In a previous post, I highlighted how we incorporate behavioral design at Klaviyo and how we apply behavioral design to reduce the gap between intention and action at four different levels.

Klaviyo’s design system team has made significant strides in codifying the design foundation through the Ascent design system. Internally, this design system drives efficiency for designers and engineers. Externally, this design system facilitates a consistent user experience.

This consistent user experience supports level 1 behavioral design — making the target action easy. For example, seemingly minor details, such as a consistent placement of actions to navigate to the next step, are guided through our Ascent design system. The target action is much easier when navigating from one step to the next is fast and intuitive. At times, how to make target actions easier incorporates behavioral insights. For example, should we make the target action a default? What about an active choice? Might the user benefit from a demonstration? Behavioral design in Ascent begins to guide how to increase the ease of target actions by incorporating context-specific insights from behavioral design.

This consistent user experience also facilitates level 2 behavioral design — supporting the target behavior — through standardizing components such as a progress indicator or progress bar. Showing progress is a powerful tactic — it provides feedback, sets expectations, and guides action. How we use these components incorporates insights from the science of motivation. For example, we leverage our understanding of motivation as we intentionally chunk each step, track progress, and celebrate. Cumulatively, showing progress can facilitate efficiency, self-efficacy, and trust.

Incorporating behavioral design decision-making into the Klaviyo Ascent design system works to overcome that pesky gap between intention and action.

Learn more about the ascent design system here.

To read more about the creation of the Ascent design system see this Behind the Pixels interview with Jason Grant.

Guiding ease and support within the Klaviyo experience was originally published in Klaviyo Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

About three years ago, I found myself at the helm of Klaviyo’s design team. Navigating leadership changes, and tasked with both hiring and onboarding a new wave of team members, I felt like a pilot assembling a plane mid-flight. With limited experience and guidance, I was piecing together the puzzle of hiring and onboarding, all in the hope that what I was building mid-air would be sufficient to set my team up for success.

These years were a period marked by the constant pursuit of refining our onboarding process and what has evolved is a guide that has proven invaluable to managers of welcoming new team members onto their teams.

Onboarding people during hyper growth

In the early days, when our team was a handful of individuals and our growth rate was gradual, managing onboarding was relatively straightforward. The time spent tailoring onboarding to each new person worked fine. However, as our hiring rate doubled, I began to notice the need for a scalable onboarding strategy. I found myself and my colleagues repeating the same tasks for each new team member, making the need for a better process clear.

Typically after completing the very structured Klaviyo and design team onboarding, which is a few weeks in total, employees were placed onto a team and left to figure things out on their own. This contrast was brought up time and again. And given the unique dynamics of each team and manager, some people received sufficient context on their projects, while others did not. It wasn’t entirely the manager’s fault, but there was room for improvement. We not only dedicated time to revamping our onboarding program (stay tuned for a blog post on this!), but we also recognized a significant need for additional guidance once a new team member actually joined a team.

Onboarding at scale

Enter the role ramp-up guide–a scalable, and proactive approach to onboarding any new team member. The guide consists of an organized overview and set of checklists, essentially serving as your team’s personalized toolkit.

Managers, this guide is designed for you to customize and adapt to the unique needs of each team. It can be presented to your new team members as a dynamic tool during their onboarding journey and as they integrate into their team. Within the realm of product design, collaborating with engineering and product partners, Its purpose is to ensure that team members, whether newcomers or undergoing internal shifts, hit the ground running and are set up for success. It’s important to note that this guide doesn’t replace your company or design team’s onboarding experience; instead, it complements it, providing that extra boost to set everyone up for success in their new roles.

Three skills to onboard effectively

Before we jump into the ramp up template, let me share three core skills that I always keep in the back of my mind, not just for my own growth but to help every team member cultivate healthy and robust relationships with their colleagues and partners.

Be an active listener

I realized the power of being an active listener. Communication is more than just hearing words-it’s a two-way street. Being an active listener means giving your full attention, minimizing distractions, and making eye contact to show that you’re fully present and value what the other person has to say. This one is the hardest of the three and takes a lot of practice and self awareness!

Be curious

Embracing curiosity is to have an active and genuine interest in understanding and learning more about who you are speaking with. You can seek to understand by asking thoughtful and open-ended questions, being open to hearing different perspectives, and being willing to learn from others’ point of view. Leave the ego at the door.

Communicate clearly

Clear communication is a cornerstone for building connections. Whether spoken or written, tailoring your communication to your audience is key. When meeting someone for the first time, provide enough context to help them grasp the background and relevance of the conversation. Be concise in your writing and speaking, use simple language, and avoid unnecessary details.

Building trust through communication is a journey that takes time and continuous effort. It’s about consistency and intentional actions, making sure your interactions contribute to a foundation of trust that strengthens over time. So, let’s dive into the guide, keeping these principles in mind as we embark on this journey together.

How to use the ramp up guide template

Let’s dig into the template -it’s your personalized playbook with two parts: the overview and the checklists. Just a quick reminder, you are the author beyond this guide and you know what’s best for your newest team member. Oh, and here’s the deal-it’s not a one-hit wonder. This guide sets the expectation that your employee will be rocking these tasks regularly to crush their role!

Overview

This section is straightforward. It lists the mission, team members, and those crucial docs and links you don’t want your employee to lose track of and helps them navigate the team dynamics.

Checklists

1. Understanding your customer

Delve into the intricacies of your user base. A deep dive into competitors, industry trends, and target customers is crucial for designers. This involves three fundamental components:

• Take a good look at what your competitors are up to.
• Listen in or join sales and support calls to learn from real interactions.
• Watch how customers use your product in action.

2. Understanding your product

Before getting started on the work, it is essential to gain a clear understanding of the ongoing projects. Beyond reviewing the roadmap, consider conducting a UX audit to really see what product improvements are needed and to gain a point of view. At Klaviyo, we like to stick to the NNGroup’s “10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design” for identifying design issues.

3. Get friendly with your team

This part is all about building effective relationships with key partners. Since you’ll be spending a lot of time working together, it’s important to understand their expectations for the product and to be aware of any considerations before the work begins. The section includes a set of questions to facilitate a well-rounded understanding and starting point. And remember, this isn’t a one-time thing — it’s an ongoing journey, even after you’ve finished the guide.

• Schedule time with your product manager(s)
• Schedule time with your engineer(s)
• Schedule time with other designers
• Schedule time with other team members across the company

Wrapping up

So far, the Klaviyo design team has used this guide to successfully onboard 40 employees onto the design team and the numbers keep growing! Here’s some feedback that we’ve received from recent hires:

“…it definitely gave me a clear checklist of documents to review and people to set up time with”

“Overall, I felt like the guide was super helpful in helping me gain context”.

“It may just be how my brain works, but I found the checklist format in there super helpful. I break down everything into tasks already, so I liked being able to treat everything in the guide as an item to check off (including the 1:1’s to meet the team).”

If you’re like I once was on a journey of trial and error, feeling uncertain about onboarding a growing team, I hope this guide can boost your confidence and set your team up for success!

Get the template

Originally published at https://www.practicingdesign.org.

How Klaviyo’s design team scaled onboarding during hyper growth was originally published in Klaviyo Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We’ve all heard of it by now — generative AI. It is reshaping how we interact with digital interfaces. It helps us search for and synthesize information instantly. It creates text, imagery, music, in any style. It analyses and interprets data. It can even generate code and integrate with software to create new user experiences.

For product designers, this has big implications. As Jakob Nielsen outlines, “AI systems are shaping up to launch the third user-interface paradigm in the history of computing — the first new interaction model in more than 60 years” (source). Currently, users have to interact with the computer using a language of boxes, dropdowns, input fields, buttons, etc. Now, users can interact with the computer using their own natural language. This presents an enormous opportunity for how we design and simplify user experiences.

So how do we design for these experiences? Here are some principles to keep in mind should you find yourself designing a generative AI tool for your software.

Principle #1: The design gives the user support

When I speak with users about generative AI tools, I often hear these common phrases: “What can I ask the AI to do?”, “Is it going to understand the way I speak?”, “I’m not sure what to say!”. This “articulation barrier is a usability challenge for [AI tools]” (source) and is something the design needs to solve for. Here are some tactics you could employ in your design:

• Provide prompt examples or a prompt library to guide users who don’t know where to begin.
• Offer instructional text on how to effectively communicate with the model, including tips on using specific keywords.
• Consider avoiding natural language prompts altogether — explore image prompts or pre-written inputs to ease users into the interaction.

Principle #2: The design keeps the user in control

Generative AI models can be non-deterministic or unpredictable by nature. They can also “hallucinate”, which is when the AI produces incorrect or misleading results. And many times, the output just doesn’t meet the user’s expectations. This can make users feel apprehensive, which can impact engagement and retention. The design must work to give users a sense of control in this environment. Below are some ideas to explore:

• Provide disclaimers that the technology is experimental and can be wrong. This transparency can help buffer any eventual disappointment the user feels with the results.
• Offer the user multiple output options to choose from. This can enhance their feeling of control if/when results are imperfect.
• Build in a feedback mechanism to include user in the process of training the model.
• Include the ability to refine the model’s initial output. For example, create a conversational UX, allow results to be edited using an interface the user is already familiar with, or clearly label outputs as drafts. This gets users in the habit of understanding that the model’s output is just a first draft, not the final result.

Principle #3: The design cultivates a sense of wonder

The value of generative AI is rooted in its capacity to astonish and inspire users. It can produce results faster than we can, and sometimes come up with an output we never would have imagined. Its variable rewards (source), while sometimes unsettling, can also be exactly what hooks the user. Look for ways to highlight this magic through your design:

• Lean into micro-interactions, animations, and distinct UI elements like the sparkle icon that enhance excitement and allure.
• Create engaging loading states (which can be lengthy) that build anticipation in a positive way.
• Incorporate elements that build curiosity and encourage exploration of the AI’s capabilities like teasers and gamification.

