Meet the Team at Gousto Tech — Sian King — Product Designer
This post is the twelfth in our series interviewing members of our GoustoTech team. In this post we meet Sian King who is a Product Designer in our Radishes squad.
Please introduce yourself and tell us about your role at Gousto.
Hi, I’m Sian. I’m a product designer, currently working in the Menu tribe but I’ll be moving to the Growth tribe shortly to start leading the design for the Beetroots Acquisition squad. We’ll mainly be focussing on Conversion Rate Optimisation which basically means improving the user sign-up journey to encourage more prospects to sign up.
How long have you been at Gousto?
I started in May 2020 during lockdown so my entire Gousto experience so far has been virtual. The onboarding was much better than I expected. I had a package arrive in an Addison Lee with all of my equipment. I liked that the onboarding is split up over the first month so you don’t have one full intense day. I was also given a really detailed onboarding document with a list of people to meet on video calls and a clear plan of the first few months. We’ve had lots of social activities like drinks with the design team, quizzes and new starter lunches so there have been lots of ways to meet people.
Can you tell us a little about your journey before arriving at Gousto?
I studied Product Design at Brunel University where I learnt about the full end to end design process, but more so for physical products. Once I graduated I found that the majority of the jobs were in the digital space, so I tried digital product design. The design process is exactly the same, just you end up with a digital product instead of physical. I’ve now been working in digital product design for 6 years. I have previously worked in finance, a creative agency and also a travel start-up.
What made you decide to join Gousto?
My primary reason was the amount of opportunity at Gousto. The business is scaling really quickly and there is so much opportunity in the product team. We currently have a team of 7 designers, but we’re hoping that we’ll scale to 20–30 designers within the next few years. Around a year ago we only had 3 designers covering the whole business. There is so much room in product development to help change the future of Gousto.
I’m very glad I came to Gousto, it’s been a whirlwind. There are a lot of work streams constantly developing and as a result, there are so many things we could be progressing and changes we could be making. The crucial thing is prioritising so there is a lot of team input to decide what work will be most impactful.
What has been the most exciting thing you’ve worked on at Gousto since joining?
Hands down, the new recipe tile design. We have an ongoing project to improve the menu experience for customers. Part of this work for the design team has been trying to understand how customers think about food, how they choose recipes and what information is useful for them at each stage of the journey. In order to get to this point we undertake a lot of user testing to understand their mental model. We are now about to launch the riskiest test we’ve ever done on the Gousto menu which is exciting.
What’s in the pipeline that you’re excited about at Gousto?
The test I mentioned above and seeing if customers will adapt to a new way of browsing their recipes. Also the challenge we face with scaling the menu significantly from 55 recipes and how this will involve things such as being able to swap ingredients in and out of your recipes. I’m excited about the fact that one day we might have a completely separate menu for people with dietary needs.
We’re also in the process of building a design system which will help us become more efficient and consistent across our digital product. We’ll be collaborating with brand and engineering to define the principles. The end goal is for us to have a range of components and values which cover various customer use cases or actions; this will enable us to build designs quicker and faster.
How would you describe the culture at Gousto?
Collaborative. Everyone is willing to work together and lend a hand. Whether it’s getting help from other members of the design team, pairing with someone in engineering, working with product managers or with the food or band teams — everyone gets stuck in. It’s a very fun place to be and I like that the problem space is very relatable as everyone likes food! I can now talk about my job with my mum and she understands what I do, which I’ve never been able to do before! I also feel like our teams are in control of the work we produce, we can come up with our own ideas and push back on deadlines that are too tight.
There have been a lot of social events, even though I joined during lockdown, and the digital product team had their first real life meetup in a park recently!
Why would you suggest that someone considers joining us at Gousto Tech?
You get to work with a bunch of really great, highly intelligent people who are very motivated and care about food. It’s a really interesting problem space and design is really valued. We’re going to scale so quickly that it creates an opportunity for any individual to make a big impact within the business.
