Yelp Product Design Leadership Q&A Part 2/4

Published in

Yelp Design

8 min readJun 30, 2021

👋 We’re back with the second part of our interview series!

This time, we sat down with our design leaders from the Business team and Consumer team to hear what makes them excited about Yelp and their insights when it comes to design.

(Drum roll 🥁…) We are excited to introduce Katherine Langdon (Product Design Manager, Services Leads), Madhava Enros (Product Design Manager, Monetization), and AQ Quiatchon (Product Design Manager, Consumer Core experience & Growth). To get started, we asked them what brought them to Yelp.

Why did you join Yelp?

Katherine:

I joined Yelp for three reasons. First, I was excited and inspired to learn more from the design team. I’m passionate about always learning and growing, and feel very fortunate to work with leaders and designers that have such a variety of different backgrounds and experiences. Second, I was motivated by the strong partnership between Product Management, Engineering and Design at Yelp. When these 3 come together with equal seats at the table, the best solutions make it into the product. Finally, I really wanted to design for small business owners. I’m very excited about the opportunity to help support local businesses and strengthen communities during this challenging time.

Madhava:

I find the mission very compelling — to help local independent businesses (and the people they’re made of) better connect with their customers. The last year has seen such an acceleration in local businesses figuring out how to be online businesses as well, in whatever form makes the most sense for them. There’s so much to do to enable them to bring the same personality and care to their online relationships as to their immediately in-person ones. I’m also excited to help build Yelp’s Toronto office, and to learn from the amazing design team here.

AQ:

Three main reasons really…

Funny enough, I did my first UX project in design school designing a competitor app to Yelp revolving around the “What should we eat” challenge that many of my friends and I always had when planning a meal — there’s always been a part of me that’s been wanting to truly help shape solutions to assist people in such a crucial part of their lives; one that could potentially be riddled with too many options!
Yelp was an exciting career growth opportunity; having worked at a start-up out of school, and then a design agency; the next logical step felt like working in a larger company and really understanding what that landscape looked and felt like; in addition to that, my previous work experience gave me a sharper eye in what it is I really am looking for; and at this step of my career, that was impact and working on a consumer-facing product end-to-end (with millions of users!).Tactically, I was pitched with the fantastical opportunity of helping define The Future of Yelp — which turned out becoming one of my proudest achievements; helping lead the visual modernization of the Yelp product with my talented colleagues!
I have an extremely strong affinity for helping local businesses and communities get the visibility and growth they deserve. If you know me, you’d know that I love (and prefer) visiting boutiques and small businesses, especially when travelling, because it tells me so much about the culture and interests of that business owner, and ultimately that locale. There’s also so much more intimacy in that experience/environment because you can almost be certain that they’re as much of a nerd for what they sell/serve as you might be; and if not, maybe you’ll learn a thing or two about it!

What are you excited about for Yelp Product Design in 2021?

Katherine:

I’m looking forward to releasing some new experiences the team is designing to help small business owners find new customers, secure new jobs, and get hired. Yelp is becoming the place that anyone can go to find help for any type of job, particularly in the home services area. We’re designing new solutions to support business owners in securing those jobs and making their businesses successful. I’m also excited that the design team is growing!

Madhava:

I’m excited to see Yelp’s modernized design language reach all corners of our apps and experiences. I’m excited to help build out the team, including in its newly invigorated Toronto presence. And I’m excited to bring new tools and insights to our business-owner customers, letting them broaden their reach and ability to build trusted relationships with their customers.

AQ:

Ever since the lockdown started in March 2020, things have changed dramatically, especially with regards to how we interact with businesses of all kinds — in reaction to this dramatic change in behavior, we launched the COVID component on business pages to help folks on Yelp understand how these businesses are accommodating for the changing environment (still one of my proudest projects to date!)

As we enter the second half of 2021, we’re seeing more and more businesses opening up and people resuming their normal routines, us included! I’m super excited to continue solving for this evolving climate and to better equip our users with the information they need to interact confidently with those businesses in their communities!

What’s the best design/leadership advice someone has given you?

Katherine:

“Leadership and management is just a new opportunity to design”

When I was considering becoming a manager, I was hesitant. But I got some great advice from a mentor, that leadership and management is just a new opportunity to design. It’s so rewarding to get to help and mentor others with their career goals. Being in management allows designers to craft a career path for the design organization and to lift up others.

Madhava:

“Often the best way to achieve something great is not to be too picky about what that thing is.”

Some recent advice that I’m getting a lot from is this idea: that often the best way to achieve something great is not to be too picky about what that thing is. It comes out of a study of achieving goals and outcomes, by some AI/machine learning researchers, where optimizing for novelty rather than what immediately looked like the right next iteration led to the most interesting outcomes. This should sound familiar to people in the design world, where optimizing for breadth and novelty is key to the work of exploration and the divergence phase. I’m finding this applicable to all sorts of situations where we’re trying to work through ambiguity.

AQ:

“Just f**king do it. You ain’t gotta do it forever if you don’t like it.”

This was the reply from my design professor when I asked him if I should take a specific job offer before I even graduate… meaning I won’t apply/interview at other places. I was still in school, months away from graduation, plagued by the seemingly career-defining questions of: “Where do I want to work” and “Do I want to work in print or digital spaces.”

I tend to be someone who gets caught up overthinking things and can end up locked in indecision, especially when there seems to be so many options. I was so caught up in thinking there was a right answer — I was also caught up believing that these had to be answered before I took on a job.

My professor’s advice was the most freeing thing to hear — the minute I heard that, I started to realize a few things:

There is no right or wrong answer
If it ain’t it, I could always move on
The reality is… hate it or love it, you’ll always learn something

Maybe I’m overdramatizing, but I like to believe that this advice is what’s helped me get to where I am now — and I continue to remind myself that it’s ok to make mistakes so long as I always net new learnings at the end of the day.

What does your WFH setup look like?

Katherine:

Like many, I’ve had to adapt to working from home with kids — and my desk setup has had to change and evolve. Originally I had my back to a wall, so web calls didn’t get distracted with the fun things my kids love to do. But more recently they’re often seen in the background. The one great thing I’ve found through all of this is that kids are now getting to really see what their parents do all day, and learn about so many career paths. My kids now get to see the creative process and hear diverse leadership positions.

I don’t keep much on my desk other than water, markers and lots of post-its. My daughter can often be found beside me; writing and drawing.

Madhava:

We’re very lucky to have enough workable workspaces to go around in our house in Toronto. My wife Kate works from our pre-pandemic home office, so I’ve set myself up in a narrow but bright window well in another room. It’s been a fun locked-in challenge to get everything set up in a constrained space — minimalist enough to prevent claustrophobia but with enough of what I need at hand.

The interesting parts: a Canon Rebel T100 set up as a webcam using a syphon server and a 15” tablet-form-factor display, set up portrait on a tablet stand. My favourite accessory — the oak pen tray. The art is a print of Susan Kare’s design for the 1984 Macintosh Control Panel.

AQ:

Like many, adjusting to daily WFH has led to my partner and I creating a schedule of who gets to use the dedicated office and who has to use the living room — this also convinced us (okay, “gave us an excuse”) to invest and evolve our setups to something we can both enjoy and love being at.