Open Book: Yuri Lence
Hear from Yuri about building customer empathy, immigrating to the US, and his YouTube channel.
Open Book is a series of interviews where you get to meet our creative design team at Opendoor.
What do you do at Opendoor?
I lead the product design of the home shopping experience, which includes the feed, search tab, detail page, filters and our design system. My work involves defining product requirements with stakeholders, testing out hypotheses, producing mockups, and working closely with engineers on implementation.
How did you become a designer?
I started working as a web designer at design agencies in 2008. I eventually got promoted to Interactive Art Director within a few years, and won design awards from places such as Red Dot, TheFWA, and Awwwards.
I decided to switch from design agencies in 2014 to product companies because I wanted to better understand customers pain points and have a chance to have an impact on product strategy. Today, my combined agency and product experience helps me to emphasize the user and iterate on many alternatives without a strong emotional attachment to previous solutions.
How can designers be even closer to the customer experience?
As designers, usually we use qualitative and quantitative research to understand the customer better. But what we’re often lacking is the customer’s lived experience. With the Opendoor design team, we try to truly empathize with each step of their journey by talking to the customer experience team and participating in real-life tests, such as the home shopping and visit experience.
How did you get to Opendoor?
I joined Open Listings to help to build the next version of the product and I led the product design for the offers and visits team. Working closely with the head of design, product owners and engineers, we rethought the majority of product features in less than a year. The end result was we had more compelling coverage of the main customer’s needs as: a more straightforward home offer creation process, a more fully-fledged home visit experience, and a native iOS app. Later, Open Listings was acquired by Opendoor, which is how I joined Opendoor.
You’ve got almost 30k subscribers on YouTube! How did you first get started?
Compared to some bloggers it’s nothing, but I’m glad I was able to reach those numbers just speaking to my iPhone’s camera. I started with telling my story of immigrating from Ukraine to the US — about cultural and household differences, as well as about daily life in a completely new country as a foreigner.
What’s been the most surprising thing about moving to the US from Ukraine for you?
Well, pretty much everything. It took some time to get used to some things like the healthcare system and taxes. But the biggest thing has been learning how to feel and express my personality in not just a new language, but a new culture. I’m thinking through how to take on the parts of American culture that I like such as its optimism, but still retain my Ukrainian identity.
How do you want to grow in 2019?
I’m trying to get as much as I can from all possible opportunities. I have my own small design bureau, where I offer UX consultancy and development. I’m also into educating people and sharing my knowledge. At the same time, I enjoy being surrounded by smart people and building something bigger than myself with them. I want to continue to do what I do now — get even more responsibilities, shift towards shipping features, and participating in developing organizational processes.
Before we go, is there anything that you want to promote?
Feel free to follow me on Dribbble, if you’d like. I’ve also started a new English-language YouTube channel, where I’ll start telling my story once I hit 200 subscribers.
P.S. If you liked what you read and are interested in learning more, check out our jobs page! We’re always hiring.
