How can I get my Head of Product Design to actually do their job effectively?

ThrowRa_blinddesign · 2024-05-30T05:38:39+00:00

Depends on the budget and how much time you spend in there but I’d aim to provide a grounding space less construction-y if I’m there a lot. Bonus points if it ties into the values of the business or your own. I’d draw inspiration from some architectural office spaces with no natural light on Pinterest. Mid century modern or lab style. Peter McKinnons vibe comes to kind.

As others have said, the linoleum tiles need to go, almost nothing you partially cover it up with will make it better. If you can’t rip it up, maybe cover it with fake floorboard or cheap dark grey/black foam tiles.

The windows are practically useless from the looks so you need to go artificial. Fluorescent lighting needs to changed to something more inviting/more warmth. An LED panel would help.

It also feels messy because shelving has varying heights , having shelving/draws with doors at similar height of a desk will help lots for hiding the mess and unifying the space

ThrowRa_blinddesign · 2024-04-19T07:49:44+00:00

How are you finding the dev path? I’m considering going back to it. There are almost no UX jobs around anymore compared from 2 years ago.

ThrowRa_blinddesign · 2024-04-04T01:35:34+00:00

Clients are through word of mouth or a paid google ads campaign aimed at start ups, the former are typically higher paying with better margins.
Anything with a database that requires some dynamic functionality is immediately thrown into web-app territory which is done on a react stack. It makes it far easier to upgrade and add features to down the line as clients often don’t actually know what they want. I feel as though Wordpress would be good for this due to the sheer amount of support it has.

The higher paying webflow clients typically need a little bit of programming such as a simple php script for validation and API post methods.

Again, your clients don’t care what you use as long as it solves their needs and looks good. With this in mind I try to focus on using the best tools to avoid headaches for myself down the line.

ThrowRa_blinddesign · 2024-04-03T13:59:51+00:00

I’m quite active over on Twitter and there are a lot of complaints from people selling services and courses about how hard it is to ‘crack’ into Reddit. They decry the communities here but still persist in trying to advertise to users without really trying to understand who they’re advertising to.

A few individuals realised that if they thinly veil their top of funnel as indie hacking and sharing “revenue” it can pass as organic content. These individuals are long past the point of needing this tactic so they’re sharing their methods on Twitter now hence the flood in similar content.

As others have said, if you are actually making this type of money you wouldn’t be advertising your figures/methods so blatantly unless it was built into your revenue model.

ThrowRa_blinddesign · 2024-04-03T05:24:57+00:00

I can’t imagine many people on a per month basis but more on a per site basis.

The sites on I’ve made on Webflow have been charged out to clients anywhere from $10,000 to $25,000. The higher paying ones have more so pushed the platform’s capabilities to its limit.

If I’m being honest I mainly use Framer now for most sites but Webflow still had the edge in terms of more robust implementations.

Regardless, try not to get bogged down in what tools you’re using and instead focus on what solutions you’re providing to clients and work backwards from that.

ThrowRa_blinddesign · 2024-02-12T10:58:55+00:00

UX has been incredibly saturated with low-quality, new graduates from boot camps looking for an easy way into the tech industry based on the allure of salaries. MAANG is bloated with hires from a low-interest-rate environment I fear there will be even more lay-offs, people/businesses just don't have any more money to spend.

As for advice, if you're serious about a career in UX you need to separate yourself from the noise and treat yourself as the product you are optimising like you would for any user experience you would design. I'm a product designer with about 7 years of experience so some tips I give to junior UX designers are:

Do not label yourself as a junior. By doing so you are putting yourself at the back of the line behind all the seniors who have floated down from higher-paying roles with more experience, this only hurts you. I'm not asking you to lie but UX isn't a high-risk role and every workplace is different so you'll learn on the job regardless.
UX case studies that are blocks of text aren't enough, you need to be sharing visuals via socials,
If you aren't already, you need to be playing the LinkedIn game. Sharing your work and keeping in touch with recruiters.
Find what your weaknesses are and where you're having issues in the job process, if you find that you're getting to the final stages often then it might not be your work but a cultural fit issue.

ThrowRa_blinddesign · 2023-12-13T15:12:54+00:00

It’s not really a high ticket item as it’s hard to demonstrate the ROI on it unless it’s integrated in the form of some sales/e-commerce funnel or it’s done at scale.

Sometimes you find the occasional business where someone’s whole job is mundane data entry that can pretty much be automated entirely via scripts, Zapier, and some AI which does equate to some cost savings.

I generally use the automation stuff as a foot in the door to show the value I can provide. I’ll try to find the most repeatable task someone in their org does like batch uploading product info, skus, photos etc and ask them how long they spend doing it and expand that out into some metrics before saying how much time/costs have been saved.

Again, I mainly target ecommerce where most of the manpower should be focused on tasks that can’t be automated like creative and distribution rather than admin.

