Esther Ahn
Designing for Scale and Building Culture
In this brand new episode of Brave UX, Esther Ahn reflects on the twists and turns of her creative journey 🎨, shares how critique can unlock better design without breaking spirits 🧠, and reveals why embracing the oops is essential for building resilient design teams and careers 🚀.
Highlights include:
- How do you make sense of your career’s twists and turns?
- What does a healthy culture of critique look like?
- What works best when presenting design work to executives?
- Where is the most tension between business goals and user needs?
- How is the children’s book Beautiful Oops! relevant to your career?
Who is Esther Ahn?
Esther is the Director of User Experience for YouTube TV and Primetime Channels on YouTube 📺—a role in which she brings deep expertise in human-centered design and research to enhance the viewing experience across platforms and at scale.
Throughout her career, Esther has pioneered new participatory design methods and conducted global research across the US, Asia, Africa, and Australia 🌏.
Before YouTube, she was Director of Digital Health UX at Stanford Health Care 🏥 and a Creative Director at the world-renowned innovation firm Frog Design. She’s also worked at two other giants of design—IDEO and Smart Design—where she shaped experiences through multidisciplinary practice.
Esther holds a BA in Architecture from UC Berkeley 🏛️ and a Master’s in Interaction Design from Carnegie Mellon University 🎓.
Transcript
- Esther Ahn:
- I've been thinking about my career past and also when I coach and mentor others, there's so many people that are at the juncture and where they should go, and there's all these things that people are questioning. Should I go a manager route? Should I go an IC route? Should I stay in-house? Should I go agency? There's all these things, right? And I think it was definitely a journey of trial and error to find that altitude.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Hello and welcome to another episode of Brave UX. I'm Brendan Jarvis, managing founder of The Space InBetween, the behavior-based UX partner for enterprise leaders who want an independent perspective to align hearts and minds. You can find out more about me and what we do thespaceinbetween.co.nz.
- Here on Brave UX though, it's my job to help you to keep on top of the latest thinking and important issues affecting our field of design. I do that by unpacking the stories, learnings, and expert advice of a diverse range of world-class leaders.
- My guest today is Esther Arn. Esther is the director of user experience for YouTube TV and primetime channels on YouTube, a role where she brings her deep expertise in human-centered design and research to enhance the viewing experience across platforms and at scale.
- Throughout her career, Esther has pioneered new participatory design and prototyping methods and conducted design research globally with projects spanning the US, Asia, Africa, and Australia.
- Before joining YouTube, Esther was the director of digital health user experience at Stanford Healthcare. She also spent six and a half years as a creative director at Frog Design, the world renowned design innovation consultancy.
- Esther's impressive background includes work at two other giants in design, innovation, IDEO, and Smart Design. As a truly multidisciplinary designer, she draws on her BA in architecture from UC Berkeley, and a master's in Interaction Design from Carnegie Mellon.
- And now she's here with me for this conversation on Brave UX. Esther, a very warm welcome to the show.
- Esther Ahn:
- Thanks, Brendan. Glad to be here.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Very glad to have you here, Esther. And one of the things that I learned about you in preparing for today was that you grew up on Long Island, New York. Yeah. And you went to a junior high and while you were there, you begged your parents to let you take lessons at Parsons School of Design. What was it about regular school that wasn't quite fulfilling you?
- Esther Ahn:
- Oh wow. That's great. You did some research. Yes, I'm from Strong Island, New York. My parents are still in Queens. They live in Flushing, so we were always the queens in Long Island. I like to say that I was right on the border, so I still had sort of the New York City zip. But yes, I grew up there and I did really want to take classes at Parsons and I think I went to a public school. Great next south middle school, junior high and high school, and it was your average American school that offers all the subjects and probably I remember my art teacher and I got to take classes there, but I think I just had an itch, probably one to just get the heck out of Long Island sometimes and get into Manhattan. And two, I was just really curious about how to explore a bit more and become, at that time it was more about the arts, so we did a lot of sketching and learning about human form and drawing and things like that.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- How did it feel as a young teenager when you first walked through the doors at Parsons? Do you recall?
- Esther Ahn:
- Oh gosh. I remember for these classes you had to come with some supplies and so it almost even started before that journey to going into an art store for the very severe stein and getting a art box. I don't know if you've seen those. It was those little plastic boxes that you open. It's like a toolbox for artists or designers. And I got to get my first box that I still remember to this day that I think I still have in my parents' house. And I had the pencils and the different types of pencils for sketching, like a special eraser that doesn't leave all the stuff behind. And so just having that, the physical artefacts made me feel like, oh wow, I am entering something so special and interesting going into a studio within Parsons. It's not polished and clean. It's pretty raw. The spaces are pretty vast. There's a lot of stuff hanging around. There's dried paint, there is scraps everywhere. And that feeling that you're now helping me now just remember was like, oh, this feels good.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, it almost makes our digital design environment sound very clinical compared to what you experienced at art school
- Esther Ahn:
- As you're looking at me with a corkboard with nothing on it. Yes. Not that
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It sounds like you mentioned your parents are in Queens, it sounds like they were very supportive of your creative pursuits.
- Esther Ahn:
- They were. And they're immigrants here from South Korea and they're both physicians, so you would think that they would be really against me doing the arts. I think my brother got the brunt of that and he got really pushed and now he's a very happy fledgling dentist, but for me, periodontist, but for me, I think they were always supportive of the different paths and by no means was it straight. So it wasn't like, okay, now I was going to be an artist and it was very meandering, but I think that they provided the support all throughout.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I've heard you previously reflect on those art classes, and I'm going to quote you now, I might do this a few times today, and what you said was, I knew I wasn't a fine artist, I just didn't have that, but there was something, what is that of a fine artist you didn't feel that you had?
- Esther Ahn:
- Oh gosh, yeah. When you go into these classes, and this was at an early age, so I was probably 13, 14, you even start to see or feel a little bit of the difference when you see someone that's really quite good and what is good, what is the perception of good. I remember at the time it's just someone that's either able to sketch really in a realistic fashion. What we're seeing is being mimicked on the page in a truly one-to-one way, so realistic, and I don't think I had that. It took me longer. It took me a lot of trial and error. And so at that time I was like, oh, I don't think I'm as good as that. At the same time, there was always this creative itch that I think I felt in those environments and giving those outlets was very freeing where maybe there wasn't a prescription of how to go about something, but to look at something in a different way and then be able to have output, but be able to change it and refine it and reform it. There was something there that I think I connected with.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You've then ended up keeping up your practise, I understand as a bit of a creative outlet and specifically oil painting.
