Career

10 years ago, I spent day and night working on a startup to create a community for like-minded people. It feels like I came to a full-circle this year, as I led design and strategy for Communities 2.0 project at Discord. We worked on a suite of initiatives to make communities on Discord easier to onboard, understand, and make connections with other like-minded people.

In particular, we launched:

• Forum Channels: creating a new channel type where people can have real-time conversations within topic-based posts (like forums, hence the name!)
• New Member Onboarding: streamlining the community join process with a set of customization questions to get channels and roles.
• Opt-in Channel List: letting users customize what channels they want to see — no more dozens of channels you’ll never see in the sidebar!

This was truly a herculean team effort, spending days debating on tiniest decisions and pixel-pushing each detail. I’m also thankful to have met my new manager this year, who’s probably one the best mentor I’ve had in my career. A good manager must both give constructive crits to push their reports to grow, and support their reports with empathy. As easy as it sounds, this is hard to find — often you’ll find people skew one way or another. I’m fortunate to have met someone who strikes a delicate balance between these, constantly supporting me to push myself to grow.

All in all, this year was genuinely one of the most fun year I’ve had in my career and really excited to continue building the best communities experience on Discord — our work has just started!

Life

We’re married! I’m so grateful to open a new stage in our lives with the best partner and soulmate I could ask for, and to have gained a new family 6,000 miles away from the motherland. Planning the wedding was no doubt stressful, from choosing the vendors and venue to going through a laundry list of tasks. I also added extra work for us as I wanted to design each little details of our wedding, like the digital invitations, food menu, and seating chart, to create a one-of-a-kind, special day for us.

In retrospective, all the hard work was all worth it for the wedding day — which was nothing short of magical. The biggest highlight of the wedding was no doubt walking down the aisle as husband and wife, seeing all our friends from each stage of our lives coming together in one place to commemorate the biggest day of our lives.

Here are some of the other highlights of the year:

• Honeymoon in Bora Bora, which was truly paradise on earth.
• Bachelor trip in Spain with the boys.
• Got to see Faker for Worlds 2022 finals, but devastated by the loss :(
• First time trip to Korea with my wife.
• Got to spend a month living in Alaska!

Looking forward to 2023

When I was 20, I was always hungry: constantly pushing myself, learning & trying new things, and chasing my dreams day and night. Looking back today, I actually don’t think I’ve been really pushing myself the past few years. Whether it’s burn out, busy with all the changes in life and work, or just finding myself to be in a more comfortable stage in life, I think it’s all excuses and I could’ve spent my time and energy more wisely.

Next year, I want to go back to staying hungry and keep challenging myself:

• Keep making killer stuff, whether it’s Discord, starting a new side project, or finally finishing the new portfolio.
• Learn new skills, like mastering Origami, or keeping up to date with the latest in web development.
• Explore new ideas and think about where I can use my design and creativity the best.

I share my new year resolutions at the end of the year to keep myself accountable, so if you’ve read this, please check in on me from time to time to see how I’m doing. I feel like I had a great start to my thirties this year, and I’ll try my best to take it even better by constantly pushing myself.

Here’s to even better 2023 :)

Every four years or so, I opened a new chapter in my life.

When I was 10, I moved to the United States from Korea with my family. Four years later, I moved back to Korea and went to high school in Seoul. Then, I moved back to the US — this time in Berkeley, CA as I started studying computer science in UC Berkeley. When I was 22, I started my first full-time job at Box and then spent three years working on Blitz with the best team I could ask for. And of course, roughly 3.5 years ago I met Hallen and started a new job at Discord.

This year, in particular, was full of significant milestones that marked the beginning of my new chapter.

We are engaged!

This May, I proposed to Hallen to design the rest of our lives together. I‘ve been thinking for a long time that when I meet someone that I want to spend the rest of my life with, I wanted to propose in a way that’s unique to myself. And of course, for me it was to make a website for the proposal.

I couldn’t have asked for a better partner to share all of the life’s greatest moments, as well as any obstacles together. (like planning for the wedding!) Before I met Hallen, I was anxious about uncertainties in life, but now I’m excited to open our new chapter as I know we can experience and face anything together. We can’t wait for our wedding day in May! (Obviously I also made a wedding website)

We moved to Seattle!

SF Bay Area might be the longest I’ve stayed at a single location ever in my life — I’ve been living there for 10 years. As Hallen started her internal medicine residency in Seattle, we both moved together to Seattle this June. I feel fortunate that remote work has become the norm in tech and made it easier for me to move to a new city. This is also probably the perfect time to try out a new city after 10 years in SF Bay Area, and I’d be moving with the best people I could ask for — Hallen (and Jon!)

It’s been six months since we moved, and we’ve been enjoying the change of vibe and scenery here in Seattle. It definitely feels slower-paced, cleaner, and more compact (~15 min to Bellevue vs. ~50 min to San Jose). We also happened to experience both the historic heat wave hitting 110°F and the historic cold and snow at 25°F. We are truly getting the full four seasons experience that we couldn’t get in California. We are stoked to explore more of this new city!

Here’s to 2022

One of my biggest weaknesses that I’ve come to realize this year is that I care way too much about public perception. It impacts my social life — interacting with both strangers and friends, and work life —like impostor syndrome. This might have cultural roots: Koreans in general care a lot about public perception and how others think about them. Although this can be a good thing as people might be extra courteous and respectful, I feel it’s preventing me from being vocal about my perspectives and exactly what I want for myself. In 2022, my top new year resolution is to be more vocal about my opinions and care a bit less about how others think about me.

I will also try to get back to writing this year, sharing my point of views on design, product, and technology. By going back to sharing my opinions via my blog and Twitter, I hope to organize my own ideas, exchange perspectives, and help others grow. Some ideas I have in mind in the back burner are: deciding when to use intuition vs. research, balancing between conforming to the design system and breaking from it, blue sky design process, just to name a few.

There are quite a bit of things I’m looking forward to next year:

• Our wedding in May: This is probably one of the biggest moments in our new chapter, and our lives. There are so many items left to plan, like choosing all the vendors, the timeline, and even design & decor (which I’ll be designing myself quite a bit!) but we can’t wait to celebrate with our friends and families in May!
• Next project at Discord: The past few months has been one of the most exciting times for me at Discord, and in my career in general. I can’t share too much yet, but I’m really excited and feel personally passionate about our next project — more to be shared soon.
• Portfolio Redesign: I haven’t published the new portfolio website this year, as I’ve been heads down making website for the proposal and our wedding. Still, I have been designing and building this new website from time to time, with all new tech stack (the current one has been a pain to say the least) and some fun additions. Can’t wait to launch this summer!

