Episode 20: Learning and Networking as a UX-er with Wenshu Kwek
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Hi everyone, I'm Dalen, founder and design educator at Curious Core.

Welcome to our Working in UX Design podcast series where we interview a UX design leader in the industry on their experience in this emerging field. We've had UX professionals from Grab, AirAsia, Google and more join us previously and we're bringing you more exciting interviews this year. Stay tuned for this week's interview with our special guest who is working in UX design.

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to another session of Working in UX Design. I'm Dalen over here, and I'm your host for this evening. We'll be chatting with Wenxu Huek from Shopify. He'll be sharing a lot of his experiences as a senior UXer and how we should be learning and networking as a UXer. So the reason why we did these sessions was due to COVID, where we saw a dip in business

the number of live events where designers could gather and learn from each other. So that's why we decided to create our monthly webinar sessions, and we've been doing it ever since 2020. So let me first introduce our guest for this evening, Wenxu. Wenxu is a senior product designer at Shopify with a background in industrial design. He helps to reduce risk in product development.

and solves high-impact problems with elegant and thoughtful solutions. He works best in cross-functional teams and has been working for seven years shipping successful B2C and B2B products and services. So that's something we'll also discuss with Wenxu. And beyond working with leading global tech companies and startups and government agencies, he tries to find time to give back to the local design community.

So just to start off, Wenxu, how's your day going and what's keeping you busy these days? Thanks for the good introduction. It's been a weird day, pretty busy at work. Lots of announcements at Shopify, but yeah, I've been busy with work. In terms of being busy, I know Shopify is like growing and serving a lot of merchants and there's like this boom in e-commerce right now. Just wondering, can you describe to me like what's your day-to-day like? So if you're familiar with Shopify, we are

e-commerce tool. Like if you want to sell anything online, you can use Shopify to build a store, set up an online store, like sell to customers. So what my team works on is we help Shopify merchants sell on more surfaces, like to sell on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Google. So I'm working with a team that works on that. So it's pretty complex. Lots of stakeholders. Our typical day is a...

Lots of conversations, working with many different people. That sounds like fun. And I know a lot of my friends who are e-commerce entrepreneurs personally, they use Shopify. And we even have a case study about it, about transitioning and replatforming to Shopify from one of our product mentors. What sort of drives you to wake up every morning and do what you do? As a designer, one thing that motivates me is the idea that I can... I know it sounds a bit cheesy, but like solving problems, right?

It's a million different super difficult problems out there. And I think as designers, we are in a very good position to kind of help teams and businesses solve these problems, right? Especially in e-commerce, it's so complex. There's so much complexity just to sell something. What I get to do every day is look at this complexity and then try to simplify it for a human on the other hand, right? So that's really fun. And it was nice to work on global products to know that

something that you work on, even if it's a small button, right? It might touch a million different humans like all around the world. So that's really nice. Yeah, that's really awesome to hear. I see that you work on both B2B and B2C products. So let's talk a little bit about that. I know you were previously in ThoughtWorks and you

work on some consumer products and now you're in Shopify and it's more like B2B because you're serving businesses. Can I understand what are some of the things as a practitioner of UX I should be taking note when working on all these two different segments? So one thing for me is I think we often talk about how there might be a difference but in the end of the day it's actually very similar. You're still like solving user problems right now.

the way you approach any design problem is the same. So I started working on B2C products. I've designed some consumer apps, right? And then after I left consulting, I went to Foodpanda. I worked on the restaurant portal. Then I went to Shopify to work on merchant products. So I really wanted to go into B2B. Having made that transition, it feels the same, right? It's all the same. One thing that is quite different is I think, especially if it's a very complex B2B product. So in a lot of consumer products, problems feel very solved. A lot of the problems, like if you want to do a checkout flow, right?

like a million different checkout flows out in the internet, right? You can go into Google and search for it. I can do competitor analysis, but if I'm working on a B2B product, like a super complex, like, so how do I integrate a store and sync like a thousand products, like with like Instagram, for example, right? There's nothing for me to Google, right? It's way more complex. You can't exactly get the reference that easily, as you mentioned, right? Cause consumer products, you can just download and then you immediately have a reference. Yes. Yeah.