- Esther Ahn:
- Yeah.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- What are you currently working on?
- Esther Ahn:
- Probably during the pandemic so many folks, it was like, okay, we were all kind of going a little stir crazy, and the work environment was tough, always being glued to your home office and with kids it was just a whole lot. And I think I was really seeking something that I could do for myself. And so I found a little art studio night classes and I did not have any experience with formal oil painting, but I went in, it's sort of like, I don't know what you would think about when you think about a night class in a suburban Bay area neighbourhood, but it was a lot of empty nester women that were coming to have this really elegant community where they're coming to talk and they were doing all different pieces. But for me, it opened this whole new door of a new medium that kind of has been really eyeopening for me in so many different ways, not just as a creative outlet, but as a really much needed meditative state of being able to get in my flow. Right now I'm working on a lot of paintings that I'm just taking photographs or different pieces that I really like and really focusing on sort of value and colour and it's making me look less about drawing the person's face Exactly. Or the fruit exactly the way it is. But it's really looking at all the different gradation of light and colour, and I've been really enjoying it. It
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Sounds like it. And hear it in your voice that you've really been enjoying it. And you mentioned using it as a way to get in flow or that's been a byproduct of pursuing oil painting. And I want to kind of take that notion of flow and zoom out again and look at your career path. And that is, I think I mentioned in your introduction that you trained as an architect at uc, Berkeley, and after graduating you went on to work as an intern at a couple of firms I believe.
- Esther Ahn:
- But
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You're not an architect today.
- Esther Ahn:
- No.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So was there a specific moment when you realised that architecture wasn't for you?
- Esther Ahn:
- Yeah, probably when I graduated and then I realised, okay, if I'm going to get this internship job, and I was sitting there, I remember we were using some 3D CAD tools and Rhino Z, and I was also detailing out some bath, literally a toilet placement in the bathroom. And I was like, okay, I can do this. It was I think the sort of connection between the philosophy and theory and the practise of it in school and then the practise of it in profession with a very long trajectory of apprenticeship and then having to go back to go to accredited to get grad degree and just all of that. I think I was like, maybe I'll try something different. But I did go into and I did many different odd jobs, so I think it was just like maybe, I'm not sure exactly what it is, but it was definitely something at Berkeley that I felt opened so much opportunity that I didn't, it's almost like the same thing that I just described with walking into the Parsons room.
- For me, going to Berkeley, it was a giant school. I'm a kid from Long Island going to a uc of California and there's thousands and thousands of students, and I think I might've switched my major maybe four times. So we were in political science and we're like, we've been doing econ, and we were just trying all these things. And then I was like, okay, it isn't really hitting. And then I went into the school of environmental design. I took my first class and it was about understanding user needs connected to environmental design. And that's when it clicked. I guess it was just sitting in that room and the way that they were describing that how we think about spaces all has to stem from how people will use those spaces, how they will move through the space where they will congregate through the space to have social interactions versus sort of private spaces where they're going to need a lot more of that focus time. And so all of that really stemmed in the work that I'm doing now with thinking about human-centered design, designing for people and product. It all kind of stemmed from that background.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Listening to those examples that you've gone through, those stories about Parsons, about your experience at uc, Berkeley, about your experience detailing that toilet and oil painting as well. Listening to what it sounds like you gravitate towards and what you're not so attracted to. It sounds like you have been working out or throughout your career and perhaps other people can relate to this too, what the right altitude of practise is for you in terms of design practise and is that something that strikes a chord with you or not?
- Esther Ahn:
- It does. The altitude is a really interesting word, branded that you just coined, and I've been thinking about it a lot. I've been thinking about my career past and also when I coach and mentor others, there's so many people that are at the juncture and where they should go. And there's all these things that people are questioning, should I go a manager route? Should I go an IC route? Should I stay in-house? Should I go agency? There's all these things. And I think it was definitely a journey of trial and error to find that altitude. I don't think I've reached that altitude yet, but I was thinking about this because one of the things that I was really inspired by was a professor that I had at Carnegie Mellon. His name was Richard Buchanan, and he talked about these four orders of design. It sat with me, but I never was able to really internalise it until maybe the past couple of years where it's really thinking about how to coach others and where I'm going to be going in my career.
- And the way he described the four orders of design was in terms of increasing complexity, maybe increasing scale, and the first order would be really around graphic design, so the communication using signs and symbols. So that's how I started my career. I started after the architecture stint, I went straight into graphic design, started doing marketing pamphlets for a small management consultancy in San Francisco. I was like, I'm going to do the logo design and I'm going to make a colour system. And then the second order of design that he discussed was the construction of things. And so this is really talking about industrial design, so whether it's objects or even physical buildings. And I think that after I was doing that, I ended up at a place called Smart Design that you mentioned, and they were really amazing. The trailblazers in industrial design making really beautiful objects that are still used in, you can recognise them all over the world, but that was a physical form factor.
- It's contained, it's really thinking about delight. And then the third order of design was this notion of interaction or action. And so this is the designing of interfaces, services, experiences. It's like what the heart of a lot of us practitioners are in today and we're really thinking about how people interact with things with UI and with people. And so then there's this fourth order, which is the integration of all the other things that we just discussed, but it's now starting to think about more complex systems organisations and it's understanding how these things all work together and the core ideas or values that drives them. And this is something that I've been thinking about in terms of that altitude.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- There's many interesting things in there and I had been curious about your exposure to industrial design at Frog and also what I assume were some quite multidisciplinary projects that you would've been engaged at probably both Frog and Smart Design and what influence they have had on the way in which you are shaping the design of YouTube TV as listening to you talk there, YouTube TV from the outside's perspective seems to be one of those opportunities to integrate because you have a physical form factor I imagine, in terms of the box that I understand that comes with the package and the remote. You've got the interactive part of it. You've got the viewing experience, which can be solo or in community with others. So how if at you reflect on your early exposure into those three other areas of design, how have you been bringing those if at all forward into how you're shaping design at YouTube tv?