If 2021 marked a beginning of my new chapter, 2022 would mark some of the biggest milestones of this new chapter, from our wedding to next projects in my career. Here’s to 2022 —happy new year and hopefully this year we’ll really see the end of the tunnel in this pandemic.

I still remember on December 31, 2019 when I was on a FaceTime with Hallen, wishing each other Happy New Year as we were counting down for the new year. Then the new year hit, along with a flurry of “Happy New Year” messages among friend and families. It seemed like just another new year. I was looking forward to catching up with my friends more, thinking about new places I want to travel, and probably another usual retrospective at the end of the year.

But little did I know that this year would be different. Little did I know I was stuck at home for pretty much the entire year. Little did I know the best way to catch up with friends would be through Discord or Zoom. Little did I know I now need to remember to bring a mask just like keys when I do end up going out. The COVID-19 pandemic has turned the world upside down and changed everyone’s lives for the worse.

I’m at a no place to complain, however. I’m probably one of the luckiest few who are safe and sound, working from the comfort of my home without the risk of exposure to the virus. As I wrap up this truly unprecedented year, I want to take the time to feel thankful for where I am today, for the privileges that I’ve had, and look forward to a better new year.

I’m thankful for where I am today.

The biggest change this year was a transition to a full-remote work. Now that I’ve been working from home since March, I can say that full WFH isn’t the best. I surely don’t miss the dreadful hour-long commute everyday, but I for sure miss the vibrant office where I can see everyone brainstorm (read: bikeshed) freely with coworkers. Ideally, it’d be half WFH / half in-office so I hope that happens next year. I also want to thank Discord for their incredible support during this time with WFH funds, wellness funds, and a bunch of gift boxes throughout the year. They truly went out of their way to look out for their employees during this time, and I feel thankful and inspired by their support.

I was able to make a lot of impact and grow a lot as a designer this year. Here are some of the highlights of my work at Discord in 2020:

• Android app redesign and concluding the Mobile Objection Squad
• Launched Communities and started building features to empower community creators and members, including Server Discovery and Membership Screening.
• Started working on Messaging squad to improve the text chat experience on Discord, starting off with Inline Replies.

This August, I also became the first Staff Product Designer at Discord. I’m incredibly humbled and excited to reach this milestone in my career. I’d like to thank everyone that helped me get here — this wouldn’t have been possible without the team that I work with everyday today, and in the past. I still have a lot to learn. I’m still soul searching, trying to find a long term vision for myself at the intersection of technology, design, and entrepreneurship. I look forward to pushing myself more next year and grow more as a designer.

I’m also glad that I got to help the society during this unprecedented time. I worked on COVID-19 Fact Check with Hallen and a group of UCSF medical students to combat misinformation around the virus. I’m always excited about opportunities to use technology and design as a means of lowering the barrier to entry for the general public. Making medical knowledge more accessible is one of these opportunities. I feel fortunate to be featured in San Francisco Chronicle and KRON radio, which helped spread information to more people. I look forward to continue to work on COVID-19 Fact Check next year, with updated information on the safety of vaccines.

Finally, I am thankful to be surrounded by loving supporters:

• My family: Unfortunately, I had to cancel my plan to visit them this January, due to a spike in Korea as well. I still get to talk to them via video (can you imagine what this pandemic would’ve been like if it happened in 2000s? or even before?) and lucky to hear they are safe and healthy. Hopefully next year we get to see each other soon.
• Hallen: We didn’t get to go “out” as much, but it was during this time that we got to understand and care for each other more than ever. I feel fortunate to have someone I can share my day with everyday, let out my anxiety and stress from the pandemic & politics, and enjoy new hobbies! This year we binge watched tons of K-Dramas and Avatar, cook a lot more, and became even more of potatoes. I feel fortunate to have her by my side and I’m looking forward to our new chapter next year!
• My friends: Originally my goal this year was to reach out and catch up more with my friends. Unfortunately, the whole situation made it more difficult, but it still gives me no excuse for not reaching out to them first, even online. Not replying to messages and emails promptly is one of my biggest weaknesses. I’ll try to be better and look out for my friends more next year. Hope everyone is safe and maybe next year we get to catch up in person!

This year made me reflect on the privileges that I have.

2020 shed light on a lot of the injustice and social inequality in the world. It was only now that really made me reflect on how much privilege I’ve had as a person. There was tremendous amount of luck that played a role in shaping where I am today. I am privileged because:

• I was raised in a financially stable, well-off family, and both of my parents are happily married.
• My parents paid for everything until I graduated from college.
• I never had to worry about being discriminated because of my gender or sexuality.
• I never had to worry about my health.
• …just to name a few.

If life is a 5-mile marathon, some people start at the starting line, while others start a mile ahead, or even more because of the wealth, gender, and race they are born in. Success doesn’t just come from effort — there’s also tremendous amount of luck involved. While it’s just as wrong to attribute success on sheer luck and privilege, it’s definitely wrong to shame people’s circumstances on just lack of effort.

I believe in a true meritocracy — given equal opportunity, those who work hard and contribute more to the society should be rewarded. Unfortunately, our society today doesn’t really allow for equal opportunity. Many people can’t realize their dreams because they can’t pay for their school. Many people can’t work because of disabilities. Many people are treated and compensated unfairly because of their gender and race. Many people can’t afford to think about “paying back” or “contributing” to the society, plan their career, or think about long-term goals because they just need to think about tomorrow: to survive and make a living.

We as a society need to work together to fix this leveled playing field and strive to give everyone equal opportunity to realize their full potential, so that people can be rewarded fairly based on their contributions. I want to do what I can within the realms of my capability to help bridge the gap between not just human and technology, but also between the various gaps within our society: education, wealth, health, and more.

