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The Year of the Looking Glass

A collection of essays by Julie Zhuo on design, building products, and observing life.

What Designers can Learn from PMs

What Designers can Learn from PMs

Gleaning lessons from the PM Handbook of Success.

Mar 31, 2015

How to Impress an Interviewer

How to Impress an Interviewer

The two traits that speak most to future potential

Apr 22, 2015

Metrics Versus Experience

Metrics Versus Experience

Some decades ago, if you wanted to build a great experience, you’d take a deep breath, close your eyes, and mutter a prayer to that oracle…

Jul 6

How to Think About Your Career

How to Think About Your Career

If you had asked 22-year-old me what my “career aspirations” were, I would have looked at you blankly and then casually changed the subject…

Jul 26

Letter To My Newborn Son

Letter To My Newborn Son

You are two weeks old, so there are only a few things we know about you. Your hair would make a pop star jealous, all slicked down dark…

4 days ago

What You See is What You Use

What You See is What You Use

A few summers ago, I had the opportunity to live in two separate units of a loft building in San Francisco.

Aug 16

Building Products

Building Products

I recently gave a talk at TNW Europe about a framework we use at Facebook to help us focus our product development process. Working on that…

Jun 2

Ten Years

Today is my ten year Faceversary.

May 9

Design, Illustrated in 3 Charts

Design, Illustrated in 3 Charts

Been typing a lot of words recently, so this one will be simple: a few doodles from the sketchbook pondering what, exactly, is design.

May 5

Unintuitive Things I’ve Learned about Management (Part 2)

Unintuitive Things I’ve Learned about Management (Part 2)

This is a continuation of Part 1, please start by reading that first.

Apr 14

Unintuitive Things I’ve Learned about Management (Part 1)

Unintuitive Things I’ve Learned about Management (Part 1)

I first started managing people seven years ago, three years after I graduated and got my first design job. At the time, I was woefully…

Mar 30

Unintuitive Lessons on Being a Designer

Unintuitive Lessons on Being a Designer

I sometimes joke that everything I have ever learned about design, I learned from my first job. Nowadays, this first job has extended to…

Mar 15

Creative Confidence

Creative Confidence

Recently, someone I was interviewing asked me what I looked for in the perfect maker.

Feb 9

Write in 2016

Three years ago, sitting on the beach over empty champagne glasses and the smoldering remains of late-night firecrackers, I made a New Year…

Jan 12

Good Design

My first design job was an internship on Microsoft OneNote in 2007. Our intrepid leader was the product founder Chris Pratley, who…

Dec 4, 2015

A New Mother’s Identity Crisis

A New Mother’s Identity Crisis

Four months after I had my first baby, I sunk into a real low.

Nov 3, 2015

What Kind of Design Work Should I do?

What Kind of Design Work Should I do?

A Flow Chart for Designers

Oct 13, 2015

The First Step in Hard Conversations

The First Step in Hard Conversations

I felt my blood pressure shoot up like a Fourth of July firework in a meeting the other day.

Sep 22, 2015

Design the Beginning

Design the Beginning

Pretty much any time we design something new, we start at the middle.

Sep 1, 2015

Average Manager vs. Great Manager

Average Manager vs. Great Manager

Explained in 10 sketches

Aug 11, 2015

The Year of the Looking Glass

A collection of essays by Julie Zhuo on design, building products, and observing life.

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