Design x Hareem Mannan
Senior Design Manager at Segment and UX Instructor at General Assembly
Illustration by Bonnie Kate Wolf
Interview conducted by Tasnim Merlin on November 30, 2020.
To kick things off, tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey to becoming a designer.
I found design the way so many others did—through an existential crisis! I was a biology major, pre-dental, and just about to pursue a career in dentistry when I had a sinking realization one day: I just could not look at teeth for the rest of my life.
I wasn’t exactly sure what to do next. At the time, I was doing Alzheimer’s research at Johns Hopkins and not really loving it. But there was this element of the research that kept sticking with me—the idea that there are certain things that make an experience more memorable. This was the first time I inadvertently stumbled on the idea of user experience design.
Dozens of books, one bootcamp, lots of freelance work, and many sleepless nights later, I found myself starting my first job in user experience design as a designer at a consulting firm in D.C., and loving it.
Were there specific moments that helped you realize this was the path you wanted to go on?
I think a moment that stood out to me is the one where I realized how similar the design process was to the scientific process. As a biology student, I was really familiar with the idea of validating a hypothesis through experimentation, and repeating experiments to observe a pattern. The motions of the design process felt very similar: find a problem, hypothesize around it, and repeat to challenge or validate your assumptions.
But the part of the design process in particular that appealed the most to me was the idea of a problem dragging you to the finish line, for lack of a better phrase. I kind of loved that you could have a job actively hunting problems and finding cool and creative ways to solve them.
Are there any topics in the field today that you find particularly interesting?
We are in the midst of one of the most defining historical events of our generation: a global pandemic that has thrown the world for a spin and made us rely on technology more than ever to connect, communicate, and derive meaning. We use the same tiny devices and gestures to call our parents; jump on a Zoom wedding or funeral; find a moment of entertainment, distraction, or peace; follow the rapidly changing news; dive into a tough work conversation; send a meme; or order our 10th (or, in my case, 15th) pair of sweatpants. When you take a step back and think about it, it’s actually mindblowing how these traditionally wildly different activities are reduced to the same motions and gestures. From a design lens, I think a couple of interesting things are happening.
One: We are getting to witness firsthand the way our relationship with technology is changing, and the places where the tools we use the most fall short or are going further than we ever could have imagined. It’s definitely an interesting time to be in this field and thinking about how the design of these tools can or should change because of it.
Two: In design, and tech as a whole, there is this underlying, widespread sense of burnout. Being online is often the only way for people to combat loneliness, but also the place where people are constantly sharing their work, achievements, and accomplishments. How do you balance the growing itch to “be productive” after work, just to catch up with what it looks like everyone else is doing? How do you take care of yourself in a world where you can’t go out and see people? When does the hustle stop? ... Does it stop?
How would you describe the challenges of being a Muslim American woman in this field?
If I had to summarize the challenge I face most often, I’d say it is the gnawing feeling of being underestimated. Being underestimated is the most consistent and implicit form of discrimination I’ve faced in this field. I can’t tell you how often people outside of Segment have assumed my role is smaller than it is, that I am smaller than my role, or that I am less capable of something. It’s hard to point at, because most people don’t think they are discriminatory since they’re not like, telling me to go back to where I came from (which, for what it’s worth, is the East Coast).
But the reality is, discrimination rarely looks like that here. It is rarely overt. In a way, being overt would be a lot easier to point at. Instead, it’s subtle. For me, it looks a lot more like what I’ll call “competency bias.” It’s the idea that it takes way longer for someone to assume I am competent at my job, let alone good at it, based on how I look compared to someone else who may look more like the “default.”
This bias is only further exacerbated by the lack of representation for people who look like me or you in our field, which means on top of having to prove that I can do something, I also feel the added pressure of having to be extra good at it to make it to the table at all.
And it might take double the amount of time and effort for you to prove something that somebody else can take half the time to prove.
Exactly. You hit on the big cost here: time. This may not feel like a big deal to anyone reading this. Like, “So what? Let people assume what they want, and just be really, really good. No one is out here calling you any racial slurs or anything.”
But it’s just a massive waste of time. It can often feel like I don’t get the opportunity to be off my game on any day, and it can be exhausting. When you’re constantly underestimated, there’s no room to catch your breath, no room to be tired, no room to have a bad day. I am constantly earning my place in a field where countless others are given that place as a right.
