those conversations.

[00:14:00] Catherine: Great. Chelsea, if you're building a product or a feature that has dependencies on another team, like engineering or whatever it might be, what's the process for engaging with them? Is there a formal process, or how do you engage?

[00:14:18] Chelsea: When we talk about dependencies, there are two kinds. One is with my own team, my own engineers, my own PM. The other is where there are other teams working on their own projects. Let me touch on the engineers first. There's no formal process, but there's an unwritten process that we all follow, which is that everybody's in this Slack channel if you're in the same team, and we just talk very freely with each other. We send each other daily or weekly updates whenever we have updates, and we loop everybody in very closely on everything we do. We have very regular meetings even though we are in different countries, meetings and workshops and anything like that. We also take notice of people's time and we respect that, so we loop people in when it's necessary, and if it's not necessary, we just update everybody asynchronously. That's how I work very closely with my engineers. So dependencies, definitely, but no formal process.

[00:15:21] If we want to talk about other teams, that's a whole different story, because Shopify is so big. There are so many teams doing so many different things, and a lot of the time there are overlaps. The beautiful thing about Shopify is that everybody is so friendly and so open to sharing. All you have to do, even if they're a different time zone away, is set up a time with them: "Hey, I want to find out a bit more about your project. Can you tell me more?" And they're very willing to share. They'll even make videos and share demos for you to review, and if you want, you can book a session together and work collaboratively with each other, which has happened quite a few times.

[00:16:00] Catherine: I love that. Can you share some of how other teams are structured and how they work? Have you got any one that came to mind there?

[00:16:09] Chelsea: Without trying to give away too much: like Ben said, we're the marketplaces team. At Shopify there's a core team that works on the admin, and we see ourselves as the layer on top. Core has so much done, and there's so much information everywhere, so whatever we do, most of the time the first thing is we look for existing research. We try to do our own research, and if we need more, it's, "Hey, I'll reach out to Core. I noticed you're building this. Could you please show me some files, some Figma files, some flows or a video demo? And here are some questions." One thing I really like about Shopify is that usually we have a huge question session. I just send them a list of questions and we get together on a call, and they answer very openly. That helps each other in our jobs, because they see what we do and we see what they do. Does that help answer your question?

Identifying stakeholders and building relationships

[00:17:09] Catherine: Yes, it's perfect, it's really great. I'm going to leave this one open, which shouldn't be done, but I'll leave it open. We had a talk from Parole[?], who's spoken with us before, and I'll share the link to that presentation with people. It was around stakeholder management, and it was about finding out who your stakeholders are first and knowing how they can sabotage your process. It may seem like a negative way of doing it, but if you don't have your stakeholders aligned and onboarded, it can cause many implications down the line. How do you identify who your stakeholders are, and how do you figure out their own priorities for their workflow? Wenshu, maybe I might ask you that, because you look deep in thought on this.

[00:18:14] Wenshu: There's this thing a PM once told me: your amount of impact in a company is proportional to the number of coffees you can have with people around the office. If you can just find some random person, have a coffee with them and just talk about anything, and you can do it with a lot of different people, you have a lot of impact, you have a lot of influence. Ultimately it's based on relationships. So I think the key to managing stakeholders is to build relationships. If you're working with this director, set up a call: "Hey, just want to say hi. I listened to this talk you gave," or "You wrote this document that's interesting to me, and I want to chat about it." Just keep talking to different people and build relationships, so people know you are there. Then, once you have relationships built over time, it becomes a lot easier to tease out information from a stakeholder, and you can also understand what they work on and what their fears are. That really helps with mapping out the stakeholder map, so to speak.

[00:19:22] Ben: If I could add a bit about stakeholders: typically, whenever we are communicating, we tend to focus on what we want to say, and less on what the person we're communicating with wants to hear, and even less on listening. For good communication, I think you need to speak the language of the person you're speaking with. That might mean you need to dig below the surface. If it's a product manager, you need to understand what their goals are, what their metrics and KPIs are, why they're even working on this project, what their main goals are and what they're hoping to get out of it. It might actually be getting promoted to a senior product manager role, and that might be the core driving force for working on projects, for their impact and their influence. If you are genuinely able to help somebody else achieve their goals, I honestly feel it's a cycle where it can come back to you, where somebody else is helping you. I think it's a good way to think about it, and it can work with any department, for that matter.