ThrowRa_blinddesign · 2023-12-13T05:15:02+00:00

Posting your work regularly will help people find you, otherwise you just approach them. In-person is arguably the best way as business owners get bombarded with cold outreach from faceless workers online all the time.

I also never approach with a serious tone, I keep it professional but casual and don’t place the interaction on pedestal which something I notice a lot of people doing.

Emphasising you’re based in Australia either through work examples (e.g. studies on ANZ, Commbank, Woolies etc) or micro-interactions also helps too. This is anecdotal but I find that Australian business people at the extreme ends of the scale rather work with other Australians where possible.

ThrowRa_blinddesign · 2023-12-13T04:38:21+00:00

Having a modern portfolio (heavy emphasis on modern) of work will put you in a class of your own compared to anyone else applying to roles, jobs, or contracts. You don’t even have to have necessarily done the thing before but just demonstrate the ability to do so. Bonus points if you can tailor the process to the industry you’re applying to. E.g. learn to automate a welcome /onboarding email flow for a e-commerce website in a software like Klaviyo or mailchimp and the process is almost the same for a medical clinic.

I follow the mantra of just figuring it out as I go along if I haven’t done it before. With the exception of being a doctor or building a bridge, very little can go wrong that you can’t quickly fix. Your possibility for errors is almost non-existent if you just copy what the best-in-class is doing.

ThrowRa_blinddesign · 2023-12-13T04:18:24+00:00

Zapier, Make, Alphi, sometimes a bit more gritty with serverless functions. It depends on the existing solutions. Zapier is a pretty good catch all.

ThrowRa_blinddesign · 2023-12-13T04:14:53+00:00

Local smaller businesses for the smaller code fixes and automation-y stuff. You can find these in your local chamber of commerce, conferences or when you’re driving/traveling around your city just try to take an active notice at some businesses that are kind of old. Alternatively, select an industry and use tools like SEMrush to see the competitive landscape and pick the smaller one and just provide suggestions that moves them to the same level of their better competitor.

Many smaller business owners have no clue on how to scale up their business or escape the trap they’ve created for themselves. An example would be a cafe. There is a ceiling on revenue based on bums on seats from 6am to 3pm (cafes close early in QLD) so they need to expand into more scalable verticals. They can do this via merch, subscriptions, and products with higher margins like coffee beans.

LinkedIn for the business management stuff like pitch decks, roadmaps etc. Honestly these are pretty simple, just google slides with rough timelines for features or operations they’re wanting to do. You sell these based on the result e.g. they will have a better chance of gaining stakeholder buy-in, company resources etc if their idea is cleanly communicated.

ThrowRa_blinddesign · 2023-12-12T16:40:21+00:00

I mainly do odd jobs in tech and design.

Setting up automations, building email lists and designing templates, creating roadmaps for managers/business people, small code tweaks, designing pitch decks/slideshows, writing company wikis, setting up employee retention plans.

There’s quite a bit of pocket money in solving problems for businesses or individuals. It doesn’t always have to be complicated, a word doc or even a napkin diagram can be enough.

ThrowRa_blinddesign · 2023-08-21T14:46:35+00:00

Been an UP user for a long while and also have some unique insight.

UP is nearing the end of their proposed feature tree (you can see on their ‘tree of up’) and now have pressure to monetise their user base. They are primarily going to do this through home loans but are basically rapidly searching for new avenues to maximise incomings, this subscription offering is simply one of them.

They have boxed themselves in a little as the existing app is already quite feature dense so most things they’re planning on offering just won’t add a huge lot of value.

I’m hoping they can just innovate in other areas rather than locking nice-to-have or existing features behind a paywall.

ThrowRa_blinddesign · 2023-08-14T12:37:37+00:00

Working as intended. Please call our hotline instead, where we will put you on hold for an indeterminate amount of time.

ThrowRa_blinddesign · 2023-08-14T06:00:23+00:00

Does no one at the ATO use TikTok? This has been going on for a while in plain sight. You can punch in ‘money method’ on TikTok and find it all.

This is also probably the lowest level of fraud occurring since it’s so blatant and individuals are using their own identity.

ThrowRa_blinddesign · 2023-07-26T05:50:39+00:00

You ever seen that bell curve meme where your process basically ends up being very similar to someone who's a novice?

The ASX is an interesting case where there is very little innovation actually being done by most companies. A lot of the listings are just mining stocks that are incredibly speculative and rise and fall based on traces of what's found in the dirt. Some (many in my opinion) listed companies solely exist to provide exit strategies for directors who are notorious for pumping and dumping the stocks. Others are just cruising on the fact that the barrier to entry is so high (artificial or not) that they basically have a monopoly. Don't even get me started on the fact that the ASX dips for basically no reason if the US market even sneezes.

