{"id":8452,"date":"2023-05-17T09:32:17","date_gmt":"2023-05-17T09:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/?p=8452"},"modified":"2025-01-28T15:57:10","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T15:57:10","slug":"design-operations-designer-etsy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/design-operations-designer-etsy\/","title":{"rendered":"Design operations with a Senior Product Designer at Etsy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/sarahjunefoxdesign\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sarah June Fox<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/what-does-a-product-designer-do\/\">Senior Product Designer<\/a> at <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.etsy.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Etsy<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. She works on the International, New Markets initiative as a Design Operationss: Core Practices co-lead, bringing Etsy\u2019s products to markets outside the U.S.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sarah June is also a member of the steering committee for the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.100archive.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">100Archive<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and an inductee to the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.istd.org.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">International Society of Typographic Designers<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Sarah June is also <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/hexagonux.com\/mentorship\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hexagon mentor<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We were fortunate enough to have her as a guest during our recent UX Insider event, which you can watch in full here or keep reading below for highlights from our conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sarah June joined us to the discuss benefits of design operations and investing in core design processes, including:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><a href=\"#codified-design-practices\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Codified design practices<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><a href=\"#product-design-squads\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Product design squads<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><a href=\"#cross-functional-working-relationships\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cross-functional working relationships<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><a href=\"#etsys-newly-minted-core-design-practices-playbook\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Etsy\u2019s newly minted Core Design Practices Playbook<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><a href=\"#what-etsy-looks-for-in-junior-designers\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What Etsy looks for in junior designers<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<section id=\"promotion\" class=\"promotion-content-raw inlinepromo inlinepromo_product-design-programmep-1 my-4\" style=\"\">\n\t<div class=\"w-container\">\n\t\t<div class=\"row align-items-center\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"col-md-12 promotion-info\">\n                <a class=\"link-content\" href=\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/courses\/product-design?utm_source=blog&amp;utm_medium=%20blog_panel_text&amp;utm_campaign=blog_promo\" style=\"\">\n                    <p>[GET CERTIFIED IN PRODUCT DESIGN (UX &amp; UI)]<\/p>\n                    <span>Enrol now in our Product Design Programme<\/span>\n                <\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n<h2><b>Can you tell us a bit about Etsy and your role at the company?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I\u2019ve been a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/courses\/product-design\">product designer<\/a> at Etsy for just over two years.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We&#8217;re a two-sided marketplace, meaning we have two equally important user groups: our buyers and our sellers. Our whole product suite needs to support all of their missions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I&#8217;m a product designer in a large product design team. There are about 85 of us at the moment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I\u2019m working across two squads. One&#8217;s called New Markets and one&#8217;s called Core Localisation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At a very high level, what we do is think about making improvements to our products that make Etsy feel like it&#8217;s local to places outside of the U.S. Etsy started in the U.S. and is very U.S.-centric, but what happens when somebody&#8217;s visiting from Japan or India?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We think about things like meeting local expectations of e-commerce and improving search results for non-English search queries. We think about taxonomy, language, local cultural norms, and pricing structures, among loads of other things.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our vision is that the entire experience on Etsy feels like it&#8217;s created for every buyer and every seller, no matter their language or region.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Tell us about Etsy\u2019s design team<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Etsy started in 2005. Inspired by this \u201cmaking\u201d culture at the time, the design team was one person. Since then, the company grew organically, and what had formerly been just a handful of designers is now a multidisciplinary group of:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">product designers<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">brand designers<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">art directors<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">CX strategists<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/what-is-information-architecture\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">information architects<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/ux-writing-copywriting\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">copywriters<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/courses\/user-research\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">researchers<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There was a time when Etsy took a good look at the brand and the products, and then really looked at our internal processes and made huge strides to improve all of that by implementing a design organisation.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b><a id=\"codified-design-practices\"><\/a>Why is it important to invest in design organisation?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I just want to say\u2014I will be praising Etsy a lot and I think it&#8217;s because I&#8217;ve worked in less-structured places or less-happy atmospheres and Etsy just does so much right.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I&#8217;ve worked in companies that didn&#8217;t invest as much time into their own design org, and the experience wasn&#8217;t as positive as a result.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So the best part for me about Etsy is the collaborative creative element. There are no lone-wolf designers. There&#8217;s no hard handover to engineering. We work together on everything and our cross-functional partnerships are really strong as a result.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Having the support of dedicated experts like researchers or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/ux-writing-copywriting\/\">UX copywriters<\/a>, for example, means that we as product designers have more time to concentrate on our own area of expertise.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And the investment into these design operations means that we&#8217;re not starting anything from scratch, even if we&#8217;re embedded alone on a squad. The designers work together as an org with things like weekly critique sessions, cross-initiative workshops, design showcases, and mentor relationships.