In designing a UX for generative AI, the design’s focus must be on guiding users through this new landscape with clarity and excitement. Experiences must be both functional and captivating. Additionally, the field of generative AI is moving so fast that designers must keep a finger on the pulse with shifting user expectations and technological advances. The challenge is a lofty one for designers, but also an incredibly exhilarating one.

If you’re interested in diving down the rabbit hole of generative AI design, apply to work on the design team at Klaviyo.

Designing User Experiences for Generative AI was originally published in Klaviyo Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Behind the Pixels is a conversational blog series that aims to give a glimpse into the work & life of being a designer at Klaviyo

AH: Today I’m talking with one of our longest-tenure designers who’s done quite a few projects in his time here and was actually an early Behind the Pixels guest. Why don’t you start by introducing yourself again? How long have you been in UX? And how long have you been at Klaviyo?

GS: I am Gui Schmitt. Been a designer here at Klaviyo for almost five years at this point, which is crazy. Throughout my journey here I’ve worked on several projects that include the SMS builder, the email editor redesign project and now more recently I’ve been working on the reviews project which is a major new initiative that is going to be released soon or, maybe by the time you’re reading, this already out, which is exciting. Yay, future me!

AH: [Laughs] Yay future Gui! Amazing, and reviews was a different type of team than we previously had at Klaviyo. Can you give us some brief context around the team and how you all work?

GS: I believe reviews is the first product that we’re releasing that comes out of this initiative called Klaviyo Ventures. In it, teams are free to experiment with new ideas, validate them for product market fit, and then take them to scale and bring it over to our main product or do an independent product. In this case, reviews was released on a limited scale for Shopify last year, similar to a soft launch, where we validated that market fit. This was before I joined the team and once we identified that people were resonating with this idea, we decided “hey, let’s take this and bring it over to the main platform and build all the features in order to enter this new area which has established players”. Obviously for people to switch, they need to have a good set of value unlocks and we want to ensure that we’re meeting their expectations entering this brand-new market.

AH: Yes, that’s interesting. You’re definitely hitting a new market and there are some pros and cons there. You know what’s expected, but also you’re trying to make something that’s competitive. Which kind of leads into my next question — you said there was some research early on to validate the opportunity. Did you do more research later? Was there an opportunity to talk to customers about concepts?

GS: Yeah, this project is fairly different from others in that we already had a product that was very basic. So we did talk a lot with users of that existing product to see what they liked, what they didn’t like, and what they wished to see in a more full solution. And because we were entering this new market, and we had those competitors that were trying to match. We talked to customers of those competitors to see what they like about their current platform, what they don’t like, and what would make them switch. So that gave us an idea of what was the perfect quadrant of things that we should focus our attention on. Ideally, you want the easy-to-build, high-value unlock — not everything is perfect like that, but we were trying to find things in that direction. And I think we’re going to learn a lot as we launch this, and our idea is to have a much quicker cycle of improvement and iteration upon that first release to respond to how people are reacting which is very different and exciting.

AH: That’s a really fun way to build and cool that your team was able to pick out what could be a competitive advantage early on. Anything interesting that you did during the creative process to come up with solutions, maybe a particular brainstorm or something?

GS: Well, I think what was a particular challenge around this project was how it operated within our design system, and the components in it. For those who are not familiar, components are a series of Lego blocks that we can assemble to make any sort of interface that feels, behaves and looks like what people expect from the platform. So I think whenever you’re trying to solve a brand new problem, you are faced with a decision of what can we do with your existing Lego blocks? And should we build any new Lego blocks to better suit this problem space?

For reviews, there was a lot of back and forth around like, ‘Hey, what should we do here?’ Because you can always do something with the existing Lego blocks, but it’s just a measure of compromise where you have to consider things like — how often are people doing this? Is this a critical path in the overall journey that requires an extra level of investment? I mean, if designers had their way, everything would be custom, right? [Laughs] But obviously, the reality of a business is that you have to make decisions and considerations and choose the best solution for this given moment in time. And a lot of times like you might get a feel of something, but again, going back to that original point, you always want to check and validate that feeling, and putting it out there sometimes is the best way to validate something that you might not be sure about, to see if the investment is worth it. Every project goes through some of that in terms of what is the best solution, but I think when you’re entering a new area like this, it tends to happen a bit more often and so I think that was a considerable, unique characteristic of reviews.

AH: Makes sense — it’s all about collaboration and give and take to make the right decision. So, here at Klaviyo one of our design values is trustworthy. I’m curious, how did you all work that into reviews?

GS: So to me reviews are all about trust. Reviews are taking the customer’s voice and opinion and using that to add trust to your brand and add social proof and validation that this is a product that real people like me and you are using and are saying its great. Throughout my research into this area, I found certain interesting insights about, you know, human psychology when it comes to trust. So, for example, a lot of people might think that having a perfect, 5 stars out of 5 product is the most trustworthy, but research shows that people actually trust products that are around 4.8 or 4.7 because everyone understands that not everything can be perfect. So when something looks too good to be true, people are skeptical, especially when you think about how now with technologies like AI and generative creation of content it’s easy for someone to whip up text. For us, it was key to try to find ways to take the data that we have and that we’re collecting from reviews and make it very clear that this is real and try to use different signifiers to do that, like promoting people to take pictures, so that it’s more realistic. We even consider things like the presentation of a review — if you go to a product’s page, everything is studio-level quality and that’s great, but people also want to see the real lighting, the flashlight on the cell phone look, and things like that.

AH: Totally. That’s super interesting, the psychology piece and making it more human, even though it’s technology. We want that to come through in the design. Did you run into any technical limitations as you started to build?

GS: It’s the piece around the design system, but ultimately, I think we are shipping with the right set of compromises where we feel like we got to do some new stuff as well. It’s not as if we compromise on everything. But in terms of reaching an MVP, you gotta sometimes cut some features — it’s not that we won’t do those but about what do you do first? Not everything is technically feasible for day one.

On the design side, I had to make several different states of the product — this is the initial release. This is subsequent — slicing the long-term goal into little pieces. I think that helps to drive the conversation because when a stakeholder is seeing a screen that has a lot of stuff in it, depending on the stakeholder, that might be either exciting or anxiety-inducing. [Laughs] Like if you’re talking to an engineer and they see all those features they might start asking ‘Oh, what is this? And this?’ and you’d have to stop and explain ‘No, no, no, don’t worry about that for now.’ So making sure that we’re always focusing on what’s the right thing to show to the right set of stakeholders. That wasn’t quite the question, but that was just something that came to my mind.

AH: And incrementality leaves room for more exciting things to come which is always good. All right, what’s the biggest challenge you had to overcome while designing and building reviews?

GS: So one interesting technical challenge that we had is we looked into how people are using review content in their emails before we released this product and the reality is that people just copy and paste quotes. The thing about that is you can copy and paste anything and it’s also laborious to do that because you have to do all the work by yourself. So we’re trying to find ways to take all the data from things that people have said and use some sort of AI technology to help us parse through all that data and find the strongest sentiment from each review and help bring that over to their emails so that they can easily take the strongest phrases that people are saying and put that into their messages. So we built this AI tech that analyzes each review and finds the short quote or phrase that you can use in your message. That’s an interesting problem because we wanted to do something that was better than the existing copy and paste and we also wanted to do something that would save time. In the future, we want to allow people to also choose other parts that are not just the AI selection because it doesn’t get right every time. But as it gets better, it should become more correct each iteration cycle.

AH: That’s really cool. Always fun when we can toss in a little AI magic in there and then connecting back to the Klaviyo app makes the whole thing feel like a really good package. On the flip side, what are you the most proud of thinking back over the process of building reviews?

GS: I think we’re fairly confident at this time, but again we’ll see [laughs], that what we are putting out there in terms of helping people get the most out of a reviews program meets their needs and can help them save time. The AI quote is an example of a saving time feature, but another thing that we did was with moderation.

Moderation plays a huge part in the time that you spend with reviews. There’s a bit of setup, but once you’re set up, most of your time with reviews is spent moderating — making sure that the things that you’re putting on your site are okay. And we built reviews so that the task of moderation has a lot of different ways that you can save time. For example, all the things that you have pending are presented on the first page, so you don’t have to go into multiple pages to see any questions or reviews that are pending. And this is something that came directly from feedback that we received from people using the original app.

So I think I want to be proud, but it’s hard because it’s not out yet. But I think there’s a lot of potential for some of these ideas. We have more features that we want to do in the future that are going to be aligned with that same ethos of saving time — like doing sentiment analysis, for example, or using AI technology to get the sentiment of [reviews] and then also potentially flag ones if someone puts a curse word in your review, for example. People get mad sometimes on the internet, as we know, so having a filter for that could be helpful. We’re building an inbox of tasks that people have to get through, so being able to sift through those tasks pretty quickly and efficiently is our goal.

AH: I like that — something we hear from customers all the time is that they don’t have enough time. So very smart. This next question is kind of similar, but do you have a favorite memory working with a team on reviews?

GS: We got to meet in person a few times. We’ve got to go to the office, which is great — it’s a different dynamic. I’m glad that we were able to do that early on in the project as we were kicking things off. That’s the moment that you’re trying to get a sense of who you’re working with, how they’re like, and what their way of working is and I think you get a sense of that quickly when you’re in person. And of course, I’m looking forward to the release of it so we can also celebrate. So I guess a favorite future memory!

AH: Favorite future memory, lock it in! Cool, and you’ve been alluding to this throughout but what happens next for you and reviews?

GS: I’m looking forward to continuing working on those features and iterating and learning from the initial release so we can continue to deliver value to this new initiative.

