Yelp Product Design Leadership Q&A Part 1/4
Hello! We’re back with a fun interview series! 👋
We recently sat down (virtually, of course) with our design leaders to hear what brought them to Yelp and their thoughts on design.
We’d like to introduce Kelly Kinch (VP of Product Design), Josh Mahoney (Director of Product Design, Consumer), and Aaron Brown (Product Design Manager, Restaurants). To get started, we asked them about Yelp.
Why did you join Yelp?
Kelly:
I guess there are a number of reasons that stick out in my mind. Culture is very important to me and I was so incredibly impressed by the caliber of the people I met at Yelp. The team is at that perfect size where everyone can really get to know each other and build a sense of genuine social connection and belonging. It’s a great place to work!
I’m also a fan of Yelp as a useful product that builds community by connecting people with great local businesses. It helps make people’s daily lives easier and richer, and also supports small business owners.
The other thing that I was excited to be a part of was rolling out a new design system to help our product design and development teams more efficiently build high quality products at scale. There’s a lot of opportunity to learn and grow as we take on new challenges like this.
Josh:
I was looking for a company that had three things: Firstly, it was small enough that I could have a large impact, yet big enough to have the resources to solve them. Second, it needed to be tackling some interesting and unsolved user problems. There’s so many interesting problems with restaurants and home services so Yelp met that need perfectly. Finally, it’s cliche, but working with great people was perhaps the most important thing, and this is still something I believe makes Yelp truly unique — it’s rare to be able to say that there’s genuinely no one at Yelp I don’t enjoy working with.
Aaron:
I joined because of the people & the potential I saw in Yelp. Since joining it’s been incredible to see the team grow and evolve the role of design in Yelp’s product development. It honestly still baffles me to think about all the products in Yelp’s ecosystem that we’re working on that often go unnoticed!
What are you excited about for Yelp Product Design in 2021?
Kelly:
I’m motivated to continue to support local communities through the pandemic with up-to-date information, trusted business reviews, and new products and features. We will transition the product towards helping people turning to Yelp to find home service pros they love, such as contractors, movers, and electricians. Plus I’m looking forward to finishing rolling out our new design look and feel.
Josh:
When I joined Yelp almost 4 years ago you could count the designers on one hand — the last few years has been an amazing transformation of growing the team, maturing our processes, building an amazing design system and figuring out how to work really well with our product and engineering partners to have real impact and influence.
2021 is exciting because it feels like we have matured these processes and are starting to realise our full potential as a design team — and the timing couldn’t be better. We are in the middle of really transforming Yelp away from a directory of restaurant reviews to a place people come to to get help in every aspect of their life, especially the home services area. For us to be successful, user-focus and design thinking will be necessary and I’m excited to see our team take on this challenge!
Aaron:
Continuing to realize Yelp’s potential, across the lives of our everyday consumers & businesses in these trying times. We have a special role in enabling diners to support their favorite local restaurants, and helping restaurants themselves operate safely & efficiently in a constantly changing environment. And across other verticals, we’ll continue to make important connections as we start to recover from this pandemic.
How do you maintain and grow a remote design culture?
Kelly:
It’s important to find a way to support a tight-knit culture so that people feel connected even though we are all far apart interacting through screens. We highly depend on the design and collaboration tools we use, including Google Meet, Slack, and Figma. It’s important to communicate a lot, show empathy for what everyone is going through now, demonstrate resilience, and support each other. And to uplift everyone’s spirits with humor and fun!
What’s the best design/leadership advice someone has given you?
“Act like an owner.”
Kelly: This is one of the most valuable pieces of advice I’ve been given. One of my favorite leaders always encouraged his teams to follow this mantra and it produced great results. The most successful people are active participants who genuinely care about their work, don’t accept the status quo, and make good decisions. They really own their work and make the most impact.
“Focus on the user and everything else will follow.”
Josh:
It seems so simplistic but it is so easy to get focussed on the process, the metrics, or even the “design” and lose sight of “what is the problem you are solving for your user, how are you making their lives better?”. I think the fact this advice came from the CEO of a huge tech company was what made it so powerful — they realised that the best way to make money is first and foremost by providing value to users.
“Understand your own process to the point where you can communicate it to others.”
Aaron:
Seems simple, but understanding your process is the first step to improving it — allowing you to recognize skill gaps and make adjustments based on the problems at hand. Soon enough you’ll have operationalized your work to the point where you can do it in your sleep (or so I’ve been told)!
What does your WFH setup look like?
Kelly:
I’m currently settling in to using my dining room as my home office because of the good natural light and views of greenery outside. Then I roam around the house a bit during the day to mix things up.
Josh:
I would not recommend my WFH setup — it’s usually perched on a couch on my laptop. That did change recently though when I moved into a new place — I now have a room especially for my office, the only problem is…it’s empty except a desk. Maybe I’ll have it furnished just in time for COVID to be over 😂
COVID has made two of my favorite hobbies harder: travel and coffee snobbery. This is me trying to make both work — making espresso in the back of my car during a road trip to Glacier National Park.
Aaron:
I’ve got some shelving with a small, built-in desk nestled in the corner of the kitchen/living room. It’s a bit narrow with just enough space for a monitor, laptop, keyboard, and mouse, along with some books, but it works. Shout-out to my girlfriend Nicole for keeping me caffeinated with her homemade matcha lattes!
That’s a wrap for part 1! Thank you to Kelly, Josh, and Aaron for sharing your thoughts on design and your work from home setup.
Stay tuned for two more Q&A posts where you’ll hear from the rest of our design leadership. Cheers and stay well! 🙌
Special thanks to PD Blog team: Xuan Zheng, Clara MacDonell, Dandi Wang, Brenda Kaing, Rose Chang