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s a really good system.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b><a id=\"product-design-squads\"><\/a>How are Etsy\u2019s squads structured?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here\u2019s a snapshot of our squad structure:<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-8453\" src=\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screenshot-2023-05-17-at-09.55.24-1.png\" alt=\"Etsy&#039;s squad structure\" width=\"1270\" height=\"734\" title=\"\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The group in the box above is an example of a single squad. We have a product designer (me), a product manager, an engineering manager, a data analyst, and a researcher that are shared across a few squads and then 5-6 dedicated engineers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The product designers, product managers, and engineering managers are considered the thought leaders of the squad. And then everybody else you see is supporting us.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We get to work with people from legal, member services (which is like our customer service), research engineering, and then leaders from our group as well. So you&#8217;re never lost on your own.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The structure is organized to encourage this amazing collaboration and then utilize the strength of cognitive diversity. Everybody is an expert at something.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The value gained from getting other people to think like designers and encouraging creativity means that we&#8217;re removing the lens that suggests that designers are the only people who are allowed to create.<\/span><\/p>\n<section id=\"promotion\" class=\"promotion-content-raw inlinepromo inlinepromo_professional-diploma-in-ux-designp-1 my-4\" style=\"\">\n\t<div class=\"w-container\">\n\t\t<div class=\"row align-items-center\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"col-md-12 promotion-info\">\n                <a class=\"link-content\" href=\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/courses\/ux-design?utm_source=blog&amp;utm_medium=blog_panel_pdux&amp;utm_campaign=blog_promo\" style=\"\">\n                    <p>[GET CERTIFIED IN UX]<\/p>\n                    <span>Take our Professional Diploma in UX Design course<\/span>\n                <\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n<h2><b>Are Etsy\u2019s product designers working in UX, UI, or both?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Most of our product designers do a bit of everything. Some squads have greater UX needs while others will be more focused on UI.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you think about somebody working on the app, for example, they would have a strong UI focus.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But I worked in a squad that was looking at tax compliance. This team was UX focused, thinking about how somebody uploads documents, for example. It mattered less what the pixels looked like.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>How do you collaborate with engineers and ensure designs are produced the way you\u2019re expecting?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you do a waterfall handover, where designs are just passed on to engineers, there might&#8217;ve been a load of things you missed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can&#8217;t account for every scenario. Either the engineer has to make decisions on the fly or they have to hand it back to you.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The best collaborative experience for a handover is to involve engineers from the very beginning. If you can have your engineers in your discovery process, they will surface a lot of things you might not have thought about.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We have weekly check-ins where we discuss everything in the project, and then daily standups as well. Nothing goes for very long without a conversation about it.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>What is Etsy\u2019s design philosophy?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our mission is to keep commerce human, and it&#8217;s really at the heart of everything that we do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Everything now is automated. We want to keep the human connection at the heart of commerce. This is why we build a place where creativity is at the heart of everything that we do.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We help our community of sellers turn their ideas into successful businesses, and our platform connects them with millions of buyers looking for an alternative to the regular e-commerce landscape\u2014something that&#8217;s special with a human touch.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To do this, we strive to lead with a set of guiding principles.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>What are Etsy\u2019s design principles?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Etsy\u2019s design principles keep us on mission. They help spread ideas of sustainability and our responsibility for our impact on the world. Etsy treats its customers so well, and our outward-facing attitude is very transparent and human.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But importantly, it&#8217;s also how Etsy treats its employees. The culture is so supportive, nurturing, and highly collaborative. So we have this massive mission, but it&#8217;s accomplished in small steps.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Each change that we make to the website or our apps helps us build towards that goal. But how do we know if we are building in the right direction?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These are Etsy\u2019s design principles:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>We embrace differences: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Diverse teams are stronger, and inclusive cultures are more resilient. When we seek out different perspectives, we make better decisions and build better products.<\/span><\/li>\n<li aria-level=\"1\"><b>We lead with optimism: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We believe in our mission, and we believe in each other. We see the world as it is, set ambitious goals, and inspire one another with generosity of spirit. Together, we reimagine what is possible.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li aria-level=\"1\"><b>We minimise waste:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Time, resources, and energy are precious, so we focus only on what will have the greatest impact.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li aria-level=\"1\"><b>We dig deeper:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The best solutions to meaningful challenges are rarely easy or obvious. We stay curious, balance our intuition with insights, and decide with confidence.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li aria-level=\"1\"><b>We commit to our craft: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our work has the power to change lives. That\u2019s why we strive to learn continuously and excel at what we do.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><b>What is Etsy\u2019s design process?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Etsy\u2019s design process is rooted in design thinking. Etsy doesn&#8217;t ever want to be prescriptive, but we encourage what we call \u201cchoose your own adventure.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Designers are empowered to work as they see fit and then to continue to challenge and evolve their methods as well.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is no one-size-fits-all, but with a systematic approach, we&#8217;ll always have the best results in the problem spaces that we work in.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The product design process adjusts to fit the individual project, not the other way around.