BTP: Always be Learning with Yujing, Flavia, Mike, Mahima & Vera

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.