And I would say most B2B products is not as sexy and it's not the trendiest thing to work on. So a lot of my colleagues and when I talk to like, when I advise juniors that I've met, they want to work on B2C. It's super exciting. I want to work on Instagram. I want to work on a new like shoppy app, right? But yeah, I also think there's a lot of like very rich problems in the B2B space. Problems that are hidden, maybe super complex. No one wants to care about. But if you're a designer and you want to work on that,

Right, and I think that's a really nice niche. - Since we're talking about problems and you're saying designers are like problem solvers, what would be an example of a B2B problem that is interesting? - Okay, so one thing that's not so obvious, with a lot of B2B products, okay, so let's use Foodpanda as an example, right? When you use the Foodpanda app, you open the app and you wanna order food, there's a menu, there are like photos, there's a price, right? Like it looks really simple, right? But then behind the scenes, right, there is an entire like super complex tool.

that a restaurant owner who is often not tech savvy has to set up. So one thing I did learn when I was in Foodpanda is just ordering bubble tea. How do you design a way for someone to order bubble tea? Really simple for a consumer, super complex if you're a restaurant owner.

How many percent sweetness, right? 50%, 5%. How much sugar, how much ice do I want? And based on these variations, the price changes, right? So how do you configure all these? So that's like super complex, super rich problems of, and it requires a lot of like systems thinking, right? Working with developers, working with business folks, your PM. So I think that wasn't, that was what I worked on in Foodpanda that I can talk about, I hope, right?

I don't remember if I ordered bubble tea on Foodpanda, but I do remember placing an order for something quite complicated on Foodpanda recently. And I just realized how easy it was. I was like, oh, I can do all this customizations. I think it might have been like eating at Muji or something like that. Muji Cafe. So that was really interesting where you had like variations of like what food to choose and stuff like that.

that. That's an interesting problem to work on. And you're saying it's slightly more obscure, right? Like the work that you do in B2B is also a little bit more niche. It doesn't touch as many people as like a B2C piece of work. So how do you feel about that?

So as I've become more senior, I think I care less about the number of people I touch, but more like the value that I create, right? So for example, you can, like my PM and I once worked on a problem for an internal tool. It's a button, but that one button can save the company like six figures every six months or something like that.

It's nice to kind of flip the framing a bit, right? So it's more about impact, right? GMV, how much GMV can I create? Or how much money can I save, right? Yeah, I care a lot less these days if I see someone on the train and then, oh, they're using something I might design. It's like, okay, it's fine. I don't care so much anymore.

So that's nice. I mean, it sounds like you've grown up. Sounds like you're moving from vanity metrics to GMV, as you call it, like gross marginal value, which is actual financial impact based on the products that you order, the design that ends up in the products. Like, let's talk a little bit about your transition from junior to senior. And earlier you spoke a little bit like juniors are more excited to work on

consumer stuff because it touches a lot of people now that you're more senior you're more about like the impact can you tell us a little bit more yeah what else has changed I can reflect on my personal experience as well when I first started out as a junior designer it was it's all about process to get from A to B there's a certain step that

a certain framework I need to use. Step one, two, three, four, five. If I follow these and I answer all the questions correctly, I would get to the solution. And I was all about process, right? But the real world is tricky, right? It's not that straightforward. So when things get bent, right? Projects go crazy, things start burning, right? Then I'll be really unhappy. No, you're not doing it properly. You're not doing research. You're not talking to stakeholders. You're not giving me enough time to design. So that was me when I first started out. But then

as I've become more experienced. So I started to realize that oftentimes to get from point A to point B, sometimes you can skip certain steps. And for me, that's the sign of a distinction between a senior and junior, right? Seeing the process, right? And knowing what you can skip. You don't always need to talk to users, for example, right? Not every problem has to solve everything. Sometimes you need to make trade-offs and you need to be happy with that. So I think for me, that's like the distinction, right? We can move into becoming more senior, more experienced.

It sounds like you kind of know, like, because you know what you're doing, because you know your tools, you kind of economize the number of steps you take or even be more efficient at what you're doing. Efficiency is one thing, but also knowing what steps to skip. Sometimes it comes to experience, like maybe you failed at many different, many, many times, right? And then you finally know, okay, you know, especially when you work in a product company.

there's never an ideal project. So be aware, right? When it's not ideal and accept, accept it, right? Find ways to adjust the way you work, right? The methods you use. So I think that's when you start to become a bit more senior and you're able to like roll with the punches. Looking back all this years, working in UX design, what advice would you share with your younger designer self? Design is a job, right? In the end, right? Uh,

Like it's a job, right? And like any job, there will be days when it sucks, right? There will be days when you have endless meetings. You will do really stupid things. You will do really tedious things. You will need to deal with politics, right? Deal with like relationships. It's a job, right? And I think when we learn design, it's all like ideal stuff, right? Okay, you're gonna go out there, you're gonna save the world. As long as you follow this double diamond thing, right? It's like everything's perfect.

