“How a Passion Becomes a Career” — with Sharon Lee, Product Design Lead at Knotch
Today, we’re speaking with Sharon Lee, Product Design Lead at Knotch. We discuss her creative upbringing, her leadership at Knotch, and her ambitious hopes for the future.
Today’s episode of Journey Map is brought to you by MindManager.
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Today’s guest began her career at the Art Center College of Design in 2014, after taking graphics in communications. She then heads to Stanford University where she graduates in 2018 with a Bachelor of Science in Science, Technology, and Society with a concentration in Media and Communications. During her time in school she held many UX Design positions at companies such as Envestnet, Stink Studios, Kleiner Perkins, and Helix. She also worked as a Design and Engagement Intern at Stanford. She is currently the Product Design Lead at Knotch. For those of you that don’t know Knotch is a New York based software company that is the independent standard for content marketing ROI. Their end to end content intelligence platforms help marketers plan, measure, optimize and benchmark their content efforts across all owned and paid strategies. Their Content Intelligence Platform enables brands to become better listeners and storytellers.
Today’s episode of Journey Map is brought to you by MindManager. Journey Map listeners know that with the right map you can take your career anywhere you set your mind to. MindManager work management software puts your ideas, plans and projects on the path to success by transforming them into dynamic digital maps, charts, diagrams and more. Mind Managers flexible visual format makes it easy to capture, organize, understand and evolve critical business information and with powerful collaboration sharing features it’s the perfect tool for keeping remote teams aligned, on track and headed in the right direction.You can take a free thirty day no commitment trial today by visiting www.mindmanager.com/journeymap.
DH: Today’s guest is Sharon Lee, Product Design Lead at Knotch. Sharon, welcome to Journey Map!
SL: Thanks Dave, it’s great to be here
DH: It’s my pleasure. I was going over your bio which obviously what’s unique about having you on the show today is that oftentimes we interview people who are mid career or late career and there’s all these data points they went to this job, then this job, then this job. You probably have the shortest introduction that I’ve done yet which is still pretty long. What is it like to be in the role you’re in , in terms of a lead position at a pretty notable tech company at such a young age?
SL: Yeah, Knotch is currently about 55 people and our design team consists of 3 individuals one being the co-founder being Aaron Tzimas he is the brains behind it all, and then we have our new marketing designer as well. So leading product design really is putting on multiple hats, it’s not just like let’s strategize, let’s create the blueprint for what we’re gonna do next, it’s also doing all the nitty-gritty work like moving pixels until they look right. So leading has a kind of cool definition because really it’s me leading myself, and trying to figure out what that means. It’s also taking the lead with the chief Creative Officer and it’s cool, it’s defining something that hasn’t been done before in the space. I’m really blessed to do it at such a young age.
DH: So if you could go back into your childhood or high school what experiences did you have that would kind of point you in the direction of becoming a designer or UX designer more specifically?
SL: Yeah, so my dad is a photographer and my mom is a graphic designer by trade, and so when other kids are going to playgrounds I was kind of going to art museums with them. That really formed this real appreciation for design and how spaces can have different experiences based on the paintings on the wall, or the sculptures in the middle of the room, and it really also taught me that art could be a trade. It’s not just an artists mentality it’s seeing how a passion can become a career, and not taking that tradition as the expected. So yeah their influence on me is really huge.
DH: So walk me through you had a few different intern positions is that common in the program you took at Stanford? It almost looks like each semester or each year you had a different intern position, was that sort of the way the program was structured?
SL: I think that Silicon Valley has that expectation a little bit, if I could call it that. You have them, and you realize that everyone around you knows what they want to do. I think that was something that was really unique to the space. You start trying to make these connections early on, and already after freshman year people are like “I’m going to work at such-and-such company and see what I can make of myself there”, and I’m like wow I want to do that. I didn’t take our age or the fact that we were freshmen in college as a limitation, I was really excited to take it as an opportunity as I have so much to learn and I want people to influence me in that way. So yeah every summer it was connecting the previous experience to the next one, saying I’ve learned this much how much more can you teach me? and just having that willingness to learn.
DH: That’s cool so what would you say is the big difference for you personally between going from those in-class experiences to those internship experiences? What were the benefits and drawbacks of both models?