- Esther Ahn:
- Yeah, it definitely all seems like it makes so much more sense when you kind of put it that way. In hindsight, I was like, how did I end up here? Or it never felt so smooth or connected. It always felt a little happenstance or luck. But yeah, I think what we're working on right now, and it's obviously I'm working with a stellar team that's making all of this happen, and so it's the person behind a really incredible team of designers and product thinkers and engineers, but essentially YouTube tv, which is in its seventh year, initially it was conceived of on some basic foundational things that we maybe have taken for granted as we've experienced tv. I'm sure Brendan, you remember having tv and it's like that big box. You couldn't move that box, right? I don't know. I remember we all were fighting to get in front.
- This is before the remote control. It was like the closer proximity meant the more I'd be able to control. But it was thinking about some of those things and then in modern times it's like if you think about tv, it was like having to set up a guide to come to your house to give you this physical piece of hardware that he has to now make an appointment, come into your home and set up the set top box with these lights and things that happen that you'll never interact with. Just stay static in your living room and then when you want to cancel that TV service, you don't feel like paying for the thing that starts adding up. You then have to go and call the people. And then I remember even having to get my set top box in a brown paper bag and go line up at a Comcast centre to try to get it back.
- But I think what YouTube TV fundamentally did was kind of flip some of those assumptions of what an experience has to be for live viewing, which is you have an contract, you can't get out of that contract, you're fixed for a time that you have to have this hardware in order to use it. And so it flipped those things by saying you can cancel at any time. You can get set up instantly with no hardware, you don't even need a special remote. You can use your streaming remotes and you don't have to learn how to use the service because it's a pretty simple interaction with a very primary three tab structure that you can see the differences between a homepage and a live guide. And then this notion of A DVR, there were the TAs of being really fickle about what you could save. You can't save all that much stuff, but having an limited DVR. So I think that some of those, that premise of just really good customer experience that we didn't expect and anticipate before we were used to something so different and that if we go back to what you were asking is how do I think about architecture, industrial design or any of those disciplines that again went back to some of those fundamental user needs are the pain points.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It sounds like there's also the benefit of starting with a blank slate, which is sort of zero to one, and then where from here my assumption is you have no sacred cows that you can't kill. You can just do the thing the way that you believe it's going to deliver the best user experience and business outcome. But then after time, you mentioned seven years, you've been doing it for seven years. What if any part of the ecosystem that you've developed or designed around YouTube TV is in danger of or do you wish that you could push further? Is there anything that this far in you're starting to really want to re-examine the fundamentals of? Or are you still feeling really confident and pleased with where you've arrived at this current state that it's in?
- Esther Ahn:
- And I can't take all the credit. I came in after the inception, so a really good friend of mine, Neil Corken who's over at Apple right now, but he was initially doing the sort of design and launch of YouTube tv. I was on the other side, I was working on music, so we were like best buds we're both working on these premium products at YouTube. And so he really was able to sort of set that foundation. A fun fact was that YouTube TV was going to launch mobile first. They thought we can go first with just a mobile only product and then TV will come later and really learn very quickly on that wasn't going to work and so quickly pivoted and sort of held that launch to make sure we had the right thing. But yes, looking at it now, I think what's happening that is really exciting and the thing that drew me to music at the time and then to TV was the amount of disruption that's happening in the industry.
- These are all the different things beyond just the product opportunity and the design opportunity, it's what's happening in the industry and what the end user is having to experience. So in music at the time, it was when it was moving to digital streaming, and so that was when we were not accustomed totally to having everything accessible on a device and being able to listen to music in that way and being able to get a new album release immediately without having to wait in lineup to get that physical thing. Well, I think what's happening right now with TV is you saw in the past couple of years that total shift to streaming and everything that we were just talking about with moving away from just this one size fits all way of watching tv. That was sort really interesting because it's like how do we ensure we do that in a way that doesn't alienate a whole bunch of users that have developed a very specific way of doing something they really love?
- At the end of the day, it plays a very important role to be able to get some downtime after a long day at work or being with kids to be able to watch something and there's some mental models that are around there and some rituals that are around there that we had to really preserve. There was also this notion of removing the live guide entirely when launching UTT, who needs that? No more channel surfing. We all sit there channel surfing, maybe you don't need that. And that turned out to be a hypothesis that we couldn't proceed with. You can't pull it so far. So I guess moving forward, I'm really proud of the product. I think the sort of state we're in with live TV viewing is changing so radically. I'm sure you guys are experiencing it, but it's fragmented the way you want to watch content is so split up.
- And so I think I was reading on average someone can have six to eight subscriptions, maybe like four paid and some two free type of subscriptions, and then I think there was like 61% of people or subscribing and then cancelling and then resubscribing sort of a constant game of trying to make sure you're not paying for the thing after a House of Dragons, which maybe wasn't the best season, but it's over and now you're ready for the, and so I think I'm trying to capture all of that and figure out, okay, how do we think about how not only the product experience can change, but maybe how all the players in this ecosystem and that can include the media codes and the sports leagues and our consumers and how everyone is looking to evolve a bit to sort of meet the changes that are happening that are causing a lot of friction and a bit of pain on the user side.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Literally anyone can watch a tv, they can engage in that content. And you touched on that challenge of understanding what those rituals are, understanding what people really enjoy about the status quo, knowing just how far you can push it. Can you remove the live guide testing those boundaries? Can you go with mobile only? Oh no, you can't. You've got to go with the set top experience as well. When you think about that, it's one of these ubiquitous experiences and when you think about it from a design lens, what does good personalization within that experience when it's got such a diverse group of people that could be engaging with it, what does that look like? Just how do you start to wrestle with what to actually design for people?
- Esther Ahn:
- It's a good point. I think the TV is such a communal device. It's not sort of a one person, one player device, but it lends itself to shared experiences and also very sort of personal experiences. And so this notion of how do you create the right level of personalization and an ideal world, you would know right off the bat what eyeballs are on the tv, right? Okay, Brendan and Esther are here. Let's merge the recommendations to find something that you might want to watch on a Friday evening.
