A Scrappy Approach to Design

I grew up making art pixel by pixel on MS Paint (seriously, pixel by pixel). Over time, it became a tool that I really mastered — as much as someone can master maybe... the art of using a calculator. By that, I really just mean I created Paint graphics that would some times be mistaken for Photoshop quality work. I then moved onto Gimp, Photoshop, and more recently, Sketch, in hopes to be able to whip up Dribbble quality work. Yet, they all remained tools that felt like a hassle to open up, because I consistently needed to look at documentation and watch tutorials. My soul never quite vibed with them the same way I did with Paint. Until I met Figma.

I won't sit here and pretend like I'm some sort of Figma or design expert. I seriously don't know any "best practices" when it comes to designing with Figma. But I can get everything I want done with it (here’s a sample app I designed for my HCI class 👀), and that's what I'm here to share with you. Here are some scrappy tips and tricks for designing (with Figma) for noobies, to enhance your quality of life.

1. Use the pen tool to make illustrations

Nice illustrations definitely jumps to mind when I think of design and it definitely sucks wanting to design things when you're not good at drawing. If you have a picture you would love to see as an illustration, use the pen tool on Figma to trace the entire photo and you'll get something like this.

Original image

Illustration made with Figma’s Pen tool

2. Prototype off built-in screen sizes (demo below)

If you're trying to prototype an app, think about what devices you're trying to optimize for and use the built-in screen sizes for the proper canvas to start off with. The "play" button on the top right corner lets you walkthrough your prototype in the device chosen — it really helps bring your designs to life.

3. Take advantage of high quality illustrations (demo below)

Jumping back to illustrations, beautiful illustrations really help make a page pop. Pablo Stanley has some awesome open source illustrations that anyone can use, it's as easy as pulling them up from a Figma plug-in.

4. Libraries (demo below)

Every platform has their own design language. So rather than reinventing the wheel, using community files could help you adhere to conventions.

A Figma demo of designing for different devices, using plug-ins and community files

5. document.designMode = "on"

You may know about right-clicking any page, selecting "Inspect" and manipulating HTML elements in the "Elements" tab of your browser. I often leverage this functionality to test out all design edits on web pages. But did you know if you select "Inspect", open the "Console" and type in document.designMode = "on", you'll be able to directly manipulate elements on the page? You don’t need to manipulate HTML at all, your whole page just becomes a drag and drop editor. Take a screenshot of the page to share your designs. You can even bring this back to Figma!

Directly manipulating site elements with document.designMode = “on”

I hope these tips / tricks are modular enough that at least one of them sticks with you. But I think the main takeaway of this post is that it doesn't really matter whether you use Paint, Illustrator, Figma, or Instagram, being comfortable with a design software can come in so handy — even if it's just for something as simple as annotating day-to-day screenshots, making a quick birthday card for friends, or trying to piece things together for a website.

Shrek

I have been watching way too many movies- here’s a list of everything I’ve watched during this quarantine so far.

This post contains spoilers about Shrek.

Sometimes I have the urge to do things that surprise me- like listening to country music or double checking that I still haven’t mastered the moonwalk after zero (0) practice. The curious mind never sleeps. But never have I, in all my years of existence, thought about watching Shrek. I’ve always wondered if the folks behind Shrek, Big Mouth, or BoJack Horseman are aware of just how unpalatable their art style is. This screenshot speaks for itself.

But one day, the urge came and I couldn’t shoo it away. So I laid on my bed at 3am as I pulled up Shrek. If I squinted hard enough, I could convince myself I was watching StartREK instead. Despite having never watched it all the way through in one sitting, I had some strong hypotheses about the plot. A green ogre with tiny spoon ears tries to save an ogre princess with a donkey friend.

