Leading with Craft: Instacart Design Panel Q&A
By Vicky Gao, Senior Product Designer
As a Design Org, we frequently host internal panels as a way to connect and learn from each other. For this one, we invited Peter Clasen (Senior Research Manager), Becca Han (Senior Manager, Research), Prakriti Parijat (Director, Research), and Chen Zhang (Staff Product Designer) to talk about leading with craft.
Some people don’t believe it’s possible to drive a big impact without having a manager or director title, but that’s not true. Individual contributors should feel empowered to make impacts because they are so deeply embedded in the product space, which is the superpower that they should leverage.
Below are the stories of designers and researchers who used their craft to tell compelling stories and build influence.
Let’s start with a round of quick intros. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to where you are.
Becca Han — Staff Researcher
I am currently a researcher focused on market research, and I’ve been at Instacart for 1.5 years. Originally, I worked as a strategic planner, and that is how I got introduced into research. I made the switch on the agency side. After that, I joined PayPal, and then became the first researcher at MasterClass before making the move to Instacart.
Chen Zhang- Staff Product Designer
I am a designer on the Ads team and have been at Instacart for over 6 months. Before Instacart, I worked at multiple tech companies including Amazon, Blackberry, and MobileIron. Initially I started my career at an Ads agency, and then realized that I didn’t enjoy agency life, so switched to a product designer role.
Peter Clasen — Senior Research Manager
I had a non-linear path to working in tech. I studied theater, worked in restaurants, and even in a prison for a year.I then went back to school to study psychology and got my PHD, and became a professor. Later on, I got into tech, working at Facebook and Google for a few years before joining Instacart
Prakriti Parijat — Senior Research Manager
I grew up in India, and I am a former biomedical engineer. I moved to the US for my PHD in Human Factor and Ergonomics at Virginia Tech. During school, I got introduced to UX and Human Centered Design, which I considered as a second career choice. After being an ergonomist for a year, I switched to UX, and found my passion in user research. I worked in Singapore for 6 years as an UX consultant, and then right before the pandemic, I moved to the US and joined Instacart.
For former and current Independent contributors (ICs), what does your “average” week look like?
Chen Zhang
I spend most of my time doing heads-down design work. I would say 60–70% of my time is focus time. Some of the work are design deliverables, and others are more strategic, like design vision, documenting, or making a plan. There are exceptions, for example, if you have a design sprint, then this week would be full of meetings. Overall, if looking at my calendar, I spend an average of 1.8 hrs per day on meetings, which is a good balance.
Becca Han
Similar to Chen, for a typical week, I do block out quite a few focus time for scoping out research projects or focusing on analysis. More recently, I’ve spent a lot of time working consultatively with cross functional partners. One other piece of my week is looking at past and third-party research, using that to craft a point of view around questions from stakeholders, which is more around synthesis, storytelling, and narrative building. The other portion is working with other researchers, in terms of inputting on what they are working on, and being a sounding board to them.
Peter Clasen
In IC work, I carved out my time up into “time I was being a teammate” vs. “time I was leading projects”. The proportion of that on a weekly basis could fluctuate dramatically. If you were leading a project, then you would need heads-down time to run sessions and analyze the data, which can be a few weeks depending on the project. And then during other weeks, you were not doing any leadership of projects, but participating as a teammate, working on team strategy, building relationships, or providing the right inputs to people when they are making decisions.
For folks who have an agency background, how did you transition from agency to in-house? How did the company size influence your decision to dedicate yourself to craft?
Prakriti Parijat
One advice I would give to people is that starting off your career in an agency is great. The work ethic in the agency gives you the pressure to always uplevel your work, and be very precise, deep, detailed, and meticulous, as you have to consistently impress your clients. On the flip side, being at an agency means you don’t have visibility to what happens on the inside, while working in-house, there is the benefit of seeing your work through to the end, and actually feel the impact of your work. That is why I made the transition. In terms of company size, I think at smaller organizations, you have the opportunity to flex outside of just honing your craft, like you might work in different OKRs and also help your product partners with planning.
Chen Zhang
When I made the transition from agency to product design, I felt that agency definitely focused more on the craft, like the design executions and skills. However, it didn’t require you to have analytical skills or business perspectives, which is what I needed to learn when transitioning into an in-house product designer role. Speaking of company size, it has a big impact on how you make design decisions and your design process. In larger organizations, the process can be review-heavy to get your design signed off.
Becca Han
Depending on the size of the company, it impacts where you want to spend your time fine tuning your craft. At smaller companies, you can flex, maybe more outside of the traditional craft. For example, when I was at MasterClass, besides doing research, I also spent about 40% of my time working with creative producers, who are responsible for developing and creating the classes. From that, I was actually able to source a lot of inspiration, because they do jobs that are so different from mine. This is also something I often think about, as you continue being an IC, how you source inspiration, how you not technically stay just sound but also fulfilled. I’ve been able to get inspiration from people I work with who are outside of my function.
A question for our managers, Peter and Prakriti — you have shifted to management roles from IC, how did your perspective change on the IC role now that you were looking at it from a manager’s lens?
Peter Clasen
I think an organization wants to be flat, which can empower everybody to drive impact. From my past IC experience, I’ve navigated a lot of near-term and long-term tradeoff situations. If you are an IC, it can be hard to navigate because near-term stuff can be seductive. From a manager’s perspective, you get to see a bunch of ICs struggling with it and a bunch of communication that is happening around whether we should do long-term thinking. As a manager, I have been thinking about how to create the right structures and incentives for people to navigate that tradeoff more easily, and not be over-burnt with the near-term stuff.