But then once you go out and oh shit, everything's, everything's on fire. My PM doesn't like me or things like that. And how do I deal with that? I don't know if it's good advice or not, but yeah, it's not as, it's not as rosy as, as it seems when you're out there. It never is. Right. But then I think it's healthy to acknowledge that and not like beat yourself up. Cause I used to do that. So if something was not ideal, I'll be like, oh shit, bad designer or

I'm not doing enough work. Or maybe like, oh, this company sucks, right? This client sucks. But I think it's a job, right? There are bad days and everything's like a good learning experience in the end. And as a proverbial question, I think you mentioned offhand earlier, you say like, hey, you're not giving me enough time to design. And I think as designers, we always feel like

Hey, like we don't have enough time to do something. We have enough time to do research. We don't have enough time to do design. How would you manage that right now if you're not really given enough time to do design or research? So I once had this conversation with a tech lead and

this is what he told me, right? Like the thing that you're building today that you think is really good, right? In five years, it's going to suck. So when trends evolve, right? Or like, I mean, nothing stays still and stays still in software, right? Things evolve, things change. In five years, it's going to suck anyway. So why are you so stressed about making it perfect today? And he was talking about code, right? But I think it's the same thing with design. What looks nice today is going to look bad. Maybe not even five years later.

two years right so so why stress so much um so and i think it comes from this mindset that we need to be perfect all the time right so yeah i think that's kind of like a curse of being being an artist or being a designer or creative things have to be perfect it

We never stray too far from that. Any advice on how to manage that a little bit better? Treat everything as an iteration. Assuming you're working in a healthy environment, your team is iterating. The first version is always going to sell, but then there is always a second version. In a few months, you can iterate. After that, you can keep evolving the product. That's one way. Another way is really

Just working really closely with the engineers, right? Product people, business stakeholders, to understand decisions like why they are made, how things come about. So once you have a much bigger understanding of the things that affect the design, I think it becomes a lot easier to accept any kind of trade-offs that you feel you might be making, right?

So maybe the corner radius is not the perfect radius. Maybe the color's slightly off, right? But then, hey, there are all these reasons behind it. Oh, we're still creating GMV. We're still creating user value. So that's kind of how I try to see it these days. We have a question from the crowd over here. So someone is asking, when you were a junior designer, how do you deal with or salvage any mistakes? Also try and learn from it. So there was this one project. Okay, it was a project in Thailand. It was an insurance-related product for,

farmers in Thailand. The user is someone who's not tech-savvy at all, and they're very used to this really lousy app with a really weird interaction pattern. It just makes no sense at all. And then when we redesigned it, we insisted on doing it the right way. It's the correct pattern. And I won't go into details because it's really hard without a whiteboard. So we redesigned it. New pattern. It's the correct design guideline. We followed all of

Apple's human interface guidelines, everything. We did testing. No one could use it, right? Because that's just not how they're used to doing it, right? They're used to this really weird way to interact with a whole app, right? And I think that was a huge learning experience for us. It's quite humbling, right? I think we often have an ego, right? When we design something, we want to have an ideal state in mind. Okay, I'm going to force this on my user. But then once we did testing, hey...

It doesn't work. So I don't know if I answered the question. Yeah, you did. I mean, it showed that your design didn't work and did not work as you all assume. So what happened? How do you salvage it?

I think the good thing was the engineers I worked with, we happened to bring them down for the user test as well, which was entirely by chance, it's coincidental. So then we didn't need to convince anyone. Everyone saw how the app would fail. So in a way, it was quite easy for the team to recover. When I think back in hindsight, had we not done that, and we just went out to test, and we go back to office and we report, hey, it's not working.

And then the end is, oh, I just spent six months working on this, right? Are you telling me you want me to redesign this? I mean, the fact that everyone was there to see the test. Yeah.

So you got the cooperation of the engineers and I'm guessing they made some iterations on the spot? Yeah, they were able to change things on the fly and then test it quickly. So yeah, that was interesting. Yeah, that sounds like quite an adventure. Did you guys end up staying longer than you expected in Thailand or what happened? No, I had to fly back. So I wasn't there to see through the project. Wish I was there though, the food was good. Okay, yeah. Well, we all love Thai food, don't we? So that's always a bonus.

So great that you sort of like had, I guess, the humility to kind of recognize it and then try your best to recover from it, the assistance and the help. What's your takeaway from that experience or what's your lesson? Just be humble, right? Just because you think there's an ideal solution, an ideal design, a lot of times when you talk to an actual user, A, actually it's not, maybe it doesn't work that way. Be very humble. B?

Be very humble, be very open. I think that sounds like good advice. We have another question from the audience who is asking, how do you manage uncertainty if the scope or objectives are not well defined for you? And what's your best advice to manage stakeholders who are requesting changes near the release? That sounds like another big question on its own. So maybe let's start with the first one. How do you manage uncertainty if work scope and objectives are not well defined?