The movie starts with the iconic All Star by Smash Mouth. Unfortunately, according to this article, “Do Not Tweet at Smash Mouth About the ‘Shrek’ Songs, They Do Not Like It”, I don’t think Smash Mouth likes to be associated with Shrek. But nonetheless, the soundtrack is chef’s kiss quality. This is coming from someone who has dedicated a good amount of their life watching Broadway musicals, movie musicals, and I have also taken one songwriting course in university- which makes me a very qualified critic. I give it 5 stars.

And then to answer the question I posed above- Shrek knows he isn’t very attractive and because of it, he decides to hide himself away in a swamp so that no one would have to look at him. I hated empathizing with Shrek. Regardless, the Scottish accent sounded a lot better on Amy Pond in Doctor Who than it did on him. On top of that, the Donkey gave me Eeyore vibes as my heart melted every time his ears drooped down. I didn’t like that either.

The thing that makes Shrek special is that it takes the typical fairytale and tosses it into the swamp. We bid our farewells to the good ol’ Prince Charming, evil queen, damsel in distress, comic relief companion and we are left with: Shrek, Lord Farquaad, Princess Fiona and a literal ass. We watch as Shrek and the donkey make their way to save Fiona. (I loved the scene where they had to cross the wooden bridge.) But when they finally get to her, Fiona is outright disappointed. She is vocal about her concerns. Fiona was ready for a heroic rescue where she gets swept off her feet, but there really wasn’t anything heroic about Shrek busting through the doors, shaking Fiona by the shoulders and yelling, “WAKE UP! Are you Princess Fiona?” And then of course, the movie ends with a gigantic plot twist where Fiona is also an ogre and they just come to accept that their appearance doesn’t matter because they love each other. I now know what true love is. Thank you, Shrek.

Call me a sucker for romcoms but Shrek is a cinematic masterpiece and I am ashamed that I have gone my whole life without a Shrek shaped heart. If you are ready to chuckle at every single dialogue in a movie where the characters have immense depth, then watch or rewatch Shrek. If you hate social distancing and refuse to bow down to our onion king, then move along. The swamp isn’t big enough for everyone.

My Disco Ball's My Kitchen Light

I have been steering off of reading non-fiction for a while. I remember when the opposite was true- when I felt like I had to read non-fiction to “grow up”, and that any time spent in fantastical worlds was time wasted. But until non-fiction grows up from being lazy regurgitation of embellished information we all already know, I remain conservative about the genre. And as always, this doesn’t go for every non-fiction book available in the world- The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch and Dataclysm by Christian Rudder are books that I will always recommend to people. But really, if you’re in tech and have resorted to only reading non-fiction books in the past 4 years (especially self-help books), take a read of this opinionated piece about “false consciousness”. (And to those same people: non self-help podcasts exist too). If you had clicked into that link, what I’m about to say shouldn’t come as much of a surprise at all. I’ve recently laid my hands on the first non-fiction book in a while- Why You Should Be a Socialist by Nathan J. Robinson. You may now laugh at the irony.

Most people (even the wealthy) agree that we live in an economic system in which greed is rewarded and modesty is punished, but it takes a little more than that to convince someone that it’s a problem. And then a lot more to convince them that social democracy could solve those problems while not introducing any new ones. Personally, the goal is just to live in a world where we value hope, justice and solidarity. What’s your utopia?

So now I have been spending time reading about how COVID-19 could change the way people think about the world. Resources like this and these are certainly intriguing. In the meantime, I know a lot of people are once again romanticizing what people have to have “accomplished” during this pandemic- almost as if there isn’t a pandemic outside right now. I think these articles by The New York Times and Philosophy Break capture a lot of why I avert from pretending to be “busy” because “busy people are after all, a little ridiculous”. We shouldn’t feel the need to define our self worth merely by the output of “work” we are able to produce.

With that, here is a list of things I have been doing that effectively make me a non-contributing member of society while social distancing. Who cares? As long as you are happy.