Here’s to 2021

As we move on from this heck of a year, I set a few goals for myself next year to continue to improve myself:

• Care more about people around me: I tend to focus on myself, and I need to change that. Reach out to my friends to catch up, how they are doing, and look out for them more. Think about not just my own growth, but also the entire team and the company. Brainstorm ideas and think about ways we can use technology as a means of bridging the various gaps in our society. I can shave off some time thinking about new couches or playing League and take the time to think about others.
• Don’t procrastinate: I have big issues with procrastinating. I tend to postpone cleaning, cooking, or heck waking up on the weekends — I honestly rarely saw the sunlight this holiday season. I postpone responding to messages unless they are urgent. I postpone even simple things like posting on Instagram. Next year, when I “think” of something, I won’t slack off and put into action immediately. I believe that anyone can bee successful, if only they were able to execute on their thoughts. I just need to get to work and not procrastinate.
• Step outside of my comfort zone: Over the last few years, I realized that I am being comfortable with where I am right now. I feel like I’m losing the sense of “hunger” from college. I worked day and night tirelessly on a scrappy startup, Iris. I went out of my way to meet so many new people. I learned new concepts and skills every day. These days, I feel like I’m sticking to what I’m comfortable with and what I’m good at. I keep focusing on product design on Figma. I hang out with my closest group of friends. Eat, Work, Some form of entertainment — games, tv shows, etc, Sleep, Repeat. I need to step out of my comfort zone and be hungry again. I should brainstorm the next big thing, or how to contribute best to the society with my friends. I should keep up with my friends more, people who reach out to me, and reach out to inspiring people in the community as well. I should even learn new skills or hobbies.
  Never settle. Stay hungry.

“Happy New Year” feels especially real this year. I look forward to next year where perhaps we can all meet in person again. Stay safe, and I sincerely hope 2021 would be a good one.

I never thought a decade is a long time until I looked back on what happened in the past decade for this year’s retrospective. This decade was my step into my adulthood, my 20s, and my career. Fortunately, I don’t think I would have spent my decade any better — I felt like I grew a lot as a person, and accomplished a lot in life.

Here are a few events that shaped my past decade.

Moved to SF Bay Area and went to UC Berkeley.

This was the single most life-changing event that happened in the past 10 years. In 2011, I got into UC Berkeley, and moved to SF Bay Area from Korea. Not gonna lie, it was a bit nerve wrecking. I had lived in Houston before, but I was born and raised in Korea, and most of all, it’s the first time I’m in another country alone. Fortunately, I became roommates with Rachit, my childhood friend from Houston who also got into Cal, and that made the transition a lot better.

The classes were brutal and I honestly don’t know how I managed to graduate with a computer science degree. (If you ask me a basic algorithm question now, I would epically fail.) Yet, Cal is the place that truly shaped my career. At Cal, I became passionate about startups and actually started one with the best co-founders I could ask for. In fact, I went on to work on another startup with the friends I met at Cal, after my brief time at Box.

I also met some of my best friends at Cal. They are the people that make me feel that this is where I belong, 5600 miles away from the motherland. I can talk about anything freely, from nerding out about K-pop and League of Legends to listening to each other’s challenges in life and contemplating the meaning of our existence. So yes, the greatest gift that my time at Cal gave me is the people, and I feel incredibly fortunate and thankful.

The greatest gift that my time at Cal gave me is the people.

I’m now at a point where I’ve roughly spent half of my life in the US, and half of my life in Korea. I think successfully finding my home in this land of opportunity, with the friends I can call my family, is the greatest accomplishment I’ve made in the past decade.

Became successful in my career as a product designer.

Successful is a big word, but if I were to self-assess how much I’ve achieved, I’d definitely give myself a pat on the back. Yes, I have lofty dreams and there’s still so much left to go, but I’ve definitely came a long way from just a kid doodling “Windows 2001 concept” to a professional product designer making impact on the lives of millions people in the world. Some of the highlights in my career this decade include:

1. Worked on a startup Iris
If anyone were to ask me how I learned product design, it’s through working on my own startup. The startup itself wasn’t successful, but I learned so much along the journey. I got to hone my skills in user experience, visual design, front-end development, product strategy, and communication. Above all, I got to work on something I’m passionate about with my best friends, and met so many talented people working on startups at Cal. To this day, I don’t think I’ve ever worked on something with as much passion as Iris. One day, I’d like to solve a big problem with talented people again through my next startup.

2. Taught Web Design DeCal
I taught product design and web development to over 2000 students over the course of six semesters. Along the way, I grew a lot as a product designer. Skills I learned giving design critiques and explaining design rationally are skills I use everyday today. One of the greatest joy I have in life is seeing comments that say “taking this web design class got me interested in product design.” It’s one of those times I really felt like I made a positive impact on people’s lives. I’d like to thank all the students and the teaching staff that made this experience one of my best times at Cal.

3. Worked on a startup Blitz
I joined Blitz after my 9-months ride at Box — heck, my stocks didn’t even vest! I still think it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my career, since I learned so much along the way as a product designer, worked on something I’m deeply passionate about (esports and gaming), worked on a product that made millions of gamers’ lives better, and worked with one of the best teams I’ve ever met. Our next chapter continues at Discord, where we continue to make gamers’ lives better by creating a place where everyone belongs.

Became an adult

This decade marked my first step into adulthood. As I now live away from my family, I tried a lot of new things on my own and became more independent & responsible (I still have a lot more to go, however.) There are a lot that I couldn’t include in this list, like filling out my first tax form and investing in stocks, but here are a few stand-outs:

1. Started cooking
If there’s one thing that can’t change about me even after 10 years of living in the US, it’s my love for Korean food. I need to eat at least 4–5 Korean food a week, and it’s tough if I have to resort to eating out every day. That’s why I started cooking in 2012 with a humble kimchi fried rice. I came a long way since then — I can cook most Korean cuisine comfortably now, like soft tofu soup, spicy pork, and omurice. I even tried some of my favorite dishes like carbonara and Hawaiian garlic shrimp. Some flopped, but for the most part, I think it tastes pretty good. (Ask Hallen)

2. Started driving
When my parents always told me to get a car the moment I came to the States, I always thought I could just get by with Uber. But sometimes (many times, in fact) parents are right. Economically, it’s not that much different, if not cheaper to get Uber, but the freedom to go anywhere whenever, wherever you want makes a huge difference. I feel I’ve definitely expanded my world by driving — it’s almost like having a pair of shoes that can take you anywhere.