AH: So you’re looking forward to getting reviews on your new product, reviews. Sounds good.

GS: Yeah! [Laughs] We’re always open to feedback!

AH: And last question, do you have any general advice for designers who are working on a net new product line like this?

GS: When you’re entering a new area or vertical, it’s a little overwhelming at times because you’re going against people that have been doing this for years. And I think you just gotta do your best to absorb that and then understand that, ‘All right [our first version] is not going to have all these things that these competitors have’, so how can you find ways to set yourself apart? In our case, a lot of the strength comes from consolidation — being all in one platform and trying to find ways to connect with other areas and unlock value that way. If you’re starting something new at a new company, you might not have that, but it’s finding the little things. Little inefficiencies in these other competitors that you can potentially innovate on and do differently. There might be some gravitation to do things in a certain way, but maybe that’s also an opportunity to do it in a different way and try to stand out through that. I think reviews is an interesting area because there are so many surfaces. For example, you have people filling in the review as a customer that bought something — we didn’t even talk about that on this interview! — but you also have the people they are moderating and using that review to promote their brand. So there are all these different areas where you can find ways to stand out and do things in a different way.

⭐️✍️— This is the first big release from our ventures team — props to Gui & team on a job well done. Can’t wait to see whats next with reviews and the ventures team as a whole!

Does taking on the big challenges sound up your alley? We’re always looking for great people to join our team.

Behind the Pixels was originally published in Klaviyo Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Influencing the roadmap is something I’ve attempted many times in my career, both successfully and unsuccessfully. What I have learned is that this is more of an art than a science, but there are still some fundamental steps that can expedite turning your ideas into reality.

1. Build credibility and co-create

Roadmap influence can happen at large and small scales. Start small by proposing alternative solutions to existing projects, advocating for unaddressed design debt, or participating more actively in quarterly planning. Over time, you will build your credibility cross-functionally as a strategic thought partner so that when a big idea comes, your stakeholders are more inclined to listen.

Once you have that big idea, seek fast feedback from other designers, product managers, engineers, and users. Workshop the idea together through design sprints, brainstorms, or casual chats so that your teammates can put their stamp on it and help level it up. When others feel a sense of shared ownership, they are far more likely to become your champion.

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” — African proverb

2. Design a visual

As designers, our ability to visualize ideas is a superpower. Create a visual to inspire others and help them grasp your concept. I don’t recommend a high-fidelity vision prototype at this stage. Those are great for when you want to wow a crowd, but they run the risk of looking too “future state”, feeling unattainable, or distracting viewers with the UI details. Low-fidelity wireframes and hand-drawn sketches are more successful because they provide enough detail for comprehension while still leaving space for meaningful input from others.

3. Put on your product manager hat

To get your idea into a roadmap you will need to align it to your company’s overall product strategy and business objectives. Put yourself in the shoes of a Product Manager and objectively evaluate your idea’s feasibility and alignment with organizational goals. Identify potential tradeoffs, anticipate objections, and prepare compelling arguments to address concerns that decision-makers may have. You may even consider drafting a light product spec or t-shirt sizing the initiative with an engineer. Having a clear plan for implementation in your narrative will help sell it through.

4. Build buzz up the ladder

Pitching your idea can feel daunting for many designers, and requires a little bravery. You don’t need to give a large presentation or post to your general Slack channel out of the gate. Start by scheduling a few 15-minute meetings with cross-functional partners whom you’ve built relationships with over time. Identify individuals who hold influence within the company and can guide you to other influential leaders. Quickly share with them your visual, the estimated level of effort, and the idea’s value to the business and user. Ask each for feedback and suggestions on whom else to engage with. Gradually, you’ll gain project champions and find your way into the room where the decision makers are.

5. Don’t give up

Ultimately, there are a lot of factors that are completely out of your control as a designer. Staffing, conflicting priorities, timing, etc can all stand in the way. But what feels like a “no”, might actually be a “not right now”. So continue to refine your idea based on feedback and bring it up when it’s relevant in conversations. Eventually, the stars might align.

Bringing a design-driven idea to fruition requires perseverance, stepping outside of your comfort zone, and effective communication. Embrace the challenge, don’t get discouraged, and never underestimate the power your passion has on influencing others. It may take some time for you to refine this skill, but once you start seeing your design-driven ideas influencing your company’s direction, the product you work on will improve and your experience as a designer will feel so much more meaningful.

Special shoutout to the design influencers I’ve learned from who helped me build this playbook Yeny Pardini Julie Lungaro Pree Kolari

5 steps for getting your design-driven ideas into the product roadmap was originally published in Klaviyo Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Behind the Pixels is a conversational blog series that aims to give a glimpse into the work & life of being a designer at Klaviyo

AH: Let’s start off by having you introduce yourself — how long have you been a product designer and how long have you been at Klaviyo, which is a decently long time at this point!

GD: It’s crazy. My name is Griffin. I’ve been a product designer for four or five years now. I didn’t study product design at all — totally self taught — I started off doing graphic design, and then joined a startup in Boston where I was their first design hire. There, I did all of the marketing design stuff and all of the product stuff. After about a year, I wanted to stop doing marketing so made the switch fully into product design. So I would say probably a full four years now. I joined Klaviyo April 1, 2020 right when the pandemic was kicking off and have been here ever since doing product design, loving it.

AH: That was a great day for me since you were coming to help on my team! Okay, you’ve done lots of projects since then, but recently you were on a very tricky, very well known page of the product. Can you give a little introduction into what we’re talking about today?

GD: Yes, so most recently, and I guess not too recently, it’s been about a year, have been working on Klaviyo’s homepage. This was a page that, as far as I know, hasn’t been touched since Klaviyo was first released back in 2013. So it’s a page that customers are very used to and comfortable with. And we really just wanted to, one, update the UI of it to start matching the rest of our app as we’ve been improving it, and two, present information for our users that’s a little bit more relevant than just listing out all of your flows and all of your campaigns that are happening in a certain time period. A primary goal was to make things a little bit more specific with some more actionable data that allows us to drive users directly into that content to make changes and view results far quicker.

AH: Connecting it to the rest of the app and also correcting some information too which is good. The team had some changes and switches during the time you worked on it. Maybe a little bit of context around the team?

GD: Most recently, we’re made up of three engineers, a PM and myself on the design side. We also have a design researcher and a product analyst who’ve both been supporting the team as well. But over the past year, we’ve had a little bit of turnover and some PMs that have been shifting. Four different PMs have come in and out of the project over the last year which has been super interesting, you know, dealing with different processes and mindsets, thoughts, goals, and having to level-set over the year and make sure everyone’s on the same page as it’s changed so much.

AH: Yeah, of course which answers my question about the difficulties of a shifting team. So then maybe talk to us about the research phase. What were you all researching and what were some of the findings?

GD: So research… We started off, like I said a year ago, and really our main focus was just on ‘Hey, what’s working on this page, what’s not working for you?’ and how can we be improving that? So that was one of our biggest focuses. I guess it’s kind of weird because we didn’t end up shipping a lot of the stuff that we had originally researched and focused on, and it ended up being a reskin of the old UX, but a lot of [the original research] was focused on how we could be improving. Understanding where people go from home, and how we can make that faster and easier for our users. In the original home, you could click into certain campaigns and flows, but there’s really only revenue data tied to that. On top of that, we learned that people really just jump into reports right away. People want to be able to understand some more data right away. So understanding what level of information people want to see when they first jump into Klaviyo and then where they go after that.

AH: So you all found that home actually might serve a different purpose than it was originally used for, but then you ended up realizing that your scope couldn’t solve some of the bigger issues. Do you want to talk about how you found other areas needed to be improved in order to eventually get to the place that you wanted to go with home?

GD: For sure. Flows is a good example of that. Our campaigns list page, for example, has all of your campaigns listed out and you can search, filter, and see all of the data attached to each campaign. But within the last year, you weren’t able to do that on the flows list page. That space was really just a list of all of your flows with some of the logic listed out in the details, but there was no data tied to that. So users were having to rely on the homepage because that was the only place where you could see a list of all your flows that were live during a certain time period with the revenue tied to it. We heard from users that it didn’t really make sense for you to be relying on the homepage to be looking at all of that data. So we thought, let’s also take a step back, use some of our engineering resources, design resources, product resources, and look at a flows list page, revamp that as well so then we can use home in a more effective way. We don’t need to overload home with data. We can use the flows list page, give people information that they want to be seeing there and then utilize the homepage as more of an entry point that’s giving you that high level information without having to overload you with all that other data.

AH: Yes, you all may not have been able to do it all in the first pass, but I like that we’re starting to unload a few things and make home not take on so much of the burden of reporting. Feels like a good long term goal.

So then thinking about the creative process and some of the tools that we use, was there a particular brainstorm or activity that you did while coming up with concepts that was particularly helpful?

GD: So less about specific tools or activities, I’ve found that oftentimes it’s designers who are popping into brainstorms and thinking through stuff. However, I’ve been super fortunate to work with engineers who are very good product-thinkers as well. I make an effort to bring my team members who are engineers or PMs, product analysts, researchers all into that room so everyone can have a say. I personally like to give everyone that voice because I don’t particularly like a relationship with engineers where I make choices and then just pass things over to engineers, saying, ‘Here, do this, do that’ — I want them to feel empowered. So it’s definitely a learning curve, because engineers aren’t always product-focused. But over the last year, I’ve seen tremendous growth from them being able to think through things and then it helps down the line when you’re a QA-ing, trying to release things, or make some decisions where your engineers end up providing that [product] feedback. It’s just getting more people to have that keen eye when it comes to making product decisions. It’s been really cool and fun to see the growth across our entire team and having people have that confidence to make decisions and raise questions when things might not look right. I can only do so much and catch so much stuff. I tried to catch everything, but even just in the last couple of days of QA-ing home both of our engineers have brought things to my attention that I hadn’t noticed before, which is pretty cool.