• My inner dancer is back! Aside from posting low quality 8 counts on my TikTok, I have dusted off my yoga mat and finally started training those oversplits, scorpions, cartwheels and elbow stands again. I’ve been able to drag myself to the dance studio once or twice a week for the past few years, but I haven’t been able to sit down and focus on progressing those fundamental moves in a long time. Peloton’s free trial has also reminded me of that elliptical in my basement- it’s been like going to Spin classes without going to Spin classes. Classes on ClassPass have also been made virtual- I was initially bummed out by this, but I have recently realized that I can just update my location and attend classes back at my favourite ballet studio in SF. What a silver lining.

• The New York Times Crosswords. I ended up getting Andy hooked on these crosswords too- our virtual work sessions have suffered significantly in productivity as a result of them.

• Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Dare I say more?

• Taking naps whenever I want to. I might take one right after this post, actually.

• Meditating. I am absolutely guilty of scrolling through my phone until I eventually fall asleep halfway through. But I have been trying to kick that habit, so I meditate right before I sleep. The effect is similar.

• Trying out new recipes! I made banana muffins the other day, and I have also been making my own boba. Chrissy Teigen has been oddly quiet since I have posted about them on my Snapchat story.

• Cutting out milk. I used to love milk, but I’ve been meaning to drop it from my diet for a while. I’ve finally made the switch to oat milk! Please be gentle with me during these trying times.

• This one is a little productive (or so I hope). Fine, you caught me. But A.I. For Anyone is hosting a virtual workshop with Mark Cuban Foundation and we currently have ~50,000 registered attendees. This is a huge opportunity for us and it’s been absolutely crazy seeing how this organization has learnt to scale in such a short amount of time. I really hope this makes a difference.

• Calling family and friends. I’m a huge non-fan of calling people, but times has changed and so have I.

• I’m going to take a nap right now and then wake up at 12am so I can complain about how messed up my sleep schedule is but twirl endlessly in my dimly lit kitchen as I kiss the stars good morning.

So it goes.

Confessions of a Tumblr User

I recently sold my soul to Disney+ and so it only makes sense to have my latest blog post named after the 2004 American teen musical-comedy blockbuster featuring the one and only, Lindsay Lohan.

So I have a confession- I’ve been an active user on Tumblr since the SuperAvengersWhoLock days when every edgy teen was embarrassed about having a Tumblr, and would then get typecasted into a box shortly after. I snuggled into the box and happily stayed there. I remember gaining a fair share of followers (after inorganically promoting it on a game site where you played Tic Tac Toe to get shoutouts) and being so proud that I found people who appreciated my witty text posts and carefully catered reblogs. Or I just really excelled at Tic Tac Toe. I never ended up sharing my Tumblr with anyone I knew in real life (except for 2 people who have probably forgotten about it immediately after I told them because they would never in a million years understand what it meant to me). But beyond that, it was like a second bed to me- the one place that always took me in its arms no matter what was happening else where. I remember having a really really terrible day in high school and posting about it- I was never one to properly share my feelings with friends, but the people on the platform cared and they told me things were going to get better.

Tumblr now isn’t what it used to be back then. The platform is filled with people who once (and still) found solace and forgiveness through it in this very very strange world. It’s filled with very distorted senses of humour that we happily embrace. Pictures of sunsets and the Eiffel Tower with that “Tumblr aesthetic”® still dance along my dashboard as I scroll through it. It’s nice to be able to glorify the little things in life, and now more than ever, that seems important.

If you have something that keeps you going everyday- don’t let go of it. Even if it’s just an outdated platform that gets terrible PR. Or this entire post was just an extremely elaborate way to tell you that I run a meme blog, and this blog you’re reading is simply my side hustle. Either way, I hope you take care in these very weird times. Stay safe during the pandemic!

Now off I go- back to listening to Lorde’s Melodrama.