3. Bought a home
Last year, I finally purchased my first home — a condo in Emeryville. It was a long journey for sure. Saving up the money is just one part of the process. It takes months to scout the market, research home mortgage options, and learn about the home buying process. Buying a home was more than just an investment; it was a learning opportunity and it definitely marked my step into adulthood this decade.

Enjoyed Life

This decade wasn’t just about working hard and growing as a person — I had a lot of fun! I think I had a good balance of work hard, play hard: I drank a lot, traveled to places, played a ton of games, and more. Life was great.

1. Started drinking
Alcohol changed my life (yes, really.) I always told myself I will never drink because I was afraid of losing my ability to think rationally. But for my 21st birthday, thanks to my friends Val and Rohit, I realized that sometimes it’s okay to let go of your rationality. It’s okay to be crazy. It’s okay to just enjoy the moment. Since that first sip of moscato, I went on to try beer, soju, gin, and more. I think drinking made me more social, open, and all in all, enjoy life. I’m glad I took that first sip of moscato. (my liver probably won’t.)

2. Traveled to 10 countries
I got to explore exciting new places, from serene shrines of Japan and stunning architecture of Italy, to majestic mountains of Switzerland and incredible glaciers of Iceland. I believe traveling is one of the best ways to spend my free time — it opens up new perspectives and gives me an opportunity for reflection. Yet, there really isn’t much opportunity to travel freely as I get busier with work and after I settle down to start a family. That’s why I think the 20s is the best time to travel and I hope to travel as much as I can in the next decade.

3. Met Hallen
Last but not least, meeting Hallen has to be one of the best things that happened this decade. She made me happier than ever. From nerding out about pokemon and sharing memes from subtle asian traits, to simply sharing our day and even planning the future, we can really be true to ourselves. Above all, she’s the most caring and sincere person I’ve ever met. I know that together, we can both paint the bright future ahead and tackle challenges in our lives. I feel so fortunate and thankful to have her by my side, and I’m excited for what’s ahead of us in the next decade!

3 things I want to accomplish in the next decade

A decade is difficult to plan ahead. I don’t think I would have guessed most of the highlights of the past decade back in 2010. However, I do want to share three things that I want to accomplish for sure in the next ten years:

1. Work on a successful startup
To this day, I don’t think I’ve ever worked on something with as much passion as my own startup, Iris. I worked tirelessly day and night, with the team I love, and for the problem I deeply cared about. I want to one day work on my own startup again, tackling the right problem with the right team. Above all, I want to do it right this time — getting the product-market fit right, scaling the product to mass market, and finding a scalable monetization model. I’ve made a lot of mistakes with Iris and Blitz, and definitely learned a lot. Next time, I want to make sure I do it right and be able to call it a success, without hesitation.

2. Start a family
If moving to SF Bay Area and going to Cal were the most defining events of the past decade, I think starting a family would probably be the most defining event of the next decade. It’s going to bring additional responsibilities and will change my life to our life going forward. Yet, I’ve always wanted to start a family soon-ish. I’ve been living away from my family for more than half of my life, and wanted to find stability with the person I love. I’m looking forward to this new chapter in life, coming soon in the next decade!

3. Be Healthy
My parents always said “you might not notice it now, but your unhealthy habits will come back to bite you when you get older.” The older I get, I’m starting to feel this more. Honestly, right now I have a terrible diet (red meat almost everyday?) and my body is not in shape at all (nice once every other week gym schedule). As I enter my thirties next decade, I want to be healthier with a better diet and keep my body in shape.

3 things I want to accomplish in 2020

I also want to set a few goals that I can take action immediately in this new year so I can work towards my long-term goals I set for the decade.

1. Gain 10 pounds, for real.
Okay, real talk, I didn’t meet my 2019 goal of gaining 12 pounds (it’s really hard please believe me.) I was pretty on track until August, when I got food poisoning from Shanghai which led me to lose six pounds in just weeks. Excuses aside, I think I could have tried harder to gain weight. I’ll make sure to push myself more, as a part of my long-term goal of staying healthy.

2. Keep in touch with my friends more.
Back in 2018, I set a goal to expand my social circle. What I didn’t realize then, is that I should have tried harder to maintain my social circle first. As I get older and busier, I stay in touch with my friends less and less. Friendship takes effort. In 2020, I will try to keep in touch and take care of my friends more. So look out for random pings from me to catch up soon!

3. Live my life, not others.
One of my biggest weaknesses is that I tend to think too much about how other people perceive me. There were times when I was afraid to speak up, did something I didn’t want to, and even felt insecure at times. I need to stop living my life based on how other people think of me, but instead put my opinions, beliefs, and values first and foremost. Life is too short to live someone else’s life. I will try to put myself as the priority this year.

For the next decade

Whew! This was a long retro, but I’m glad I do this every year. In fact, writing yearly retrospectives is probably one of the best things I’ve done in the past decade. It helps me look back on what happened in the past year, good or bad, celebrate the good times, and learn from the bad times. Most of all, it’s an opportunity for me to reflect on how thankful I am for everyone around me. This retro is a special thank you to all the people that shaped my past decade, and a promise from me to continue to grow as a better person.

Happy 2020!

Special thanks to everyone that shaped my last decade: my parents, Hallen, Team Iris, Web Design DeCal staff, Team Blitz, Jess’ Bitches, K-Popular, and countless more. ❤️

2018 was a great year. I went through some of the biggest changes in my life yet, all for the better. Obviously there were some areas I could have done better, but it’s one of those years that I can confidently look back and say, “What a year.”

As always, here’s a recap of what happened this year as a thank you to everyone that supported me this year.

Bought a condo in Emeryville

This June, I signed my life away under a mortgage and bought a condo in Emeryville. It was a long process: it didn’t happen in just a month like the usual apartment rental search. I spent the entire first half of the year researching home mortgage options, getting my financials in good order, and scouting for the right condo. Especially in a seller’s market like now, there were only a handful of condos that matched my criteria, and most of them had a ton of competition, making matters even harder.

I would like to thank my real estate agent Nikki Lui, for guiding me throughout the process. Buying a home for the first time is beyond just an investment. It was a great learning experience and one of the most important steps into adulthood, and I am glad I got to make that step this year.