To be honest, that's something I struggle with, right? It's something I do need to work on. I think ambiguity is something that's really stressful, I think. So one thing that I've found that has helped is to kind of identify like just a smaller step that I can take, right? And then just do it, right? So if something's super unclear, right? I don't know what's supposed to do. Just find the small things you can do and then just do it, right? And then as you start doing things, right? Things become clearer. So I remember...

We once had a project that was super unclear when I was a consultant. We were almost like kind of waiting for requirements to come down from the client, right?

and we wanted to do research, okay, like to get requirements from customers. But then after a while, we realized, hey, maybe we should just start designing, right? That's a small thing we can do. And after we started designing some wireframes, it started to answer some questions, right? Now, once you had a design, right? And then a client sees it, oh, actually things could be this way, right? And then it helped to clarify things, right? So sometimes just like taking a small step forward, just start designing, right? Sometimes I think that the temptation is always to like spend time researching, right? Spend time thinking, understanding what's the requirement, but sometimes you just need to move forward and take a small step.

Yeah, sounds like it's taking a small step towards clarifying or clarity itself. That's on sort of scoping and managing the objectives. What's your best advice to manage stakeholders who are requesting huge changes near release? Has that happened to you? Yeah. I think hopefully you're working with a product manager who can help manage these conversations. So I think ideally you're working really closely with your cross-functional team

I think Shopify we call it a trifecta engineering product design like if you're working very closely together right and then when stakeholders come in and they request a change right in scope it doesn't just affect design right it affects the product roadmap it affects engineering when everyone can come in and

and give an appropriate response, the trifecta can come in. And then I think it's a much more measured way to kind of respond to things like these. Sounds like it's like putting heads together and not all heads are from the same department. What about managing difficult stakeholders in general?

It's all about relationships, right? I think like whether or not you have influence in a company is when it's the number of people you can have like casual coffees with, right? In a way, like if you can just like go to the business stakeholder and you can just have a coffee chat, okay, you have influence, right? So I think building relationships is really, really important, right?

And it's the things we tend to forget, especially when it's remote. Okay, I don't need to make friends in office. I don't need to talk to people, ask them how their day is going. When you build relationships over time, there is more trust. And then so when difficulty arises, things become challenging. I think that you can solve them much easier when you have a good relationship with the people you work with.

I fully agree with that. And I think I've never heard of the metric of number of coffee chats you can have with people as a measure of your influence. But certainly I think what really has helped when I was working in product management is being able to like take people out for lunch and bring people together. For example, I think that certainly helped a lot. Food and drinks really bring people together. And

And there's a temptation to like offload that work to the PM. Okay, it's your job, right? I'll just focus on design. But I think as designers, it's very important to do that as well. Most designers I know are very introverted. I've hardly seen very extroverted designers. I don't know which one you relate to a little bit more. So tell me a little bit, like let's say you're a little bit more shy and you're a little bit more introverted. How would you engage a stakeholder or how should you like talk to people in the community or do networking?

Okay, so I hate networking. I've always hated it. And I'm very introverted. So I think that's where I come from. So maybe I think there's a bit of story here. So which is how I got into UX. So I first started as an industrial designer. And then at one point in my career, I wanted to make a switch, but I wasn't completely sure. And then I found out that there's this community called like UX SG, right? UX Singapore, they were doing a conference, they're looking for volunteers. And I thought, oh, if I volunteer, I can attend a conference for free, right? So I volunteered. But

But long story short, I continued to stay as a volunteer and then I just started showing up at every meetup to help organize things. And I never did it with the intention of networking. I just did it because I was learning something and then I wanted to give back. Because of UXSG, I managed to move into UX, so I wanted to give back. But then because I was always showing up at these meetups, over time, people see the same face and they just come to you to tell

I was never the kind of person to go to a meetup and, hey, hi, I'm with you, you know. I just kind of volunteered. I was always there. And then at some point, like, okay, people started coming to talk to me. So that was how I kind of like reverse networked. ♪

And I would tell the audience that I can verify that because I seen you in one of those events and that's actually how we met. And you're very, very, very quiet. In fact, you just sat there and listened to everyone talk. I would admit I'm quite a silent type myself, but you're even more silent than

me so is that the trick like just just show up and let people like reach out to you yeah just just show up at one point someone will talk to you but also i think networking becomes a dirty word if you only think about it from like what value am i getting from this relationship right this person that i'm talking to like what value am i getting out of it right but just like a kind of scarcity mindset right so if you have a more like abundant mindset okay i'm here to bring value to someone and then they would give me some value and then it's networking becomes a lot less dirty