Effective Altruism

I was sitting at Blenz Coffee as a gathering of Christmas carolers stumbled into the coffee shop with portable instruments- a group of young and old, meek and the bold. I glanced up at my laptop screen and noticed it was 10:30pm, a little late for these children to be out but surely, this felt harmless enough. A young boy then came up to me with a laminated pamphlet and a transparent donation box with two $50 bills sitting in there as display. I asked if they were raising money for a registered charity and he opened up the pamphlet confidently, but even then, something felt off. So in the span of those few seconds, I did a quick Google search and my screen was flooded with the term “scam”. I promptly back the pamphlet and told him I didn’t have any change at the moment. I felt bad- maybe this little boy really thinks he is raising money for an important cause, but situations like this make me wonder: how can I do good, and how do I do it right? For example, had I given the boy money, I would have done more harm than not donating at all.

So in comes “Doing Good Better”, by William MacAskill, a book about how we can practice effective altruism (“how can I make the biggest difference I can?”) to help others, do work that matters, and make smarter choices about giving back. There is a lot to unpack in the book, and I’m not sure if I agree with everything MacAskill has to say. Regardless, here are some things I hope to remember from the book:

• We have ~80,000 (40 years x 50 weeks x 40 hours) working hours in our career, how do we maximize what we do in these hours?

• Earning to give: rather than trying to maximize the direct impact we have with our jobs, we can also try to increase our earnings so we can donate more, improving people’s lives through our givings rather than our day-to-day work.

  • This feels important as I try inch closer to graduation, and recognize that I might not always be able to make “the type of difference” I hope to make. In fact, despite being a book about effective altruism, MacAskill explicitly recommends against working in a non-profit straight out of college, to prioritize building skills and credentials that could help us in the longer term. Our first job might last a few years, but our subsequent career will last decades.

• The five key questions of effective altruism:

  • How many benefit, and by how much?

  • Is this the most effective thing you can do?

  • Is this area neglected?

  • What would have happened otherwise?

    • For example, imagine a town with only three doctors, who save 100 lives each (and spend the rest of their time treating non-life threatening sicknesses, such as the common cold). If one of the doctors leave, the two remaining doctors will still save the 300 people, but perhaps the people with common colds will now be neglected. So that’s the difference that extra doctor would have made- which is probably less than what we would have thought at first glance. It’s difficult to think about the impact we make in that way, but seeing what would happen otherwise can help us see our direct impact in a clearer way.

  • What are the chances of success, and how good would success be?

• When evaluating a charity, we can evaluate:

  • What does this charity do?

  • How cost-effective is each program area?

  • How robust is the evidence behind each program?

  • How well is each program implemented?

  • Does the charity need additional funds?

• Some additional things to think about:

  • The 100x Multiplier: for those of us living in rich countries, we should expect to be able to do at least one hundred times as much to benefit other people as you can to benefit yourself.

  • People often believe that: If many people did this thing, then change would happen. But any individual person doesn’t make a difference. This isn’t true if we consider expected value.

    • We can use expected value to compare higher-risk but higher-upside actions with actions that are certain to have an impact. In the small chance that our action does matter, what is the outcome?

      • For example, in the case of the US elections, a voter has a one-in-sixty-million chance of affecting the outcome, but the expected value is very high.

  • When it comes to helping others, being unreflective often means being ineffective.

If you’re curious about Effective Altruism overall, you can learn more here, and here’s the book I read. I’m learning, but there’s still lots to learn! I’m excited for the new year. 🎉

User Research

One thing I love about product management over software engineering is the ability to view projects in more holistic views. I want to understand not just how we should build something but rather, why we are building a product, and who we are building it for. That’s where user research comes into play. I’ve conducted over 30 user research and usability testing sessions during my time with 4 projects in the Microsoft Garage— working with a diverse set of Windows users, cancer researchers, and finally published a research report with Xbox research about accessibility in gaming. More recently, I’ve conducted another series of user research sessions to learn more about user needs and expectations for the docs.microsoft.com platform. 

