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Design Better
Rewind: Vicki Tan: Learning from new voices
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Rewind: Vicki Tan: Learning from new voices

This week, we’re rewinding to one of our favorite episodes from our 6th season,  with Vicki Tan. Vicki is a designer and author, who is now a staff product designer at Pinterest. When we spoke with her, Vicki was an associate principal product designer at Spotify, and Earlier in her career, she was a senior product designer at Headspace, worked on communication and UX design at Google and product design at Lyft.

Original episode description

Vicki Tan has worked at companies that change the way we travel, think about our mental health, and access music from around the globe. To each of these roles she has brought her background in psychology, to better understand the needs of the people using these products.

We chat with Vicki about some of the things she has learned over the course of her career, from Lyft to Headspace to Spotify, how her creative process has changed over the years, and how her team does research. 

Vicki also talks about why she regularly takes a sabbatical from her work, and why “finding umami” is important to figuring out the core mission of a company. 

Vicki’s episode was part of our 6th season, which included other great guests like Dan Pink, Eileen Fisher, Sara Seager, and more.

Bio

Vicki Tan is a Staff Product Designer at Pinterest. Earlier in her career, she was an Associate Principal Product Designer at Spotify, a senior product designer at Headspace, worked on communication and UX design at Google, and product design at Lyft. According to Frank Yoo, design director at Lyft, Vicki “is positive and thoughtful and puts as much care into people and teams as she does creating the artifacts themselves.”  


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Design Better
Design Better
Design Better co-hosts Eli Woolery and Aarron Walter explore the intersection of design, technology, and the creative process through conversations with inspiring guests across many creative fields. Whether you’re design curious or a design pro, Design Better is guaranteed to inspire and inform. Episodes are released semi-weekly for free subscribers, weekly for premium subscribers. Vanity Fair calls Design Better, “sharp, to the point, and full of incredibly valuable information for anyone looking to better understand how to build a more innovative world.”