Blitz joined Discord

It was a monumental year for my career as well, as we concluded our three year ride at Blitz and joined Discord. Looking back at the past three years at Blitz, it was the best decision I’ve ever made in my career. I grew so much as a product designer, produced awesome designs that impacted millions of gamers, and worked with one of the best teams I’ve ever met. You can learn more about my learnings and the journey here.

I’ve been at Discord for only two months so far, but I can already say it’s an incredible place to work. Simply put, Discord is a place where you can be proud to be a nerd. People at Discord are some of the quirkiest, yet brightest and hardest working people I’ve seen. At Discord, I feel I need to hold myself to higher standards, and I feel invigorated to work with them every day. We have some dope stuff in the works, and I can’t wait to share with everyone soon™.

Met Hallen

I’m thankful and fortunate to have met Hallen this year. Since we’ve met this summer, she’s been my greatest source of motivation and strength, and has made my life brighter than ever. Yes, my friends roast me now more than ever because of how cheesy I’ve become, but sometimes I can’t hide my happiness. I guess now they are going to unfollow me from Medium, too.

From exploring the most beautiful, grammable places in the city and talking about our dreams to nerding out like kids and simply sharing a part of our day, I treasure every moment we’ve shared this year. I am thankful for having her by my side, and I will continue to push myself to be a better person for us. I’m looking forward to more happiness, adventures, and everything ahead of us next year and onwards.

For 2019.

My mom used to say life is like a sine-cosine graph — she is a math teacher and this is her way of saying life has ups and downs. I still don’t think 2018 was the peak of that graph. If I were to say it was the peak, then next year will only get worse.

That’s why I write new year’s resolutions to promise myself and everyone reading this that I will not be complacent and continue to push myself to limits. As long as I continue to set high standards for myself and hold myself accountable, each subsequent year will only get better and better.

Here are three goals I set for myself next year:

Gain 12 pounds. 1 pound each month.

Go from Smol to Swole

Okay guys feel free to hate, but for some people this is actually really hard. This was the only goal I wasn’t able to meet this year — I was supposed to gain 20, but was only able to gain 5.

Next year, I want to make sure I reach a healthy level of weight by gaining 12 pounds, and keep myself accountable by gaining at least 1 pound each month. If I fail to gain 1 pound any given month, I will eat a half plate of sandwich + salad from Mezzo. Their portions are HUGE. And we all know how much I hate greens.

It doesn’t matter how often I work out if I don’t have the material, i.e. mass to bulk up. My biggest goal of the year is to be physically fit. To do that, I will try best to eat more and have a balanced diet.

Save 25% of paycheck each month.

A big win this year was my condo purchase this June, but I shouldn’t stop there. I feel without a strict division between savings, bills, and allowance, I wouldn’t be able to control my expenditure wisely.

20% is a good rule of thumb for savings, but I want to push myself to save a little more than that and save 25% each paycheck. I feel this is totally possible if I cut down on buying things I don’t need and watch my budget more carefully. I’m allocating 25% into savings and investment, 38% to my allowance account linked to credit card, and the remaining 37% stays in my primary account to pay for bills.

I hope to reach my target savings for next year with this monthly savings plan. Only then I get to celebrate with French Laundry.

Hold myself to higher standards at work.

Here’s a confession I want to make: looking back, I wasn’t challenging myself 100% when it comes to work this year. Maybe I was burned out, going through changes in life, or getting used to the transition at my new job, but really there are no excuses. I could have done better.

I feel that my career and my work gives me the sense of identity and pride, and I know I can do better. Though this goal is immeasurable, I want to make a promise with myself and with everyone that I will hold myself to a high standard at work. Whether it’s Discord, Witeboard, or personal projects, I believe I can pay more meticulous attention to detail and go beyond what’s expected.

TLDR, I want to make sure that at the end of the year, I can proudly say: “Damn, I really worked my ass off this year. And I am proud of all the work I produced.”

I would like to thank everyone that I shared a piece of this incredible year. Special thanks to my parents for always believing in me and supporting me, Jess’s bitches for roasting me and giving me source of memes, and Hallen for making my life brighter every day. Here’s to 2019!

I still remember watching the NA LCS Final at the Instant Esports (former name of Blitz) Viewing Party back in August 2015. I rooted for my team along with hundreds of other fans, and most of all, saw validation for this company that my friends Rick and Jonathan put their heart and soul into. I told them at the event that if they ever need a product designer, feel free to reach out to me any time.

3 months later, I joined Blitz as their Lead Designer. It really felt like I was joining a rocketship. I saw the validation — they had finished Y Combinator and raised a $2M seed round. I loved the team — they had the skills that I didn’t have as a startup founder when I worked on my previous startup Iris. Most of all, I was passionate about the product — I have been an avid esports fan since 10, growing up at the hub of esports, Korea.

I learned quickly that designing at a seed-stage startup is not quite like joining a rocketship. Looking back, it wasn’t a smooth sailing for sure. It was a rollercoaster ride full of changes, mistakes, failures, successes, wins, and of course, learnings. As I conclude my ride at Blitz and embark on my next journey, I’d like to share some of these learnings over my three years at Blitz (acquired by Discord November 2018).

1. Design is more than just about art or ease of use. It’s about empowering a business.

Often, designers are told that design is not just about making things look good — it’s about making things work well. This still overlooks a crucial, perhaps the most important goal of design: design is a means of creating a successful business.

Ideally, design should accomplish all three goals: aesthetic goal, product goal, and business goal. At its most basic level, design must be visually pleasing and create delightful experiences. The intangible value of beauty, delight, and craftsmanship actually have tremendous effect on users, as we can see from Apple, Slack, and Stripe.

But what separates product design from just an art is that it must help users accomplish a desired task. Users will not use your product if it just looks good and doesn’t work. Great user interfaces are not necessarily fancy or novel. It just works — like tried and true interface norms like tables and bottom navigation bar.

It was only after working at Blitz that I learned design’s ultimate goal is to create a successful business. Sometimes it doesn’t matter if your design looks good. Heck, it might not matter if your product is super easy to use and works damn well. In the end what really matters is “will the company meet its business goal?”

Here’s an example — in almost every user interviews or surveys, the #1 user pain point has always been “How can I improve myself as a gamer?” We explored what we can do to help users, like the Missions feature below.