- That's not always going to be so easy or possible or maybe not preferred even. And so I think this is going to be a real interesting thing and it also starts to raise the question of should everything be hand-delivered to you with where you lose any aspect of that control or lightweight control? Remember I went back to the lab guide, it's like we were like, oh, you don't need to do that. You don't need to do the channel surface and we can just serve it up. And people were like, no, I like that. I like that
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You've shared once previously. I think it's quite a personal example of what you're talking about here in terms of that shared or that communal experience and even in a sense, and this will make sense soon in a distributed way, and this was back a few years ago and you were speaking about watching the Oscars and this is when parasite won best picture. Oh yeah, right. You were talking about how it connected you with your family and career even at such great distance relating that experience back to what was then front of mind for you at YouTube tv you said, and I'll quote again, you said, I think we have a really unique opportunity to carve out what that experience would be like to help people stay connected, to help people develop a better understanding of stories from around the world and to open up their minds and their ways of thinking. So it sounded like you see live TV events like the Oscars and many others, sports as well as a powerful tool for fostering connection and also broadening people's perspectives.
- Esther Ahn:
- Absolutely. Yeah. It's so funny that you mentioned that, but I just remember that moment when Parasite one, the Oscars, that it was a really proud moment. Being able to call my parents were like, that is so exciting for them. For that generation who immigrated here way back. It is craziness to see that they're like, whoa, this is a major American organisation like global event on sort of world class programming and this whole Korean and you saw acceptance, it was like 50 people. It's such a big proud moment, but I think that that is one of the great things about working at YouTube because it's a platform and our mission is to sort of give everyone a voice and I think that what the potential here is that I'm focusing on a lot of those TV experiences, but what is the future of tv? Is the future of TV just news and sports or is the future of TV a whole new way to experience so much different content and different formats? I think that that is something that could be really interesting and it does open our perspective because now you're getting voices and views delivered in your home that you could experience with your family or your household that sparked discussion and engagement in new ways.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I've heard you previously talk about fostering a culture of critique and innovation within your design org, and so thinking about that in your view, what does a healthy culture of critique look like and how are you going about cultivating that at YouTube tv?
- Esther Ahn:
- Yeah, thanks for asking about that. It's something I think a lot about is this notion of critique and having it so that it's the way we operate has been so important for me and the teams that I've been building up, and I think the reason why is maybe it goes back to the design school days. I mean it's like in architecture school, oh man, the dreaded studio. At the end of studio, we would have to have all our work up and it would be allnighters. We were in the studio and we were building up all the things. It was presentation boards, it was models, and I think ultimately it was for me being prepared to tell a narrative around what it is that I wanted them to see as a possibility. This could be something, but really let me explain to you, it's almost like the story arc, the beginning, middle and end, whether it's the problem I wanted to solve, the way in which we went about it and then this is the possibility and I think the culture of critique is bringing a lot of the work.
- People are working so fast and furious now and I think we're in a little bit of a climate where we build so fast that everyone's working intensely on different features. There are multitude of PRGs going out and we're launching on a very fast cycle, so it could be every week, every two weeks we could be moving. And so the safe space of being able to bring designers together now we're at two or three times a week to be able to do low fidelity to high fidelity and everything is in Figma now, but still being able to present the work and discuss the work and have this critique or dialogue about the work is I think what helps designers grow, feel empowered, tighten up their story, ask different questions, makes the work better.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, it's interesting you talk about that. You think you use the word dreaded and it is what comes to mind when you have to give presentations of something that you've poured your heart and soul into and you're probably quite tired by the sound of it. People are working late nights when they're studying and also probably quite busy during the working day. So there is this inbuilt fear of it and it's probably tied up with a bit of public speaking anxiety as well. And there's the word critique brings to mind critic and critical in some things that we don't hold that we try to keep away from and probably for good reason. However, it's so important for fostering better design work and listening to you talk about that in the way you mentioned creating a safe space, and this is my own projection, but I wonder just how much the critique was about the importance or the way in which the narrative was landing as opposed to the actual fidelity of what was being presented.
- Esther Ahn:
- It's a good question, and this is something that I've thought about a lot too. The notion of critique has always been super harsh, right? It's like I'm going to put something up there and I'm going to get bashed, right? Even agency styles you had to be ready and going to get, and I was like, how do we not do that? But then on the reverse side of it, I sometimes saw a lot of crits or critiques happening where there was really no real debate. It was really like, it's great work Brendan, love that.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- How do I live? Keep going.
- Esther Ahn:
- So what is that sweet spot of it? And so you were asking about the storytelling versus the fidelity and the storytelling is interesting because when you're going to a presentation and then maybe that's when we're talking about altitude, right? It's like when you're going to an executive presentation, how do you button up a story where you don't have a lot of time and you need to get to the key points and you need to pretty much come out of there? Gardening a lot of confidence in the idea or the model and a cri. There's also a sort of an intent to do that. A lot of times we're coming in to say, Hey, we just want you to be able to sign off or give me the thumbs up, we're ready to go. And so it does have to sort of come with what's the context?
- How did we get here, what should we be discussing versus not discussing? Maybe we're not ready to really dig into all the edge cases yet because sometimes we'll just completely go and open it. So what I noticed with beginning the critique is first making sure we kind of established what do we want to get out of this one and having the designers or the content strategists or researchers come empowered to be able to set that stage and so that we're all sort of level set and then still being able to tune how are you communicating the idea, so in a way that we're not all in it with you, we're not all in each of those nitty gritty discussions on how you got to this, and then it doesn't matter if it's the highest fidelity or the lowest fidelity, it's because we've sort of anchored on where we want to go with the discussion, what type of feedback we want to be able to provide, and then what type of decisions we want to get out of it.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Making me remember a very early conversation on the podcast with Donna Spencer who's a UX strategist and information architect in Australia, and she had written a book about presenting design work and one of the things that always stuck with me, and I think you are kind of echoing or at least paralleling some of what Donna said, and that's give people an attendance, a specific role and make it clear to them what that role is so that you can ensure that the feedback that they're giving you is actually within some bounds that's going to be useful to progressing the design.
