Transcript of Interview With Lindsey Liang

Interview With Lindsey Liang

This interview features Lindsey Liang, lead product designer at The New York Times. You can watch it on Lindsey’s profile page.

Transcript

– All right, well, I’m back speaking with another one of the presenters that will be at Convey UX in Seattle. Coming up at the end last week of February. Today I am pleased to be chatting with Lindsey Lang. Hello, Lindsey. How are you today?

– I’m doing very well. Thanks for asking. A very pleasure and honor to be here.

– Well, I’m speaking from the Seattle area where Blinks headquarters is located. Where are you talking to us from?

– I’m from New York. I’m in the New York Times building and it’s right here, times Square.

– Well, we’re excited to have you as part of the program and probably the best place to start is if you could talk a little bit about your background and the type of work that you do.

– Yeah, totally. So I’m a product designer. My background is focusing on building user-centric, very thoughtful and new experiences in digital space. And here at the Times I work building and maintaining the premium advertising experience for our clients. Also for, for, for the Times too.

– And, you know, being a a media company, are there any particular challenges that you see facing the, the media industry related to the work that you’re doing in, in design and the broader user experience?

– Yeah, maybe not necessarily related to media, but in general I think the challenging I I I’ve experiencing is like design being brought into the process a bit too late in the stage. And if we, we can be brought into like earlier stage, you know, more early strategy conversations. I do think design has the power to shed a light on tons of more difficult conversation and navigate through like those competing objectives from different stakeholders.

– Yeah. You’re able to share any of the ways that you’re trying to get past that in your own work at the New York Times?

– Yeah, I mean like, I would love to talk more about that during our plantation and next year, but I think some, like the power of design visuals really bring the visual contextual artifacts in front of people really like, helps there, helps all the conversation like foster that very positive collaboration.

– Well, you’re a design topic is titled Designing for Competing Goals. So tell me a little bit about how you decided on that topic.

– Yeah, so I’ve been at the Times for a couple years now and designing for competing goals. Literally my team and I like every day, like challenges, challenges we’re facing like on the daily basis. So like my, my team and I are really focusing on like my manager Dimitri, we’re very small design tier at the New York Times and we’re like at the intersection balancing user experience, our readers experience and advertiser goals and also our company goals too. So it’s a really hard balance. There’s tons of difficult conversations within the team, also externally facing advertisers. Yeah. And I’ve learned a ton during the process and I think will be valuable, valuable to share with other people. And yeah, hopefully we can figure out better ways to bring people, to bring designers along the way and we can help to resolve those competing goals faster and more efficiently.

– Well, it sounds like it’s gonna be very interesting to hear about your detailed thoughts about that along with Dmitri. Are, are there any other exciting or or complicated things that you’re working on today or coming up in the future that you might want to share with us now?

– Yeah, totally. It’s, it’s exciting like the, the, the stage we’re at, like the bigger environment to like the AI is coming up, you know, what does that mean for New York Times, especially for advertising space. And we have tons of innovation happening around this area here at times too. Yeah. It’s like innovation, AI and better user experience, more premium user experience, advertising experience for our advertisers too. Yeah, a lot of new things coming up. We very,

– You mentioned, you mentioned AI and that’s one of the major theme areas of our, our upcoming Convey UX are, are you able to talk a little bit more in detail about how you think AI is gonna be employed or possibly you know, what you’re doing yourself to, you know, to learn about it and develop skills for it?

– I think that space we’re still still learning a lot, be very cautious and to think very human and ethical way to use AI. And I think internally conversation still going but people are excited. May not able to share all the details but like something’s cooking too for sure.

– All right, well that, that’s great to hear. Well I also like to, you know, recognize that in addition to all the senior leaders that we have attending the conference, we also have a lot of people that are relatively new to the profession. Do you have a tip that you might wanna share to people that are new, maybe based on your own experiences that would kind of help them move forward early in their career?

– Yeah, absolutely. I think as designers sometimes or really fix, fixated on the like make the design perfect, but I truly believe like there’s no perfect design and it’s the really worst just sharing work, work in progress and design with other people. And when more people’s eyes under design, I only think that will make your design stronger and that will bring team together too. Yeah, that’s my one advice.

– Well, it’s been great to have this chance to talk with you, Lindsey. I’ll look forward to seeing you and Dmitri in Seattle for the presentation, which will also be streamed online. But thank you so much for taking the time today to meet with me.

– Thank you so much, Joe. Yeah, I’m excited.

– All right, bye-Bye

– Bye.