Techies

Born in Soviet Russia, always an observer, became one professionally as a user researcher, worked on
Google, YouTube, Android, Airbnb, and now at Medium.

Tell me a bit about your early years and where you come from.

I was born in the Soviet Union and left when I was five or so. The immigration process took about six months as we waited to see where we would be allowed to immigrate to—when we left the Soviet Union we had to immediately give up our citizenship there without knowing where we would be allowed to move to. As a result we had to spend a bunch of months in Austria and then Italy, waiting to see what we could learn from the consulates there.

“Being an immigrant taught me from an early age to observe carefully. The thought was always, ‘This is how things happen here,’ and not ‘This is just how things work.’ That probably influenced my observation skills from a pretty early age. “

Eventually, we learned the US would be able to take us in, and we were placed in San Diego due to relatively arbitrary reasons. In retrospect, a ridiculously awesome location to be randomly placed in—we knew nothing about San Diego when we arrived there. That’s where most of my childhood happened.

Being an immigrant taught me from an early age to observe carefully. The thought was always, “This is how things happen here,” and not “This is just how things work.” That probably influenced my observation skills from a pretty early age.

How did you first get interested in tech?

I was interested in the things happening on computers pretty early on. As soon as we got AOL, I was pretty obsessed. This was later on, but I remember my friends making fun of me for always being on LiveJournal. And just in general asking me how to do random things on online. I wasn’t particularly technical, certainly not in a hardware kind of way, but I guess I always felt comfortable being online. If I had to learn some basic html to make my sentence bold on Livejournal, god damnit, I was going to make it happen!

In 2002, I left San Diego for Stanford. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, though I knew I liked the social sciences. I took a bunch of different social science classes and ended up in psychology, perhaps unsurprisingly with a slant towards cultural psychology. At one point, somewhat randomly, I learned about user research, which seemed to combine both psychology and technology and I got really, really proactive about learning about it. I took as many relevant classes as possible, like HCI classes and any kind of classes related to research methods that would apply.

As I was graduating, I applied to do user research at Google and they were hiring junior researchers. I was lucky and got the job. I would say a lot of it was learned on the job—partly because it was a relatively new field. The foundation was created at school—how to think about research design, how to formulate the right research questions. But a lot of the details were learned once I got to work.

So you’ve done design research for multiple large global companies. Tell me more about how your roles developed.

In the beginning, I was much more focused on more tactical type research. Things that were focused on usability-type studies, can a person get from point A to point B? Is it useable?

Then as my understanding of design matured, and also, product in general, companies became more aware that there’s more to understanding users than whether or not can they can complete a task. Instead research can help illuminate the most high order questions like—how does this fit into their lives? Is this something people would even use? And that became really satisfying, because these are really fundamental questions about a product’s ability to be successful and to be out into the world.

It’s been interesting to see my evolution in research go that direction, but also see the industry evolve that way as well—to realize there’s more to user research than answering whether this little widget make sense or not. Sure that’s important—if your product is brilliant but doesn’t make sense, no one’s going to get its brilliance. But being able to use the product is not suddenly going to make people fall in love with what you’ve made. That’s just table stakes.

“When I’m seeing people like 10, 15, 20 years older than me in leadership roles that are not like me in any way, it’s really hard to imagine yourself and what you’re working towards.”

What questions are particularly interesting to you right now, or what questions do you feel like are most important for tech companies to be asking right now?

One thing that’s definitely on my mind is how to be thoughtful about the way we direct attention. A lot of us have been sucked into low attention span worlds where we mindlessly consume content and click on things here and there, and don’t even notice that 20 minutes later, we’ve been staring at our phones and not really spending our time in the way we’d like.

So one thing I’ve been thinking about is, okay, we have these human tendencies for distraction and random interval reinforcement. I don’t think this is something that was created by the internet or products. It just takes advantage of certain tendencies we have. That can be bad news, but to me, it’s also good news in that we can design experiences that facilitate much more thoughtful consumption taking advantage of our more positive tendencies.

People still do consume for longer amounts of time—people read books before they go to bed, or they read magazines on Sunday mornings, or they read the news on their commutes. People want to learn, feel, connect. So how do we design with those different use cases and desires in mind, and meet people where they are? But also gently push them in new ways, too.

Are there lessons that you’ve learned from your time in this field that inform what you build now at Medium? Taking preventative measures or really consciously designing to make a healthy place for people to express themselves?

There are a couple of things that we’re trying to do at Medium that are working somewhat well—though there is plenty of room to be even better. One is, what comments you see are determined by the author and your network. For example, since I follow you on Medium, I see your comments, but not a random person I don’t know unless an author recommends the comment. That completely changes the nature of not only what you as a reader and writer see, but what a commenter sees and thus how they think about what they’re communicating. “I want everyone to see that I was the first commenter” — that incentive isn’t there.

Secondly, I think that setting a precedent for the type of content we had early on really set the tone for what kind of content should exist on the site. As the community expands it’s going to change and shift so it’s not something we can rest our laurels on, but something that I think does help.