- Esther Ahn:
- I think the most frustrating thing for designers when they're going in with a specific intent and a specific goal that they want to achieve and then they come out with a whole bunch of feedback in all different directions that makes them then even question whether the initial direction was right or wrong to begin with. We've thrown them off, we haven't served that.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, yeah. You also mentioned presenting to executives and it would be remiss of me not to get some insight from you as to what you have found works best when you're with C-Suite if you have that opportunity, if someone's listening today and they're going to present to their founder or they're going to present to someone in the C-suite, what have you found is the best way to get them to understand what it is that you're saying and develop an appreciation for what they're looking at or what they're seeing?
- Esther Ahn:
- It's funny because there's something that we're doing now that I think is kind of interesting and maybe a lot of people might not like this style, but it's actually moving away from presentation so much. I know this is controversial, which is we're going to before we get to the forum because we want the forum to actually be about thoughtful provocations questions that are generated on thinking about what material was there versus digesting what's being presented and then trying to get them to sort of understand, okay, where did you come from? What was the problem? What are you trying to solve? And then also being able to provide feedback. Now that would be sort of again, a forum designated around some type of action, whether it's a steer or directional setting or whatnot. That is something that we've trying to do, which is like let's prepare them. Let's get something that is really digestible for someone to view or read and then we can provide some high level points about it, but then really focus it around discussion. And so that's been a little bit of a paradigm shift.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I really like that and I think the reason why I like that is because it's less of a surprise. You're not necessarily relying on people's gut instinct or their initial reaction in the moment where there's pressure on to say and provide something, whether it's good, bad or otherwise about what they're seeing. Sometimes at least I found for myself, my initial thinking about something isn't quite as useful as that little pause that I take and come back to it the next day.
- Esther Ahn:
- Yeah, I mean especially when you're in big organisations, there is sometimes like this, how do I say it? I think people want to say smart things. You want to make sure you're getting something in,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You're being paid really well, so you better say smart things, right? Yeah.
- Esther Ahn:
- Probably a different thing is making sure we have clear not only what we want to get out of the discussion, but also what are the roles? Is this someone that is really weighing in on something that could block or stop or is it something that's an idea that maybe we should follow up on? But generally if we think about design and product thinking, it is getting so much more complex that you really do want sort of thoughtful dialogue between stakeholders and how do you bring them along, but it doesn't have to be in a way where it's always with showmanship, right? I still believe that there's huge value in that and I don't think that we should take that away. I mean, I really love being able to present a vision and getting people inspired. This was my days at Frog, this is what I thrived on was being able to that end of the project, we go in and we take 'em on a journey, and it's a high that you get out of that because you're seeing faces change and ideas forming and the thought bubbles going up, and so there is such power to that.
- It's just sort of when is that necessary versus a different one, which is like we really need to unlock some things we haven't thought about or we need to really highlight an area that we want to push through, and some of that just needs a little more percolating.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- We've been talking about formal forums or settings where this type of conversation happens, and you mentioned giving them a pre-read, the people that are going to attend, and this is again, it's kind of a formalised way of helping to further the design in a positive direction. What if any work do you do behind the scenes with partners like the Offlines? I am talking about the stuff that happens in between the lines, the reading between the lines. What emphasis do you place on that in your role as director? Just how much of that type of work are you doing alongside the more formal type of furthering design?
- Esther Ahn:
- Yeah, I think that you're getting to the good crUX, the, I guess the aha here is that one meeting isn't going to do it, right? That one meeting isn't usually the thing that makes it or breaks it, but there's a bunch of different things that are happening alongside, and it depends on what type of complexity or what type of problem. There is one that comes to mind that I've been working on that is really hard. It's a hard problem because there's multiple teams involved, all incentivized maybe by slight different things, and UX is trying to unify a lot of times or make cohesion out of parts and trying to come together to bring that cohesion and bring to light why that is a value that maybe is sometimes at odds with maybe a growth goal. It's a value goal, so is a preread going to sell that?
- Most likely, not most likely. I'm like, great. No. So I do think that my role and my leads roles would be finding those forums where it's maybe smaller group and being able to make sure we're understanding and listening, okay, what are your needs and what do we have to make sure we're mindful about before presenting a proposal like this and how do we incorporate some of those inputs and feedback into refining this so we can all be moving in? Sounds very master Mindy, but I think it's all human relationship and connection. This is communication all times. I feel like I'm always talking. I was telling my kids, yeah, I talk all day. They're like, why do you talk all day? I was like, I'm not really sure, and I'm pretty sure everyone wants me to stop talking, but I think it's what we're describing here.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, it's how things happen. It's how things get done. As much as we like to think it's achieved in the actual craft part of the design, it's more often than not in large organisations, that's not the case. Like you say, you've got many different complex problems involving many different teams that are incentivized in different ways. Often I really like the painting of the picture of UX is that joiner of dots that connect connector, that unifier. I think that's probably one of our most underrated and undervalued functions as a wider field that we provide. I also wanted to pick up on the tension that can exist between different incentives you mentioned between a growth goal and something else, right? YouTube tv, as you mentioned, is a subscription service. People have to pay money. They have to pay money and no contracts. Yeah, I know it's a novel
- Esther Ahn:
- Idea course for free. When you think of YouTube, you think that's the greatest thing because it's free. That's right.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah. And are no mean, I'm not sure if there are no ads, but you have to pay a subscription, which means that the product, every renewal cycle is at risk of churn. People can just leave and this puts you at the really pointy end of design that's working with very much needing to consider both what those business objectives are in terms of reducing, churning, making that experience something people want to keep paying for and then providing an experience that, well, I suppose though I've just said both of those things in one, right? You've got to create such a great experience, people are really loving it and they don't churn, but that can I imagine be often more difficult to achieve in reality than it was for me to describe just then, where have you encountered the most tension between those two? Sometimes conflicting priorities of the business goal and the user needs?
- Esther Ahn:
- That tension that you're calling out is we're living and breathing it all the time, and it's a good tension, right? Because it's a very clear goal that you can measure very clearly in terms of if it's doing well or not. Sometimes other products, it's harder to do that or maybe is more longitudinal. This you will be able to see quite quickly, very easily. You can move into a cycle where then you're going to be working on what I would call growth projects to make sure we're driving that flywheel, so we want to make sure we're acquiring and how do we do that where you have to look at onboarding experience, like an upsell experience. You're going to look at different surfaces or different ways to target potentially new customers, and then you're going to sort of look all throughout that journey and then you can go all the way towards when someone's going to cancel.