“When you’re constantly underestimated, there’s no room to catch your breath, no room to be tired, no room to have a bad day.”
Since that is a disadvantage that people who look like me or you may face, how do you overcome that?
Ah, the magic question! My answer for this is simple: If we work in a field that errs on the side of underestimating people who look like me and you, then I only want to work for people who overestimate me.
And man, the difference that has made in my career so far! To have had managers and mentors who saw things in me I couldn’t see in myself, to have people believe I was better or more prepared for something than I thought I was. My current manager, for example, is awesome at this. In the past, I’ve interviewed at places where I’ve just not continued the process when I haven’t seen this in my manager-to-be. It’s too important to have, and too costly not to have. And as a woman of color, even though it’s a subtle difference - it’s a remarkable one. It’s the difference between someone being like “Oh wow, I can’t believe she did that!” versus “Of course she did that—let’s give her something harder and bigger to tackle next.”
The advice I’d give to people starting out in their careers, especially women of color, is prioritize places where you are seen and valued, regardless of industry, size of team, product type, etc. Investing your career in the people you want to work with sets you up with the foundational growth that ensures you don’t get trapped in a cycle of being underestimated and not set up for success down the line, which is a cycle that is incredibly hard to break from. The problems always get more interesting, challenging, and fun when you’re working alongside a manager and a team who firmly believe in your ability to tackle them. I promise.
You wrote an article on the hidden privilege in design when it comes to approaching work. Can you speak a little bit about that?
Ah, yes! I wrote that coming out of my last job, thinking about how struck I was by that experience and remembering how not struck other people in the room were at the experience I described in the introduction to the article. But I think one of the biggest takeaways I got from that is the extent to which empathy isn’t a given—it’s something you have to actively earn, time and time again.
“…empathy isn’t a given—it’s something you have to actively earn, time and time again.”
The concept of empathy is super buzzwordy, you know? It’s all over portfolios, like “I’m an empathetic designer! I employed empathy!” as though it’s just a tool in the designer toolkit, right next to Figma and above Abstract.
If we start to think of empathy as something we are constantly earning though, it becomes like working out. You can’t do it once and assume you are done (like I do, with working out). In order for it to work, it has to be thought of as part of a regimen, injected regularly into your work as an individual contributor (IC) and the culture you are building as a design leader. That’s really the only way we can combat the biases we all carry into our work to build truly meaningful and inclusive user experiences.
What is your current role as a Segment?
I lead our product design team at Segment. We are eleven including me, one design manager, one design systems engineer, and eight unbelievable product designers. It’s such an amazing group of people to work with and learn from, just wildly talented and grounded, sharp and creative. They’re the best.
You also wrote a beautiful Medium article on transitioning to a management role. Can you talk a little bit about your transition to becoming a product design manager?
I loved being a design IC. I really did. Every part of the design process was energizing to me, from thinking about product problems to being able to work alongside PMs and engineers to design creative solutions to tough problems.
When I first stepped into a design management role, I remember sadly thinking I was walking away from all the things I loved about being an IC—the product thinking, the teamwork, the designing experiences. I quickly realized design management was all the things I loved about designing, but at scale. This made the adjustment way easier for me: still feeling like I was designing, but more intangible things instead of tangible ones. I was designing inclusivity, culture, collaboration, hiring, and scaling strategies instead of mocks and user interviews.
Ultimately, it’s been an incredibly rewarding, challenging, and fun experience. I’ve learned so much from our design team, and have been able to learn from truly amazing managers at Segment along the way.
How would you describe your leadership style?
I don’t know that I have a specific style, but something I think about a lot is approaching it from a Maslow’s hierarchy of needs perspective. How do we make sure designers have everything they need to be successful in their roles? How do we make sure they feel psychologically safe, included, and respected? How can we help design against burnout, or design towards a healthy balance of work and life?
Then and only then do I focus on my favorite area, the area I’d put my money on, where retention lives when all of the above is taken care of: How can we make this job enjoyable? You spend sometimes upwards of 40 hours a week thinking about work, or working. For most people, you’re talking to your coworkers more than your family members, your partner, and your dog. In that world, shouldn’t you enjoy what you do, or at least the people you work with?
