Rewind: Vicki Tan: Learning from new voices
Design Better
Navigating Career Paths in Design: Management vs. Individual Contribution
This chapter explores the transition between design roles, specifically contrasting management and individual contribution. It emphasizes self-reflection and flexibility in career paths to align with personal strengths and passions.
This week, we’re rewinding to one of our favorite episodes from our 6th season, with Vicki Tan. Vicki is a designer and author, who is now a staff product designer at Pinterest. When we spoke with her, Vicki was an associate principal product designer at Spotify, and Earlier in her career, she was a senior product designer at Headspace, worked on communication and UX design at Google and product design at Lyft.
Find full show notes, bonus content, and more on our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/rewind-vicki-tan
Original episode description
Vicki Tan has worked at companies that change the way we travel, think about our mental health, and access music from around the globe. To each of these roles she has brought her background in psychology, to better understand the needs of the people using these products.
We chat with Vicki about some of the things she has learned over the course of her career, from Lyft to Headspace to Spotify, how her creative process has changed over the years, and how her team does research.
Vicki also talks about why she regularly takes a sabbatical from her work, and why “finding umami” is important to figuring out the core mission of a company.
Bio
Vicki Tan is a Staff Product Designer at Pinterest. Earlier in her career, she was an Associate Principal Product Designer at Spotify, a senior product designer at Headspace, worked on communication and UX design at Google, and product design at Lyft. According to Frank Yoo, design director at Lyft, Vicki “is positive and thoughtful and puts as much care into people and teams as she does creating the artifacts themselves.”
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