The path to product design
An interview with Faire product designer Jenny Zhuo on work, life, the the power of a quarter life crisis
Jenny Zhuo almost didn’t become a product designer. After starting out on the wrong foot with an ill-advised internship in advertising account management, Jenny completed a short stint in graphic design, was the sole front-end developer at a company, and launched her own self-care box business. Today, she’s able to bring all of those diverse skill sets and experiences to her role as a product designer at Faire.
Since there’s no typical model of what a designer looks like at Faire, we sat down with Jenny to talk about her life-changing quarter life crisis, why it’s important to talk to your users face-to-face, and what she’s learned so far while working at Faire.
What do you do at Faire?
I’m a product designer under Faire’s Brand Pillar, a group focused on the maker experience on Faire. Within that, I’m part of a team focused on driving the growth of small businesses. I spend a lot of my time thinking about how we can bring more small businesses and brands onto our platform, and what kinds of features and support tools would create a better experience for them.
How did you get into product design?
Well, it’s been a long journey! Each step was like a chapter in helping me develop the skills that I would need to be the product designer that I am today.
I was one of those people who went to college and had no idea what I wanted to do, and ended up majoring in advertising. Unfortunately, I had a college professor who told me, “Not everyone’s creative,” and convinced me to go into account management instead of one of the creative tracks — even though I had always done art growing up. When I graduated, I started working at an ad agency and it was the most miserable summer of my life. Basically I had a quarter life crisis. So, I quit my job, moved home, and started working as a cashier. It was there that I started painting again. It reminded me that I’m a creative soul, and got me on a more creative career path.
From there, I got into graphic design, got my Masters in Entrepreneurship, took a side detour into front-end engineering, and finally found my way into product design. I ended up stumbling upon Faire due to the business I started during the pandemic: Yubi, a curated self-care package box (we actually source our products from Faire). From there, I fell in love with Faire’s mission and just had to work at the company. Luckily, I ended up landing the job!
What does a typical work day or week at Faire look like?
Most of my days center around a few recurring syncs. I work really closely with my product manager Rémi, and a content designer, Kristine. I see Rémi as a real thought partner in the work that we do together, and I love partnering with Kristine to develop the product narrative. I’ll check in with them once or twice a day to collaborate and talk through design decisions, alternative approaches, and explore new ideas.
I also attend regular design critiques to get feedback from the other designers at Faire. It’s really helpful to get their eyes on a piece of design that might be touching many areas of the platforms so that I can better understand all of the use cases. In the afternoons, I try to block off chunks of heads-down time so I can implement the feedback I’ve gotten and create new prototypes.
Over the course of a regular week, we also do a lot of user interviews where we talk to brands to understand where their problem areas or frustrations are, and get to know them better as business owners. I find that when you talk face to face with somebody, you get a really good sense of who they are and what they care about. It’s easier to internalize their challenges, and bring that to your work with the customer in mind. There’s a lot to explore in designing for small businesses about how you can help somebody achieve their dream by getting their products out there. They have a lot of different things they need to manage, and it’s about asking, how can we make that easier?
Shop Assistant experience on the Faire Maker Portal
Looking back, what’s been one of your favorite projects?
My favorite project I’ve worked on so far is the Shop Assistant. It’s a side panel in the brand portal (which is where brands manage their shops, update inventory, and fulfill orders on Faire) that helps provide nudges and education.
The content changes depending on the context and the user. So, in onboarding a brand, it’s very driven by what you need to do to set up your shop. After onboarding, we use the Shop Assistant to take brands through a set of recommended actions that help set them up for success within their first two weeks. We know from our analytics that brands with collections typically do better sales, so that’s something we ask them to set up within those first couple weeks, for example.
What makes this one of my favorite projects is it speaks to this larger discussion around education in the portal, and what we can do to onboard smaller brands with less reliance on our team. We’ve also found that this tool is broadly applicable across the platform. I originally designed the Shop Assistant system to help brands with just their initial onboarding, but we’ve since adapted it for other touchpoints in the brand journey — for example, a pod on the Apparel Pillar (the team focused on building out the apparel experience) is also using it to provide direction for apparel brands, helping them set up promotions and navigate apparel wholesale’s unique quirks.
Details from the Shop Assistant onboarding experience for new Faire makers
What have you learned since you started working at Faire?
I’m an intuitive designer, and part of my growth as a product designer has been to flex the other side of my brain and combine that with my intuition to propose design solutions that are rooted in data and metrics. Part of what I love about working at Faire is that we approach product design with intention, and root all of our design decisions in data and analytics. I work with my PM very closely to look at where our pain points are, and partner with him to design from there.
Ownership is one of Faire’s values. How does that show up in your work day to day?
What ownership means to me is owning the end-to-end design process. So, not only producing designs, but coordinating with the right cross-functional stakeholders, actively setting expectations and timelines, and managing their perspectives, since every stakeholder has a different vantage point on the business. For me, ownership is about being thoughtful in your design work, but also in how you share it with others in the organization.
What advice would you give to someone just starting out at Faire?
Specifically for product designers, I would recommend being really receptive and open to feedback. In general, designers shouldn’t get too attached to their work but being able to iterate quickly and reflect a growth mindset is very beneficial to working at Faire.
Also, people are incredibly kind at Faire. So show up as yourself, ask the questions you need to, and don’t be afraid to ask for more information. If you reach out to anybody here, it’s almost always going to be a good conversation.
Interested in joining the Faire team? View current openings and apply here: www.faire.com/careers/openings
