What led you into design?
Ever since I was a kid, I loved messing with the design of things—I’d take apart stuff around the house just to redesign it. Like most designers, I became obsessed with Apple from an early age. I remember getting an old Apple Macintosh Classic from my grade school when they upgraded computers. That’s when I realized how much design impacts how you feel when using something.
I went to college thinking I’d work in an ad agency but I ended up studying finance and working at a hedge fund. I loved learning about businesses from a strategic and financial perspective and learned a lot covering consumer and technology companies, especially studying S-1s of tech companies. On the side, I taught myself Sketch through YouTube, recreating apps and websites on nights and weekends.
I started doing freelance design work (often for free) and then joined a venture capital and studio firm. I became close friends with product designers there (shoutout Hayden Mills), and started picking up design work, eventually deciding to give it a shot full-time.
What does a typical day look like?
I am a night owl, so I never wake up early. I also work mostly with team members outside the US, so am often up super late for meetings.
My day generally starts around 10a.m.-ish. Sometimes I try to work out in the mornings, but often end up spending too much time loitering around the house. I usually check in on messages in the morning if there's anything urgent that happened during the night I'll start with that. Otherwise, I head to the office. My days are typically full of meetings--strategy reviews, PRD briefings, project check-ins, and trying to find time for deep work.
I take breaks in the evenings to see friends or watch TV, and then usually get back online around 8pm and work with the global team. I try to sleep by 2am-ish.
What's your workstation setup?
I actually don't really have a standard set up. I don't have a desk, usually if I'm working from home I'll sit on the couch or sometimes just sit in bed and work. At the office, I try to work at a desk but generally don't love open workspaces (I am too social and get distracted), so I'll find a phone booth or conference room to set up for the day.
Where do you go to get inspired?
I try to stay aware of the popular apps, both from a user standpoint, but also what is trending with design twitter (X?). For my work, I focus on content creation and getting businesses creators to make more TikToks or go LIVE--so I'll often look at the other players in this space: Instagram, Youtube, PopShop, Whatnot, VSCO, Snap, etc.
But I think I'm most inspired outside of software design, specifically with movies and TV shows. I really love storytelling and am most inspired by the way certain movies/shows use visuals, sounds, and dialogue to capture so many emotions. Some of my favorites are Master of None, Past Lives, Atlanta, Cha Cha Real Smooth, and anything A24.
What product have you recently seen that made you think this is great design?
I really love Retro. It's designed so beautifully and intentionally. Same for the apps from the amo team. From a craft perspective, these are all top tier in my opinion. I also think about the social content space a lot so it's fun seeing different takes from the traditional, one-to-many perspective most social products have these days.
As a little spicy hot take, I think some attributes of Temu make it great design. I study it a lot for work, and while it's quite unconventional, I can tell how effective many of their patterns must be for driving purchasing. I think it's valuable as designers to take notice of products that don't necessarily adhere to traditional craft standards, but are shameless about pushing users in a certain direction and can do that with unique design.
What pieces of work are you most proud of?
Recently, we've been working on two key areas: 1) AI generated TikToks and 2) LIVE selling. I'm particularily proud of a lot of this work because it's complex, new, and we're trying to create paradigm shifts in an incredibly fast manner. All of this work is under NDA, so I can't share it publicly yet, but it's been exciting and challenging--I'm super proud of our team (Christine Ying, Wei-Chien, Rachel Wang).
What design challenges do you face at your company?
We move incredibly fast at TikTok. I've worked at mostly startups, so coming in I thought I had a sense of how to work fast. But TikTok is 10x that. At the same time, our scale is huge--we have a diverse set of users all over the world. Speaking the language of impact is really critical for most designers, but I'd say it's particularly important here because you need to be able to convince XFN for time for craft, while also proving that it will increase a metric, on top of getting alignment across multiple teams, with different working cultures, to ship anything meaningful.
Specifically in TikTok Shop, we have these challenges added with building a native shopping experience into a non-shopping, entertainment-first platform. All of this creates a ton of challenges, but it's also been one of the most rewarding challenges of my career learning how to navigate and really stress testing what design can do, and when design can actually be an unnecessary blocker.
What music do you listen to while designing?
Any advice for ambitious designers?
Try everything to learn what you like. Sometimes it's easy to only want to design for something specific, but be open to learning areas outside of your immediate interests, even if this means working outside of design for a bit. Eventually, more experiences help give you more clarity in what you do and don't like.
Anything you want to promote or plug?
I'm @roshofosho on Twitter if you want to connect or ask me anything!
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