[00:20:36] Catherine: I like that: find out the personal motivations. And regarding something like a coffee, how does that work virtually at Shopify, for building relationships?

[00:20:49] Wenshu: It's actually a lot easier, because you are remote, so you can just set up a call. People here are really friendly, and the only challenge we have in APAC is time zones. Sometimes you have to take calls later in the evening or earlier in the morning, but we're pretty good about that. If you have a late-night call, the next day you just start work later. No one cares. It's a lot easier. We also have this internal tool called Sidekicks. It's a bot that randomly matches you with any random person at Shopify every two or three weeks. You'll be pinged on Slack: "Hey, set up a time." That has been very useful. I've used it to meet completely random people, like a customer support agent in Ireland or a developer in Brazil. It's been nice.

[00:21:42] Catherine: That's a fantastic idea. Sorry, what time period did you say that was done? Every two weeks?

[00:21:48] Wenshu: I think every two weeks, but I think it's up to you. You can even make it once every week, but that's a bit intense for me.

[00:21:57] Catherine: That is really nice. It seems like there's a very good culture and process at Shopify to help people meet globally.

[00:22:07] Ben: I think it goes back to digital by design. We used to be digital by default when the pandemic hit, and then we transitioned to becoming a more intentional company about having remote practices and improving on those practices over time. I think that's how it evolved.

[00:22:28] Catherine: I really like that. Great conversation. Chelsea, did you have anything to add?

[00:22:35] Chelsea: I do. It also really boils down to culture. Like I said, I've been here for two months, and already so many people have reached out: "Hey, do you want to set up a recurring biweekly one-on-one?" where we just talk about anything under the sun. Initially it was a bit of a foreign concept to me. I was like, "Why would I hang out with you? I don't even know who you are." But subsequently it really makes sense, because then you really know this person. This person is all the way in Australia or Japan, and I'm starting to have a friendship with them. Because I have a friendship, I have a better working relationship with them. Then I realized it's not really all about work. Work is only fun because of the people and because of the culture, so I'm very thankful for that.

[00:23:21] Catherine: I love it. It's up to the individuals as well to start building the culture. Without jumping on too quickly, have any of you, at an individual level, created anything new for the company at a cultural level or a process level that you thought was great, maybe from an old company?

[00:23:52] Vihar: Designers opening up, let's say, office hours, where other designers can book their time and maybe pair on getting fresh eyes or feedback, or something like that. That is one of the things I've noticed designers starting to do. That helps in collaboration and, again, in building relationships, as Chelsea mentioned.

Design behaviors to unlearn

[00:24:17] Catherine: Fantastic. Wenshu, I might ask you at an individual level, for you personally (we discussed this a little on the call, and I really liked it): what design behaviors do you recommend people should unlearn?

[00:24:40] Wenshu: At the risk of being slightly controversial, one thing one should unlearn: drop the idea that you are important and you control the design. I think it takes an army of people to build a product, and design is just one small part of a really big, multifaceted company. When a CEO makes a strategic decision that influences how a product is shaped, it's a design decision. When an engineer builds an API a certain way, ultimately it changes the customer UX, so it's also a design decision. Everyone in a way impacts the design. And it's not just people working on the product; it's also support, marketing, sales, HR. They all influence the UX in some way.

[00:25:28] I think many designers have an inclination towards an inflated sense of self-importance: "I'm the head chef, I'm the master of good taste. You don't care about design. No one understands my pain." And they storm into the room and throw screens on the wall. That's just not effective. As designers, to be truly effective, we need to show up with a lot of humility. Yes, I'm the designer for the team, that's my job title, but I'm here to listen, I'm here to work with you. If a PM wants to wireframe, go ahead; I'm interested to know what they have in mind. If an engineer disagrees with the layout of a page, that's fine. Let's sit together. I want to listen to your idea; I want to work with you. I'm not saying design is not important, but if you drop that inflated sense of ego that a lot of designers tend to have, you become a much more effective designer.