I think I like that you said that and actually it's true that networking is like a dirty word for many people and I do find that it's extremely valuable in your professional career right because like your next job might be referred to someone that you know from a conference or from an event that you attend so I'm wondering when you say add value and you're a designer correct and maybe you're not very experienced as a designer how do you add value to people or

How did you do it in the past? Because you're not very senior, but you're there, you're listening, you're showing your face, you're showing up. I think back then for me, it was because I was volunteering. I was volunteering for the meetups. So I helped to create a space for other designers to meet up. So that's how I saw my value, helping you meet other people. And the thing is, no matter how junior you are, there's always someone more junior than you. So there's always someone who you can give advice to. Yeah.

so yeah so when I attended UXSG even when I was very early in my career there would always be someone right from like uni or like poly who'd like show up and they're like oh what's UX how do I get a job right so you're never naked because there's someone more naked than you are yeah yeah there's always someone and you never know who they will become right so always help out like maybe five years down the road like

they become someone you can work with. That's a great way to kind of like think about it. And for people who are a little bit more not too extroverted, you're suggesting that maybe they could play the role of a facilitator or play the role of a volunteer and try and add value to the community. I don't think you have to do a lot as a volunteer, do you? What do you have to contribute exactly?

Back then, the principle that I think Raven and Michael had was like, should be as little effort as possible. Lowest effort, highest impact. So we just did like, I think we ran this thing called open space, right? Where there's no agenda, nothing, right? It's just a, we open the space for you, you come in and then you propose like topics you want to discuss, right? And then we just vote on it and like people like self-organize. And so there really was very little effort like in organizing the meetups back then.

But as someone who runs events, I actually know the amount of work that goes behind it, especially like a conference where you have to get the speakers. But maybe for volunteers, there might be a more specific role for you to play. So that sounds like a good idea. Definitely looking to all these physical meetups as they are opening up again. So I think it's a good opportunity for all the junior designers here to volunteer yourself for

physical events. Just kind of wondering, how has volunteering, how has networking, how has participating in this community, how has it helped with your career? I think on the baseline level, it's just knowing that there are people outside that are like me, going through similar problems. Someone who I can rent that would be outside the company I'm in, so I can say things I wouldn't dare to say in my company. So I think that has been very healthy for me. But I think also a lot of my

roles a lot of the jobs that i've been offered interviews that have been offered right um they came from networks right it's not like you don't see it on linkedin right you don't see it on my job portals i think that has really helped but it was never like always like one way so i try to like help as well like i know someone's looking for a job i'll try to connect them with someone else so in a way like giving right but then when you give right at some point you get something back in return like a budget mindset just don't be like hey i must always get something

I think there was this book called Give and Take or something. And they talk about three types of people, right? Givers who give a lot, takers who only take. Then people who keep score about giving and taking. Mm-hmm.

So it's like equal, equal kind of thing. Yeah, if you do that, networking wouldn't be fun. Yeah, so you're in the giving camp. You don't really keep score. No, I don't. Okay, that's excellent. I'm sure a lot of people here would love to be friends with you. In this case, I'm wondering, you mentioned earlier that there was this conversation where you have your tech lead, where you learn something. So let's talk a little bit about learning from non-designers like...

How do we learn from non-designers? I think it starts from recognizing that everyone has an impact on the design. No matter how nice you design something on Figma, a developer has to build it. So in a way, a developer is a designer as well. They have as much influence on it as you do. And by extension, there's a lot that you can learn from them. When I first worked on a mobile app,

my first like consumer mobile app. Like I've never done mobile apps before. So I had no idea like what iOS was. I was an Android user. I don't know the patterns. I don't know how screens flow, but there was a front end dev that was like really, really good. Like he knows everything and the patterns to use. And then, oh, okay. So I'll just, I'll just learn from him. Like trust him, trust that they have like good intentions, right?

Like no one goes to work with the intention of doing a bad job. So yeah, that's when I really learned like, okay, there's a lot, even like interaction design, right? I learned a lot of interaction design like from the engineer, the iOS like engineer, like who knew more about iOS than I did. So yeah, ever since then, I've always seen them as a source of learning, right? So,

That's excellent. I think engineers have a lot to teach us. Even as a product person, I learned from the engineers. I listened to my engineers too. So that is definitely a good source. What about people who are not in the tech industry? Do you learn from them or is there anything that you learn that you apply back to your work? I think what's interesting is like if you do get a chance to work with like business folks, right? Or,

They see things very differently. And because they see things differently, I think it gives you a different lens on your work, on the product that you're working on. So that's something I've learned. Yeah, that's fine. I mean, let's take an example. You shared something about what you learned from the engineers, and that's how to design better model products, how to use mobile patterns, for example. What can you share that you learned from, say, a business person that you are applying as a UX designer?