SL: Great question. I think that when you’re in a classroom you can only plan so much you don’t have shareholders that have different opinions or users to test against, it sometimes is a lot more about intuition and working with limitations in the field. When I was in a company there weren’t second chances, you got one pitch and that was your only chance to get feedback that would either push your project forward or really hold you back, and I think that those x and y factors in the field are really what grew me to keep finding those experiences and keep pushing with what worked with people. In a classroom there’s a lot of theories and theories sometimes don’t hold ground when those x,y,z factors are not present in real life situations. I think that’s the main difference.
DH: That is very cool thanks for sharing. So in my career with our agency I don’t know if you knew this or not but we’re Craft&Crew, obviously who produces this podcast, but we are a UX and UI firm ourselves. Funny enough while a lot of people think about us as working in Saas, B2B tech, and financial services, historically one in every two dollars we made in the ten years of running our business has come from a college or university. So we actually have a lot of experience in that space from a design perspective, UX specifically. One of your internships which was actually at Stanford where you also went to school. I think there’s a lot of public knowledge about some of the challenges of trying to do great UX design in higher education. What did you find uniquely challenging about applying the craft of user experience design to an academic setting?
SL: I think it has to do with the flexibility and Stanford really emphasizes its design thinking process, and it’s about marrying that process with real student feedback. I think it was a huge advantage of being on campus because the tools that we were creating were for the students themselves, or for staff members themselves. So whereas sometimes you create a product you can go online and you get a lot of anonymous feedback either from beta testers or from family and friends, this time I could go to a building to knock on room 105 and be like “Hey can I interview you about this product I’m creating for you? Does it make sense to you? Am I forgetting anything?” and that face to face experience really enriched the product we were creating and it made me feel like I could empathize because these were not just staff members that were at a different school it was my teachers, my professors, my admin that I could have a personal relationship with and be like “Yeah oh my god as a student I also struggled with that and here’s a tool that we created to make that better”. I think that was really cool.
DH: So how do you see the connection of learning some of those lessons in an academic setting and how does it apply to your life at Knotch? The reason I’m asking and maybe I’m leading the answer a little bit, but what I was so fascinated by in your bio because I felt I could relate to it, is that I often say that there are a lot of similarities between doing user experience design in higher education and doing user experience design in B2B tech. So I want to see what your take is and maybe you have some similar or different opinions than I do on that.
SL: Totally, I think at the end of the day you’re working with people right? I think whether it be in a school setting or whether it be a company setting, there’s shareholders, there’s people you need to listen to, there’s laws you have to abide by, be it like ADA compliance. I think that any product designers role is to teach a person the environment you introduce them to, and help them learn without even being there. It’s hints and queues, and design structures you place so that they know where to go. Be it for an academic page for teachers to log on, or a data platform for users to log on.
DH: So yeah, I think what people really don’t think about in higher education marketing and let’s just say design and UX as part of that bucket, I think people don’t really think about the fact that you are selling something that is a considered purchase that has a multi stakeholder decision process. You know the student might not be the one who’s paying, parents or other family members might have a strong influence in your decision on where to go, friends might have a strong influence. Also just the buying cycle, it’s a long tailed sales cycle, there’s very clear competition, like most institutions can name their competitors on one hand. I think that in B2B tech tax it’s very similar in that the skew is actually quite expensive in Saas or enterprise technology in general, and it’s often the person who needs it is not the person who is paying for it. How I think we made the transition from very focused in the education industry to very focused in the technology industry is that we understood all those factors and while it might have been a little bit of a stretch at first to convince people, especially to convince the tech people that our education experience is relevant. I think we’ve actually been able to prove that actually by having that experience in higher education its made us more effective as designers and marketers by extension in tech.
SL: I completely agree.
DH: If you can imagine your career on an emotional time, if you could go out over the next 10 years what do you hope the highest high on your emotional journey will look like?
SL: The next 10 years wow. I think to keep in the entrepreneurship theme of this podcast, I would love to partner with someone, and find someone who understands me and wants to embark on an entrepreneurial journey with me. I think that eventually I’d love to start something that I know that I can take a creative spin on. I think the highs would be knowing about what this product may be, because at this point in my career I really don’t know. I hope that this product helps people whether it be disseminating information, or a tool that helps people who don’t have access to information obtain it. I think that’s something that I’ve always been drawn to with technology and how it marry’s with social and community aspects. Yeah I think that would be a great high.
DH:That definitely sounds like a great ambition to have. If you could go back to when your parents were dragging you around, although it doesn’t sound like they were dragging you around it sounds like you were a willing participant. But if you go back to when your parents are taking you to art museums, or maybe you’re peeking over your dad’s shoulder as he’s working on editing photos, or peeking over your mom’s shoulder as she’s doing graphic design work. If you could go back to that younger version of yourself and let that person know where you’re going to wind up in 2020, do you think that that person wants to know or do you think they would want to chart their own path as it would have gone down?