The third thing is the design itself. I’ve heard people say, “When you start writing a response it makes it clear that it’s not just the comment necessarily; it can be it’s own post,” and that’s exactly the intent. The onus to write something reasonable and thoughtful feels that much higher than a regular comment box. Now, there is a challenge there too because you don’t want people to feel intimidated to share their thoughts, so it’s definitely something that we need to balance, but those are some of things that help in the direction of making it a place with better conversations than usual. But again, there’s still so much to do. It’s an extremely hairy, complicated problem. But that’s how you know it’s worth working on, too.

What are some of the hardest part of your job and some of the biggest struggles?

I think not seeing tons of role models. When I’m seeing people like 10, 15, 20 years older than me in leadership roles that are not like me in any way, it’s really hard to imagine yourself and what you’re working towards.

When I went to my first Women in Design talk, it was really the first time I saw women who had careers I aspired to in front of me, and it really did hit me, wow, this feels more reachable now. Hilariously—but in a sad way I guess—I was one of the people who was giving a talk. So you have be your own role model sometimes I guess. And that’s hard.

“When I went to my first Women in Design talk, it was really the first time I saw women who had careers I aspired to in front of me, and it really did hit me, wow, this feels more reachable now. Hilariously—but in a sad way I guess—I was one of the people who was giving a talk. So you have be your own role model sometimes I guess. And that’s hard.”

You kind of already answered this, but I’m curious about your biggest motivators? Like what drives you?

As many people do, I’ve often asked myself what my career goals are. But kind of related to the role models point, it’s hard to be able to point to someone and say, “I want to be that person.” And It’s not cut and dry, like I’m a lawyer at a firm and I want to make partner. So all I’ve really had as a goal was I just want to learn and do something that it makes the world a little bit better.

The more time has passed the more I’ve realized, that that’s an adequate enough goal, even if it feels a bit vague. There was this one interview I had with a Medium reader that really brought this home, and has stuck with me. He was talking about this article from a Rwandan refugee. It’s really good. It’s the story from this girl who was seven with her sister when she was a refugee—and eventually went to Harvard and lives in San Francisco—but it was their whole experience as children, and later also the disconnect she felt when she came to America.

And the reader said something like, “If I ever read a news article that was ‘10,000 Rwandan refugees such and such’ I would feel very differently about it than reading about this one person—this one story. And now that I have read this story, anytime I would read about Rwandan refugees, it would feel very differently too. It’s so much more real.”

And that kind of creation of empathy via stories, is so powerful, and something the internet can uniquely do—give voice to individuals, and their stories. And connect it to others that may otherwise never have heard it before.

That is a remarkable way to use the unique capabilities of the tool that we know as the internet. And that’s super cool to me, that I can help make that happen.

“As many people do, I’ve often asked myself what my career goals are. But kind of related to the role models point, it’s hard to be able to point to someone and say, ‘I want to be that person.’ And It’s not cut and dry, like I’m a lawyer at a firm and I want to make partner. So all I’ve really had as a goal was I just want to learn and do something that it makes the world a little bit better.”

What would you like to see change?

One thing that comes to mind is a lack of awareness of privilege. People get really sucked into this world and forget that this is a very specific environment and the problems that they’re having need to be put into context.

We all have right to be upset with our problems but a little self-awareness really wouldn’t hurt. I don’t mean just people who get pissed because their start-up stopped providing free laundry or whatever. But, even more importantly, I mean we need to look at solving problems that are beyond the cushy, privileged problems. This is why diversity in tech is critical, and not just a nice-to-have. We need access to a wider set of problems.

“We need to look at solving problems that are beyond the cushy, privileged problems. This is why diversity in tech is critical, and not just a nice-to-have. We need access to a wider set of problems.”

What advice would you give to folks from similar backgrounds who are looking to get into research or tech?

This might just be general career advice, but—be curious, be proactive. That’s the the first thing that comes to mind, because, like I was mentioning, when I first found out about research, I was a voracious reader of everything about it. I’d try to ask anyone about it, and take as many classes as possible related to it. So, being proactive and really putting your energy into the thing you’re excited about—it’s just going to serve you well.

I think, on the same note, ask a lot of questions. Because there’s a finite amount of careers that are told to people when they’re ten and fifteen and even twenty. It’s like, doctor, lawyer, now engineer. But there’s all these jobs out there, and if you ask around you might find one that will fit your interests and strengths and things you’re excited about.

And you have even more access, via the internet, to try to figure out what that is. And so don’t feel like, “Oh, there’s only these 5 jobs that I can be.” Really be curious, and research around, and see what’s possible. And maybe there’s some combination of things that you create yourself that can be your work.

“Ask a lot of questions. Because there’s a finite amount of careers that are told to people when they’re ten and fifteen and even twenty. It’s like, doctor, lawyer, now engineer. But there’s all these jobs out there, and if you ask around you might find one that will fit your interests and strengths and things you’re excited about.”

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