Like a business person never cares about the aesthetic quality of a product, right? It's all about can it convert, right? How much money am I saving here? If I'm taking six months to build this, right? How much money am I losing by not building this sooner, right? So I think that really helped me understand the actual impact of my designs, right? Just talking to them and again, right? Building relationships, right? Just meeting them for Korean barbecue if you can, right?

It's really learning about that, right? Because they are looking at metrics, they look at Excel sheets, right? I'm so glad I don't have to do that. Someone will do that for me, right? They see things in a completely different way, right? It really helps. And it also helps you build a case, right? For your designs, right? Because when you're presenting to stakeholders, you can't talk about design principles,

or how nice this design is. The number of users we spoke with, they don't care. Like a CEO, for example, cares about the impact. I hear this quite often from more senior design leaders or even more senior designers. It's important for us to justify the impact that we deliver as UX designers. How should someone who's like maybe in their first year as a practitioner, how should they actually

learn how to justify their impact more what books should they read or you know who should they be talking to for example I don't know about books I think like relying on your cross-functional peers if you have them especially the PM I think the PM is like should be your best friend you should probably spend more time with your PM than your designer than the other designers in your team

So I mean, a PM is incentivized to deliver value, right? Like way more than an engineer or a designer. So they're thinking about that like all the time. So I think really leaning on them when they're new, I think that really, really helps. But what if your PM is also kind of new? There aren't many experienced PMs, to be honest, in the industry. So if they're kind of new, like what's the next best person?

I think in the end of the day, it's really all about relationships, right? So if you have a good relationship with your business stakeholder, if you have any, right, then, then you can lean on them and to kind of help you define, um,

okay, so what, this is what we're thinking of doing. What does it mean for you? What are you looking for? So yeah, like build good relationships with the people you work with. And then I think everything is like a lot easier from there. Yeah, I'm getting a sense from our conversation, like if someone's new to their career, they should really be listening a lot and actually put themselves out there and just learn and be open to cross-functional experts. Just kind of like absorb everything like a sponge. I'm actually quite curious, like,

You said that you were an industrial designer and we happen to run a program that helped mid-career professionals to transition into UX design. I'm sure a lot of them who's hearing this right now could benefit from some tips or advice. How did you make that jump? How did you make that switch from, say, industrial design? If you're coming from industrial design, it's a bit like you're cheating in a way because I think industrial design is basically UX, but in 3D. So in a way, I think

Like the fundamentals are the same, right? Like the design process, right? The need to do research. Like it's all the same, right? The difference is the medium, right? Everything is like flat, right? And then there's a flow, right? There are designs, right? Things are less permanent. So these are the things that I had to learn. But I think transitioning from industrial design or any other, if you are transitioning from a design field, I think it's a bit easier. Who gave you your first opportunity or how did you manage to obtain your first opportunity to be a UXer?

And again, it's true, like networking, even though I wasn't doing it intentionally. So I've actually wanted to do a master's, a human computer interface. So I thought I should do that because I wasn't confident. I do a master's in the US, right? And then from there, I'll find a job in the US, like work in the Bay Area. So that was my plan. And then I found a senior on LinkedIn who did exactly that. And I reached out to her. So, hey, I'm

looking to go into UX and can I set up a call with you and then she chatted we chatted and then she told me hey uh I'm working at a company in Singapore like we happen to be looking for junior designers right so why don't you try and apply and then I applied I got an offer and then she told me hey uh instead of paying money to learn why don't I went on to get paid to learn and that's how I got into UX yeah it was from a random like LinkedIn message to like some senior in the US.

Wow, very very lucky that you got an offer. Because these days it's a lot tougher to enter the industry and it's very very competitive. But I think the principle doesn't change, right? The principle here is like reach out to people, ask for help, talk to them and

something good will happen out of that. Seems like it. And I think most people have a little bit of ego, right? They like it when someone goes to them to ask for advice, right? So if you're like ping someone on LinkedIn, hey, I'm junior looking for help. Like most of the time, like they would say yes, unless they're like really busy or...

I think that's that and I think that's also like ADP lists, like platforms like ADP lists where you can ask for help or there are events you can go to. Even though like UXSG isn't really active right now, there are still like community events like Friends of Figma and all that. So at least in Singapore. So in your own locality, I'm sure there's like local events as well for you to be involved where people have drinks together. I'm just wondering for your role in Shopify, how did that came about?

And again, it's because I know Aditi. So, and I think, you know, so we have a mutual friend. So, and again, I met her at a meetup and I believe you were at a meetup as well. It was a product. It wasn't even a design meetup. It was like product tonic, the one in Bali. So you never know, like some random person you're speaking with today might become your boss five years later.

Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about design, right? And you graduated with first class honors in industrial design from NUS. And I think someone who knows you is cheering you in the chat. I think it's someone from my team. I'm trying to understand, you know, studying design, what are some of the transferable skills to this new discipline called UX? What are you still using today that you learned from your industrial design days?

And US industrial design is quite a different, quite a good course. I think what I really use today, I think as a designer, you need to build a vocabulary, right? Like kind of like, I don't know if vocabulary makes sense, like a vocabulary of what good design looks like. And then you do that firstly by just looking at many different things, right? Online, like on Pinterest, like trying different products. So you have a much better sense of what is good taste, like what works well. But then also it's, you learn by doing, right? Try and error. Like in design school, you...

design school is usually really tough right you do a lot of iterations you don't sleep very much right so i remember being in studio like cutting wood yeah i don't know if they still do that today but um in year one in nus industrial design they would give you a giant block of styrofoam and you need to shave it down into a 10 by 10 by 10 cm like sphere and it has to be perfectly spherical i don't remember if we were allowed to use a machine i don't think so so with like sandpaper and pen knives and the instructor would like actually measure it with a

caliper and it's off by like just one or two mm right he would like pick it up like throw it on your head right and bounce the ball it's correct the correct the building right and in a way like today like when designing something and i think it's the same thing right how it's applicable it's like when you're designing something you just keep doing iterations right sometimes you just need to like brute force it right try like 50 different variations right and then from that 50 you have one that's interesting yeah something that i learned i would say i'm also very appreciative i i

think maybe I had it a little bit easier than you did when I went to design school and polytechnic but I remember getting my

packaging design for an energy drink rejected like eight times and the lecturer never bothered to explain to me why and he just says hey you can push it further like he'll just give one comment and then I change it based on his one comment and then he'll give it like one more comment like why don't you just like tell me from the start like this are the 10 things you should look out for it still puzzles me but I think it was like what you said it's a character building process and

where you learn to be persistent and you learn to be sensitive about the design that you're doing. And I think it really, really helped me because after that, I was like, oh, I get it. Like, this is like good design. Oh, this is like not good design. I definitely find your experience relatable. I heard they treat people worse in architecture. Oh yeah, architecture is way, way worse. I don't know if it's still true today, but...

Yeah, back then. When I go home from school at 1am, they are still in studio. But yeah, we have architects who come to our program as well. And then they say, wow, this is great, man. Like we get to go home on time. UX designer. They don't get to go home on time as an architect.

I'd love to know a little bit more about your experience at work. Do you use any framework like Kanban to help manage your workload? I'm guessing it's more from a personal perspective. Does it help instill some control in your workload or is Kanban effective essentially? The funny thing is that every time I've tried to do Kanban, the team uses it for a while and then after one or two weeks, we stop using it. So I don't know if it's my fault or I'm not doing it correctly. But...

Okay, so Shopify is right now, like Shopify is a remote first company, right? So when they're remote first, we can't rely on like synchronous meetings anymore. So there's a lot of writing, right? There's a writing culture. So I think from that, what I've learned is I try to maintain a Google Doc and then treat it like a journal. And so every day, this is what I've done. And then I try to break down the things that I need to do. And then I post it on Slack, do a lot of writing, right? And

And I think that has helped me break down my work and help me be clearer about communicating what kind of work I need to do and why. I think it's working remotely has forced me to do that. So let me get this right, because Shopify is a remote first company. How you're managing your work today is that you write a journal of what you did or what you're about to do.

Both. But that's just how I've processed my own work. And then how you work with other folks in your team, I think it depends. It varies from team to team. Usually my preference is to try and track my work together with what the engineers are doing. So if everyone's on...

GitHub, tracking things on a Kanban board, then I would try to have my work show up as well. So at least people know what I'm doing. Like if not, what are designers doing? It was like you disappear in a cave, but you will show up to Sprint later, and this is the design. I think that sounds like a good idea. I mean, what you're really practicing is this agile principle of like being transparent and you're working with increments, right? What has been the most challenging thing working fully remote so far?

I do miss office moments. So in office, you know, we just have walk over to someone and they start disturbing them, right? Or like shooting nerve guns or like going for long lunches. I do miss that. And

Some things are just easier in person, I think. What we do in Shopify is we do this thing called bursts. As and when you need it, the team can come together and meet at a place for three to five days. Just get shit done in those five days. And then you fly back and go back into working remotely. You do that anywhere in the world? Or what's happening? ITD. Right now, I think with the economy...