AH: I can attest, they’re great. And just the idea of co-creation with the team is a pretty cool way to work. Then on the engineering side, did you all run into any technical limitations? And how did you adjust?

GD: Yes, for sure. During all of this, we’ve been revamping our design system. So that definitely has played a role because we have been using a lot of new components that were just being built. We were the guinea pigs there and, happy to do it — happy to use some of our new cards, use some of our new tables, some of our new drop downs. But there’s also some things that might have been overlooked when those new components were originally being built. So we had the opportunity to basically do an extended deep-dive QA on those components, to make sure that they were actually fitting the needs for everything like in-app that’s going to be using it. Home was one of the first teams to use quite a few components.

Load times are another technical limitation we dealt with. We’ve had a huge request since we released the product to add more timeframes and custom timeframes. So it’s this really interesting balance between how much we can give to our users because we know that they want these certain things versus giving them an optimal experience. Like technically we can give users the ability to go back in time as far as possible, but we run into some loading issues there. Pages may timeout or pages may take a very long time to load and that’s really not a good user experience for our users. So we’ve decided to cap it at 180 days in the past, which should give users ample timeframes to do the reporting comparisons that they want to be doing, especially on home, and then they can then dive deeper into say the Overview dashboard or different reporting surfaces and do more in depth reporting there, where there’s not as much data that might need to be loaded or those might just be built in a different way that they are able to load all that information quicker.

AH: It goes back to what you said, if the true purpose of home is not to be a deep dive reporting area. Do you need to have deep-dive analytic features on there? But then we need to have those available somewhere else.

GD: For sure. It’s been a reporting surface historically, and I almost don’t view it as a reporting surface. Home is a surface where you get a gauge of what’s happening in the now and then you can dive in deeper and look at specific flows or campaigns, individual ones or marketing initiatives in those product areas as a whole and go to those areas to look at the overall performance. You probably don’t need to do that on home.

AH: This is a really good segue into my next question about change aversion. So you’re saying home has historically been used as a reporting space where people relied on it for certain analytics they couldn’t find elsewhere and it’s also the most trafficked page in Klaviyo. How did you all balance knowing that there would definitely be change aversion versus making changes for the eventual good in the long term, even if we’re not there quite yet?

GD: Absolutely. So I think overall at Klaviyo and especially with this project, we’re really focused on looking at the data and trying to understand what success means for our users. So I mean, one of the things we look at internally is like an “FII score”, which stands for fast, intuitive, and inspirational. It’s these three pillars of our design team that we try to focus on when we ship features and make product decisions. So yes, change happens. Change might not be loved by everyone initially, but we know, based off of looking at that data, that these changes that we’ve implemented are actually helping users immediately. We’re increasing the speed in which users can do things. The FII score increased by over 14 percent, with an average 35% increase in a task success rate, and a 15% increase in speed compared to the old home. So it’s those kinds of things that we’re more focused and putting more emphasis on than we are on changing things and having users be frustrated by those changes that we’re making. We know that things might have moved or look different, but they’re completing their tasks faster and more effectively in Klaviyo which really is our main goal.

AH: Totally. What was the biggest challenge to overcome in the process of building home?

GD: I think the personnel changes were definitely difficult, and with that there were some changing and competing priorities during the process which made it difficult to navigate. But I think that the biggest thing is that home captures so many different product areas, and there’s so many different opinions and people who care deeply about their individual product areas. It’s kind of a unique place to be working on a feature that touches literally everything. In a lot of the work I’ve done so far, I was really focused on just flows, just campaigns or just a certain report, but this was a feature that we needed to go out and get buy-in from stakeholders across the entire company (plus our customers, plus CSMs, plus leaders). It was an all hands on deck effort across Klaviyo and that was a little bit challenging to navigate at times because there are so many differing opinions and priorities when it comes to these different product areas and finding that balance between them all.

AH: 100% — on the flip side, what are you most proud of thinking back across the process?

GD: That we shipped it [Laughs]. But no, I go back to that data and I’ve been very happy to see we’re hitting the numbers that we want to be hitting and, at the end of the day, we know that we are providing more value to our users than they were getting before.

AH: And it’s not the end, which leads to my next question — like you said, it ended up being more of a reskin with some quality of life improvements, but sounds like there’s more coming. Can you tease any of the things that you’re thinking about as we go forward?

GD: Yeah, it’s gonna get faster, it’s gonna get more accessible. But there’s also a lot of work that’s happening that’s going to make the entire reporting journey a lot better. From the homepage all the way through to individual objects. This is just the beginning of a much larger reporting initiative that we are undertaking on the design and product side at Klaviyo.

AH: Very exciting. Okay, final question, any advice for other designers who might be working on a very visible piece of their product, like home?

GD: Talk to as many people as you possibly can! Make sure everyone is aware early and often about ideas, thoughts, concepts that you have. Don’t be afraid to take and make bold decisions, because that’s really the only way to spark change and make progress. When you have ideas, speak up and challenge other people’s opinions as well. People aren’t always gonna love what you’re doing, but at the end of the day, you have the most knowledge around that particular product area. I’ve been working on it for a year, there’s been a lot of people who came in and out of it — have the confidence to speak up and make firm decisions, but also be able to back them up data at the same time.

🏡 🚧 — Redoing the most visited page in a product is no small feat. My compliments to Griffin & team. Excited for the future of home and the overall Klaviyo analytics experience!

Does taking on the big challenges sound up your alley? We’re always looking for great people to join our team.

Behind the Pixels was originally published in Klaviyo Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Behind the Pixels is a conversational blog series that aims to give a glimpse into the work & life of being a designer at Klaviyo

AH: So it’s our first Behind the Pixels of the new year and we’ve got an awesome person on today. Can you introduce yourself and then tell us how long you’ve been a Content Designer and how long you’ve been at Klaviyo?

EK: Hello, Ally! I feel like I’m on a talk show. [Laughs] I’m Erin Kelly and I’ve been a Content Designer for almost 3 years now. I started at Klaviyo in December of 2021 which is so crazy. Jack, a Senior Content Designer here, and I started on the same day and it’s been a party ever since. I remember our first few weeks, everyone was coming to us with so much energy and so many challenges.

AH: It’s true — all of us were very excited for you to join. But if I’m being honest looking back, I don’t think we quite understood exactly what content design would encompass. So can you give us the lowdown on what is content design at a high level?

EK: At a high level, it’s guiding users through Klaviyo in the way that makes sense to them. Content design starts at the very beginning of a project. We have to be on the same exact page as our designers– finding out the words that our users use, the way they think about things, understanding their mental model– and using that to inform the entire experience. There’s the concept of full stack content design — which is the idea that content designers can successfully contribute to a project at every stage, start to finish. Beth Dunn describes it in her book Cultivating Content Design as “research and brainstorming, determining strategy and scope, sketching out flows, testing for usability and accessibility, proofreading and polishing the final result, measuring success and iterating based on the results.” While that doesn’t encompass it all, I think it does a good job at illustrating it’s more than just the words– a common misconception.

AH: Totally, so it’s more than just the copy. It’s definitely an interesting way to think about the problems. I’m curious, what drew you to a career in content design?

EK: There’s an opportunity to be creative, but there’s also an opportunity to use psychology and guide people through these experiences. I’m very, very collaborative. I need to be working with other people to solve a problem. Also, I always need to understand the ‘why’ behind anything I do. I can’t just do something without understanding why we’re doing it, because there’s no desire for me to get it done. Not only my role, but also Klaviyo uses the ‘why’ to drive our decisions, so I’m really grateful to have something that keeps me motivated every day.

AH: Cool, and I know you’ve worked with a bunch of different people in your year and change here. Can you go through an example or maybe a particular project that is a good example for people to understand content design in action?

EK: Yes! Last year, we didn’t have a clear workflow or experience for users who want to set up SMS. We had previously called it “Get your phone number.” And while that’s true, it’s more than that. Users are setting up SMS as a marketing strategy for their business. And we [Klaviyo] needed to design an experience that made users feel ready, and successfully set up with their new channel. I worked with Sara Reich, Senior Product Designer, and we successfully created a workflow for users to get started using SMS if they were brand new.

AH: So I’m curious because ‘Get a phone number’ seems like pretty simple content. [Laughs] But obviously, there was more to it. How did you kick off that project or begin to understand what the problem was and how you wanted to solve it together?

EK: When we started, we looked at what was working, what wasn’t working, and what was going to be the most scalable solution. We had to take those 3 things and make them work together. We looked at the current flow and worked with our design research partner to understand issues through user research and then took it from there.

What we found was that we weren’t using content that works for user needs and they didn’t know what was going on. I don’t know if you remember, but it was just a modal and a ton of legal language. Users would click a button and would get this ginormous modal of things you can’t send, then click OK. All we did was say, “You’re set up now!” but content wasn’t clear. We didn’t ask what countries they wanted to send to, or describe new terms to them. Users would just show up to their settings and they’d have SMS working but [we] weren’t guiding them how they should.

AH: So the brevity was there, but the logic and the idea of the problem we were trying to solve was totally missing. So moving on to the creative process, obviously on the design side we have all these different brainstorms and activities we do to come up with ideas & designs, so I’m curious is there a particular brainstorm activity that is your go-to for content design?

EK: There’s an activity I’ll do with designers and I’ll copy it below. Truly, I love the Zoom calls where we’re just going through competitors and inspiration sites together. It might be for 30 minutes or maybe for an hour where we’re just getting in the creative mindset and our brains go into ideation mode thinking: “We could do this. Or we could do this. OR! We could do this…” The creative solutioning together really sparks the excitement for the problem that we’re going to solve.

AH: That’s cool. And you talked about collaboration being one of your favorite parts of the process. Product teams have all these people in different roles and it seems like you work with a bunch of them. What does that collaboration look like for you?