Prakriti Parijat
If I were to go back to my IC self, I would definitely encourage myself to show up more as a leader, because there is an illusion that you need to be a senior leader or manager to be able to influence others, which is not necessarily true. As an IC, you have so much power of knowledge to influence a decision. If you don’t feel empowered or confident enough, you can use a smaller platform to share your opinions, and get feedback, and then just build the muscle for it. At Instacart, everyone has the equal power to create influence.
Peter Clasen
Just to build on that a bit more, the title may have symbolism and the hierarchy exists. However, it is actually harder for managers to have deep product or strategy impact because they are spread a lot further across space. Sometimes as an IC, I underestimated my ability to influence very deeply in a certain product space. I actually had way more leverage on that than I do as a manager now.
As an independent contributor (IC) how do you lead without direct management authority?
Chen Zhang
I believe there are 3 approaches. First is to share the research findings. Ask stakeholders to attend the share-out meeting so that they can actually see the recording from users, which provides more empathy for users. The second one is to use design skills to visualize. Design sprints are a great method which we use a lot at Instacart. Spending a week to paint the vision on what we can do if we have the resources and budget, which can really inspire and motivate stakeholders. The third one is to use the data. Most of the time, data doesn’t lie, and it is a solid proof. That is how you can lead the decision even without the title.
For ICs here, would you ever want to consider becoming a manager?
Becca Han
I am open to both paths. I’ve been a people manager in the past, and it definitely gives you a different type of appreciation for our managers, and all the work they do behind the scenes. As I continue to stretch, it will stretch me in a different way. Instead of just thinking about craft, I will need to focus on how to inspire others, and keep people motivated, which is an interesting challenge.
Any pro tips recommended for ICs?
Becca Han
I would like to emphasize to all ICs that you should feel empowered to contribute and have a point of view. Regardless of the title, the luxury of being an IC is that you are so deeply embedded in whatever team or challenge that you are working on. You have the day-to-day context, which is so important in terms of working with stakeholders or even just crafting a point of view around that. To me, this is the IC superpower.
Peter Clasen
My tip is to find something that is compelling to you to work on and leans into your strengths. We are so fortunate that we hire so many people who are good at lots of different things, and there’s something so intoxicating about being on a team where people are good at different things, and you start to trust each other, and what you are working on is compelling to the group. It’s the best experience ever and what I am chasing consistently. We should let everyone bring their strengths, and not waste too much time on things that they are not good at.
A more tactical tip is communication. Coming from an academic background, it took me a long time to figure out what kind of communication lands in a business setting. My best mentors have not been researchers, they’ve been PMs or Data Scientists, people who could just create one slide to make you completely understand the world. It is something worth investing in regardless of your function.
Chen Zhang
As an IC, you don’t lose the opportunity to become a mentor or someone who can help and support others’ growth. Even though you don’t have the title, you can still foster that relationship with someone. You can actually have the opportunity to develop a smooth relationship as you are not that person’s manager, which opens up a lot of doors for discussion.
Careers are long, and you can definitely try different things. If you go in a direction and it is not right for you, it’s okay to be wrong and go back. Our industry and company don’t force you to strictly follow one rule.
How do you balance between doubling down your strengths or other growth areas?
Prakriti Parijat
Whenever joining an organization, I would suggest to play to your strengths. For example, facilitation was one of my strengths. When I joined my previous company, I got the chance to play to it. As it was the planning time, I gathered all the PMs together and did a brainstorming. It was a great way to show impact. When you play to your strengths, it helps establish trust and your expertise.
In terms of areas you are working on, one thing I’ve worked on is how to ask good questions. For example, in a setting with the leadership team, if I have a question, I would think about whether it adds value to the conversation if I ask. To get better at it, you need to proactively practice. For example, you can start in a low-risk situation to ask questions, and then gather feedback, so as to slowly build that expertise.
Can you share how you prioritize your time across different projects and teams? both as an IC and a manager?
Chen Zhang
You have to learn about the context, and then communicate and get aligned with your stakeholders. Also communicate with them if you need to adjust your prioritization list. In addition, zoom out to see the company focus. Rather than delivering one feature, ask the team about the blue sky vision and the overall project timeline.
Peter Clasen
Roadmap is the tool I consistently use. I like to have a document to get alignment on what projects I am taking on, and I can track the progress and milestones with it. It is a powerful tool to stay aligned and focused. I also try to do fewer things, which helps me achieve milestones. I would say no to more things and put them to the backlog.
How do you measure your own success?
Prakriti Parijat
Earlier in my career, I thought achievement equates success. As I grew in my career, it became more about progress, as in individual or personal progress. What that means is that I may do research where the insights didn’t land the way I thought I would, but I did learn a new methodology in that project. For me that is success because it added to the toolkit that I am building, and I know that it will pay off in the long run. I think I am here to play the long game, what I can add to my toolkit to help me progress, and to become the best version of myself.
Becca Han
Oftentimes I check in with myself by asking whether I feel uncomfortable, and whether I am being stretched in a different way. If I am not, I try to figure out where that is coming from. There might be times when I feel comfortable with being comfortable and that’s okay, but I do think that as we continue to progress in our careers, it can be easy to just settle in. It is important to continually check whether I am still stretching and want to lean into this area where I feel uncomfortable and why I feel this way.
Besides that, I am also constantly thinking about what the business impact I am driving and what contribution I have to the culture amongst my team. Even if you are an IC, depending how you show up, your impact on your team is very real.
Thanks to the panelists for sharing amazing insights, and to Dan Shilov for being our host.
Last but not the least, thanks to my amazing teammates Dan Shilov, Whitney Homans, and our Design Ops team for organizing this panel!
