Office Hours: I’m a Staff Product Designer at Uber. I’m Anya Kern. AMAFeatured

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Hi Elphas!

I’m Anya Kern. I’m a Staff Product Designer at Uber. I’m also the Head of Design and co-founder of Blooming Eve, where we’re helping to make fertility treatments more affordable and create an overall better experience in broader women's health.

Before Uber and Blooming Eve, I worked at Microsoft's e-commerce team where I created a North Star vision of the shopping experience that worked towards it through a series of A/B tests.

I freelanced as a designer in my early career and launched 2 other startups before Blooming Eve: a sustainable marketplace and a packaged Slavic meatballs business that focused on providing a balanced diet.

During my downtime, I enjoy traveling, running 🏃‍♀️ in Golden Gate Park, pilates and 🧘🏼 , theater and music shows, and now starting to explore creative projects with paper mache 🎭

Ask me anything about UX/UI design, growth, product, women’s health, being a self-funded serial entrepreneur, or anything else!

ElphaStaff·Sep 02

Thanks so much for joining us @anyakern!Elphas – please ask @anyakern your questions before Friday, September 6th. @anyakern may not have time to answer every questions, so emoji upvote your favorites 🔥👍🏾➕

Ila85·Sep 06

So many interesting startups! What were some unexpected challenges you faced in your first ventures, like the sustainable marketplace and Slavic meatballs business? And what drew you to those startup ideas?

anyakern·Sep 07

What drew me to build my first two businesses was my strong desire to be part of mission-driven companies. I am passionate about a healthy diet and sustainability, and I wanted to create businesses that reflected these values. Additionally, my background in the food industry and e-commerce gave me relevant experience that I could leverage.Regarding unexpected challenges:Slavic Meatballs: Finding a co-packer willing to produce both meat and veggie meatballs proved extremely difficult. I considered opening my own factory, but this would have involved a daily commute from San Francisco and working in an environment where I constantly would smell of meat. Ultimately, I decided against this option and shifted to a digital startup, which was timely given the onset of COVID in 2020.Sustainable Marketplace: In hindsight, I realized that I should have focused more on attracting traffic to the marketplace rather than solely on making it user-friendly. This is a common mistake among designer-entrepreneurs.

anyakern·Sep 07

Wow so many good questions! I am honored to pay back to this wonderful community. Thank you Elpha for giving us space for deep conversations <3

Josefina·Sep 09

Thank YOU for making the time for it <3

cllisaleung·Sep 06

Hi @anyakern! Thank you for your time.As someone who's still early on in their journey (jumped around a lot early career, now growing out a studio and doing freelance work):(1) How have your approached improving your craft (depth) and learning new skills (breadth)?(2) What are some mindset shifts you had to make as you shifted from freelance to entrepreneurship?(3) What advice do you have for someone who's starting out their own studio (and finding out just how many opportunities for growth they have)?Thank you again and best of luck with Blooming Eve!Best, Lisa

anyakern·Sep 07

(1) How have your approached improving your craft (depth) and learning new skills (breadth)?I’m not a perfectionist. Once I feel I’ve achieved a good level of proficiency in a skill, I tend to lose interest and move on to learn something new. My approach is often driven by specific projects. For example, when working on a site that required advanced transitions and animations beyond what Figma could handle at the time, I learned Adobe After Effects to visualize these animations. I also make an effort to stay updated with current trends and incorporate them into my projects. For instance, I’ve integrated AI into recent projects and focused on growth design earlier in my career.(2) What are some mindset shifts you had to make as you shifted from freelance to entrepreneurship?For me the 2 happened at about the same time. I was taking on some small freelance gigs, building my design portfolio, not having enough gigs... And then I started designing for my startup, and this was another case study in my portfolio. Freelance didn't work well for me at that stage of my career, my business actually mady me feel more stable financially at that time. (3) What advice do you have for someone who's starting out their own studio (and finding out just how many opportunities for growth they have)?Use 80/20 rule. You have your bread and butter, stuff you know how to do and do well (80%) and the exploratory stuff, that helps you grow as a professional (20%). For example, I was good in web design for Shopify sites, but on the side, I wanted to explore postcard design, illustrations, and animations. Too many times I did the mistake of spending 80% of my time on the latter or at least not incorporating the the exploratory stuff into your bread and butter.

MfP·Sep 05

@anyakern how do you manage your time as a FT leader at a large company and leading at your own company? I'm interested in exploring other avenues but struggle to find the space while holding a 9-6 role.

anyakern·Sep 07

It’s a tough one, and if you go that route, burnout is probably unavoidable. I had one. I feel like burnout is helping you define your boundaries and tools to deal with the work load. What helped: - Heavy prioritization. I spend some time in the mornings going through only 1-3 very digestible tactical things I need to do. - I am not on social media (or remove whatever you think takes up too much of your time)- Sometimes my work is a bit slow, and sometimes the startups are okay to be paused. It’s a matter of being flexible and expecting to work productively 40-60 hours a week

Margurite151·Sep 02

Why isn't fertility covered by most employers in the state of California as a benefit? I'm still puzzled by this. Why do some earlier stage startups that cover this really think $5K is sufficient for coverage when that's like an appointment an maybe some other supplementary program when in fact costs can range I've seen people spend for fertility between $10K-200K in their lifetimes (over the course of a few years trying to have kids)? What can Blooming Eve offer in terms of support and more affordable options in my area with female doctors? I did look up what you offered and my existing fertility clinic was listed (pricey), but the other ones listed were cheaper were all white male doctors. What else can Blooming Eve to support things like therapy (affordable) for those undergoing fertility treatment or those who are stressing out about the costs?

