Interview with Ted Boda, Product Design Manager at Instagram
Ted Boda is currently a Product Design Manager on the Well-Being team at Instagram. He is also a former Director of Design at Udacity, former Senior Designer at Nest Labs, former Lead Mobile Designer at Netflix and a former Lead UI Designer for Keynote at Apple.
What are the ways that designers can have the biggest impact on the product?
One reason the PM function is so valuable across companies is their ability to talk in metrics. They leverage data, research, and the competitive landscape to develop strategy, timelines, and roadmap.
So if a designer just shows designs, that's just one part of the story—even if it's a really good UX flow, visually makes sense, and uses design systems patterns. The other part of the story is bringing in other elements—such as research and data—that help build a case for the impact that the design solution can have.
A great way for a designer to frame it is: “Here’s the goal, here's my hypothesis, here is signal that this product will get us there. We've done the research, we've done these tests. And here's the design. Here's where we were at, here's where we drastically simplified it, and here were the results of that simplification.”
People will listen when you talk beyond design. You are not a designer, you are a product designer. And so it's really this ability to think in this hybrid mindset. That’s the most important part.
If you're the CEO of a company, that’ll really resonate because they’re thinking about metrics such as profit, customer satisfaction, and brand recognition. So designers need to be set up to think like that, and design leaders can help them do that.
Another way to think of it is it's a combination of fiction and fact. The fiction is innovation. It's where you want to go and where you want to break new ground. It's very different from traditional product development.
As an example, we're working on an innovation project right now at Instagram. We're asking ourselves “Where are we going to be in the next 2-5 years when it comes to this area within Instagram?” We're aware of problems that exist today and we want to come up with a solution that addresses them.
So if a designer creates a vision of what the future could look like, and it's grounded in research and metrics, how does she communicate that to the right people within the company and get that buy-in?
First and foremost, you've got to build relationships within a company. Unless you have some magical story that the CEO is completely bought into, you need people to also be partners within that story.
So with this innovation project, there's an engineering leader and PM who are excited about the idea. When you get buy-in from the right people, it'll be a huge factor in your discussion. And it's important to find the people who are actually going to make the product happen, not just the design manager, and not just the CEO. It's data science, engineering, and others.
So you really have to have those relationships with leaders in other functions. There’s a higher likelihood of getting things done.
What are the traits of an impactful designer?
I always look for designers that have an entrepreneurial spirit, who want to make things successful and not just make things aesthetically pleasing. Designers who really say, “This needs to work out and needs to have impact.” And entrepreneurs do just that.
It’s important but it doesn't have to be every designer. Specific designers, like design systems designers, are really good at that. The impact that they have is a bit different from other designers though. Design systems teams need to partner closely with engineering, and what matters is product engineering velocity and increasing the speed of designing and building products.
Are there environments where design is positioned to have a bigger impact than others? What factors should a designer look for in a company if they're looking to have a bigger impact?
I'll talk about two companies here. I was at Apple for five years back in 2006-2011. It was a long time ago, but I made impact by being innovative, focusing on craft, and really believing in my conviction in how a product should work. Data and research wasn't a factor in how I designed.
Now at Facebook I'm more of a thinker who considers data and research a lot more. For me, I don't feel like I can be successful at a company like Apple because I'm always going to be thinking about: Have you done the research? What data proves this is the right way to go?
I think Jobs was really good at seeing an experience and pointing out what needed to be changed to make it better. I think that was his specialty.
There are lots of companies on the other end of the spectrum that are incredibly data-driven. Like Google and Netflix and Facebook. And even Apple, with some products such as News, Apple TV and the App Store, data is becoming a key part of how the product is developed.
So if you're a designer that really thinks like that or wants to grow in that area then those are great companies to do that.
And of the data-driven companies, some of them are able to move really fast—by, for example, running tests and making changes everyday, like at Facebook or Instagram. At other companies like Airbnb, it might be a little slower. Usage isn't as frequent, so A/B tests might take six months or a year, and decisions might have to be more intuition-based.
What are ways that a design leader can help to enable their designers to have a bigger impact?
Design leaders have a ton of jobs. The most important one is to mentor designers and help them build up specific skillsets. This could be being better at design tools like Figma or prototyping, or being a better presenter or storyteller. For example, understanding story arc, how to speak to slides, how to tell a story that will convince people in a succinct way what you're trying to get across.
Creating mentorship opportunities is also really key. Having junior designers under the wing of more experienced designers.
As a design leader, I take the “radical candor” approach to management. This means showing care but also being really transparent with feedback. The feedback comes from a place of wanting to help others grow and become better.
It's important to help designers build their confidence in what they think is right. They should be opinionated. But it's not enough to be opinionated. They also have to be right. So it's really about combining the two.
The most senior designers are the ones who both have conviction in their opinion and are also highly accurate. They bring strong visual design and product thinking and can tell a good, convincing story with a strong opinion about why something needs to happen—and they have all the skills to decide if something is right or wrong.
Follow Ted on Twitter @boda. Also, be sure to check out his recent interview on the Hustle podcast where he shares about his career journey in design and design leadership.