How to blaze a trail in unexplored areas of design

Inès Mir explains how her role as a Principal Product Designer gives her the space to cultivate her craft while raising the bar for others.

The true mark of leadership is influence. Being a leader is not limited to people management; it can also mean setting an example that raises the bar for others. This is what differentiates the two product design career paths at Zalando. While Senior Product Designers typically share their knowledge and experience with the community through mentorship, Principal Product Designers additionally use their hands-on craft to help define and advance the standards, strategy, and vision of the company.

Inès Mir, who joined Zalando as a Principal last summer, is one such thought leader. Though she had dipped her toes into management in her previous job — and derived a great deal of satisfaction from doing so — she realized that she wanted the space to dive deep into complex problems and to blaze a trail in unexplored areas of design. To that end, Inès found Zalando’s separation of principal design and design management responsibilities particularly appealing.

Inès, who has 14 years of UI and UX experience, is spearheading her own projects within Zalando Direct. This B2B organization makes Zalando’s marketplace accessible to fashion brands and merchants, enabling them to launch and grow their business.

The B2B space has provided Inès with the most interesting challenges of her career. She enjoys it so much, in fact, that she encourages very experienced designers to join her in this particularly data-driven area if they wish to explore the Principal role to its full potential.

Would you embrace the challenge of being a Principal Product Designer at Zalando? We asked Inès to hone in on a few of the ways the role allows designers to make an impact.

Cultivate your craft

Cultivating your craft as a Principal Product Designer at Zalando means focusing on the design skills that enable you — and the teams within your sphere of influence — to deliver. For Inès, that means having the space to work strategically on overarching topics, rather than only designing on a feature-by-feature basis. She is currently charting the complex landscape of information architecture. “This is a really interesting and challenging area for a Principal Product Designer to work in,” she explains. “I get to see the product from a higher perspective. I collaborate with very experienced Principal Product Managers and Engineers in the Zalando community, and I learn a lot from them. I really like that Zalando is supporting my ambition here. I have been given a strategic project through which I can really show my expertise. In other companies, the Principal role is often much less defined.”

Forge a vision

Principal Product Designers work closely with Product Managers, Design Managers, executive stakeholders, and Principals in other fields to shape the customer experience vision. Often collaborating with other teams, they articulate how a future project might deliver value and delight from the customer’s, or partner’s, point of view. In the numbers-driven B2B space, Inès prioritizes data and transparency above all. “As Principals, we influence the product and department level. We need to base our decisions on research, to communicate and align with every team, and to help people to understand what we are working on and why it is important. I strive to build a close relationship with our Analysts. I raise the bar by promoting these best practices within my team, by being hands-on and owning my high-level craft, and by leading by example so that we can all achieve high standards.”

Push the envelope

Zalando’s Principal Designer Circle — which Inès is helping to organize — is intended as a regular opportunity for Principals to engage with the community, sparking conversations and spreading knowledge that can lead to innovation. Exchanging with expert practitioners from other companies, the aim is to push forward our collective design practices, to shape thinking in the industry about design expertise, and to contribute to the wider body of knowledge.

Fulfill your ambitions

When we asked Inès if she had any advice for aspiring Principal Product Designers, she was very clear: “Come to B2B!” Inès loves how her role is bookended by business, and how delivering features spanning different modules and teams requires her to regularly utilize her stakeholder management and facilitation skills. “In B2B, we almost always work with complicated flow scenarios, and not with a single page or component. This teaches us to think holistically about the user experience. Being able to think both from the client side and the business side is what makes the best Principals. We strike the balance between achieving our design ambitions and meeting user needs and business priorities.”

Act like an owner

Adopting the owner mindset, one of Zalando’s founding principles, is Inès’ favorite part of her job. “We built Zalando Direct in the same way a business would build a platform, then we reworked it. Because of the area we are working in, we really know how business works. I find a lot of inspiration in how you decide what to build, and how to build it for whom. Our main goal is to put the customer — or in our case, the business partner — at the center of our product decision-making. I believe that designers who act like business owners will be especially valued in the future.”

Ready to raise the bar as a Principal Product Designer? Apply now and mention B2B in your application.