[00:26:26] Catherine: I think the same could be said for engineering, product, UX, you name it: drop the ego. If you get into a position of continuous learning, and let people take over your role... I must say, I've worked with a few designers, and with the speed at which a designer would work versus something that I've tested, you can see why you leave it to the experts. But at the same time, it's about letting somebody run with their vision or idea, so you get a better sense of what they're trying to achieve and their goals. I think that's important too. I like that. Vihar, did you have anything to add to that?

[00:27:10] Vihar: Just to add to Wenshu's point, we should avoid siloed thinking as much as possible and invite other disciplines into our own design process. We have to do it very early in the product development stage, as well as often, so that you don't have arguments or discussions later in the process. Think about this case: someone designed something, they go high fidelity, and when you present it to a developer, they might say, "Hey, we don't have this data," or "We have these constraints on building this," and all your work would be a waste. That's why I think cross-discipline pairing should be encouraged a lot.

[00:28:03] Catherine: Everyone is going to have an opinion on this topic. Chelsea, what are your thoughts on what needs to be unlearned?

[00:28:09] Chelsea: One thing, very similar to what Wenshu has been saying. One bit of advice that one of my mentors gave me early in my career is to never attach your worth to your work or your design. I don't really see this at Shopify, but maybe because I haven't been here very long. In my previous companies, regardless of how senior or junior a designer was, sometimes when you gave them critique or raised big flags, they'd get a little defensive, and you'd be like, "But why are you getting so defensive?" Then I started to see that it's because when you tie your worth to your design, you start to think it's an attack, when honestly it's not an attack.

[00:28:54] What my mentor said to prevent this is that every design decision you make has to be very logically justified and backed by data. You have to understand what the pros and cons are, why you made this design decision, and what data you used to back it up. So it's very logical, very justified, and it's not emotional. There's no way you can be like, "Oh, you're attacking me," because it was not an attack. You're making the decision based on the information you have, and if someone else has more information than you, then that's good. It helps elevate your design.

[00:29:26] Catherine: And what happens when it's a feeling? Sometimes somebody just has a feeling about something. What happens in that situation?

[00:29:33] Chelsea: I just swallow it. Honestly, it's a skill. All of this is a skill. When I first started out, I was like, "Oh, I'll go back and cry. I'm a worm, I'm a terrible designer." And slowly you build the skill, and I'd be like, "Yeah, you know what, you're just talking about my design." You learn to grow a thicker skin, as they say. Just swallow it and then be like, "Okay, I'm back on. I'll take your feedback and I'll do it."

[00:29:56] Vihar: Yes, as long as users and the product are winning, individual feelings should not matter.

[00:30:05] Wenshu: One thing to add to that: software moves so fast. That UI that is really nice today is going to look dated in five years. So I wouldn't worry too much about something not being good enough, because in five years it's not going to be good anyway.

[00:30:22] Catherine: I love that point, that's brilliant. Ben, did you have anything to add as well?

[00:30:28] Ben: Yes, I've actually been thinking about this. In my career I've mentored a lot of designers, especially designers who are very early in their careers, and they usually have trouble detaching worth from work. Some of the strategies I remember telling them: don't get your work reviewed the day you finish designing it. Even if you finish designing it in the morning or in the afternoon, just take a day, reset, recalibrate, and the next day you can go and present it to whoever you're presenting to. And when you do present it the next day, imagine it's not your job, it's not your design; somebody else on the team designed it. It was a very silly exercise, but it somehow seemed to work for many people I ended up trying it on, so that mostly helped.

[00:31:28] The other thing was some forms of perfectionism. Usually you want to get every single aspect right, not just the design but maybe also communication and collaboration, and maybe even discussions with cross-functional peers. When you focus on getting every single thing right, a lot of mental energy is put onto different parts, and then you're stretched too thin. So one of the things I would try to unlearn is this act of forcing perfection everywhere. I would rather focus my energy on the high-impact things, and for that I need to be a little reflective and figure out what the high-impact things are, and then be a bit kinder about the things which aren't going as well.

[00:32:30] Catherine: That's great. Just focus on the high impact, and take the person out of it, the individual out of it, which is all fantastic advice.