EK: When I start a project with a designer, first I have a meeting with them to discuss working styles. As a content designer, it’s important to know that every designer works differently. Luckily, I can mold to different working styles pretty well. I don’t know if that’s a personality thing or what, but I’ll ask questions like– “Would you rather use Slack to talk about these things? Would you rather use Figma comments?” Whatever it is, I just need to know what the best communication methods are throughout our project so we can work effectively and efficiently.

We also have our product partners. I’m always pretty close to the product manager because they have the technical knowledge that I need to write clear content. They have that back-end and front-end mindset that is really great for a partner to have. Right now, Stephen, a Product Designer, and I work together on the developer experience team and we both ask a million questions. Our product manager, Scott, slays. He taught Stephen and I how to make API calls using Klaviyo’s API and that was such a great experience.

AH: That’s awesome. And now thinking over the last year and all the different projects you’ve been on, is there a favorite memory of working here so far?

EK: Last May I met my coworkers in person and saw the office for the first time! Flavia introduced me to my new favorite pastry from Tatte and I beat Ke in Mario Kart. So the trip was a huge win. But then we had the Chicago meet up and that was a blast too! Basically any time I can see my coworkers in person, I have the time of my life.

AH: Getting to know the people you’re working with — it’s part of what makes the work even more fun. I think that’s awesome. Okay, thinking about the future. You’ve completed your first year, but the content team is relatively in its infancy here. What are the biggest opportunities we have for your team in the next couple years at Klaviyo?

EK: I think making our content design system public is going to be the biggest, most exciting thing not just for our team, but for the content design industry. We want to be a company that has a content design system that works not just for Klaviyo’s product today, but for the future of Klaviyo and for other companies that are looking to build out content design or need guidance. But this month specifically, I’m working with Lauren on our inclusive language guidelines. We’re so excited to make Klaviyo more inclusive and more accessible.

AH: It’s going to level up Klaviyo and then you all can create the gold standard for others! That’s actually a really good segway into my final question, do you have any advice for smaller teams or people just starting out who are not lucky enough to have an Erin Kelly and her team at their company. Where should they start?

EK: You don’t need to read all of the books, or the blog posts, or watch the conference talks. You just need to take a couple minutes and read design system guidance. How you frame and structure content within your components shapes the whole experience. When we have a consistent way for users to digest and consume information that they’ve already seen before, they can move through Klaviyo faster and start seeing value faster.

Those guidelines have been curated for so many use cases that work and they’ve been looked at by so many people. Doing it right is important and doing it consistently is also important. I think reading industry best practices for content, and reading content design system guidance is going to help anyone a ton.

AH: I like it — you don’t have to be afraid that you’re copying what other people have. Instead incorporate those best practices into what you’re starting with and then you have a good foundation to build on.

EK: Yep, that’s it!

🗒👩‍🎨 — It’s been an absolute delight working with Erin & the content team. Can’t wait to continue to watch content level-up our work here at Klaviyo!

Does partnering with a group of talented content designers sound like fun? We’re always looking for great people to join our team.

Behind the Pixels was originally published in Klaviyo Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of the special treats of working as a behavioral designer is observing the demonstration of behavioral science practices across disciplines. Below are some principles I’ve observed (at work) over the years .

It’s the context, not the person

As behavioral designers, we know that one’s context affects one’s decision-making. We’ve learned this through studies on jam choice, wine selection, and order effects. Seemingly small design choices matter, especially in the aggregate.

Just as the music in a wine store can affect our wine choice, our personal environment can affect how we show up at work. What’s the implication? If someone seems out of sorts, ask about their environment!

Or, as social psychologists Lee Ross and Richard Nisbett advise, consider asking “What were the details of the immediate context of the behavior? How was the situation construed by the actor? And what was the broader social context or social system within which the actors were functioning?” Examining the situation, not the person, means giving colleagues the benefit of the doubt. We know our colleagues have the best intentions!

And, when examining how we might improve, turn the question to a challenge about the context. We know that if we change the context, it’s likely to spur a change in behavior.

No sunk costs

After we invest our time, effort, and resources into something we have a tendency to see that thing through. Once we’ve sunk costs into something, we want to keep going! I know I’ve pushed for an idea for a bit too long because of the resources we’d invested.

But from work on idea generation, we’ve seen that oftentimes we arrive at our one stellar idea after thinking through many others. On the path toward that one stellar idea, it’s important to accept the sunk costs. In fact, waving goodbye to those sunk costs is a positive sign — it demonstrates how our thinking has evolved!

Some of my favorite collaborations have been with folks who accept the sunk costs as an inevitable part of the design process. I’ve found that this mentality inspires idea generation, maintains forward momentum, and facilitates identifying that great end product collaboratively and quickly.

Framing matters

Just ask your content colleagues — language is powerful. How we frame concepts steers the perceptions of our users and builds user mental models for how something works. (Metaphors are a great example powerful framing.)

Framing of collaboration on a work project matters, too! Our framing of work together steers partner perceptions that build our mental models for how we work together. When I frame collaboration, I try to frame it in a way that brings us together while acknowledging we’re here to solve hard problems. As I do this, I channel a visual of Liz Fosslien’s — this is about us and the problem. If we confront a tension in the design process, this tension isn’t about your idea or my idea, it’s about us and solving the problem together. And by the way, challenges like this are why we’re here! We’re not here for the easy stuff, we’re here for the gnarly challenging stuff.

My favorite projects haven’t been the easy ones. My favorite projects have been the ones that pushed me, expanded my perception of my capabilities, and asked more from me than I knew I could give. In each of those projects, my colleagues and I had a strong framing of us against the problem.

Pro tip: This framing helps with those sunk costs!

Connect to intrinsic motivation

We’re intrinsically motivated to do something when we find it inherently enjoyable. Working with intrinsic motivation means connecting work to tasks that colleagues naturally enjoy or are naturally motivated to do.

Working on volunteer projects I learned that inquiring about colleagues’ why at a project kick-off surfaces each teammate’s intrinsic motivation. Then, when we divided the work, we prioritized positioning each teammate to the project phase that connected with their intrinsic motivation. Personally, I saw how this translated to a strong sense of pride in the work, and it made me proud to support a colleague’s growth. A simple round of one question — what excites you about this project? — can facilitate this.

My career has grown through raising my hand for projects connected with my intrinsic motivation. In fact, it’s how I found the field of behavioral design! Identifying teammates’ intrinsic motivation is an important step to supporting their professional growth and this energy can be powerful fuel for the team.

Show progress

Showing progress is motivating! Tracking progress makes often intangible growth tangible, and seeing progression is motivating.

How you track progress should be modified for you and your team. Personally, I’ve seen a variety of tactics work:

• Map detailed sub-steps in your work tracking software. Checking items off of that list shows incremental progress to you and your team. (Here at Klaviyo we use monday.)
• Reflect on what you’re proud of during a team ritual. This public declaration can inspire those around you. And, taking a moment to reflect on your performance accomplishments builds your sense of self-efficacy or confidence. (Shout out to Klaviyo, Jason Breen, who let me in on this team ritual of his.)
• Use sticky notes. A mentor of mine wrote about how she survived the initial days of COVID isolation through tracking progress toward her goals — and it involved a lot of sticky notes. Seeing progress matters.

We spend a great deal of time at work. Seemingly small practices — like tracking that progress towards a goal — matter, especially when examined in the aggregate.

Connect to shared vision

We like to be a part of something. “Something” can be big — redefining an entire field of work , for example — or it can be seemingly small — we treat others with respect here.

Take it from the folks at BetterUp, “the data show that, collectively, 1) our connections to others and 2) our connection to the work itself matter the most for intent to stay [at our current work place]”. Tracking progress is important, and especially powerful when this progress is connected to a broader, shared, vision. When we feel like we’re a part of something, we feel a stronger sense of belonging, connection, and mattering. Each of these can influence retention and productivity. Perhaps more importantly, these feelings facilitate psychological safety, sharing of ideas, and enjoyment. And, I know that I prefer to enjoy my work!

Connecting our work — yes, even those seemingly small tasks! — to the broader organizational mission and vision helps us feel connected and like we’re a part of something. This shared sense of meaning simply makes us feel good.

Define social scripts

Being a part of something also provides guidelines on how to behave. These guidelines create synchrony, which benefits group cohesion.

One of my favorite examples of defining social scripts comes from The Art of Gathering author, Priya Parker. In an interview, Parker describes a gathering with a very specific social script. This gathering was titled, “Worn-Out Moms Hootenanny” and had a simple rule, a shared (and fun) consequence for talking about your kids. In Parker’s telling, the event was a hit.

Simple guidelines about how to behave in a shared work environment give us a shared sense of purpose and promote cohesion. For me, this was unintuitive at first; I’ve always attributed strict rules with compromised space for productivity. Over time I’ve enriched my perspective; and now, when fostering a culture on a team, I like to remind myself of Priya Parker’s advice that guidelines support us.

“Yes, and” mindset

If you’ve ever been a part of an improvisation group, the “yes, and” mindset might sound familiar. This mindset supports cohesive story development on stage and it supports idea development at work.

Despite taking improv classes in high school, I learned about the “yes, and” practice by facilitating design workshops. During these workshops, I witnessed how a simple “yes and” reaction prompted generative ideation. I also saw how this reaction is contagious. One prior client even joked that they were signing up for an adult improv class after our sessions!

As someone who loves exploring ideas together, this “yes and” mindset is one I endeavor to carry into conversations with colleagues (and friends!). (And, shout out to Klaviyo, Diana Reed who shared this as a generative practice to facilitate 1:1 conversations — it’s not only for improv and design workshops, folks!)

Do any of these resonate? What are other principles that you apply to your work? Post in the comments below!