- Maybe you can sort of optimise there. Maybe they've already cancelled, maybe you can get them back, and so you can do a whole thing around that and that could probably take up your whole UX team's time. And so I think the tension is often and then there's going to be sort of core feature improvements that we have to do because ultimately you have to deliver the product is, I'm very cognizant that this is a product that costs a good deal of money, what people think about of what comes out of their monthly income. This is a large price tag, so there has to be continual value provided back to the user. So then the product is also trying to maintain that value in some ways, table stakes and also it's moving so fast. You can see a lot of these streaming services are introducing really novel features.
- There's a lot of interesting things on different interactions that you can do, and so there's constantly that, but you also might not see a direct correlation of those feature improvements to sort of that growth, but how do you ensure that you're also working on the things that may not move the needle immediately? And some of these are going to be the long haul investments, whether that's modernising the design system, maybe we need to take a step back and look at how we're updating our components. Maybe that is investing in an area that hasn't been able to get as refreshed, or maybe that's more of the new ideas that we really want to do that isn't a sure bet. So I think that tension definitely exists, and so structuring the organisation is an important way. So structuring the team to be able to have that sort of space and allocation across is really critical. Being able to really work with the cross-functional partners to sort of ensure that we are continually driving the message of value focus and sort of balance with growth. Focus has been a big thing.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Do you have a hard and fast allocation of time or some other way of ensuring that you are looking at those broader horizons while also tending to the here and now? And I'm thinking of a famous example in Google. I dunno if Google still does it, but that the fifth day, the 80%, 20% split with that 20% being able to be spent on people's personal projects or projects that they could further for the company.
- Esther Ahn:
- The only thing I do with the 80%, 20% split now is that I make sure that when a person's thinking about their allocation that you always have the 20% for non-product work. That was my rule of thumb as opposed to a fixed rule in terms of growth versus keep the lights running type of projects because those fluctuate. I think we have to really be in tune to where we are in the sort of product life cycle, how we're responding to, there's so many different factors at play. There's competitors, there's sort of our user needs. We're constantly hearing what the expectations are or where they want more or less. And so rather than having a fixed thing, it's being able to have a general guideline of where to go and then being able to ensure we're dialling up and dialling down. The thing I was talking about before is that designers need space. So the hundred percent model to me is how do you give designers the space they need to think to be out of meetings, to maybe go to a conference to maybe go get inspired somewhere that has to be outside and we have to give that allocation to them,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Design ops and its most rosy light as painted as a supporting practise that can free designers up to look more broadly at the work that they're doing to cast their eyes a little bit further out at the horizon. The more pessimistic view of design ops is that it gets used to ensure that designers are spending more time on the day-to-day here and now because they have more capacity to do that. But in reality and the reality that you've experienced, just where does design ops sit for you in its function? Is it something that's enabling more blue sky time or has it been something that's actually the pressure of the organisation comes down to spend more time doing more here and now type work?
- Esther Ahn:
- So design ops and processes of planning, maybe. Essentially it's planning work, right? It's important, right? Because otherwise you've seen the other side of that, which is then people are just getting pulled for everything. I think the more you get a designer to support a product manager, the more they're going to want stuff. So it'll be constant things. Oh my gosh, this is great. Let's do this again. Let's think about this. And so it just unleashes. And so I think the planning is a way to put some guardrails in place to one, protect time and ensure we're focused enough and that time horizon can vary. I think what I'm realising is the way designers are operating also has changed dramatically in the last couple years because a lot of stuff has happened, right? Like covid was challenging. Being at home was challenging for a lot of designers, going back to work was challenging for a lot of designers.
- Going hybrid for work is very challenging for designers and not just designers for everyone. It's just been this sort of rate of change and being able to context switch in the ways that we work has been a bit jarring. And so I notice more burnout. I notice more fatigue, but we're moving quickly and fast and as we mentioned, we have a business to run. But I think what I'm realising is that sustaining the energy and the motivation and the ability for people to feel fresh is directly tied to the output and impactful work you get on the day to day
- Brendan Jarvis:
- When you have the opportunity to think a little broader because you're not so heavy on releasing whatever it is that you're releasing or working on whatever it is that needs to be released, you seize that moment. And part of your role as a design director has been to identify when those things are coming so that your team can make the most of them. Now, again, that's my projection, but I'd be interested to hear your challenge or your furthering of that projection if that resonates or not, and sort of why or why not?
- Esther Ahn:
- It's a hundred percent. I have to anticipate that, and I have to ensure we're actually in that season right now where we're flying everyone in next week, and this is a time where we're going to put all the things down that we've been focusing on for the past year, and those problems will still be there in the week after, but we're going to spend next week coming together, not focusing on what it is we have to execute on, but looking at some of the things that we've done celebrating those wins, that's a key factor here. There are so many wins and we just go on to the next. And I think that, again, thinking about that sort of rate of change and the context shifting, shifting that people are enduring right now, especially designers, it's really being able to celebrate the wins is such a huge thing. And then being able to look at what's ahead versus what we have to get out now will be the focus. And it's not a one time a year thing. It's being able to anticipate when those are making sure that not only our team understands it, but the rest of our teams understand them.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You've been in the role at YouTube and across music and tv, now I'm speaking around about eight years or maybe a little more. If you think about how you thought about the role of being a director when you first started, to how you think about it now. And I'm not talking about the responsibilities that you may have picked up on terms of your job description or the more formal aspect of the role, but if you reflect on your initial thinking versus how you think about it now, how, if at all, has your perspective on what you are there to do changed in that time?