anyakern·Sep 07

Oh good tough questions! First, act and vote: https://p2a.co/TNBM99cEmployer benefits really depend on the feedback that benefits managers get from employees, and advocating for the benefits in your company might help people after you at least. Resolve.org has great templates you can send to your employer to advocate. It's like anything in life, if you have more requirements, you will pay either in time or in money to meet the requirements. You might want to look into remote monitoring with a clinic that is further from you, but has a female doctor and is affordable. You would do monitoring at your local obgyn or fertility clinic and go to the doctor of your choice only for retrieval and implantation. One pro tip that a lot of women do not know: Massachusetts has full coverage of unlimited IVF cycles. And in order to benefit of it you need to change the location at your employment and insurance. You don't need to fully relocate.

teresaman·Sep 07

Adding to this, I've been in a long journey myself and definitely resonate with the cost range you shared (mine has already been 70k and still ongoing, all out of pocket). I'm super excited that your startup's mission is to make fertility more financially approachable for people.It looks like the way you're doing it is to have a list of clinics and their cost, allowing people to find cheaper options. I'm curious, since I've been on the search myself for a very long time and have finally found an amazing clinic and doctor (not a woman but I would hands down recommend him to anyone looking in NY) through a referral, how are you balancing the notion of cost savings with nuances like quality of care? And sometimes, even every clinic, at the same price point, offers a vastly different experience depending on the RE you choose...Fertility is such a broad area so super curious how you're thinking of building Blooming Eve with all these aspects in mine. Finally, how you're managing this while being a staff designer at Uber! 💪

anyakern·Sep 07

Sorry you have to go through this, I hope the new doctor works well for you 🙏It's really very personal in terms of how much are people willing to pay and how hard are their medical cases. Some people just need a little boost of hormones and the quantity of cycles is more important for them than quality, and some need more diagnostics before they start. Even the same doctor can be extremely amazing most of the time and have a bad day here and there. This journey is bumpy, so you gotta buckle up, and be ready for surprises, hopefully positive ones :)

MfP·Sep 05

@anyakern curious is blooming eve focused on creating the marketplace for fertility providers and customers (sorry if I misrepresented it here) or do you get involved with government advocacy to change underlying policies as well? Thank you for doing what you do!

anyakern·Sep 07

We are more of a marketplace and a knowledge portal. If you are looking for advocacy, RESOLVE.org is an amazing org. And thank you for the kind words :)

chinmayidumbre·Sep 05

What actions did you take in your journey to be play strategic role as a designer?

anyakern·Sep 07

I love this question. - Data - I intentionally chose the growth design focus about 5 years ago, seeing how much easier it is to convince leadership to try new things if the hypothesis is that the change will help them meet their financial goals. A/B testing and overall data tracking is the missing link between design and business that helps us designers play a strategic role. - Roadshows - when I have an idea I am willing to bet on, I don't just bring it up a few times in the meetings, I build a case for it, a presentation that includes the data and the research and build quick prototypes to inspire and visualize. Too many times in my early career I would just mention an idea to a few people and it would die to early, but now I understand that it is my job to inspire people for change. - I am the default POC for knowing the users and the best UX practices. If you get to this point, people will reach out to you to ask for advice and loop you in the conversations more. I hope it answers :)

SnnnDrrr·Sep 04

@anyakern Thank you for offering this office hour. Where do you see yourself career-wise in the next 5, 10, and 20 years? I'm a senior designer and I'm interested to learn more about different perspectives of other designers who are more senior than me :)

anyakern·Sep 07

I want to try myself out as a design manager. I have a goal of becoming a Design Director one day, but it is a soft goal. If I prefer staying IC vs managing people, I might just stay as an IC. Overall I really want to retire early, in let's say 5-10 years. Early retirement means that I work less (part-time-ish) and do not worry about the basic expenses, like rent, food etc. In 10-20 years I hope to work more on non-profit, mission-driven, government policy work, that helps society. I think service design and metric driven approach to change is extremely needed there.

PrettyPM·Sep 02

@anyakern Thank you Anya for offering this opportunity to learn from your experience. Could you please walk us through a typical day in your role as a Product Designer at Uber? Additionally, what resources or tools did you find most valuable for learning and mastering Product Design?

anyakern·Sep 07

The sample tasks are: - meetings to align on the initiatives and next steps with my PMs and developers- meetings to hear out my stakeholders and users (I am building SaaS now, so my stakeholders are often my users)- the quiet time working in figma, creating user journeys, digging into data, user feedback, and writing the process docs and reflections. - asking for feedback and digesting the feedback in meetings or async in figma comments. - doing roadshows with leadership on the new directions I am proposing based on my research.

anyakern·Sep 08

most valuable resources or tools: i already mentioned in the other comment muzli and Lenny's podcast, also talking to other designers, reading books like "Storyworthy", or "The goal". I love the SF Design Week, it sheds light on how others do things and what is trendy in the industry.

dianek·Sep 05

Where do you go to find inspiration, keep up with latest design trends, and keep your skills and creativity top notch?

anyakern·Sep 07

I like listening to podcasts. Lenny's is my favorite: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/podcastI am at this stage of my design career and the tools I am working on, where storytelling matters much more rather than creativity. For design news and inspiration, Muzli has been extremely helpful: https://muz.li/Also, I like exploring IRL physical design trends and thinking about how it is applicable in the digital world. What has been extremely helpful after you absorb all the goodness of inspiration is to sit down and let your brain wander, meditate, and then write and sketch. I used to forget to give myself this time and space, but without it, you can't actually create something meaningfully different.

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