Plus strings are tighter, but most of my team is in Singapore. So we do meet up once in a while. We have a question on UX coaching. Do you coach people on UX? Do you actually do coaching at all? No, I don't know.

All right. So I guess that might not be the right question. What about career coaching? Do you happen to coach anyone on their careers? Nah, I haven't done it. But once in a while, like someone reaches out to me on LinkedIn, just like what I used to do right now, six or seven years ago. And I'll be happy to take a call. Are you actually open to people reaching out to you and asking for career advice? Yeah, always happy to help. That sounds lovely. Thank you.

I think as I understand, I mean, career coaching is a little bit different from coaching someone to be a more effective UX designer. I think there's a lot of elements to career coaching. And part of that is helping the person understand what kind of transferable skills that

they have. Like someone like Wen Xu, who is an industrial designer, has quite a number of transferable skills into this new field. And then working with them to ensure that they position and present their best self. So that's on career coaching. And then like getting someone better as a UX designer, that's usually like working with them and doing it over time and giving them feedback along the way. That's something I've also done. And I would say it really depends on

how receptive the person is to your advice as a coach, but also how likely are they able to practice like the ideal state of UX, right? And when we talk about the ideal state, it means like, hey, we have to do it iteratively. Hey, we have to make data-driven decisions. And if they are not able to do any of that, then it becomes like very challenging for them to practice proper UX. And I think Aditi, your boss, always has this criticism for

working in consulting, which she says that, yeah, you're only working on the MVP or the prototype of the product. So how does it feel like to work in a product company now?

I think everything that they say about it is true, right? So I think when I was a consultant, I did many different things. A lot of fun projects, but it's very thin. If I'm lucky, I'm there to ship the first version of the design, right? So I'm there when the developers are building it. But then once it's released, I'm not there to see what happens next, right? But in a product company, you go really deep on one product area, right? And the bigger the company, the narrower your scope. But it's nice. It's nice to be able to ship something and then be there to own up to your mistakes, right? Or...

Or like see the impact, right? At least you get to see like whether your design works and how it impacts lives. And I think that's what you mentioned as part of waking up every day, right? To solve problems. I think in consulting, I learned what good looks like because there's really a very strong focus on

ideal practices, best practices. So I learned it when I was there. And then going into a product company, it's more about how do you now deliver value as cheaply, as quickly as possible. So it's different types of learning, I would say. If I could ask you one more question, and that is to the audience over here, like, do you have any general advice or tips to help them be a better learner or a better networker as a UXer?

I think just put yourself out there, right? So you are never too junior to like help someone. Just like there are always events like just show up, right? Um,

Put yourself out there. You don't have to be an extrovert. People will come to you. Always be helping people. At one point, someone will help you back. I think that really helps. And then also focus on building relationships, especially with non-design peers that you work with. Because there is so much learning there that we often miss. We always assume we must learn from designers. We must have coaching from other designers. Maybe your coach could be a PM. You never know.

I'm gonna ask you a fun question. How do you bribe a product manager and how do you bribe an engineer? And how do you bribe a business person? Like what do you use to bribe them? How to bribe? I mean like bribe and I say it in a very like joking way. I don't mean like actually bribe because that's illegal but like what do you bribe them with? Like what do you do to get into their good books?

I think one thing I like to do, which is I like to accept compromises for now. When a PM needs to ship something faster and then, okay, I'll be compromising. I'll be like, okay, let's do it simple. The design will be less perfect, but we ship it out. But then by making these compromises later on, when you need to push something, they are more accepting. So in a way, that's kind of how I do it. What about engineers? I think it's the same thing. When something's really hard to build, can you simplify it? Okay. I'll be like, okay.

okay I'll simplify for you you know and then next time if there's something I really want to push up you know okay you

Actually, that's really sound advice. I was hoping it involves something with food or something like that. Or coffee, right? As you were saying earlier. Okay, so I guess the idea is kind of like to be flexible. What about business people? Is there anything you do to get into their good books? I don't know. I guess learn what's important to them, right? And try to help them achieve it. Especially if the new executive joins a company, right? They need a quick win to show their value.

and then like help them solve their quick win and then that really helps you be their good books I mean it sounds really transactional but that's how it is sometimes I think it sounds like you're being a team player right like hey you're part of the team too so you're just like helping them out hopefully someday it comes back

just like you said. So I think we had a wonderful discussion with you this evening, Wenxu, and thank you so much for sharing your experiences live with an audience this evening. Thank you. Thank you, Dylan, for having me. For those of you who are

listening to this for the first time I hope you enjoyed the content that we shared here do check out our monthly webinar events if you haven't we do upload all of this on our podcast on Apple and Spotify as well as on our YouTube channel if you'd like to watch the video do check out if you haven't our

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