- Esther Ahn:
- I think sometimes we have this thing where it's like, oh, if you become a director, oh, if you become a VP or oh, if you become the CDO, it's going to be really good. You're going to be great. It's going to be really exciting and interesting and you're going to be able to do everything the way that you want to do it. And maybe it's like it's sort of like this. It will unlock something. The challenges are very much the same challenges that I was facing pre this role, I guess. I think what it has offered me is what I realised is a tonne of privilege to be in forums where I can hear directly the issues or the investments, and that has been really important for me to realise. The privilege on being able to communicate that back to the teams on the ground or the teams sort of working to make everything happen, is that they understand directly some of the trade-offs or some of those things. So that has been that sort of important role that I play in communicating those either the mission or the questions or the things that we might not be doing because we're doing this. The whys that has played a much more role than I realised I would be doing.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's lucky that you're a good narrative storyteller then, because I imagine that you're able to put that in some pretty good context for the design team. I want to take a, maybe it's not a long bow here, but hopefully we can shift into a brief conversation about the risk of thinking a little further ahead for the design team. You mentioned the tension earlier about stuff that contributes directly to whatever those key revenue related metrics are, and then the important thinking work, the innovation, the actual, the messy stuff that's not clear and that you can't see necessarily a direct return on that investment. And what I want to ask you about is something that you have previously said about the role that intuition plays in design, and specifically you said, and I'll quote you now. So there's data and then there's also just trusting in yourself as a designer and trusting your intuition as to what's right for crafting an amazing experience.
- So when you think about intuition and design, and this is actually making me think about my conversation with Doreen Lorenzo, who I understand that through your time at Frog, Doreen talked about innovation doesn't happen at the bottom of a spreadsheet and it doesn't take a rocket scientist. I don't need to explain that. I think people kind of inherently understand what that means, but when it comes to intuition and design, what does that look like to you? When is the right time to apply that? How do you bring to bear in a world that seems really intent on needing to justify everything at the bottom of a spreadsheet?
- Esther Ahn:
- I think that it's the art of when to apply and how to apply that. Because to your point, if we were always going in with our intuition, I don't know how far we would get or how successful the output would be, but if we were to solely go the other way, we've seen where that also doesn't get us to where we want to go. I'm trying to think about a concrete example, and one that comes to mind was when I was working on the music product, it was a really interesting time because we had two music products at Google. We had Google play music, and we had YouTube music, we had YouTube music. But it was a very primitive product that when you looked at it, it looked like video thumbnails of music videos. You couldn't really tell that it was like an album or a playlist.
- It didn't give you sort of that thing. We were designing the whole thing from scratch, just ripping it up and basically rethinking what the music experience should be and what is a differentiated music experience because it's a pretty saturated market where consumers have so much choice. And I remember we were looking at the experience and looking at the customer user journeys and looking at all the frameworks and jobs to be done, and it's like, what's the best thing to do? And essentially there was a big debate and it was like, it's about making the best lean back music player, and that is what people want. This is what the data says. They want it to operate like a music player, which is like, don't show me music video. I'm coming for the audio. It's good. The data says that it's very rational to go forth and we were going to proceed, but there was a hypothesis that was lurking, which is like, what is the future of this experience for people?
- And you absolutely need the table stakes of a high quality audio stream, and you can't be listening to an audio stream of a video. You can't be hearing the cars barking or the door slamming. So we need to get that sort of really done. But there is also this opportunity for these moments where we can deliver the ability to, with a very sort of quick interaction, to be able to pull up something that's happening in the video on that which people maybe are not accustomed to, because maybe people aren't watching those music videos, but brings something much more experiential to it. And for a moment, maybe they will glance at their screen and they will see something. Maybe it's like Oh my gosh, that was like Michael Jackson's hat. Do you remember when he wore that hat in that scene or whatever it is. And I remember there being a forceful debate, which is like, we don't need it.
- It's superfluous and the data shows people don't want it. But this was like, we can actually create a level of delight. And it's about being able to enable people to experience something that maybe doesn't exist but could provide these opportunities in the future that will be of use and potentially would cater towards different audiences that are coming to listen or experience music. And so it was pure just conviction, like this was it. And so I think we pushed really hard. That took a lot of backdoor conversations in some ways, or convincing or having, being able to show someone a prototype of something and being able to have them feel it out and going to another person over here and saying, Hey, just try this out for a bit. See how it is that really led to a good amount of consensus. Let's try it. Let's actually try it. And I think that that led to one of the really good differentiating features of the product.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And that product is currently the number two most downloaded music app, I think on Apple's App Store in the United States, perhaps worldwide.
- Esther Ahn:
- Yeah, it's a fun product.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Do you attribute that decisions like that to that kind of popularity?
- Esther Ahn:
- I definitely don't think it's that one decision, but I think it was such a collective of music enthusiasts and design thinking and people that came from a history of working on really cool music services over the years, so cardio, sza all coming together. And so I think when you bring sort of this passion into delivering something that we were the underdogs, why would YouTube bring a music service that you have to pay for? Again, remember it's a free platform, but I think it was that sort of passion and the ability to test ideas and move fairly quickly and be willing to take risk that made something. But I think ultimately the thing was make sure we are not under-delivering on the table stakes of what people want, but also over-delivering on the things that they don't know even that they want.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- When you think about that time, I know there's probably a lot of things going on there, and it sounded like there was many activities to build the will to test that feature out. I'm sure it was similar for other things you were trying to do, but can you think of whether or not there was a watershed moment or a person, an aha moment for someone where that really tipped the balance tipped in favour of that innovative idea? I
- Esther Ahn:
- Think it came, I remember it being a particular product executive that we sat down with and actually having something that I could show him put in his hand saying, Hey, check this out. And then be like, okay, play this now, try this and then see how it's one-to-one. And I think being able to demonstrate that was something in your hands that actually works and being able to experience that was the thing. And then you have an individual that's willing to go to bat.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- We've been talking about things from the perspective of design and design, trying to build a case to support innovation through how we relate to others. Obviously there's complex set of stakeholders at play. You mentioned product just there, that senior product leader. If you flip things now and you think about your partners at your level or above or whatever it is that whoever you're engaging with that's not designed, where are you willing to give them the benefit of the doubt? What sort of areas or how are you best to receive that kind of intuition from them? Where do you find yourself feeling most receptive to that?