We ended up never working on Missions because growth was a much more pressing business priority. Gamer improvement is a feature that mostly impacts our retention, but our retention was already great at 50% 10-week retention. Our growth, however, was stagnating. We had weeks when our WAU flatlined when we never shipped content, our main driver for growth. In order to grow exponentially, we needed a feature that could bring us inherent product virality, and that’s why we shipped Clans.

As a product designer, you will be constantly bombarded with problems with prioritization. Sometimes you will be in situations where you must sacrifice the visuals for the sake of functionality. At an early-stage startup where every moment is a fight for survival, a more pressing prioritization is between features. So many great ideas, but so little time and resource. That’s why it’s important to keep in mind your immediate business needs and goals.

Figure out what’s the most important metric for your company now. Your ultimate goal as a product designer is to use design to move the needle for that metric. That’s the success metric for your company, your product, and your career.

2. Sometimes it’s ok to be NOT perfect.

As designers, it’s in our nature to obsess over each pixel and pay attention to every detail. When I used to work in a design team at a much larger company, I got to do just that — spend days and weeks pixel-pushing and polishing each and every interaction to create the perfect experience.

At a startup, however, things are different. You get to ship features in just 2 weeks instead of 2 months. At the same time, you are working with just 1–2 other frontend engineers instead of a whole team of engineers. Because you are resource-strapped, you don’t have the luxury to create that perfect experience you desire. And you know what, chances are that extra 2 weeks of pixel polish probably won’t affect your company’s success as much as you’d think.

When I first joined Blitz, I worked on a complete redesign of the Instant Esports mobile app. The whole engineering team worked really hard on it — in fact, we spent the entire 2 weeks just pixel pushing to create the perfect design for our Explore page. The app looked and felt great. After nearly 3 months of work (which is a lot of time for a startup), we finally released the all-new Instant Esports app. The result? It had negligible impact on our metrics — both retention and growth.

The redesign taught the entire team a valuable lesson. Sometimes we must be willing to ship things even if it’s not perfect. Shipping 2 weeks earlier to get users’ feedback early and iterate is much more valuable than spending 2 weeks on fancy cards full of diagonal lines and sexy masks.

As a designer, it hurts me every time I see off-pixel instances in our app. In fact, I could write a 10-page doc with a list of aesthetic and quality-of-life improvements we could make. But before I’m a designer, I’m a product designer, and that means that I know there are bigger priorities than pixel perfection.

I’ve gotten pretty used to the production app not 100% matching my Sketch file. And that’s okay.

As a product designer, you will be put into situations where you must make a compromise — a compromise between a designer’s desire for craftsmanship and product desire for achieving a success metric. In most cases, the right answer for a startup is the latter. Think for yourself what metric your new fancy font or animation will influence. Retention? Growth? It probably will impact an intangible value of delight. Sometimes, delight is a luxury for a resource-strapped startup.

3. Freedom comes with responsibility

One of the best perks of being a designer at an early-stage startup is that you get to have tremendous amount of freedom. You get to be the mastermind and own everything design, from product to branding (yes, business cards too.) I was really excited to join Blitz for the opportunity to have an infinite canvas for design. Over time, however, I learned that freedom comes with responsibility.

When you are designing and producing great work, you will enjoy all the freedom you have. But not everyone is perfect, and there will be times when you get stuck in a so-called designer’s block. And if your design doesn’t deliver results, it’s ultimately on you. There’s no one else to blame, and no one else to help you.

There were many times when I designed something, and I knew it didn’t look and feel right. When I walk over and show it to my teammates, they would say the same. “It just doesn’t feel right.” “It doesn’t look good.” And yes, the dreaded “Can you make it pop?” These kind of feedbacks rarely help a designer. It gives us whether we are on the right track or not, but doesn’t really give us a better sense of direction. So then I am off on my own, sitting at my desk for hours trying to figure out the why to the problem.

One way I tackled this is by hosting design critiques with other solo designers at early-stage startups. We all work at small startups where showing our work is perfectly fine, so we meet every Wednesday to get a third person’s point of view. We share our work by briefly explaining what the design does, why we are working on the design, and the problem or the question that we currently have. It’s almost like a therapy session, really. If you are a solo designer at a startup, I highly recommend holding design critiques with other solo designers. It’s going to help you with your designer’s block and improve your communication skills as a designer.

4. You have to get out of your comfort zone.

I consider myself a product designer first and foremost. That is, I specialize in creating user interfaces and user experiences, and my skillset has developed over the years to specialize in that role. When I joined Blitz, however, I had to get out of my comfort zone to wear as many hats as possible, depending on what the team needed at the time.

Here’s a list of everything I did over my three years at Blitz:

• Product design: This is an obvious one. My main day-to-day task.
• Graphic design: Creating YouTube thumbnails, video overlays, marketing graphics, etc.
• UX research: Analyzing quantitative data via Mixpanel, user interviews, and user surveys.
• Frontend dev: I acted as a second frontend dev from time to time using HTML/CSS/React.
• Esports analyst: I wrote the script for LCK (League of Legends pro league in Korea) analysis videos.
• Translator: I went down to LA to translate Korean players’ interview.
• Presentation Designer: Spent hours going back and forth with Rick (our CEO) cranking out pitch decks for our funding.
• …and I probably left out a few more.

Many of these are something I am not used to, especially graphic design. Coming from product background, I consider graphic design to be a very different skillset. I can explain why certain product design is effective or not. To this day, I still struggle to grasp why and how a certain graphic design is aesthetically pleasing. Yet, I had to step outside of my comfort zone and learn a thing or two in visual design to help our content team, like creating Youtube thumbnails, video overlays, marketing assets, and more.

Working at Blitz was an incredible opportunity to expand my skillset and try something new. I have dabbled with Photoshop more than ever. I got a chance to learn React. I interviewed with nearly a hundred users and read through thousands of user surveys. Heck, I even got to meet and talk with many esports players in real life. I don’t think I would have been able to do so many different things at any other company.

5. Expect changes. Lots of them.

One of my key traits as a person is that I love making plans. I make plans on a daily, weekly, quarterly, and yearly level. As a side-effect, I find myself hard to get used to changes in plans. Well, working at an early-stage startup, I really had to get used to these changes.

Here’s a thing with early-stage startups: most long term plans change. It’s because in early stage, your top priority is to find product-market fit. You must adapt like an amoeba that constantly try to change shape to mold yourself to user needs and business opportunity. The only thing that stays firm is the company vision. The rest — the features, the product, everything — is open for change.

