Design Leadership Interview with Kara Fong
Hi, Kara! Thanks for taking the time to connect with me. Let’s start with an easy question: how long have you been at DoorDash and what does your role entail?
I’ve been at DoorDash for almost 2 years and it’s been such a wild ride. I feel really fortunate to look after our Design Foundations team. We have a mission to make people’s experience with DoorDash the most well-crafted by defining the user experience standards that drive scalability, efficiency, and sustainability. Our team is made up of specialist systems-thinkers who have deep expertise in their domains such as design systems, content design, design and research operations, accessibility, and most recently, customer experience and integrity, which covers fraud, trust and safety, support, and internal tools.
How did you get into design and grow in your career to where you are today?
I first got into design during my time at Microsoft, working as a product manager on the Core Experiences for Office products on Apple platforms. I learned from some of the best of the best design-minded people. It was from them that I built a strong foundation for first-principles thinking and really sweating the details of design decisions (square vs circle profile photos, anyone?). I worked on design systems before I even really knew they were called design systems.
A few years later I found myself at Meta (née Facebook at the time when I joined) where I really felt like Julie Zhuo (who was our Head of Design) and John Evans (who was my manager overseeing Design Systems and Tools at the time), took a chance on me when I was hired to be one of the first Design Program Managers for the Facebook App. I developed a real passion for design systems, design tools, and visual systems, to the point where I could talk for hours about emoji or pixel snapping in iconography. It was there where I partnered with some of the most talented designers in the industry, learned from them, and most importantly, I felt like I grew alongside them.
What drew you to the team at DoorDash?
Before I joined DoorDash I was a frequent user, but what really drew me to the company was how mission-driven it is and how much our values are aligned. Helena Seo, our fearless Head of Design at DoorDash, really helped paint a picture of how customer-obsessed we are here at DoorDash, and that really holds true based on what I’ve experienced. People are really motivated to do what’s right for our users, and the most interesting part is how we balance decisions that impact our ecosystem, the decision we make on a support flow can have a ripple effect on what our customers experience, how our Dashers interact with our customers, impact our merchant’s business, and how our teammates (support agents) help drive resolutions. It’s a lot of responsibility, but one that’s very rewarding.
Your team, Design Foundations, supports many different orgs within DoorDash. How do you manage so many different stakeholder teams and cross-functional partners?
Honestly, one of the biggest challenges of my role happens to be what makes it most exciting. The way that my team is structured, many team members are embedded within an audience team across many sides of our marketplace, like Consumer, Dasher, Merchant, Ads & Promos, and Customer Experience & Integrity. Being embedded allows the team to operate at the lowest level of detail and have a deep impact on our products. Other members focus on our core foundations and have broad impact across the business. I have wonderful product, design, research, and engineering leader colleagues who look out for members of my team, and I’m fortunate that they also understand the need to build scalable systems.
While there isn’t necessarily a single cross-functional team, like engineering or marketing, that maps directly to my team, I focus on finding partners that are motivated by the same outcomes or have similar challenges as I do. An example of a shared challenge many of us faced was how as a company we would approach quality and craft. I met with many ambitious engineering leaders (shoutout to Moustafa Aly, Jeff Yuan, Liangxiao Zhu) who were passionate about streamlining and investing in our bugs SLA to enable high-quality experiences across DoorDash. Our teams worked together to define a solid strategy. By doing so, we’ve been able to drive more ownership around craft across our teams, which allows us to really take pride in what we ship to the people using our products.
What has been your approach toward developing talent and leading teams to success?
A lot of my management philosophies come from learning from the great managers I’ve had in the past. I think about talent in 3 ways: Find, Grow, and Keep.
On finding talent:I think an aspect of developing talent is hiring for diversity. It’s so important to constantly look at the skillsets across your team and hire for complementary skills. I look for people who I feel like I could learn from as well. I think there’s a common misconception that leaders should always be the ones to teach, but when you foster an environment where everyone is curious and constantly learning, you’re getting 1% better everyday.
On growing and keeping talent: It’s so important to understand each individual’s motivations and ensure they’re set up well to continue to grow and do what they love. I get a lot of satisfaction from staying connected to folks in my org and the broader design org. It’s given me the ability to identify more cross-org opportunities for their work, be an advocate for them, and better understand their unique perspective and challenges. I often think about how Maya Angelou said that “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” For me, it’s important that people feel heard, respected, and appreciated.
Have you received a piece of feedback, or a kernel of advice from a colleague or mentor, that has stuck with you over time?
During my time at Facebook, I was fortunate enough to learn from Charlie Sutton, who led design at the time. A small nugget of the many things he taught me was to “be the change that you want to see in the organization.” It really shifted my perspective about how to be a great role model. Being a mentor wasn’t necessarily something that I sought out, but it was something that happened organically. Being a huge Marvel fan, I always think about how “with great power comes great responsibility,” and to me, feeling deep ownership has always been an important philosophy to live by. That means uplifting others when you can, solving problems that are beyond what’s in front of you, and prioritizing needs of the broader org and business before your own.
So, what have you been up to at DoorDash?
I just officially returned to work after my maternity leave with my second kiddo! Before I went out, I was on a mission to give DoorDash a more memorable personality by creating a look & feel that was clean, iconic, and joyful. We had a lot of talented folks working on this effort, including Joe Jezowski, Kevin Schaefer, Adriel Teles. We really strove to balance simplicity and usability in order to make people’s experience more intuitive and engaging. As part of this effort, our new illustration style, Delicia, was born. 🎉 It’s been so inspiring to see the creativity from the design team and how they’ve used Delicia to bring life to our products.
Fun tidbit: Rachel Dady (our Senior Copy Creative Lead at DoorDash) made the brilliant suggestion to name the illustration style Delicia because it’s the Spanish translation of “delight,” which is a thread through the entire visual system, and because it has subtle phonetic similarities to “delicious”! A fun nod to our food obsessions here at DoorDash 🤤
Okay, last question: You’re in the Seattle area — what is your must-try restaurant?
Anyone who knows me knows that I basically have an IV attached to me that’s constantly pumping boba. But if we’re asking about a must-try restaurant, I’ve got to say it’s Mike’s Noodle House. This restaurant is a Cantonese-style family-owned restaurant that serves wonton noodles and congee. I’ve eaten here for years, and it reminds me of my childhood. On the outside, it’s unassuming. On the inside, you’ll find fresh noodles swimming in savory shrimp soup with deliciously plump wonton with pale yellow chives for garnish. Makes my mouth water just typing this. My recommendation? Get the Sui Kau Wonton Noodles.
[Feeling fancy for our NY Design Team dinner at Bar Pasquale]
[Design systems team enjoying fresh pizza @ L’Industrie]