- Esther Ahn:
- I will tell you that one of the great challenges of working in any environment is the differences in people's styles, the way they are, the communicate, the way their temperament is, the way they either really push forcefully ideas or they may do it in a different way. And that creates, because we all bring our own to the table as well. And so this benefit of doubt is interesting because it's, I think about this a lot, which is like, how do I approach someone that maybe I disagree with what they are trying to sort of suggest, but how can I have to continually try to reframe the way I'm looking at it? And sometimes it just takes a couple of times and maybe I'll come back to it, but I think this is sort of the challenge that we're in. And I guess then you're kind of questioning when are you losing your conviction on something.
- But I think what I'm ultimately realising is it's not about pushing forcefully on something. It's coming to a realisation among different people that sometimes in a really nice state they all agree and align. And in other states they do not for many different reasons. And many of those reasons are very logical and rationalised by constraints. And so I think the more I understand what the constraints that they're dealing with, what the trade-offs or the risks that they are seeing that maybe are different from the trade-offs and risks that I'm seeing, that helps me see more of the benefit of the doubt. There was a leader that I had a manager that I really appreciated, but sometimes I would, earlier in my career, I would get frustrated really easily. I'm from New York, remember the Long Island? We'd be like, how come? What's the problem here? And I get frustrated because I was like, I need to really just push it through a different way then. Or I would get really frustrated and just feel like, oh, I can't work with this person. I just can't work with this person. If this person was not here, then this would be so much better.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And
- Esther Ahn:
- I think that
- Brendan Jarvis:
- How do I get them fired?
- Esther Ahn:
- How do we get them fired? And I'm sure there's tonnes of people that say that about me too. So I'm very cognizant of that. And so the thing was, it's like how can you be a Swiss army knife? And so at any point you're going to have to figure out which thing you're going to pull out that will work in this particular person or style. I'll noodle on that. I still noodle on this like, wait a minute, how much are we supposed to flex and are we chameleons and are we supposed to adapt it? But I think it ultimately comes back to the more and more you're in these leadership positions and larger organisations, it's all about that connection of ideas and people coming with different ways of thinking about those ideas because of constraints that are real and valid. And so how do we coalesce and get to the point where we're seeing that and that could either then lead to an agreement or a divergence. Yeah,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's quite pragmatic, but with good reason.
- Esther Ahn:
- I hope so. I don't know. I was like, is that right? Do I always have to pull out a different thing, the scissor versus the knife? But I was like, maybe this is the way though that we operate more and more in this realm of complexity where there'll be always people with different ways of looking at things than the way you do.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, 100%. 100%. I'm just mindful of time, Esther, before we wrap up, one final question for you, and this ties back to our earlier conversation about your career, which let's be honest, it's been a great career so far. It's had a few twists and turns, and I'm sure most of us, there were moments when you wondered where is this all leading? And you did touch on that earlier. How did I get here? How did I get to be at YouTube tv? But things can sometimes make a bit more sense in retrospect. So when you reflect on your journey thus far, what relevance do you feel? The message of the children's book, beautiful. Oops.
- Esther Ahn:
- Oh gosh.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Holds for people navigating their careers.
- Esther Ahn:
- So the context of beautiful, oops, it's like a children's picture book. And my daughter Ella really loved this book. And we went to go see a play and it was about, the play was showing how someone was trying to draw a picture and they messed up. I think it was trying to draw an elephant and they drew something and then they got really upset and then they got bent out of shape. Same thing. The example that I just said, it's like, it's all these things that are going wrong, but the ultimate sort of morale of the story was that it turned into such a better and more beautiful picture than they could have even imagined by embracing the oops. So I guess in my reflection, it was never a clear path to where I am today. By no means have I reached the end of the road, but I think I realised there will be, oops, along the way, there'll be sort of product decisions I made that maybe weren't right, or maybe a management decision that I made that wasn't particularly right.
- But it's, I think how we come out of that and almost how we sort of, it's actually something that I'm thinking about a lot with parenting is when we mess up, we're like, oh my gosh, we really screwed up. I just yelled at that kid and he was just trying to do homework and I really like screwing him for life. This is it. But it's that sort of moment after where we're going to reconcile and sort kind of be forth with, I'm a human, I made a mistake. And that actually turns into such a better learning moment and such a much more positive moment than what we even root on as being terrible. And so I guess that that is sort of the continuous thing
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Because if you could parent in such a way that you never made a mistake like that, first of all, you'd probably be a robot, but you're also, you're not role modelling the behaviour that's most needed in the world, which is, I think you mentioned reconciliation, right? Like this, showing that it's okay to make a mistake, acknowledging that that's part of being human and modelling that for children. What a great gift. And just coming back to the professional side of this, I think the message were, for me anyway, and I actually bought this book as a result, prepping for today. It got delivered two days ago. So it's probably like what I've done this three times on the podcast now. I've bought three books, all children's books for my children from my wonderful guests like you that have talked about these books. And that is that we just need to embrace the, oops.
- There's nothing wrong with that. And I really found it quite refreshing looking at how refreshingly honest you were about your career in various forums that you've spoken about it because you've certainly been someone that has embraced the oops. And I think it's made for a great story and a very inspiring one at that. So Esther, I've really enjoyed today's conversation. It's been wonderful to sit here with you and hear a little bit more about your career and also how you've come to lead your design organisation. Thank you for so generously sharing your stories and insights with me today.
- Esther Ahn:
- Thanks, Brendan. This was awesome.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Really, really my pleasure. Really enjoyed it. Esther, if people want to connect with you or to keep up to date with what you are doing, what's the best way for them to do that?
- Esther Ahn:
- Yeah, the best way, probably through LinkedIn.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Great. Thanks Esther. And to everyone that's tuned in, it's been great having you here as well. Everything we've covered will be in the show notes, including where you can find Esther on LinkedIn as well as all of the things that we've spoken about. There'll be some chapters so you can hop around to the parts that you want to hear.
- Again, if you enjoyed the show and you want to hear more conversations like this, great conversations with world-class leaders in UX research, product management and design. Don't forget to leave a review, subscribe it turns up every two weeks and tell just one other person about the show if you feel that they would get value from these conversations at depth.
- If you want to reach out to me, you can find me on LinkedIn, just search for Brendan Jarvis. There's also a link to my profile at the bottom of the show notes or head on over to my website, which is thespaceinbetween.co.nz. That's thespaceinbetween.co.nz. And until next time, keep being brave.