“What brings you joy in designing?” — Interview with Erika Lauro, Senior Product Designer at Zalando
- Misato Ehara
- Dec 4, 2020
- 5 min read
We interviewed Erika to learn about how she uses her Strategic Design skillset as a UX Designer, what she does to collaborate with software developers, what she likes working at Zalando and her motivations to mentor junior UX and Strategic designers. Enjoy! 🌟
1. How do you use your Strategic Design Skills in UX Design?
When I was questioning the value of my contribution as an industrial designer, I came across an MA in Strategic Design which taught how to design services or experiences around a physical product, including brand strategy, marketing, business modelling, how to create value propositions, and how to approach any kind of design challenge with a strategic mindset. I had a lot of strategic jobs, and branding was a great experience, but I missed the customer side of things. This got me to focus on UX and service design mostly.
At the beginning of the Double Diamond design process, you have this phase where you research and frame the challenge to design for.
This is where my strategic design skillset comes in — questioning the value we’re creating for customers, researching and studying the market — to see if something is worth producing, valuing and branding and how we can differentiate ourselves from what is already on the market.
2. How do you make sure that UXers and software developers are on the same page?
As UX designers, we’re a bridge between customer’s needs and technological feasibility. If you define a problem which is worth solving on the customer side, you still need to deal with how this will be feasible in a development roadmap and what the limitations are for current design and technological systems.
When we start designing solutions, we have developers come in for reviews so they are aware of what we’re designing. They can then flag anything that’s unfeasible and we can make adjustments to the designs.
You need to make sure that what you have designed is implemented correctly, so collaboration with developers makes a big difference in the process.
Share software developers at an early design stage to know what is feasible and unfeasible technically.
— Do developer teams and UX teams have similar goals?
I don’t think those conversations happen often in my case — I’m more aligned with product development teams in terms of scale and impact.
Developers are mostly concerned with design implementation and the requirements they need to make something happen. But some developers have higher awareness in UX and provide meaningful input to make things faster and smoother for everybody. Just like there are different stages in Corporate UX Maturity, there are different maturity levels among Software Developers too.
Different UX maturity requires different communication.
3. What do you like working on a global e-commerce product as a Senior Product Designer at Zalando?
a.) Accommodating customers across Europe globally and locally.
Zalando covers most of Europe at the moment, which is a challenge for designing solutions as you have to factor in cultural differences in all of the countries you serve so the challenge that I face frequently is having a holistic view but also a localised one.
— That is great hospitality from Zalando to tailor solutions for each country!
Yes, it’s an important thing to do it. Northern Europe has a completely different culture to the south of Europe in terms of fashion expectations about prices, services and sustainability, for example. Last year, the “Do more” corporate strategy to become more sustainable was launched but there are cultural differences in the response to that.
— How do you find out these cultural differences?
We have a UX and Market Research department which focuses on deepening our understanding of these aspects when we launch a product. We need to take these different aspects into account so we invest in the correct strategy to create value for people.
b.) Getting exposed to diverse cultures
This is the first time I’ve worked with a big design team of designers, analysts and researchers — one hundred and fifty people. Having so many people in the room creates a great atmosphere with different backgrounds, countries, and expertise. Just being exposed to this team makes you grow as a designer and as a person and there’s a lot to learn from the people you work with.
c.) Reacting quickly to unexpected situations
Even though Zalando is quite a big corporation now they still react quickly to new situations. For example, in response to the pandemic, Zalando provided a space on the platform to support small boutiques across Europe. It was surprising to see how quickly they reacted to this situation. They still have a start-up attitude which I like.
4. You are a mentor at ‘mega mentor’, ‘adplist.org’ and ‘mentoring.design,’ what is your motivation to spend your time with juniors?
I’ve reached a point in my career where I can give back. I’ve mentored around ten people this year and it is fascinating to have mostly women coming to me as mentees. The tech industry is still very male-dominated and I’ve discovered that I’m not the only one having difficulty establishing myself with different stakeholders and proving my value. This dynamic impacts a lot of the perception of yourself as a professional and your contribution to your job.
I’m fascinated to see how I can foster self-confidence in people as designers and as professional women. Someone said to me that if you don’t have clear goals, you’re not ready for mentoring, but I don’t think this is always the case. To identify what someone’s goals are, a simple but meaningful question could make a big difference in mentoring like:
“What brings you joy in designing?”
By answering this question, somebody could identify what their core motivation is, and has resulted in some of my mentees making big changes and developments. My goal is to grow even further as a young leader and empower a new generation of female designers to design better futures, also for themselves.
If you can improve someone’s self-confidence, this impacts on their own lives and in their organisation, and they feel entitled and inspired to do the same for someone else.
Interviewed by Misato Ehara
Edited by Misato Ehara, Laura Cooper and Erika Lauro
Illustrations by Blush (Vijay Verma)
Edited with Google docs
Published on 4 Dec 2020
Interviewee: Erika is a Senior Strategic & Product Designer with a strong passion for Design Strategy and Brand Innovation. Over the last 8 years, she gained meaningful experiences in different innovation projects driving teams and clients through a mixed approach based on Design Thinking, Lean UX and Agile, able to help brands to make decisions based on data, users needs and build long term relationships with their customers.
Interviewer: Misato Ehara is founder of The UX Review, former design Strategist at Gensler. She has just completed a Masters in Curating Contemporary Design and currently working as a User Researcher at Honest Research.
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