Ling
Lim

What led you into design?

I remember being a young girl insisting on rearranging my bedroom until it pleases me. Where others at 16 chose the conventional path of going to junior colleges in Singapore, I blazed my own path by entering the local polytechnic to pursue my diploma in architecture.

10 years into my architectural path, I found myself in America. I wish I had a romantic story about how I found product design through architecture, but truth be told, it was the avenue that presented itself to me when I needed a job to live in America. In both careers, I am the advocate for the user. Improving their journeys, be it through a building or through a workflow in a SaSS product, has been my bread and butter, and thankfully also my joy for the last decade.

What does a typical day look like?

A typical day for me starts at 7am. I like spending 2 hours in the morning before work to take my time making coffee and to work on things that matter deeply to me. For example, last year I spent most mornings writing and submitting my writing. By the end of the year, I had work published in multiple journals. I am lucky to work remotely so I jump online around 9am in my attic office. This year, my focus has been on jewelry making — so I have been setting up my workspace in the garage and learning 3D modeling. During lunch, I take a walk with my dog Xerxes around the neighborhood. After work, I am either at the gym or making jewelry at a maker space.

What's your workstation setup?

After living in tiny apartments for the last 2 decades, we moved into a house this winter. I am fortunate to have a whole cozy attic space as my office where I house my collection of books, my digital keyboard, and my work desk. I especially enjoy the skylight that lights up my work space and I get to watch the evolution of the skies through the day.

For work, I am simple. I only use my Macbook and an external monitor. I don't use head phones since my room is quiet enough. Most importantly, I have a framed video of my late dog, Cyrus, whom I lost to cancer last September on my desk. He is wagging his little tail in an endless loop, keeping his memory alive.

Where do you go to get inspired?

I believe that you can find inspiration anywhere, even when something appears seemingly unrelated. Consequently, as long as I nourish my mind with good things, inspiration follows. Over the past year, I've been a fan of short stories and poetry. I admire the way these writers are able to tell us so much with so little.

I am also a huge believer in moving my body. Some of my best ideas have come to me on walks, playing with my dog, or in the middle of a lifting session at the gym. I jot down these ideas in my notes app and follow up on them later.

But if I can only offer one source of inspiration at the end of the day, it would have to be through writing. I try to write every morning. After months of this daily habit, it still never ceases to amaze me the things that come out. I like to think that we don't know what we actually know until we let ourselves reveal it through words. I used to have a writing teacher who made us write with my non-dominant hand! I've learned so much about who I am through my writing practice, and that inspires me everyday.

What product have you recently seen that made you think this is great design?

I like products that is able to scale in complexity skillfully as their users grow with the platform. To that end, I admire Notion for its simple and clean interface for taking quick notes, to handling complex databases depending on how far you'd like to take it. It's a treasure trove of features that doesn't care if you're using one or all of them.

Recently, I am also enjoying Sharpr3D for its basic modeling capabilities. It was intuitive to pick up as a beginner, and as I learn, I am able to explore its more advanced features like applying textures and materials.

Another app I love is Ulysses which I use for all of my writing! I am able to start new projects, merge them,

What pieces of work are you most proud of?

I can't share too much about most things I work on but I am honored to share what is live and public!

Last year I was lucky to work on Agent Donovan which was presented by our CEO at Gov Summit 2024. Agent Donovan showcases exquisite cutting-edge AI capabilities for mission-critical AI including geospatial analysis.

Looking back on past projects, I am incredibly proud of developing official UX Writing guidelines at Carta that still lives in their design system today.

What design challenges do you face at your company?

Working in a fast-paced high-growth company in a generative space comes with predictable challenges. Sometimes we make assumptions faster than we get to validate them. Thankfully, we get a lot of autonomy to act as owners and do what's right for the projects we are working in. Over communicating has been the key to replacing a structured process, while still enabling us to ship at a high bar.

As each team moves fast, there's also the challenge of maintaining design consistency across our suite of products with different end users. We recognize this and have since committed resources. We're also in the middle of implementing an approval process to ensure at least communication and alignment of our assets.

What music do you listen to while designing?

Any advice for ambitious designers?

Keep your cool and learn to understand the value you bring to the table, not just at work but in life as a creative person. As much as the world needs us, there are still many places where this need isn't understood yet and that's okay. The only way to bring awareness to our craft and how the way we help uniquely is to stand our ground and to keep chipping away at it. We have the space we have today because of the designers who came before us. I want future generations of designers to be able to say this about us as well.

Don't just design at your day job. Find other ways to work on and express your creativity, and everything else you do will be the better for it.

Anything you want to promote or plug?

I write a substack exploring life experiences, and I post frequently on X and bluesky. You can follow along for announcements on what I'll be getting up to this year — spoiler alert: it's exciting and has to do with dogs and jewelry! Also, hit me up if you'd like to connect!