Throughout my three year journey at Blitz, we have changed courses many, many times. We started out as a mobile app that curated third-party esports news and offered latest schedule. We then had a soul-searching moment when we pivoted twice. (one of the pivots was a completely random one: a topic-based messaging app.) We eventually came back to esports, and started producing our own esports content — think Vox but for esports. This year, we shifted focus back to product by creating a desktop app that helps gamers make better ingame decisions. TL;DR: we worked on something new almost every half a year.

The upside to this is that I got to produce lots of stuff. I have pretty much worked on every possible platforms — iOS, Android, web, and desktop — and tried all sorts of styles — light, dark, flat, shadows, serif, sans-serif — you name it.

On the other hand, there were times when we had to scrap what we were working on and move to another opportunity immediately. So many unexpected factors caused last-minute changes, such as:

• Time-sensitive opportunity: Fortnite grew in popularity this summer, and we wanted to catch the wave to seize the market before teenagers (the main playerbase for Fortnite) go back to school.
• External factor: We worked on a feature that depended on League of Legends’ new tournament system, Clash. Unfortunately, they postponed the launch of Clash indefinitely and we had to scrap the feature.
• More pressing business need: Our latest metric showed that growth is the most important business concern, so we funneled all our resource into our growth feature Clans.

If you are used to concrete yearly, quarterly, monthly, and weekly goals, you are going to have to get used to sudden changes at a startup. One week you will be working on a desktop app. Next Monday, your team might decide to scrap that and work on something completely different.

Changes are part of the startup life. Get used to it.

Parting Thoughts

Looking back at the past three years at Blitz, it was the best decision I’ve ever made in my career. I had a chance to grow so much as a designer, and learn valuable lessons I probably couldn’t have gotten anywhere else in the world.

This is not just because I joined a seed-stage startup — it’s because I joined Blitz. I personally felt a strong attachment to their product and vision as an esports fan. I resonated with the users’ pain points, and that made me fully invest my passion into the product. And of course, I joined Blitz because it was the best team that I could ask for. The Blitz team is the most talented and wholesome team I’ve ever worked with, and I’ve learned so much from them, from product and engineering to marketing and content.

If I were to give an advice to anyone looking to join an early-stage startup, I’d say you look at three things:

• Team: Does the team have what you don’t have? Do you think you can learn a lot from the team? Do you have the right chemistry?
• Vision: Are you passionate about what the team is working on? Do you resonate with the vision and the pain point? How much do you know about the market?
• Validation: How confident are you in their product and the market? What’s their current metric? How much room for growth do you see in the market?

I am super excited to share that Blitz has been acquired by Discord and I will be joining Discord to embark on a new journey. I consider consumer startups to face three quests: 1. Finding product-market fit. 2. Scaling to market. 3. Monetization. At Blitz, I’ve been working on the first quest, finding product-market fit. At Discord, I will be working on the third, as we tackle monetization. You can learn more about it here.

Looking back, Blitz has been a chance for me to hone my craft and grow as a product designer. I consider Discord as an opportunity for me to put my learnings into action, making an impact on millions of gamers, and take Discord’s business to the next level.

I can’t wait to continue my learnings at Discord, and share the lessons in my journey along the way.

Here’s to Blitz.

Special thanks to everyone I had an honor to work with at Blitz (and continue to work with at Discord!): Rick Ling, Jonathan Lin, Joanna Jao, Jonathan Wu, Haru Bui, Sharon Coone, Mark Reyes, Alex Yue, Joshua Lee, Kurt Hogarth, Ricardo Garcia, Sean Meiliunas, Matt Mersel, and Renato Perdigão.

Shout out to Kevin Gutowski, Sagar Shah, and Jeremy Blalock for emotional support at design critiques, and to my potato for my source of motivation.

Reflections from designing at a seed-stage startup was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I just pushed the sixth iteration of my portfolio, which builds on from last year’s Korea theme. You can check it out here.

I made my very first portfolio website in 2013. Since then, I’ve pushed myself to redesign my portfolio every summer, looking back on the lessons, documenting new projects, and applying new skills.

Yes, it’s a lot of work — I spend an entire summer for each portfolio redesign. But the fruit of the labor is definitely sweet. I can definitely say annual portfolio redesign is one of the major reasons why I grew so much as a designer in the past five years, and I’d highly encourage other designers to give it a try as well. Here are the why, how, and the lessons I’ve learned over the course of my six years of annual portfolio redesign.

The Why

1. To reflect on what I’ve learned in the past year.

I learn so many new things each year, from new tech and design skills to even how I approach product design process. I then apply these learnings to my annual portfolio redesign. In the last year’s redesign, for example, I used React.js, which was my biggest learning from the year before. Using React makes it super easy to reuse commonly used components like carousels, keeping the code more modular and maintaining the user experience consistent across the site.

2. To update what I’ve been working on.

Every year, I keep my portfolio updated with new projects from work, freelance, and side projects. This is important especially because I work at a fast-changing startup, Blitz. Blitz has changed its focus from a mobile news app (2016) and an esports publication (2017) to a desktop gaming insights app (2018). That’s why it’s important to keep my portfolio updated, in order to document my journey at Blitz and create a best representation of where I am at in my career.

3. To get creative without constraints.

Working on my portfolio redesign is one of the rare opportunities where I can be 100% creative with my work. It’s my website— I am the only stakeholder in this project. As such, I can focus on creating a design that’s unique to myself and try something unconventional without worrying about the opinions of the stakeholders. Sometimes as a product designer, you resort to conventional, safe methodologies as you design interfaces that meet the business and product goals. That’s why you should still dedicate some time to flex your creative muscle, and working on your portfolio is a perfect workout.

The How

Evaluation

I kicked off this year’s design by first evaluating what worked and didn’t work in the previous version:

The Good

• Theme: It was something unique to myself, embracing and conveying my Korean identity by getting inspirations from Korean art.
• Depth of case study: Case studies were super thorough and in-depth, documenting the process and rationale behind the design decisions.
• React.js: Using react.js made it super easy for me to create reusable, scalable components like carousels and thumbnail series for case studies.

The Bad

• Navigation didn’t work as intended: I had originally wanted people to click on one of the featured case studies — Blitz and Box — but it turned out the number one most visited page was about page.