Transitioning to a fully remote company

[00:32:41] Catherine: Great. My next question will be around transitioning into a role like the one at Shopify. Wenshu, if you don't mind me asking you again: how did you transition into the role at Shopify? What was your old learning versus your new learning? How did you incorporate the best of your old way, and at the same time get up to speed with the new way of working?

[00:33:14] Wenshu: Shopify is the first company I've joined that is 100% remote. Before then, of course, due to COVID we were working from home, but I'd always worked in companies where there was an office, and I knew that even after COVID I wouldn't go back to an office. So coming into Shopify was a huge jump for me, to never be in an office. That's something I've had to learn. Primarily, it's asynchronous collaboration, because we work a lot with people in many different time zones. You need to accept that when you want to get something, you're not going to get a response immediately, and learn how to design your work around that.

[00:33:55] We spend a lot of time on documentation, which sounds like a terrible thing to a lot of designers when they hear it. But what I've learned is that it forces me to be very clear about what I'm doing, and really forces me to think about what I'm designing and be very intentional. When I first started at Shopify, it would take me one or two hours to write a document, but now it's maybe 30 minutes. That's still a bit too long, and I'm still trying to get it down, but I'm really learning how to communicate as much as I can, as clearly as I can, with as few words as possible. In a way, it also helps me be much better at thinking about my work and explaining it.

[00:34:40] Sometimes we don't even do meetings. We just send a document: "Hey, this is what I'm thinking about. These are the decisions we need to make." Then you go to sleep, and the next day you wake up and North America has replied and a decision was made. That's quite nice. But I would say it did take quite a long time for me to learn this. There's an adjustment that needs to be made when you go remote.

[00:35:06] Catherine: I love that, and I think it could be put into everything you do, because miscommunication and rework are the two biggest issues, which documentation solves. Chelsea, do you have anything to add? I don't know if it's frozen for me or not. Going on to onboarding remote teams: what changes have you made, and how does it work? Chelsea, can you hear me? No. We might have lost Chelsea, but that's okay; we'll reconnect with her. Ben, I might ask you that same question: with regard to onboarding remote teams, what changes have you made to the approach?

[00:36:06] Ben: I think, similar to Wenshu, this is the first time I've actually had to be an onboardee in a remote environment. I have onboarded other designers in a remote environment, but I've never been on the other side of it. Some of it is just grappling with and trying to understand how you even get stuff done. In the first few months in an organization, you usually have a bunch of real-life coffees and lunch-table conversations, and that helps build relationships and rapport. But in a remote setting none of that happens, so how do you try to recreate it? I think when done poorly, we try to recreate the office setting online, and that only works to a certain level.

[00:37:05] Some things that have personally worked for me in terms of onboarding remotely are setting up coffee chats with various people from various places. The best part is that since I'm not confined to an office, I could be talking to somebody from Canada one evening and somebody else from, I don't know, the UK the next day. That kind of freedom doesn't exist if I was just staying in an office. I'd usually be confined to the office space itself, and everybody would be in the same organization or the same building. That definitely helped me think a little broader, because the scale of impact could be much, much greater in a company that's across different geographies. You have so many cross-cultural things you can learn from people in other countries: the way they work, the kinds of processes they use, the principles they use. So those were some of the things I found quite insightful when I was onboarding in a global organization.

[00:38:19] Catherine: Great. Wenshu, have you anything to add there?

[00:38:26] Wenshu: I think you can't replace in-real-life interactions. One thing Shopify is planning to do as well, but we couldn't because of Omicron, is this thing called Burst. At least four to six times a year, your team can all fly together to one place, anywhere, and spend three to four days together. That's one way to still have that in-real-life interaction with your team. And you can do it with different teams: people on the design team, or your actual product team. That's one thing we're also trying, but we haven't experienced it yet, due to how the world is right now.

[00:39:11] Catherine: It's something we've actually seen people do for our conferences. A lot of teams come into Dublin, and we as a team decided to do the exact same thing. Previously we've gone to Bali, and we're planning on doing New York, because getting away from it and working together in an environment is just unbeatable. You don't have to do it always, but it is a lovely experience from a bonding perspective. Chelsea, you probably haven't been anywhere yet, because it's been two months and it's the pandemic, but are there any exciting plans for the team to catch up?

