Helen Tran
@tranhelen
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Building something new. Entrepreneur. Designer. Competitive meathead.
šØš¦ YYZ / šŗšø SFO
Joined April 2011
i was in mongolia for the last bit. this is a golden eagle on my arm. we had dinner at one of the eagle hunter's homes, i got to meet the only youngest female huntress, and she put her eagle on me too. i danced around with her pops. good trip. photo by @jonaslavoie
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I've spent the last seven years kind of building dashboards. I fundamentally believe they should not exist, in most cases, for more users, and I beg you all to stop building them.
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all designers must learn fundamental visual design. space, typography, colour theory, basic art direction, rhythm and balance, grids (not dev grids, design grids), etc. this is a hill i'm willing to die on.
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The world has no idea what to do with people who have multiple talents.
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Any of you older tech millennials notice apps got. worse somehow? Like the basic usability stuff: account logins not working, patterns that are incredibly unusual. ?.
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Has anyone noticed not a lot of ppl want to do thingsā¦ wellā¦ anymore?.
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Please designers, practice your visual design skills. You cannot bank on arranging Figma components your whole career.
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people be like āyour portfolio isnāt blowing me away,ā my brother in christ your company is b2b sass we all have the same tables.
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I hate Meta but, credit where it's due: this product finally understands it's fashion and not tech.
Metaās smart glasses can take calls, play music, and livestream from your face
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'Someday,' is a no. 'Maybe,' is a no. 'Not sure,' is a no. 'Not now,' is a no. If it's not a YES, it is a no. There. Just saved you years of trouble. Apply it to work, relationships, and everything.
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Designers, I splurged on Herman Miller this week. Mostly I've been holding off because I didn't want to be "that person" that owned an Eames chair but! *the ultimate desk* was finally created. I introduce to y'all: the leatherwarp sit-to-stand desk:
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WHO IS THE PERSON CLICKING YES TO IN BROWSER NOTIFICATIONS. IS IT NOBODY CAUSE I THINK IT IS NOBODY.
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iāve reached that point in my career where iāve pretty sure iām unhireable.
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i don't want to be recommended young people things anymore. the idea of a city with tons of live music and bars and imported coffee makes me want to die. i want to make dinner for my friends, watch a movie with a smart man i like, listen to jazz and go to bed at a reasonable hour.
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not me making a fake app to get an interview after 14 yrs doing this shit lol.
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Developing taste is such an overlooked area for product and UI designers. Colour theory (esp. the weird horoscopey āblue is trustā bs) isnāt as important as understanding what simply looks good.
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Designers: do your research. Many of you out there creating UIs for things you know absolutely nothing about; meal planning, financial planning, accounting, etc. etc. and saying you do āproduct design.ā. There are a trove of ppl already doing those professions to learn from.
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I've answered this ? a lot f/ ppl who have watched me run through portfolios:. How can you tell a new UI designer from a seasoned one within seconds?. You look at their spacing. Their ability to space things speaks directly to their practice. Once you see it, you can't un-see it.
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Itās time to be Twitter official with @AngelList. š. I accepted a role as the Product Design Lead back in Nov. Joining a team of designers for the first time in 6(!) years was very exciting and they, along with the wider team, have been welcoming so far. P.S. I will be hiring.
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the downside of dating anyone in tech who works remotely is you find out who their āmeeting personaā is.
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building good stable software always takes longer than you'd expect or hope.
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designers don't really need to spend that much time on UX personas . presumably the business already has customer segments you can use; maybe break that down further if you like. define the goal & skip the bullshit about them being a single mom of 2.
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it's going to be hard in this market for designers who can't do the visual parts of their job to compete against designers who can do it + the other things, too.
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"Nobody knows what they're doing.". Nope. Not accepting this. This is a widely accepted insecure statement repeated to absolve themselves or others of doing better or learning. There are 100% ppl. who know what they're doing and they're very good at their jobs. Learn from them.
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Fuck it, @NotionHQ for everything. Notion for websites. Notion for blogs. Notion for emails which aren't emails. Notion for links.
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Iām convinced just finishing what you started and doing what you say you will, will put you ahead of 99.9999% of people.
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Iāve finally placed the feeling I had about the interviewing that threw me off and I think I can describe it now. Some people interview you in the position of the judge. Some people interview you in the position of a coach or teammate.
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This is transparently why interviewing in tech is so bad. If youāre screening for someone values, which you should be, you can do so without asking āgotchaā questions with arbitrary pre-determined judgements.