Demonstrating behaviors (at work) was originally published in Klaviyo Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Behind the Pixels is a conversational blog series that aims to give a glimpse into the work & life of being a designer at Klaviyo

In this post we explore how 5 designers utilized their ‘learning stipend’ — an amazing Klaviyo benefit were every year employees have $3k to spend on courses and further education if they choose to.

Learn UI with Yujing Su

AH: Let’s do this. So to start off, can you introduce yourself? Tell us how long you’ve been at Klaviyo and what team you’re on here?

YS: Yeah, so actually three days ago was my one year anniversary, so here for a little over a year. Time flew — really fast. And currently I’m on the infrastructure team specifically collaborating with the product merchandising and C3 teams.

AH: Staying very busy rumor has it… so you took the Learn UI course this year with the learning stipend. Tell us a little bit about that course. How long was it? What was the structure?

YS: It’s a self paced course mostly focusing on improving visual skills and it was virtual of course. To be honest, I haven’t finished it yet. But, it basically covers different topics to improve your visual skills such as alignment, spacing, visual consistency, color choices, typography and creating UI components. Then the last part is about creating your own design portfolio.

AH: Not bad, pretty extensive it sounds like!

YS: Yeah. I heard about Eric, the author of this course, from a blog post where he shares free visual design tips. And that’s very helpful itself and it’s free, so that’s why I signed up for this course. And [the course] is mostly focusing on very practical UI tips, so it’s not just color theory you find in textbooks and in college courses. His course is very much structured so that you can use the tips and implement them in your day to day work. There’s seven chapters and I’m only halfway through, but so far it’s really helpful.

AH: You kind of answered my second question, talking about how you knew his blog, but why did you choose the course? Were you trying to improve a skill?

YS: Mostly to improve my visual design skills. And I feel I’m pretty comfortable working with a design system — my past experience was always working in an established UX team or product design work. But I feel my growth area is to create visual screens from scratch. Especially while I was interviewing for this job, it took me a while to create a visually appealing portfolio without much guidance from a design system.

AH: Totally makes sense. And then what have you learned from this course so far? Has it changed any of the ways that you approach your day to day at Klaviyo?

YS: I think what I learned is being able to create my own visual design or doing a final pixel perfect screen from scratch. Like I said, I’m still working through this course, so I don’t think I’ve used it in my day to day,, but I think definitely it’s going to happen after I finish it. I just have to find the time to do that!

AH: In all the free time that you don’t have, yep, got it! [laughs] So then, so far, what’s the one line takeaway or review you’d give to someone who hasn’t taken the course?

YS: I think this is a great resource for anyone who wants to grow their visual design skills. Because I know many of us are focused on the UX part of product design. So I recommend this course for those who are looking to improve on visual design or if they want to become a visual designer, or join the design systems team. This will be the course for those purposes.

AH: Final question, if you had to give the course a rating, 1–5 stars, what would you give it?

YS: I think it’s like a 4.5. I took a half point off because it is hard to comment without having finished it. But yeah, this course is structured in a way that you listen to the tutorial and then jump into Figma to do your homework exercises. It’s definitely a more hands on course, I just have to do more of the hands on parts. That’s the best way to take full advantage of this course and learn the most from it.

Reforge: Experimentation + Testing with Flavia D’Urso

AH: In Behind the Pixels fashion, why don’t you introduce yourself? What do you do at Klaviyo and what team are you on?

FD: I’m Flavia and I’m on the strategies team. I’m a senior product designer and have been at Klaviyo for a year.

AH: Happy anniversary! Okay, so you took the Reforge Experimentation course with your learning stipend. Tell us a little bit about the course. How long is it? In-person or virtual? How does it work?

FD: The Reforge course is a hybrid between self paced modules completed individually and virtual discussions with the group based on those modules. You are going to get much more out of those conversations and lectures if you have done the modules in advance. Each virtual session had a guest speaker that could speak to real life examples of the material from their own career.

For context,I had just joined Klaviyo — I was originally on the experiments team and I wanted to learn more. The course looked really interesting and came highly recommended. It was more about product experimentation — so how we, internally, might experiment with a feature. Just like the experiments being run on the strategies team currently. It strangely overlapped with customer empathy for me, to think about how our customers might think through the process of experimentation, especially upmarket customers. So while it wasn’t exactly what I expected, it was cool.

AH: Very interesting. You started to answer this one, but why did you choose to take it? Was it a new skill? Sounds like maybe it was influenced by your team?

FD: Yes, definitely. I felt like I had not been on a team that dealt with experimentation explicitly. The team includes very data science-focused work and folks who are steeped in that language and I just wanted to update my understanding of the problem space. That was the main motivation for picking that course.

AH: Cool. And you started to speak to this too, but tell us a little bit more about what you learned and then how it changed or didn’t change your approach to your day to day work at Klaviyo?

FD: It was definitely interesting, because I think there were a couple moments that, again, provided unexpected crossover. The takeaway for me was also a lot of ‘understanding the problem’ — how would you, mainly product folks, set up an experiment and understand the need for experimentation. A lot of that included questioning around ‘what’s going on?’ And I was in that headspace of like, ‘what’s going on? I’m new to Klaviyo’. So it helped me, coming in cold, to frame my questions around auditing a new product and joining a particular team. I was asking myself throughout — What are my questions? What are my assumptions? How do I want to answer those questions? This experimentation setup was actually a helpful mental framework for joining a new team which is great. While I haven’t run a direct experiment since taking the course I have all my notes for when I do!

AH: Awesome. Then for someone who hasn’t taken this course, what’s the one-line takeaway or your quick review on it?

FD: Put your product and strategy hat on and think about how to iterate quickly and experiment. But as a designer, I think it’d be cool.

AH: And then the final question, if you had to give the course a rating, 1–5 stars, what would you give it?

FD: I want to be truthful… I’d give it a three and a half. While that may sound low, I think it is mainly due to the emphasis on the community aspect between sessions and the energy and engagement wasn’t quite there compared to other cohorts and programs I have been a part of. So I think that this course was interesting in terms of its subject matter, but I think its broader goals of having a strong community feel, where everyone’s asking each other questions, isn’t quite there yet.

Strategic Thinking for the CXO with Mike Oren

AH: You’ve actually already been on Behind the Pixels, so our readership might know about your background but for someone new to the blog, do you want to give a quick intro into who you are and what you do at Klaviyo?

MO: I’m Mike Oren and I’m Head of Design Research at Klaviyo.

AH: And you took a super interesting sounding course called Strategic Thinking for the CXO. Tell us a little bit about that course. How long was it? What was the structure?

MO: So I originally thought it was six weeks but it’s apparently eight weeks. [laughs] But that included an introduction and some fluffy content — pretty typical for normal college courses as well, so it’s not a big deal. What was cool about it versus other online courses I’ve taken is that it did mix self guided learning with a couple of optional live courses where the professor would come in and go a little bit deeper on some of the topics.

The other thing I’ll point out is that despite it having the acronym of CXO, and a lot of people in design thinking that the X stands for experience, it’s actually more of a generic placeholder ‘x’ for any type of C-suite executive. So it’s not specific to design, it’s more of a business strategies course.

AH: Ah, the trick ‘x’, not actually representing ‘experience’. All right. So then why did you choose this course? Was this a new skill you’re trying to build or new way of thinking? What was the thought process?

MO: I’ve taken a couple of different strategy courses that were usually more specialized. I really like the one that HBS online has with Clayton Christensen’s Disruptive Strategies. [Strategic Thinking for the CXO] was more of an overview of different strategic frameworks. And as someone who’s led design-strategy practices at past companies, in general, good research is strategic and good strategy leverages research. So being able to understand some frameworks that are being used by some of my partners is key. Maybe less so here than at some bigger corporations, but just generally speaking the language of partners is always important to me. So that’s one of the reasons why I’ve been taking lots of different business-related classes.

AH: Maybe I should start taking courses like this giving all the communication we’re doing with our partners these days.

MO: One of my favorites I took was actually this Innovating with Finance course out of Stanford, but they don’t tend to teach it anymore. That was cool too, because it also talked about how startup financing works and helps explain why right now capital is very hard to get — basically how investors decide whether or not to put their money into the market versus a startup versus just putting it in something very safe, like treasury bonds.

AH: So interesting. I might look that up myself. Going back to the Strategic Thinking course, what did you learn from taking it? And then has it changed the way you approach your day to day at Klaviyo?

MO: I’d say the number one thing I learned was about some different frameworks for thinking about strategy. And it did cover a range of different types of strategy, whether it was strategy to continue business as usual or enter a new market or figure out how to balance a portfolio of products or services within an organization. It hasn’t changed much of my day to day yet at Klaviyo and I don’t know if it’ll change my day to day in the near future either, but as the organization matures, there is going to be more of a need for it. Because at some point, everything becomes too large to be driven by one or two people.

AH: For sure. Prepping for the future, look at you so prepared! All right, what is the one line takeaway or review that you’d give to someone who hasn’t taken the course?

MO: So before the course, most of what I knew about Michael Porter, while I did know five forces existed, I didn’t know what the five forces were exactly and how they interacted. But the biggest one was a quote that I love to quote, which is:

“Strategy is deciding what not to do.”

And all of the frameworks in some way, shape or form really came down to that. They weren’t about identifying what the organization isn’t doing that it should be doing, it’s about how every organization only has so many people and so much money to go around — how can it make sure that it’s doing the things that are going to move the needle the most, and help them with their end goals?

AH: That’s a cool way to think about it. Awesome. And then finally, if you had to give the course a rating, 1–5 stars, what would you give it?