I strongly believe that while the connections that inspire that kind of enjoyment can happen at work, they don’t just happen on their own. You have to intentionally design towards that kind of team dynamic and culture. And when you do, I also strongly believe it’s a win-win. Designing towards this kind of inclusivity and enjoyment makes all the work stuff ten times easier as well. It’s way easier to work with someone you’ve grown to like than someone you don’t know at all!
What would you say helps your team work well together?
This might be simplistic, but so far my hunch is that successful teams come down to two components: 1) good people, who are 2) good at what they do. I think a lot of what hiring managers tend to focus on is the “Are they good at design?” part. But when I think about the pieces of our design team that makes work both enjoyable and productive, it really comes down to designers being, well, good people.
You can teach someone to get better at prototyping, being more customer-driven, or adhering to a design system. It is way harder to teach someone how to be honest, collaborative, and open to feedback. Or to be kind, thoughtful, or inclusive. These are the skills, the ones we often deem “soft” skills, that really hold teams together. They end up making every interaction, even the tough ones, way easier.
You teach at the General Assembly bootcamp as well. What interested you to become a General Assembly (GA) Bootcamp instructor?
The biggest motivator for me was having done GA myself in the first place. I know the role that a bootcamp can play for people for whom a degree or a master’s program is out of the question, especially for underrepresented minorities. And having gone through it myself, I remember what it felt like going for a career transition through an unconventional path, not really sure if it would work but determined to try anyway.
And then when I started teaching as a new manager at the time, I loved the idea of being able to go back to the fundamentals and teach design from scratch. It ended up being an incredibly productive experience for me outside of just a rewarding one. How do I take this concept that I understand and take for granted, and break it down into easy to understand parts and ideas? How do I think on my feet to explain it in a different way, if someone didn’t get it? All of these questions helped me on the flipside at work, where it became easier and easier to break complex ideas down to simpler components, and try approaching a problem from a new perspective.
Besides that, it was also just incredibly humbling. I would walk out of every class thinking that I so easily took for granted being in this field that these students were trying so incredibly hard to break into in their free time. Working with hungry, passionate students everyday—people who ranged from being a mom of two to someone ten years in their career who just wanted something different for themselves—it was the best reminder of the privilege I carry being in this field already, and my responsibility to do everything I could to help.
What advice would you give to junior designers?
I would say two things:
One: Never underestimate the value of being hungry and passionate for that role you want or that company you want to work for. There are dozens of people who can do what you can do on paper, but what truly stands out as a hiring manager is seeing the fire burn in people who will do whatever it takes to get there, whether that is a quick note to the hiring manager on how interested you are in the role, a coffee chat with someone who works there to get a sense of what it’s like, or anything else you are comfortable doing.
“Never underestimate the value of being hungry and passionate for that role you want or that company you want to work for.”
Two: Ask for help! When I look back at how I tried to break into design, I really tried to approach it like school. I figured if I studied hard or long enough, read enough books or Medium articles, I would just “get it.” I really wish I just reached out to people who had jobs I wanted, or cool paths I wanted to know more about. I didn’t understand the extent to which this was a community-based career.
Are there skills you hope your students walk away with when they enter the field?
I tell this to all my design students, but one of the most valuable things you can walk away from the bootcamp knowing is a clearer picture of all the things you don’t know. It helps you walk away with a clear sense of what you might want to learn next, how you might want to start bridging the gap between what you know now, having graduated, and where you might want to go next.
Above all else, I hope my students walk away with that same commitment to bravery they made when they first walked into GA. Every student who walks into a GA classroom is making a choice, often a brave step to transition to a new career path, explore a new option for themselves, or enhance an existing skill set. I hope the bravery that led to taking that first leap leads to a career of brave leaps like that one, but now with a little more insight on how exactly to do so.
What are a couple things you do in your free time?
I wish you asked me this question a year ago when I was, you know, cool, and had more of a life around traveling and seeing friends and family! But for now, my free time is comprised of hanging out with my cats and husband (a.k.a. roommate who is sick of me), lots of long walks (I’m competing with some of my friends on Apple Watch and it truly takes up more of my week than I ever could have imagined, in a good way), and watching more shows than I am proud of admitting. We just watched Snowpiercer, which was great!