I’ve started becoming more hyperaware of when I walk out of user research sessions feeling like I’ve lost a sense of direction for my project vs. when I leave having gained clarity and my mind is bubbling with ideas. At the end of the day, the former is bound to happen, and sessions like that could very well be why we should do these in the first place. But I’m hoping to reflect on how I can stop being the reason why the former happens.

Here is how I generally approach conducting user research:

Create a user research plan with the goal, hypotheses (optional), research details etc.

• No leading questions

  • For example, rather than asking “Do you have any problems with x?”, which implies that a user has a poor relationship with x. Instead, ask “Tell me about your experience with x?” so they get to choose how they feel about it, and then follow it up with why.

• Tie numbers to questions

  • Especially for more qualitative studies, tie number scales to questions (i.e. “On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being very poor to 5 being excellent— how do you feel about x?”) to quantify sentiments of responses after the interviews. It can be difficult to differentiate a “decently good” to a “fairly well”, but it is easy to know the difference between a rating of “2/5” and a “4/5”. Of course, scales are relative as well, but they are slightly more empirical.

• Let them tell me a story

  • It is sometimes helpful to leave questions intentionally broad so users have the freedom to answer with anything they want. This can often reveal unidentified flaws in a product, opening up my eyes to not just to a solution I like, but rather, the solution we need.

• Magic wand question

  • Very much like the previous point— give users the option to describe their ideal experience with x if they had a magic wand and anything is possible. This helps me understand what the desired user journey could look like, without constraining them to my own bias / questions. Although remember, users are experts of the problem space, but not necessarily the solution space.

Create a user interview guide

• The user research plan is helpful for outlining everything I hope to get through in an interview, but the truth is, it’s difficult to keep referring to a sheet of paper when I want to foster an organic conversation with someone. So making and reading over an interview guide (a simplified version of the research plan with bold highlighted points), allows me to glance at my cheat sheet during the interview and know exactly where I am in terms of progress.

Conducting interviews

• Don’t interrupt them

  • It can be difficult to hold myself back from steering conversations “back on topic” when I feel I’m not getting exactly the response I’m “hoping for” from a user, and they start going off on a tangent. But people speak the truth when I let them speak their heart.

• Don’t try to fill in awkward silence

  • Sometimes user research will feel awkward— and that’s when I generally go rogue and start suggesting answers to users. I fall straight into the trap of asking leading questions, in hopes that they don’t feel bad. But after a terrible interview where I basically spoon-fed a participant all the answers, my mentor gave me the advice of just letting awkward silence happen. This worked surprisingly well. People feel obligated to come up with answers (and often even more innovative ones) because of the uncomfortable dead air.

Summarize interviews

• I find it helpful to conduct interviews with another person so that one can ask questions, while the other focuses on note taking. This time around, we did our user research through usertesting.com which meant that I didn’t have to take notes at all, and could review the recorded interviews after each one. It also gives the flexibility of annotating the video to mark down key points.

• I create a summary report with every interview I conducted based on (loosely depending on context) the following points:

  • Anonymous user ID (remove PII for confidentiality)

  • Background

  • What they currently do

  • What problems they have

  • What their wants are

  • Quotes

  • Other interesting observations

User research report

• After all of my user research sessions, I sit down and draw themes amongst my observations and generate recommendations / actionable items out of my findings. This includes reviewing my hypothesis. 

• It’s important to reflect on and share my learnings so that there is transparency in the work that I’m doing, and the team should be aware of concerns that users have. This facilitates an environment where teammates share and learn from each other’s work.

Don’t let user research be the be-all and end-all

• It’s inevitable to have anomalies in user research findings, and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean the research should be scrapped or augmented to prove the initial hypotheses. Rather, the holistic result of the research can be used to help drive part of the decision making in creating a solution that users will love, but it should be coupled with data and metrics to ensure that a solution doesn’t just satisfy the needs of the small sample size of users that were interviewed.

Huge thank you to Sara Lerner, Den Delimarschi, Horyun Song and Melissa Boone for guiding me through all of this. I still have lots to learn. 💖