MO: I’d probably give this one a 5 and again, mostly because you do actually get some live interaction with faculty. Like HBS (Harvard Business School) online does have a couple like that, but honestly the ones that are live tend to have about 60 to 100 students. So you don’t really get your questions answered half the time. This one was like 30 or 40 students or something a little bit more reasonable. So if I had a question, and it was in a live session, it got answered and I appreciate that. It also had a live TA which is also kind of an exception for a lot of these online classes. So that was cool.

Memorizely Design Systems with Mahima Rao

AH: Why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself. What team are you on and what do you do at Klaviyo?

MR: I’m Mahima and I’m a product designer on the data science team. We are currently working on analytical insights experiments that will lay the foundation for some super exciting things to come next year!

AH: Cool and you are taking the Memorizely Design Systems course. Tell us a little bit about it. How long is it? In-person or virtual? How does it work?

MR: So I’m currently taking a five week course with Memorizely. It is virtual, and we have two classes a week. The first is a two hour long session where we actually learn things about topics for that week. And then an hour-long co-working session, which is super helpful. It is structured in a way where we meet on Zoom and I think the good thing is everyone keeps their camera on. It’s super discussion-oriented and everyone asks questions. I think over the five weeks we will build our own design system and learn as we go through that. I’ve finished two weeks and I’ve already started learning so many things.

I think what’s really amazing is I can always come back to our design system and see what we’re doing and compare what I’m learning to the actual design system that we have now. Which is really nice and a lot of fun!

AH: The design system team is going to want to adopt you here. Okay, so why did you choose to take this course? Were you trying to build a new skill? Did you already have an interest in this?

MR: For sure, I definitely have an interest in the design systems team. I’m super into developing patterns and understanding how you build scalable and dynamic products. So I wanted to improve on this and also expand my knowledge within the UX space. In addition, as I design things on a day to day basis, understanding and knowing the design system is super important and also helps contribute towards and collaborate with the team.

AH: Totally. You kind of started talking about this a little bit, but what have you learned from this course and has it affected or changed any of your day to day work at Klaviyo?

MR: Let me see. What have I learned? I think what we’re doing right now is like the foundations and the styles, and especially with the colors I’ve never worked through to see how accessible it is, what colors to use. And I think at the foundational level, understanding that and applying that even to the designs and experiments that I do has been super interesting. I’ve also been working on and looking into illustrations for the team. I think illustrations go into the foundations of a design system and as I’m working through that, it’s been super helpful understanding what role illustrations play, how the colors/styles play into it. And yeah, I think it’s been super helpful looking at examples — looking at all the public design systems websites to understand how certain things are organized and thought through. I think I’m just being more intentional when I’m choosing styles, choosing spacing, choosing grids. It’s been really nice.

AH: You now have a system to place things in your head. That’s awesome. All right, so what is your review so far for someone who hasn’t taken this course.

MR: I think as a designer, you are working with so many different experts — with a content strategist or researcher, motion designer, behavioral designer — and I think all of that plays into the system. And I think as a whole, the design system is not really about restricting creativity but empowering creativity and the experience. So taking this course would help you collaborate better with the whole team as well as contribute towards this experience design. And so I think you should take the course! [Laughs]

AH: Finally, if you had to give the course a rating, 1–5 stars, what would you give it?

MR: I would definitely give it a 5 because of how comfortable I feel in the class, even in the two weeks. It has been really nice. I think it’s a fun bunch and I’m learning a lot.

AI Generated Media with Vera Guttenberger

AH: So to start off in classic style, let’s have you introduce yourself and what you do at Klaviyo?

VG: I’m Vera. I’m a product designer here and I work on the SMS conversations product.

AH: And you used our learning stipend this year. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about the course you took — how long was it? Was it virtual or in-person? Self-paced?

VG: It was called AI Generated Media (Deepfakes for Good) offered by the MIT Media Lab, and it was pretty short, but I learned a lot! It was a five week seminar and all virtual — so there were five live sessions, once a week, and office hours with researchers were offered throughout as well.

Every week there was a theme of the lecture and then there was a hands-on assignment based on the theme. You would do it on your own, but you could go to office hours and we did also have small groups we could work with and present artwork to as well.

AH: Even the course name is super buzz-wordy. I’m curious what made you choose the course — were you trying to improve an existing skill? Learn something new? Was it for the team you’re working on?

VG: I wasn’t necessarily trying to learn a particular skill, but the course sounded cool and was about a topic I didn’t know a ton about. And honestly, anything offered by the Media Lab I knew would be interesting so I wanted to look into it. The course was really flexible and was a nice intersection of skills, and you could choose what you wanted to lean into. They had you learn about the technology and do hands-on coding projects, but some of the classes were also more focused on the ethical and political implications of AI media, so that was a cool mix.

AH: Very interesting and what else did you learn from taking this course? And did it change how you approach any of your design work at Klaviyo?

VG: I learned about how synthetic media technology can be applied in a variety of industries, both for positive and negative impact. And to be totally honest, it made me want to stay very far away from AI generated media. [Laughs] It really freaks me out, especially after this course. It was interesting to be exposed to the behind the scenes of how it works — the coding we did was pretty basic, but we did learn to make AI generated video and audio and it’s almost scary how easy it is. [That] was my biggest takeaway. So while I think the technology is incredible, I didn’t continue to play around with it much after the fact. The more interesting part for me was the ethical implications and governance of it and what it’s used for. They [talked about] how to use it for good. A lot of the positive use cases are in entertainment, like using it for art and music, as well as in education. They even talked about how it can be used in the medical field — having virtual therapists or doctors, which was framed in a positive light, but it is all a bit weird to me as well. But then there are, of course, all of the negative applications of it, particularly the spread of fake news and misinformation, causing a lot of distrust, and new ways of taking advantage of people.

AH: You can probably recognize it even more now.

VG: Yeah, that’s a good thing. I’ve had my Grandma send me something and I’m like, ‘This is fake…’ [Laughs] It was interesting to learn how the technology works, at least on a basic level, but also interesting to know more about how to be careful around it.

AH: For sure. Which is a good lead into my next question, which is what’s the one takeaway or learning for someone who hasn’t taken the course?

VG: I mean, this particular one, I feel like anybody could take it. It was nice because each of the assignments, especially the coding assignments, you could do the minimum, which gets you the basics. But then there are bonus things you could do if you were really interested in that particular assignment. For example, if one week you were like, I don’t get this or I don’t care about this, you could just do the basic stuff and not do the bonus coding, but if a particular week you were really interested and wanted to learn more there was lots of additional opportunity to explore. So it was cool because it allowed people to get into it however much they wanted. And some people did, like really extravagantly, and produced some very impressive work! It was very self paced and the office hours are super — you can go talk to the researchers to get help if you want or just discuss what interests you.

AH: Cool! And final question, if you had to rank the AI-Generated Media course 1–5 stars, how many stars would it get?

VG: Probably a 4 — I thought it was really good. I liked the way it was structured and how they balance the technical component with the interest in psychology. It didn’t help me necessarily improve a particular work-related skill, but was something that I found interesting and cool to learn about.

Behind the Pixels was originally published in Klaviyo Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Behind the Pixels is a conversational blog series that aims to give a glimpse into the work & life of being a designer at Klaviyo

AH: Starting off in classic behind the pixels fashion, can you both introduce yourselves, how long you’ve been a UX researcher and then how long you’ve been at Klaviyo?

KB: I can start! I am a researcher on the App-Intelligence side — joined the team just a couple weeks after Valerie on a new research team that was forming. Currently, I’m conducting research for segmentation, profile properties, lists, and product merchandising teams. In these pods we’re concerned with innovative and easy ways for our customers to access data about their customers in an actionable way. And how long have I been here? It will be a year by the end of September.

AH: And how long have you been a researcher?

KB: I’ve been a researcher for two years actually — it’ll be my two year anniversary of being a researcher soon!

AH: Happy anniversary! And Valerie?

VM: I’ll start with how long I’ve been a researcher. I’ve been a researcher officially since 2019. I initially thought product design was going to be where I would land, but research called out to me because I had a background in sociology from undergrad and I was like, ‘Hey, look at all those things that you were doing as an undergrad and how applicable they are to what it they’re calling UX research or design research.’ I’ve been here at Klaviyo for about a year and my work has been sort of floating in the ether between App-Communications and App-Intelligence understanding what some of the common points are.

AH: So both of you had previous lives before you were researchers. And I’m curious if you can tell us a little bit about your journey into research and what led you here. What kinds of roles did you have before you were a formal researcher?

KB: I feel like we’re kind of gonna be the same in the way that Valerie said, where you get into industry after doing a couple of things prior and being exposed to research. For me, I was in a graduate program, getting a statistics masters in early 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic. During my graduate program, our research group launched and analyzed survey research that started at University of Delaware about different age group’s reaction to COVID-19 protective behaviors. As a research team, we were trying to understand the different factors that influence people’s propensity to wear a mask and receive the COVID-19 vaccine. I think that work was integral to my understanding of underlying motivators for behavior and how statistics can be used to uncover those. In that role, I was really intrigued by the why behind the numbers. Like I can understand it analytically, but I wanted more of an understanding of things like, ‘why is this age group saying that they don’t want to wear a mask and they don’t want to get the vaccine’. So, that role is one of the reasons why I leaned into mixed methods research that starts with looking through a quantitative lens and then focuses outwards towards qualitative work.

Then after that, I was an analyst at a startup that focused on the same topic, health research. We were trying to help this telehealth startup understand how users’ engagement fluctuates in regards to their level of concerns with data privacy, forming new doctor-patient relationships, etc. A lot of our tools were quant base with work through surveys and analytics, but one-day I was just sitting there thinking, ‘I have all this data, I see all these numbers and graphs, but what is the underlying factor as to why this thing is increasing or why this thing is decreasing’. So I think getting at the why is the reason why I got into research.

AH: So ‘why?’, is the why. I love it.