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For early-stage projects, we might spend more time doing user research. Whereas if something is already in production, we might be doing A\/B experiments or multivariate tests, where continual improvement is really at the heart of what we do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nothing is sacred, nothing stays the same, and we continue to get feedback and refine as our user&#8217;s needs change over time as well.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>How does Etsy make use of data in its design practices?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Etsy is very much a data-driven company. We want to use data to inform everything that we do.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We place a big emphasis on building with science\u2014designing experiments that help us figure out how to improve our performance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We analyze behavioral patterns over time, and this data helps us make improvements to the marketplace.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We write experiments, A\/B tests, and multivariate tests. They help us validate our own assumptions and help us identify dead ends sooner, rather than spending, for example, three months building a feature that nobody ends up using.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We can run an experiment early in the process to understand whether we&#8217;re on the right path, and this helps us reduce risk and be more confident in the changes that we&#8217;re making.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>What are the benefits of a design system?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We use a suite of design systems that help us with this idea of minimizing waste.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-8454\" src=\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screenshot-2023-05-17-at-10.05.44-1.png\" alt=\"design systems with the idea of minimizing waste\" width=\"1098\" height=\"594\" title=\"\"><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We have one for our apps, one for desktop and mobile web, and then one for our internal tooling as well.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These are well-implemented systems with brilliant documentation. These reusable components allow us to concentrate on UX and what&#8217;s happening in the flow without worrying about the radius of a button or which typeface to use.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These design systems:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Promote consistency<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Reduce building time<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Get everyone on the same page<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Reduce design and development debt<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Allow room for innovation<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Contribute to strong, memorable brands<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We have an entire Design Systems team responsible for creating our design systems.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It works like all our product squads work. It has a product manager, loads of engineers, engineering managers, researchers, and data analysts, and their whole job is to maintain and expand the design system.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Who are Etsy\u2019s researchers?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here\u2019s an overview of the researchers our squad collaborates with:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-8455\" src=\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screenshot-2023-05-17-at-10.06.49.png\" alt=\"Who are Etsy&#039;s researchers?\" width=\"1256\" height=\"704\" title=\"\"><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/courses\/user-research\"><b>product researchers<\/b><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> answer more qualitative, \u201chow\u2019s it going?\u201d questions, such as:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What are users trying to do here?<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Are they accomplishing their needs?<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Would they recommend us to a friend or relative?<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our <\/span><b>market researchers<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> are thinking about understanding:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our audience<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Their perceptions of our brand in the context of our industry and global trends.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Demographics (where people are and where they live)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What devices they&#8217;re accessing our sites on<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And then our <\/span><b>analytics partner<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> gives us more behavioral data, such as:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Onsite behavior<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Clustering segments<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How people get around the site<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Where they come to the site from<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Why they leave (if they leave)<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All of this together empowers everybody at the company to make thoughtful, well-informed decisions.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b><a id=\"cross-functional-working-relationships\"><\/a>How do you collaborate with researchers and data analysts?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our research team runs its own research alongside the research that we identify.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They give us feedback through things like one-on-one interviews, online surveys, experiments, forums, and beta prototype groups. We sometimes have buyers come into Etsy offices to give us feedback, or we do shop-alongs or diary studies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This ensures that what we&#8217;re building addresses real needs and solves existing pain points.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We can also request research support. To do that we have weekly meetings with the research team. And we have a dedicated researcher embedded in our team as well.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Then we have access to data dashboards where we can write our own queries. We can request collaborative sessions where our data analysts will help us figure out what we want to look at.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>How does Etsy stay committed to \u201ccraft\u201d in day-to-day work?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Etsy is rooted in this culture of making and supporting literal crafting. This craft principle really speaks to what I see as the strength of the Etsy org as a whole.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In our office, we have a craft room that&#8217;s full of pompoms and scissors, and other crafty stuff. We have craft afternoons every month that every employee can attend. We do things like make bonsai sculptures, reeds at Christmas, moccasins, and watercolor paintings.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can go up any time you want for an artsy break.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We also have these things called PD breathers which are moments when we can just relax. It&#8217;s either going to an art gallery, getting manicures, or doing yoga or meditation sessions. There are coffee chats where people get together with people they&#8217;ve never met before.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We also have Design Lightning, which is a big biweekly presentation where everybody in the product design org presents their work in a two-minute spotlight.