[00:39:53] Chelsea: I'm in there... [inaudible]

[00:40:01] Catherine: Well, you'll have to keep us posted on how those plans come to life. Maybe a few photos would be nice. I hope it comes to life, because a few teams I've heard of have gotten over to rally in the US and different places to meet, and it seems like a really exciting thing to do.

Design behaviors at different levels, working remotely

[00:40:19] Catherine: Just before we wrap up, and we're going to wrap up very soon: Chelsea, how do design behaviors differ between different levels when it comes to working remotely? Is there anything that's different there?

[00:40:40] Chelsea: I guess I would need everyone to help chime in on this, because we are all at very different levels. But for me, I don't see a major difference between what I do whether it's remote or not. Prior to Shopify, my roles were all in person, and I don't see a major difference. Sure, maybe now workshopping has to be via Miro, and there are no more giant papers and real Post-its that you can touch. But apart from that, I wouldn't really say much has changed. I used to talk to my engineers on Slack; I still do. You talk to people, you have meetings regularly. Maybe someone else will have a better answer to this question.

Closing thoughts

[00:41:22] Catherine: And if not, we do have to wrap up, and I would like any closing arguments or closing points that people would like to get across to the audience. Ben, maybe I'll ask you first.

[00:41:40] Ben: Sure. Is it the same thing, about design behaviors across levels?

[00:41:47] Catherine: No, this is just in general. If you have any thoughts or a summary based on this conversation that you'd like to get across. You mentioned quite a few things that I really liked, on documentation and on knowing your worth versus your work. What's the biggest take-home that you'd like people to take from you?

[00:42:17] Ben: I've actually been thinking about this a lot over the past few months. Considering the current climate we are in, the restrictions, and generally the state of mind I'm in, I've ended up becoming a little more reflective and trying to start a couple of reflective practices. I've never done this in all my career, but over the last six months to a year, I've tended to log a bunch of my mental space: a bunch of feelings, a bunch of thoughts, whatever I plan on doing in terms of career and personal growth. I feel like that's helped me organize my thoughts and think about where I want to go in, I don't know, six months to a year. Three years probably feels a little too far off for me to plan. But I think that's helped me become a bit more reflective and a bit more intentional about how I want to own my own career, and that's something I definitely encourage other people to do.

[00:43:30] Catherine: I love that. Vihar, how about you?

[00:43:35] Vihar: If I have to pick one, considering the whole remote environment: collaboration and cross-discipline pairing is even more important, to build relationships and to avoid roadblocks and things like that. It should be intentional, and designers and everyone else should get out of their comfort zone, talk to people and collaborate even more effectively. That would be my final line.

[00:44:03] Catherine: Lovely. Chelsea?

[00:44:10] Chelsea: I've actually become a lot more organized ever since this whole pandemic happened. Now that the lines between work and personal life are a lot more blurred, I realized that if I don't set boundaries, I get burnt out very easily. I actually learned this the hard way; I got burnt out. So what I do now is I have a schedule that I really follow, and I mark it out on my calendars, both my work and personal calendars, so that people who want to work with me can see it: past this certain time, no meetings, this is my private time. And I make sure to work out at least a few times a week, just to get that sanity back into my mind.

[00:44:54] Catherine: I love that. I think that's incredibly important, and it seems very much so for the Shopify team as a whole, because you work globally, and it's figuring out how you can still work globally. Like what Wenshu was saying about when the team wakes up in the US and you've got your answers: that's a really efficient way of doing it, and taking a step back. And I'll finish on you, Wenshu. Do you have anything to add?

[00:45:20] Wenshu: Maybe two things. Really invest in having intentional relationships. And the second thing: design is not that important. Have humility, and work with non-designers.

[00:45:35] Catherine: I love it. Are you going to become an engineer, by the way?

[00:45:42] Wenshu: No. Well, I was once told I look like an engineer, on the first day in design school. I don't know how to take that.

[00:45:53] Catherine: But thank you all so much. I really enjoyed that conversation. You all are absolutely wonderful, and Shopify is lucky to have you all, so thank you very much.