Ed Ngai graduated from UCSD in 2017. He majored in Computer Science. He is currently a product designer at Salesforce, working on the mobile experience for iOS and Android. Previously, he worked on the Lightning Design System team as a UX Engineer, and occasionally used his programming background for high-fidelity prototypes. On the side, he’s currently dabbling in point & shoot film photography!
Read our conversation down below to see what Ed has been up to!
How did you get into design?
Growing up, my parents ran a small print shop in San Francisco, so I was exposed to print design for as long as I could remember. Looking back, I think that’s what steered me toward participating in school newspapers, yearbook, and photography in high school. During my first couple years as a computer science major, I felt that I quickly lost touch with that side of me. Luckily, during my 3rd year, I took COGS 187A and was immediately hooked on UX. It was the perfect blend of my design experience in the past and my interest in creating digital products.
What does your typical day look like?
My typical day starts at 9am with a cup of cold brew coffee. I’ll check a few emails and Slack messages, then spend 10 minutes on Headspace in one of our mindfulness rooms. I’ll usually be sitting in meetings throughout the morning to sync with fellow designers, engineers, and product managers. My calendar frees up after lunch, giving me 3–4 hours to do individual design work until around 5pm. This typically means working on initial concepts for new features, creating specs for our engineering teams, and creating decks for design crits or presentations.
What’s the biggest difference in designing at a company versus at school?
I think a key difference is the constraints that you face as you approach various design problems. When designing at a large company, we’re always considering constraints such as time, resources and competing opinions. In practice, this means that we’re not always able to go through the full design process for each project, or there could be engineering costs that keep us from building out every feature in our designs in the short-term. Navigating this can be stressful, but is a necessary skill in large organizations.
What’s a design challenge that you recently faced?
We recently redesigned the Salesforce mobile app to align better with our desktop experience users know and love. With every revamp of a product, it’s always an interesting challenge to figure out the best way to introduce the new experience, especially if users have already gotten accustomed to our previous app. Here, our team set out to figure out how might we find ways to help orient users to the new interface, in a way that was delightful, but not too overwhelming.
An interesting insight we learned through user research here, was that users are typically very task oriented when coming into the app and tend to dismiss any distracting onboarding carousels. Taking learnings like this and going through multiple design iterations, the team was able to converge on a thoughtful solution that includes what features to call out, when to call them out, and of course, the visual design.
For me, this was an interesting design challenge as it involved a bit of collaboration with our user research team which led me to better understand how our existing users interact with the product. A bunch of quantitative and qualitative data emerged from this project, which helped us lean into user expectations and deliver a quality onboarding experience.
What tips do you have for new designers?
Find ways to blend your existing passions with design. Whether it’s sports, video games, or traveling, viewing things you currently enjoy doing through the lens of design is a great way to learn and have fun while doing it.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Sometimes it takes time. It’s really easy to feel discouraged when you see other designers producing awesome work, and landing jobs you can only dream of. I still struggle with this everyday. Always remember that you determine your own pace, and being great at something will take time.
Where do you find inspiration?
I think my biggest sources of inspiration are places and people. There’s nothing like traveling to a different city, experiencing a new environment for the first time, and meeting new individuals there. When visiting a new city I always try to keep an eye out for design elements and solutions that are drastically different than what I might find at home. Meeting and talking to people there also gives tons of insight into a different culture and what they care about. After these experiences, I always feel energized and excited about bringing what I learned into my own work and projects.
For my immediate work, I find most of my inspiration from using other apps to discover new mobile design patterns. Creatively, I find a lot of my inspiration from music, streetwear, and photography.
Tell us about a project you are most proud of.
My current work on the Salesforce mobile app is the project that I’m most proud of. For the past year, I’ve been lucky to be a part of a redesign of our mobile experience, which is a unique opportunity at a large company like Salesforce. Not only is the team that I work with awesome, but this project has taught me a lot about designing for mobile, and how to develop an effective design strategy for large scale projects.
What was one thing that you learned from UCSD which helped you in your post undergrad life?
To be honest, it’s hard to pinpoint one specific thing here. I think that my entire experience with Design Co (formerly know as Design at UCSD) was the most impactful in preparing me for life after undergrad. Not only did it provide me with design skills outside of class, but it helped steer me in the right direction career wise. I got to meet some amazing people through the organization and playing an active role was one of the most rewarding experiences.
Anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
Get involved and meet as many people as you can in the design space. You’ll be amazed at where these connections will take you on your path. Don’t be afraid to take risks. It’s okay to not know what your passion is yet, but trying new things and making mistakes will bring you closer to figuring it all out. Lastly, enjoy the moment, seek discomfort, and have fun!
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