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We have deep dives into our work where you have a whole hour to talk about what you&#8217;re working on. We have \u2018lunch and learn\u2019 events where you have half an hour to talk about what you&#8217;re working on and share your knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And then fun things like Toastmasters where you learn how to give presentations.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b><a id=\"etsys-newly-minted-core-design-practices-playbook\"><\/a>What is Etsy\u2019s Core Practice Playbook?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of the initiatives that I work on is this Core Practice Playbook. It\u2019s a living guide to the ever-evolving practices that Etsy designers use and rely on to collaborate and communicate and create these user experiences.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was originally a concept from our VP of design, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/christinagoldschmidt\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Christina Goldschmidt<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. She didn&#8217;t want any of this to be prescriptive, as I mentioned. But she saw it as offering guidance to how Etsy uniquely handles certain design practices and how they&#8217;re rooted in all these guiding principles and our overall mission.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It&#8217;s a living resource, available as an internal website, a series of talks, and a Figma tool set. It&#8217;s continually expanded upon to meet the needs of our designers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Each practice (for example, design quality assurance) has a practice lead, who looks after the content in the Core Practice Playbook and acts as the resident expert.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So if I were doing design QA and needed some advice, I&#8217;d go to the practice lead, visit the website, or use the Figma tools.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It&#8217;s so useful for everybody and it makes working with our partners so much easier.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At the moment, it&#8217;s only available internally. But we\u2019re talking about how to make it public and what that would look like.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b><a id=\"what-etsy-looks-for-in-junior-designers\"><\/a>What skills do you feel are a must-have for a junior design position at a company like Etsy?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think one of the most important things to have is curiosity and an open mind.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Every company is going to have different ways of working. There isn&#8217;t a list of things that you can say, \u201cIf you do this, this, and this, then you&#8217;ll be the perfect fit for every job.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you want to work somewhere, make sure it aligns with your own values. And make sure that you would be proud to work there.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of the best pieces of advice that somebody gave me when starting a new job was just to meet as many people and ask as many questions as possible. Knowing how to ask questions and feeling empowered to speak up\u2014I think that\u2019s the most important skill.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I hope that there wouldn&#8217;t be any company that would expect a junior to hit the ground running, knowing everything from day dot.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>What is the hiring process for product designers like at Etsy?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They have a series of interviews that I jokingly refer to as a gauntlet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You have an initial talk with the hiring manager just to discover if you are suitable for the role.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Then you&#8217;d meet the engineering manager from the squad that you&#8217;re going to work with, or a high-level engineer. And then a product design manager and possibly a product designer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All of these are 45-minute interviews.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You then do a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/design-challenges-for-ux-designers\/\">whiteboarding exercise<\/a> where you&#8217;re given a project or a problem space and you talk about how you would work through that. And then you&#8217;d meet a few other people\u2014maybe a researcher, data analyst, or UX copywriter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Each of the interviews has a different theme. They want to see that you have design skills, but they also want to see that you align with Etsy&#8217;s values. We&#8217;re very inclusive, so if there are any indications that you don&#8217;t align with any of our values, that\u2019s a huge thing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It&#8217;s intense, but it&#8217;s really friendly and approachable.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>What did you wish you knew at the beginning of your product design career?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I definitely wish that I was more confident at the beginning of my career. It took me a long time to realize that no matter what level I was at, my opinion mattered and was worth sharing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And that kind of goes back to the last question\u2014that you should work somewhere where you feel valued and you feel empowered to pipe up even if you&#8217;re two days into the job.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You were hired for a reason and your insight is valuable.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>How do you learn to accept failure as a designer? For example, a failed A\/B test experiment.<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At Etsy, we celebrate failure as a learning experience. Nobody gets in trouble.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Most of the experiments we run are either neutral or fail. The value of that is that we know then that it was not the right thing to do for that market, and we could try it somewhere else.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Your designs are not an extension of you. When a design doesn\u2019t work out, it doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s a personal failure. It\u2019s an important separation to have\u2014otherwise, you\u2019ll be losing sleep over things.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Part of our process at Etsy is something that we call \u201cdivergent design,\u201d where you try and think about as many solutions as possible to a problem so you can test out several different things and then you&#8217;re not wedded to one solution. You&#8217;re not putting all your eggs in one basket.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And then if some things fail and some things succeed, it doesn&#8217;t feel as personal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There was a time when I took everything to heart and would feel very disappointed if something didn&#8217;t meet my expectations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But now, if I feel like I&#8217;ve interrogated the problem space and it doesn&#8217;t work for such and such a reason, then I&#8217;m more able to let that go and move on and learn from that and try something different.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sarah June Fox is a Senior Product Designer at Etsy. She works on the International, New Markets initiative as a Design Ops: Core Practices co-lead, bringing Etsy\u2019s products to markets outside the U.S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":8456,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[265,270],"tags":[359],"class_list":["post-8452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-career","category-expert-interviews","tag-expert-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8452"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11653,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8452\/revisions\/11653"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}