Well, it's been a while, hasn't it? Sorry for the radio silence over the past year, but we've been busy. By "we," I mean "I," and by "busy," I mean "procrastinating and watching cat videos on YouTube." But hey, no judgment here! After all, it's not like anyone actually reads these newsletters anyway, right? (Please say yes.)
So I didn’t actually wrote the above, I used ChatGPT. Can you believe it? An AI wrote that! I wouldn’t have been able to do that a year ago. The fact is, a year has brought a lot of changes. What changes have happened in my life? Let’s fill in the gaps.
H&M Pre-loved launched in Sweden and Germany
In February, the product I had been working on at H&M for a year, Pre-loved aka second-hand, gets launched. It felt great to finally talk about what I’ve been working on. It was a bit hush-hush. Also, super fun to see the actual customer feedback. It made a smaller splash in the news than I expected. I remember being so anxious about the reception. Funny how your worries shouldn’t have been worries in hindsight.
I started applying for a new job
Don’t get me wrong, working at H&M was an amazing opportunity and I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for it. However, I didn’t feel it was the right place for me. But I would still recommend people to apply to H&M because they were working on some interesting things and the scale was big with nice colleagues and an easy pace. Now H&M is going through a reorg, so it remains to be seen if that will still be true.
Anyway, I ended up being in a few processes, most notably getting offers from Meta, Klarna, and Mckinsey Design. I also applied to Spotify but I seem to have been auto-rejected. Didn’t even get to the phone screener!
I didn’t end up choosing McKinsey Design because the compensation would have been lower than if I stayed at H&M. Then I decided between Meta and Klarna based on the product team I was matched with. Klarna matched me with the App Search which fits into an exciting vision that Klarna has of becoming the #1 shopping app. At Meta, I was matched with an internal tool which is not my thing. I am a product designer specifically because I want to work on consumer-facing products. I want to create products people love using.
I should also mention that I was so stressed out during this period because I was juggling work and a bunch of processes - even timing the offers so they came around the same week. It did bump up my compensation, but not something I would do again.
I started working at Klarna
In July, I start working in the App Search Experience team at Klarna. It’s been 5 months now and I don’t think that I’ve fully settled in yet. It’s a new situation for me where the user base is big yet the pace is quick. When I worked in startups, the pace was fast, but the user base was small. At H&M the pace was slow, but the user base was big.
The scope is also big. At H&M there are individual teams for Search, Product Listing, Product Detail Page, and Product Visualization. At Klarna, it all belongs to my team.
The job also requires a lot more UI design skills. When I was working at startups, I did a lot of UI design, but during my 2 years at H&M, it was minimal. I mostly tweaked the design that was already established on the web and app. So my oh my were my UI design skills rusty when I started at Klarna.
I got to be part of the launch of the MVP, although I only worked on the final polish. It will be fun to continue iterating on it. Here’s a video showcasing the Klarna Search (and two other products). I was working with Communications to put the search section together, also a first for me.
I created an online course for Product Designers that want to apply to Big Tech
Last year, I was experimenting with paid coaching. This year, I experimented with an online course. It was great to distill what I learned from the experience I had from applying. It’s the course I wish I had. So, finally, I have my own product to iterate on. Feels weirdly great to add new content to it.
If you want to know more about it, you can follow this link.
Now that you’re up to speed, what’s next for the newsletter? I will be experimenting with what I write about, but it will in general be about what I’m thinking about related to design productivity and life.
So stay tuned, and thanks for sticking with me! (And if you actually do read these newsletters, please let me know. I'd love to hear from you!)”