Designer Journey : The Team Player
Hailing from LA and having landed in Berlin only 6 months ago, Mal is the first designer to be featured in our designer journey series. He’s fascinated with throw pillow subscriptions, dresses like Kanye, likes going to sleeping festivals and is a huge Drake fan. And he loves talking about design.
How did you get started in design?
Well, I never went to design school. I started out as a philosophy major at Cal State Long Beach but decided to take my education offline. I took some time off to travel, went to India and Southeast Asia to delve a bit more deeply into eastern mythology and the teachings of Buddha.
But design was always there in the back of my mind. I knew the tools for instance and back then it was all about the tools. And because I knew those tools, like Photoshop, I was able to get a design job. I was also always into tech, and tinkering with hardware. I’ve always hung out in homebrew communities and forums because I loved the idea of reverse engineering a piece of technology to understand how it really works. To me learning has always been more effective when it is an active rather than passive process.
It wasn’t until I met a few mentors along the way that I really found design. My first mentor taught me visual design was the least important part of designing, and that beautiful design is about the experience people have with a product. Our job as designers is to defend and be the voice of the users. When I heard this a switch went off in my head, and since then I’ve been pursuing design hardcore.
My first design job was working on a platform for musicians. It was a startup of 16 people, and I played almost every role in that company: engineer, video editor, marketer, sales, pixel pusher. I really didn’t know where I fit in yet. But, I had a really good mentor, our CXO, and he taught me that design is not just about the pixel. It’s about business, planning, growth, acquiring new users. And it’s this holistic view of a business that really makes a business work.
Why Zalando?
I’ve worked as a designer at several companies now, but I’ve always been the only designer on staff. I was looking for a bigger company with a large design team, and a strong design culture. Now that I’ve worked with a larger design team, I’ll never go back. I love the opportunity it gives you to get feedback on your work. I also loved that Zalando has roles for product designers, versus just UX or UI. All the companies I admire have product designers, and I wanted to delve into that a bit more.
I also loved that Zalando has roles for product designers, versus just UX or UI. All the companies I admire have product designers, and I wanted to delve into that a bit more.
To me, product design is the entire process of design, from ideation to iteration. And I was very impressed that Anne Pascual, the VP of Product Design, had just come to Zalando from IDEO, the company that basically invented design thinking.
First impressions?
Zalando is very innovative. And it surprised me that a company of this size would invest resources into things like Hackathons, giving you the chance to scratch your product itch and explore new solutions for users. Never underestimate the opportunity to scratch your own itch.
What do you love about Berlin?
I moved to Berlin from LA, and there’s a lot in common between the two cities. They’re actually sister cities, and there were lots of Berlin artists around my neighborhood in downtown LA. Both are transplant cities. The people who move to Berlin and LA have big aspirations and place a huge priority on freedom of expression — be who you want to be and feel free to try out random things.
Berlin has far exceeded my expectations — especially in terms of the design community, which is really popping. I like to stay active in the vibrant community, so I go to lots of meetups, have participated in panel discussions and made lots of friends here already. And there is so much opportunity for tech to disrupt the status quo.
A day in the life of…Mal
I’m currently on the app team working on the browse and shop experience. This touches on the search function, so that people can find exactly what they want as quickly as possible. I love working directly with an engineer to come up with the best, most efficient solutions for the user. I think it’s important that engineers and designs align their values, every products has internal and external qualities just like a person. External qualities are things like how beautiful is it? usability? is it fast and easy to use? All these things designers care deeply about, but there’s the internal qualities like how cohesive is the code? how easy is it to maintain and update? how reliable is it? All these things engineers really cares about. And when you tip the scale toward to the external qualities it degrade the internal qualities. For example, when we add additional components, icons and GIFs it can affect the maintainability, stability of the app. For example, we’ve been working on a design system for the company. Now we have to find ways to integrate it into the apps without bloating it or risking accessibility issues. Adding custom components can degrade usability, stability and it is imperative that as designers we work closely with engineering to understand these frameworks.
What types of questions do you like to focus on?
Right now I’m fascinated with edge cases and how a company deals with them. I want to bring edge cases front and center. When we design for people at their worst, it’ll work that much better when they’re at their best.
I want to bring edge cases front and center. When we design for people at their worst, it’ll work that much better when they’re at their best.
How does your background influence you as a designer?
One of my design superpowers is my unique perspective on cultures. Being born with eastern beliefs and raised in western culture, I’m able to reflect on both sides. In a globalized world, how do we properly understand information from another culture in a sensitive way and make use of it effectively? Ignoring other cultures can lead to miscommunication and misunderstanding, but bringing these cultural conflicts to light and exploring them fosters deeper understanding and new possibilities.
What is your design philosophy?
Other designers are the most qualified to recognize quality work. It’s important they think your work is good. I also think there is a shift in designs towards being more business focus, like back in the days, design was about selling and making money. You can tie products to profit and packaging main job is to sell more. Then over the last couple decades there seem to be a shift to more visual communication and somehow we lost that skill, the skill to sell our ideas, sell the design, and pitch it! Design now is all about the customer willingness to pay.
Mal is a product designer with Zalando. Check out his work on Dribble.