VM: I would definitely echo the why sentiments, that was what pushed me to study sociology as an undergraduate student. It was something that had always fascinated me, why do people organize themselves in these ways? Why do people take these types of actions? I graduated from college in 2011. Didn’t really know how to plug a sociology degree into the world, didn’t know about UX research, didn’t know about design research, didn’t know about any of that. I did a couple years of AmeriCorps and worked in the nonprofit sector before transitioning to healthcare.

Outside of work, I was pursuing graphic design. I pivoted because the field was moving towards digital, so I wanted to know how I could activate what I’d learned on that side. And that’s when I started to pursue Human Computer Interaction (HCI) thinking I want to be a product designer. However, I definitely dug into the courses that were a lot more research intensive.

Studying HCI helped orient my awareness of human centered design and how research informs that kind of work. Also shout out to my former manager at Oak Street, he was super, super encouraging of me taking things that I was learning outside of work and bringing them in where applicable.

AH: It sounds like both of you had a gradual interest in research that led you down a path that eventually became a career. But did either of you have a defining moment where you realized ‘I’m supposed to be a researcher!’?

VM: I’m gonna be honest, I was like, ‘I hope I can be a researcher’ — that was my thought [Laughs] From my observation, the masters program I came out of was very structured in supporting folks to become product designers (things may have shifted since then) . A lot of the coursework I experienced was about prototyping, coding, information architecture etc. There were a few courses that they put in the program that were strictly oriented towards research and it was so interesting, because a lot of my cohort was like, ‘Ugh, why do we have to do this? Why do we have to write these papers?’ And I was just like, ‘This is great! I really hope I can do this professionally because I feel like being a designer is hard too.’ It’s hard in a different way. And in some ways, I thought being a researcher would let me play the strengths that I had (and continue) to cultivate.

I definitely have a great appreciation for graphic design and product design, but it seemed like being a researcher would allow me to use my strengths from the humanities while being in the tech field. So there was this hope, like I hope there is room for me to do this. It wasn’t a light bulb moment. It was a steady realization that I really could merge past and present interests.

AH: And look at you now! Well, it’s interesting, Valerie with your sociology background and then Katie with your quantitative background, that you’re both using that knowledge in your research. I’m curious how your prior experiences in those spaces have influenced how you approach design research?

KB: Yeah, I would say my background has influenced the way that I approach research. Actually in a role prior to this when I was a researcher, most of the researchers would immediately utilize interviews to understand more about our users in the qualitative realm. And if they needed to size some things, they’d drill in a little bit further with analytics. But it’s weird, for me especially, a lot of colleagues on that team were like, ‘Oh, well, that’s interesting that you’re starting backwards right? You’re not committing to the qualitative research and then quantitative research execution of the workflow; you’re going to quant and then qual.’ So I would say working in a more quantitative realm as an analyst and then as a survey researcher has influenced me to work with analytics and surveys to answer some initial questions that way. This workflow comes from that epiphany I had one day where I would see concrete numbers on the graph with some anomalies here and there; let me get at the fuzzy underlying things that can’t be explained on a graph. So I would say those quantitative roles influenced my workflow and then, like Valerie was saying, education plays a part into how our brain thinks. When you specialize in one discipline like stats, it definitely has a lasting impression on your thought processes and thus influences your initial path forward in solving problems. But now instead of adhering to one discipline, I get to do both. Now I get the best of both worlds!

VM: Both worlds 100%. And I would say coming from a primarily qualitative background I definitely appreciate working in an environment with folks that are really well versed and comfortable with quant because it is this back and forth. I gravitate towards qualitative because I think that as humans, it is compelling to talk about our behavior in terms of what’s desirable. That’s just an innate human thing, to say things that are desirable and encouraged. And that can filter down even into how we answer questions and how we engage with folks in basic interviews.

One of the things that I love is pulling apart what someone says and having them dig deeper into a response they’ve given because it allows me an opportunity to bypass some of those “defenses” in an unassuming and empathetic way. Actually one of the more advanced research techniques I’ve observed and learned is that occasionally when you’re in a session with a participant, sometimes the interview guide goes out the window because they say something that inadvertently can portal you towards what you were actually interested in the first place. This is why active, empathetic, non-solution based listening is a discipline of research that is easier to describe than to do. You didn’t let your imposed order of what you thought was important take control of the conversation, you’re letting participants open up to you in their own way to speak more plainly, and hopefully, honestly about their process challenges, and unidentified needs. At the end of the day, that’s what’s most important for our work as researchers.

If we can understand why people are doing things the way that they’re doing them — back to the big why’s — it allows us to actually design accurately. In our work it’s not about judging how people use technology, however as representatives of an organization such as ours we still have to be mindful to structure our practice such that we can build rapport and gain trust in a short period of time. I think that’s why interviews in particular are so energy-consuming because I feel like if someone can sense that you’re judging, or worse, trying to problem solve in the moment, they will know that you’re not really listening and that can quietly limit what you learn from them. When you’re actively listening and not trying to troubleshoot or judge you can hear a lot more interesting things to follow up on which can actually open up a whole world of new information.

AH: Yeah, that’s fascinating. Okay, changing gears a little bit to the Klaviyo side of the house. Does one of you want to share the biggest challenge you’re facing doing research at Klaviyo right now?

KB: Biggest challenge — I’ll say speaking on [their] behalf I don’t want to put words in the research mouth — I think that there’s so much interest in research that it can be difficult to say no to some requests. Luckily Klaviyo is very much a research oriented culture that the product team’s interest in research is still alive and well even if the research team isn’t directly involved in it for that moment in time.

AH: So much to do, so many people to teach how to do it — you got your work cut out for you, but we’re all very happy you all are here. All right, Valerie, for you. What are you the most excited about in the future of research here?

VM: I’m actually excited for the next two quarters, because I know there have been a couple of realignments around what we’re focusing on as an organization. Also our team has expanded at the same time and so I feel like [we’re] now in this research mega-zoid mode, having multiple researchers across these pods and across our pillars to really showcase what our team is capable of now that we’re more fleshed out.

I think what may have been a little bit challenging was when we were at limited capacity, back to what Katie was saying, prioritizing where we were going to plug ourselves in, what kinds of research aims were we going to tackle and what was going to be the best use of our time. Now that we have a bigger team, there’s going to be more of that tactical to exploratory range, and not necessarily needing to sacrifice what kinds of questions are important to our partners and what are important for getting the company oriented in the right direction. I think we’re going to be much better suited to support so that’s the most exciting part for me.

AH: Cool. Yeah, that sounds exciting.

KB: Are we allowed to talk about CDP land?

AH: I believe so!

KB: Yeah, I was going to say the research in that realm specifically is really exciting. Especially coming from the App-Intelligence side. Just thinking about people’s reactions to CDPs in general, I know that there’s an interest in it. And there’s so many strides that can be made at Klaviyo when we’re focusing on that and how to make data as accessible and usable as possible for our users in the ways that they’ve already expressed interest in. Building upon that is something that I’m excited for in the App-Intelligence realm!

AH: All right, I know we’re out of time, so you’ll have to give me the two sentence version, but for those people out there who are taking their own meandering path to research or like asking questions and looking for the ‘why’, what is the best piece of advice that you can give to them?

KB: You know, I would say two things. The first thing I would say is stay hungry and thirsty for knowledge. There are so many methods out there that you can use, and it can be a little bit overwhelming when you first start. Like okay, what do I do? Do I do qual or do I do quant? Is this at the beginning of the product lifecycle? Is it towards the end? Are we iterating? Are we exploring? There’s so many different methods. I would say to stay interested in the fundamental ways to extract insights from each of these scenarios and continue to learn about the research function overall. Like understanding how it’s evolving because the field is always evolving. I feel like research in UX was not as big as a thing five years ago, so it’s really blown up. And it can kind of be overwhelming at first to get into the field, but remain open to what you can learn and then once you’re in the field remain open to feedback. Always know that there are some things that you can modify, so please remain open to feedback from colleagues who are experts in an area of research that you haven’t explored yet. Moral of the story is to never say no to learning more in various contexts; whether it be from a textbook when you first start in UXR or from someone on your team when you break into industry. I think those are the most important things, but what about you Valerie? Is there something else I’m missing?

VM: I mean, you hit on at least what I was going to say towards the end. I think especially if you’re interested in research at Klaviyo it’s a highly collaborative experience. I don’t know if I’ve worked at a place where it hasn’t been, but I do know that there are some places that have the research function in its [own] box, everything in its box. I think research at Klaviyo is definitely one of those things where you’re bringing your strength but you’re adding to other people’s strengths.

We have excellent partners from product analytics, product, Voice of Customer, market research, customer advocacy. We are working across so many different groups that are also doing research. And so it’s really not about being a lone rock star. It’s about being like, ‘Hey, here’s what I’ve learned, or here’s what my colleague has learned.’ I think we spend a lot of time routing inquiries to other teams or colleagues familiar with a line of inquiry. ‘Oh, you’re asking this question. My colleague over here has done this. Maybe that’ll help you’. That’s again, going back to the point of making sure that we’re tamping down on duplicative efforts and plugging research that was previously completed into our process so that we’re constantly building on what we’ve learned prior.

When you’re thinking with a collaborative spirit, it’s easier to open doors so that information can move across the organization and nothing is being held so tightly or so siloed that it doesn’t get socialized, doesn’t get shared because I think that’s the death of research — when you find knowledge but you can’t socialize it and nobody can act on it. And that right there is every researcher’s nightmare that they seek to avoid. So, yeah, staying collaborative, staying connected.

AH: Love it — learn, collaborate, share!

🛣🕵️‍♀️— I can personally vouch for the expertise of Valerie and Katie. It’s really cool to have a research team and more generally a design team full of people that come from a diversity of backgrounds!

Think your interesting background could help make our design team better? We’re always looking for great people to join our team.

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