Iāve interviewed 1000s of people over my career. Only 1% of candidates truly know how to stand out. Learn to answer these 13 questions and I guarantee youāll ace your next job interview:.
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People on Linkedin write about the roles they're moving on from like they were in the military. "It has been an honour to serve alongside you.".Man, what do you MEAN, you make software ffs.
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In his book "Range," David Epstein mentioned that older start-up founders are more successful so I looked up the data:
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that alarm some designers must feel when they realize they're just a regular person with a job.
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There is no ādesign-led,ā or āengineering-led,ā or āproduct-led.ā In the end, there is just bad or good teamwork.
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Hi Helen,. My name is person youāve never met. Iād like to invite you to donate your time for no clear benefit Iāve identified, so that I, and someone else youāve never met, can benefit. Something about being female and passion. I demand you respond to me in bold,. Person.
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some ppl really do interview like everything is a āgotchaā exercise. like you caught meā¦ doing what, exactly? youāre the one/company who needs help.
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I have so much respect for people who start āsecond careers.ā The amount of work and commitment to growth is so admirable.
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This insight is brought to you by my portfolio along with: .- In product, being early is the same as being wrong (stole that one).- What people want is not necessarily what they need.- Calendars are complicated as hell and all developers underestimate their complexities.
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I love when designers talk about ājammingā in Figma like theyāre musicians and not corporate workers whose whole job is to make it as universally uncreative as possible to complete tasks.
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I donāt think weāre honest enough with design students when they graduate whatever program (formal or not) about the gap between their abilities and the abilities required for a job.
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Me when I started my career: ship it. Me in the middle: letās not ship total garbage, maybe we should think about it some more. Me now, after being a founder: ship it yesterday.
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I am open to a job. If you're looking for someone who self-manages, directly communicates, and knows how to _build_ a product from 0 > PMF and what it's like to scale with a company from 0 > 4000 and has managed and built a design team before (30+), DM. IC roles only rn.
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how are you 21 and a life coach your brain isn't even done developing.
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Please stop building AI tools to summarize books. People need to read slower and process better so they can make higher-level connections, not try to turn everything into bite-sized quoted for random usage whenever they see fit.
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What is with the ādonāt criticize web3ā perspective? Any good idea or concept can withstand criticism.
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itās crazy to me how designers can be so talented and have all the skills to make things but they justā¦ donāt be founders.
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Dear startup founders who donāt have a strong visual designer on your team:. Whatever size your logo is, make it 50% smaller. Literally no one cares. #designtips.
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The refusal the design profession has to defining what they actually do is not helping. You do not exist āto solve problems.ā That is the definition of every job ever invented in good faith. Be specific.
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Design thinking is a way to trick yourself, and others, into doing more reps than you otherwise would have, to produce creative outcomes, which look like magic on the outside, but are simply the result of work over time.
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Not wanting to climb corporate ranks for no reason isn't a lack of ambition. My ambitions are larger than contributing to a make-belief status game or the game of hyper-capitalism. The ultimate bore is what people call "ambition" these days, and I think they lack imagination.
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āIt's not your kids holding your career back. It's your husband.ā. Fiery article to read on a Sunday morning.
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I am a student at the University of Toronto now. āŗļø. It took me a while to get here, but going back to school (even part-time) at 32 is still something I never dreamed Iād have the chance to do. ā¤ļø. Career #2 exploration underway.
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yah I just donāt think I should need a portfolio after ten years if you are serious and can talk to me about my work.
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You can criticize all you want about dribbble shots but at least they were practicing their visual design skills. We need more dribbbling. š« š„“.
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surely this notebook, unlike all the other notebooks, will change my life.
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if you create a functional app and it does really well, please hire a UI designer to make it look good too. what does it hurt, to give a shit a little more, and make the world a little more beautiful.
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I learned that designing a calendar within mobile constraints is an intensive exercise in patience.
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A bunch of y'all are still asking so a list of q's:. 1. What do we need dashboards for?.Actionable insights. 2. Where do those come from?. It's a trick, "someone knowledgable enough to turn data/visualizations into actionable insights.". 3. Is user this? Answer usually no.
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half of user testing is just waiting for ppl to cancel on you.
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ppl who are like, 'show your work'. being a designer can sometimes be strategic or lots of work can be replaced over time which you don't want to take credit for. there's quite a few reasons why a designer doesn't have a 'typical' portfolio and i'm so tired of this narrative.
