Hà Phan
@hpdailyrant.bsky.social
4.7K followers 1.6K following 2.6K posts
Musings about Design & Product. Currently at Zillow, Design Tech & AI.
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hpdailyrant.bsky.social
I started doing this 10 years ago because I use it for talks. So it just became a habit.
hpdailyrant.bsky.social
I save everything I work on — every ugly prototype, every presentation & research study. The early ugly prototypes are the best, bc you can look back and see evidence of your curiosity. I even save meta jokes about the product. When I was working on Search, the nerdiest joke was, “Did you mean X?”
hpdailyrant.bsky.social
When I’m uncertain, I deliberately do the least possible. By reducing variables and resisting the urge to overbuild, I can isolate what’s working and what’s not. This helps prevent premature complexity and keeps the prototype clean enough to learn from.
hpdailyrant.bsky.social
Two years, one pending patent, 1 pivotal research project that led to an acquisition for Virtual Staging, and the release of SkyTour. More to come.
hpdailyrant.bsky.social
The scientists & engineers on our team are good information architects and UX designers in their own right. They have to name the nuanced user behavior and motivation in their own R&D work. Which motivation and which behavior wins with what trade offs? Those are worthwhile conversations.
hpdailyrant.bsky.social
Luck is meeting the right people on your journey. In my last 2 roles as a product leader, then as designer for rich media experiences — traditional functional leaders for both those roles would not have hired me. I was not like all others. The hiring mngrs both saw the ingenuity in my case studies.
hpdailyrant.bsky.social
Something I did for a long time was I continually interviewed even when I already had a job. I did this for years, bc I wanted to feel like I didn’t need the job and that I had options. I could walk away at anytime. Nowadays, it’s harder to do that. The job finding process is broken.
hpdailyrant.bsky.social
Last week I asked a question about dwell time on an immersive feature. It revealed to me possibilities of how users might use the feature at various parts of the funnel. This alone debunks some opinions about UX approaches.
hpdailyrant.bsky.social
The learning part of the job is very motivating. It sparks curiosity and creativity. But politics and process in service of control can kill motivation.
hpdailyrant.bsky.social
I hadn’t run a design sprint in person for awhile. It’s easier on Zoom. In person it’s like cat herding, especially when there are multiple groups working on separate problems.
hpdailyrant.bsky.social
I know the Rapture is over but for those who are wondering why they didn’t get picked up, you can call this hotline. #rapture
hpdailyrant.bsky.social
A lot of people ask me what my process is working on next gen experiences. It’s simple.
- Co-create w/engs on as many divergent working ideas as possible w/the focus on designing proofs & testing concepts against each other.
- Create menu to load different sets of data & config settings
- Iterate
hpdailyrant.bsky.social
My brother used Nano-Banana to optimize an old photo of my dad, and the optimization is a whole different person.
hpdailyrant.bsky.social
Contributed to a presentation for our upcoming team retreat and there’s a slide for what’s coming. The last bullet said, “Let Ha cook!” That’s a lot of pressure.
hpdailyrant.bsky.social
I looked up the dwell time on certain features and it gave me a perspective on engagement and efficiency at different parts of the funnel.
hpdailyrant.bsky.social
I know some people who don’t interview well but would do great in a job.
hpdailyrant.bsky.social
On the design side, working on experiences that didn’t previously exist is hard even on the visual design side, bc you have to decide what do you want it to evoke. What do you want it to remind you of? Design patterns are built for 2D page experiences.
hpdailyrant.bsky.social
I find that leading initiatives broadly across the org often gives you the visibility & creds. But leading innovation deeply is often perceived as a black box. No one truly understands it except the team members who are intimately involved with the problem, and it looks easy when you present it.
hpdailyrant.bsky.social
There’s a difference between being given a set of constraints downstream to design vs creating a new vision by poking at the tech and defining the constraints based on the strength & weakness of the emergent tech. That is Design-led or Experience-led — which can be led by any cross functional role.
hpdailyrant.bsky.social
Building automation from scratch is a platform effort. On the backend, it’s not just about adding endpoints or adjusting logic—it’s about orchestration, data pipelines, workflow engines & resilience. That’s a different class of work than shipping a feature with a UI and a few backend tweaks.
hpdailyrant.bsky.social
Look for the badge “Human Approved.”
hpdailyrant.bsky.social
Everything to me is just a puzzle. After you solve a lot of puzzles, they all start to look the same. You start to see patterns, and there’s always a moment where you say, “Oh I’ve been here before” or “Oh this looks like that other thing but bigger.”
hpdailyrant.bsky.social
“What percentage AI are you?” This was a question posed by a monk yesterday at a zen monastery. It felt like a koan. What she meant was how much of us is conditioned by algorithm vs mindful living, fresh awareness.