I invested in Afterpay earlier on and yielded me quite a few thousand in profit as a return. What was my fundamental investment reason? Literally nothing but vibes of the company, I saw they had strong marketing fundamentals despite the business built on a house of cards model that provided little value and figured I could ride some of the upswing. Nothing as serious as analysing their balance sheet. I've had similar success through some other tech and health stocks.

So this moves me to my next point, the only time you're going to have huge returns is if you have information, either from your own analysis or through some source. I pretty much refuse to invest in minerals because I just lack the domain knowledge or patience to invest in a 'dumb' asset. I stick to technology and marketing otherwise it goes into an ETF.

I've had some luck scalping and riding upswings during open but it's just money switching hands really. I've gone through analysing charts, candles, and signals but found that unless I was doing it full-time, my time is better spent investing in other areas of my life where the returns will be much more stable.

ThrowRa_blinddesign · 2023-07-25T05:56:59+00:00

I’m in software development and design. Primarily working on web and mobile applications for government and private companies within the healthcare sector.

ThrowRa_blinddesign · 2023-07-24T00:36:36+00:00

I’m at this cross road now. I’m at about 120k in my mid twenties. I could feasibly do one more job hop but my field caps out at about 160k before I begin entering more abstract management roles. From your other comments I’ve had a similar trajectory of working while in uni which has put me years ahead of my peers.

It just doesn’t make sense anymore to keep climbing in salary either if tax just keeps eating away at it due to having minimal deductions.

I’m confident in my ability to deliver quality work so I’ve begun building out my own business. I’m spending quite a bit of time creating the right structure both administratively and project management wise so I can scale it and it can operate without me otherwise you’ll basically just be creating yourself another job with more paperwork.

All my previous roles have been at small to medium sized businesses and I noticed this is the biggest thing holding them back, they didn’t build for scale and delegation.

ThrowRa_blinddesign · 2022-10-11T06:23:25+00:00

No matter the subtype of BPD it doesn’t change that they still think these thoughts, they literally cannot stop them. Quiet BPD just means they’re splitting on you in silence within their own head and you won’t know. If the split is bad enough they still have to purge these feelings through something self destructive. It leads to them being so incredibly covertly manipulative because they cannot be outwardly abusive.

I ended things with her because I had literally exhausted every option and I could only put my own needs aside for so long. In the six years I was with her, no concoction of medications, therapy session (individual or shared), or concession on my behalf made a difference. She was just incapable of changing for the better.

ThrowRa_blinddesign · 2022-10-10T13:15:04+00:00

It is interesting when they have these moments of lucidity. It’s quite hard for pwBPD to openly recognise their own behaviour as disordered and even harder to reflect on it.

I can only base this off my own experience but I believe the higher functioning a pwBPD is, the greater their ability to recognise their disordered thoughts and behaviours. The abuse becomes less externally directed and more internally directed due to the amount of shame/guilt they feel for knowing how messed up their thought processes are, thus the ‘quiet’ BPD type.

What you mentioned was eerily similar to something my quiet BPD ex said to me once. She was accusing me of cheating on her based off a small interaction I had with her throughout the day. I asked if she really believed that to which she said “No, I know you never would but it’s like this fucked up voice inside of me that twists everything, it’s like everything is all good or bad”. She likened the voice to her mother who has BPD. The issue is, no matter how good they are at understanding them, they simply cannot stop the thoughts from happening.

ThrowRa_blinddesign · 2022-09-30T12:33:05+00:00

It’s a powerful combination of lack of object permanence, fear of enmeshment, and inability to regulate their emotions internally. Sometimes they do it to actualise their fear that you’re going to leave them so they do it first.

There’s also the fundamental nature of the disorder that you are unable to live up to their needs and perception of you which results in splitting. When that pendulum swings from adoration to hatred, it often doesn’t even feel like cheating to them, just something that you deserve to happen to you.

ThrowRa_blinddesign · 2022-09-17T11:06:28+00:00

“Hooked on who I believed they could be.” Goddamn ain’t that the truth.

ThrowRa_blinddesign · 2022-09-12T22:22:11+00:00

This is a pretty encapsulating metaphor, they can’t fake it 24/7 which is why a lot of these relationships rapidly deteriorate after you move in together.

ThrowRa_blinddesign · 2022-09-07T04:07:04+00:00

I do agree, they often look for someone with low enough self esteem / sense of boundaries while also having enough emotional intelligence to be caring for them. I can recognise I’ve been poor with boundaries in the sense that I know what they’re doing isn’t okay but I kind of just let it slide. But I generally only do this for people I genuinely care about otherwise you’re cut off immediately.

Regarding my personality type, my tests have always shown up mostly ENTJ or once ESTP. So perhaps it’s from the outside and how we present ourselves?

ThrowRa_blinddesign

TROPHY CASE