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one thing I never had the guts to ask in my early career is, ātell me who my direct manager is and explain to me the decision tree in detail.ā. yep, asking now.
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itās such a joke that ppl get so aggressive when i say i want to go to school, āwhy? you already have a job.ā. when the hell did wanting to learn (formal or not) become something you had to justify.
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i felt like a douche for buying a tesla,. but after a couple of weeks with it, and i'm fine with being a huge douche. i love that car/not-car/road rocket/moving ipad.
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I'll never be able to condense seven years of "fucking dashboards" into anything palate-able but if you're considering them, you better be building for NASA or data scientists bc no one else needs them, in *this* age in *most* contexts. ALL UI is a "dashboard.".
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Why does it seem like people are rushing to teach others before they even pay their dues?.
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do not buy philips hue coloured lights. it is a slippery slope and youāll never be the same person again.
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A dashboard is usually running interference or used as a placeholder. Interference: "I need to study what data you have for me and think about this". Placeholder: "As a Designer, I don't know what they need so give them everything and hope they can do something with it.".
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Designers fell into some selection bias when they cheered about PMs going away: maybe youāve never worked with a good PM, doesnāt mean theyāre all bad. Imagine a PM saying that about you back. š.
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The traits that all corporate managers claim to want in an employee (initiative, vision, high ownership) often overlap with founder traits and their interviewing processes almost exclusively select people with those traits out.
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Now that demand for designers is super high, we donāt have to argue about UI/UX/anything anymore. The peace!.
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I donāt know what to tell the tech companies interviewing me rn but this offer is amongst your competitors. Thatās likeā¦ $24,000 to have no meetings.
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Uncommon interview advice:.Work on your social skills friends. This is not an introvert/extrovert thing. This is a skill. Hello, how are you, etc. etc.
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New pic! This is decidedly not "up to the times" with everyone's cartoon avvies but . people won't know what I look like when I meet them in meatspace and that's weird.
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living alone and single in a pandemic must have a lot of crossover with solitary confinement . winter is going to be . rough this year. Iām going to be darker than any finnish person you've ever met.
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Like this week:.- Netflix blocks us merging accounts into a household, no explanation why.- Lyft doesn't allow viewing receipts on the web anymore so I have to find it in my email. It's like all these fundamental, "hey, I'm trying to use your app" things are just. broken.
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I'm wondering if there will be a time when tech will support part-time employees. Not consultants, just part-time. I suppose the (actual) 4-day work week is close to this but I'm thinking more like 24h/week.
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ppl wondering where Design Twitter has gone and I think the q is, āwho design twitter?ā and the answer is Nigeria.
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The only people who will remember you worked all the time are your spouse and your kids.
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how did we fuck up tv again but on the internet.i'm just trying to get a laugh here
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A large portion of software is going to be service design and I'm convinced founders are missing out on the historical lesson that service is a differentiator if you're building commoditized tools.
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Do you have a #WomenInTech story of a good ally?. This one time I had a colleague tell someone, āthatās literally what she just said.ā It made the whole room freeze but I still remember that as a moment of blissful justice. I still live on the fumes of that one.
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Arnold said something once in his memoir about there being no competition at the top, and it still really resonates with me. Before you say, āall the people underneath you. ā just pause for a second.
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Having a shiny portfolio and being good at your job are two separate things. Theyāre not even correlated. āBeing good at your jobā is also as subjective as how shiny your portfolio is. Donāt give up trying to find people for you. Forget the elitist circle. You got bills to pay.
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What a way to stifle curiousity; to tell each other we can only pick one thing to care about. What a lack of nurturing, love, and care. Astounding loss of potential.
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How are designers future-proofing their careers?. Iām thinking of going back to my development skillset and becoming a stronger dev through data science and AI/ML.
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Letās just agree to not ask each other anymore how we are. The answer is āidkā for the foreseeable future so letās just conserve some energy.
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If you literally *just started,* you donāt have imposter syndrome. Thatās you, learning, feeling anxious because applying yourself can be difficult in new territory. The way out is doing > builds self-efficacy > leads to confidence > repeat.
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At this point, I'm convinced Google Sheets is a perfect product.
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You can upgrade 90% of your conversations if you let go of needing to agree or disagree. Listen and ask them questions about their perspective. Most things aren't academic debates and you lose out on insightful information trying to make them so.
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