SL: I think that she would want to know, but I don’t know if I would tell her. I think that a lot of the mistakes I made be it choosing a school and then a major, or deciding what classes to take, or deciding what internships to go into. I think all of them had their highlights and their fungles and I think that’s how I got to know that Knotch was the place for me, and that this role was something I wanted to do. When I was that age I didn’t set out to become a product designer, I really thought I would be a brand marketer at a pretty traditional boutique agency working on brands. I see that this is where I was meant to be, that the sensitivity I have towards user experiences is what drives me to wake up every morning and make the designs that I do. I think she would want to know though, and I don’t think she would stop pestering me until I said. Because it was hard being a creative in a suburb of Los Angeles, it was hard trying to vouch for aesthetic decisions when a lot of logical decisions drove the conversation. So it would be a split I would have to debate it out with her.
DH: That’s the first time anyone has ever answered that question with I would debate with myself. I’d love to see it. Okay so, what’s the best piece of advice you can give another recent grad? just a piece of advice that you feel that maybe you followed that has allowed you to get into the position you’re in now.
SL: I would say don’t compromise passion for practicality. I think that as a designer people are often shocked. Like sometimes I’ll tell the doctor “Like yeah I’m in design” and he will be like “Do you make money?” and I’ll be like “Oh what a personal question”. I think that a huge benefit of growing up with parents in this field was that I could see that it wasn’t so much about what tradition says, your passions will have a certain outcome and it’s about learning to use constraints as guides. Sometimes limitations are there to push you in a different direction and all the while you keep your passions are your core and realize that they serve a purpose in this industry, and in this world I think that you’ll be a happier person. I think that you’ll find that we have a very unique and diverse world of businesses, and private contractors, and Instagram handles, and there is a space for that. So I would say that.
DH: Thank you for that great message, for anyone I think not just recent graduates. Last question it might actually be a long answer but I want to ask it anyway. When you got hired at Knotch could you summarize how that went down? How did you go from where you were and then get into this product design lead role? I know it’s a big question or multi staged, but if you could just summarize it and give us the picture.
SL: Sure yeah it was actually a really wild ride. I had actually signed with a different company and they had my start date as a month later, and out of nowhere one of my doctors found a growth in my nose and I had to go into surgery. During that time a lot of weird contract things got muddied and I was back on the market. I think it was like market timing or something like that, but then as I was kind of wery Rob who’s our Head Recruiter reached out to me and said “Our Chief Creative Officer is super picky and he’d like to talk to you”. I was like okay! I like picky people, I think that picky people know what they want and sometimes in a leadership role that’s a motivating factor and I take that as a challenge. So he got on the call and he started out by just saying “I don’t care about how old you are, I don’t care about your education, Stanford-Shampford I just want to know what you’re like” and I loved that all the assumptions were out the window, I loved that he was looking for a teammate not just a resume to pin to his and so it really was a frank conversation about what do you like to do? What about design draws you to it? What sort of design draws you?, do you like shoes?Do you like laptops?Do you like iPhone cases? Do you like posters to put on your wall? So I think having that frank conversation really lined up and exposed what this role is going to be. I knew of the bat it wasn’t going to be an easy job it wasn’t going to be “Here’s the task you have to do, go do it” it’s I have no idea when this task is due we’re creating something completely new and really we have no idea how it’s going to perform and that was something that drew me to then role. Then of course there’s the hurdles you have to pass, so I spoke with the Marketing Manager, I spoke with the marketing team, and just got to know them. It was really about “hHere’s a start-up it’s fast growing we don’t know what this role is going to look like and Aaron has not hired someone in six years and we really need this position, but it’s going to be something that has no assumptions attached to it, can you do that?” I think that’s what draws people to Knotch and what keeps us there is that we’re doing something really radical and we don’t have definitions or expectations and that’s really cleared the field for us. So that was a really good match.
DH: That’s really great, I wish I would have asked that question first actually I don’t know why I waited for the end. Here we are at time for our time together today and I just opened that Pandora’s box. So we will have to do this again in a few years, when you are two times further into your career than you are now. But thank you so much for doing this, and for sharing. I know that a lot of our listeners are at an earlier stage in their career or have just graduated so that was really great to get your perspective. Thank you for sharing and like I said we’ll have to do this again.
SL: Thank you so much Dave it’s been a real honour!