• Case studies don’t speak for itself: There was way too much text for case studies. Most people spent less than 2 minutes on each case study, just glancing at the thumbnails.

• Visual polish: It turned out the web font for Neue Haas Unica didn’t render properly on the live website, ending up with much larger kerning than intended. The spacing could’ve been more generous as well, since I am designing a portfolio website catered towards design-savvy audience, not a functional app.

Approach

From the evaluations, I kept the theme Korea, but redesigned the website from the ground up. The goal for this year was to answer the question “How can I build on from last year’s Korea theme to be as perfect as possible?”

Improved Navigation
I went for a menu drawer (hamburger) instead of a sticky tab navigation to minimize distraction from the content and deemphasize the about page. I also placed a much stronger emphasis on the featured projects — Blitz, Box, and Witeboard — to get more people to land on those case studies.

Let the work speak for itself
Each case study now has larger thumbnails with captions instead of long blurbs of paragraphs. If the work itself is good, there’s no need to describe the role of each interface element in detail.

It’s ok to be a little bold.
There’s now more generous spacing, wider gutter, and more meticulous attention to typography all around. Remember that I’m designing a portfolio site mostly for design-savvy people, not a functional app for people in 50’s. It’s ok to get a little crazy.

You can check out the 6th redesign of my portfolio site here.

Tips and Lessons

1. Make it unique to yourself

Take a moment to think about how you can make your portfolio website unique to yourself. In particular, the header of your home page above the fold is the area where you can be 100% you and land a striking first impression. Don’t be basic and just write “I’m John Smith. Product Designer at Facebook” in Helvetica or Noe Display. Think about what makes you unique — you could use your cultural heritage, or maybe your background, like a physicist that became a designer — as an inspiration for your design direction.

2. It needs to serve a purpose.

You should still treat your portfolio just like any other product — you should think about who’s your audience and define the goals of your website. Depending on the audience and the goal, you should think about:

• What do you want to get out of your website? Maybe you want to land a job. Maybe you just want to have some fun. Depending on your goal, you should balance out how much you want to focus on function vs. form.
• What’s one page you really want your users to see? Your navigation should optimize for landing the users on that page.
• What do you want your users to do after they have explored your site? You should probably have a strong call to action, especially in header and footer.

3. But it’s ok to get crazy.

At the same time, remember that you are designing a portfolio website, not an app or a promotional site for your company. Your audience will most likely be a bunch of techies who are looking at your work on a giant 27" monitor in 1920x1080 screen res (this is true story from metrics from my portfolio site.) You have room to be generous with spacing, go bold with typography, and try something eccentric. Don’t be afraid to sacrifice just a bit of usability for a touch of delight and personality. This is one of the few cases where you can and should be really yourself when it comes to design.

4. Let your work speak for itself.

“Show, Don’t tell.” — this is the rule of thumb you should be following when it comes to case studies. You should still describe your design process and the rationale behind your design decisions in detail. But you shouldn’t go so in depth to the point where you are explaining every pixel and end up writing an essay. Keep your writing to a minimum and try to prove your point with your design comps. Make sure your thumbs are large enough (either container width or full screen) and keep it distraction-free. If your work is good, it wouldn’t require an in-depth explanation. It should speak for itself.

5. Be selective about your work.

Make sure you curate your best works, which should be no more than three. Having too many case studies will distract your visitors from exploring your best works. Spend time thinking about how you can optimize your navigation to land your visitors to your best works, and make sure case studies for those best works are thorough enough. It’s also important to show a wide breadth of work from multiple categories (consumer, enterprise, fintech, gaming, etc) and multiple platforms (mobile, desktop, web, marketing website, etc). It might be good to have 1–3 featured projects, which are your best works to date, and 3–4 other projects just to show you have worked on projects from wide range of audiences and platforms.

Last but not least, have fun.

When I was a kid, I used to spend days and nights just working on my personal website in HTML because it was fun creating an online presence of myself. Sure, I wouldn’t count them as my “professional portfolio,” but that same passion from childhood is what drives me to work on my portfolio today. It never feels like work. It’s just another hobby of mine like games, and that mindset allows me to get more creative when designing my site.

That’s why I want to end this post with the last piece of tip — have fun. I’ve met so many designers who are stressed over building their portfolios, and that’s a perfect recipe for a designer’s block. This is your chance to be 100% you — unlimited room for creativity and expression. You can take as much time as you want, use whatever tech you want, and design however you want. Seriously, you don’t get opportunities like this often (if ever). Enjoy it.

As I finish this year’s redesign, I’m already excited to think about what directions I want to take for next year’s redesign. I can’t wait to see how much I’d grow as a designer in the next years to come, and share my new portfolio with everyone each year.

Special thanks to Kevin Gutowski, Sagar Shah, and Jeremy Blalock for always providing me with awesome design critiques, and to my potato for giving me motivations to push myself to limits.

How and why I redesign my portfolio every year was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Last year, I wrote that life is like a sine-cosine graph (again, my mom is a math teacher and this is her way of saying life has ups and downs.). Looking back, this year was an upward slope of that graph — it wasn’t incredible, but it was definitely a huge improvement from last year.

1. Blitz didn’t crash and burn; in fact, we had a successful rebrand and became one of the premier esports publications in just a year.
2. I launched my new portfolio website and worked with some awesome clients.
3. I achieved all of my personal goals for this year (to certain extent): gym, driving, and a new hobby — cooking.

I want to dedicate this blog post to myself and my friends as a recap of what happened this year and a promise to continue to push myself beyond my limits.

Work life

Blitz

We started this year with lots of uncertainty and hope. We came back to working on esports after two pivots, rebranded ourselves as Blitz, and began moving into an uncharted territory as an esports publication. Yet, thanks to the works of our team (especially our new content team in LA!) we became one of the premier esports publications in just a year.

Designing for an esports publication was full of new learnings for me, as I had a chance to apply design to not just product, but the entire brand by creating a design system that touches upon every part of our process (content, marketing, and product.) As we applied design beyond product, I learned more about the purpose of design. That is, design is an art of balancing function and form in order to deliver value to our users. You can learn more about the learnings here.

One thing I really missed out this year was a chance to interview my hero, Faker. I actually ditched my Barcelona trip (fortunately it was only $250 RT) to join the Blitz crew for League of Legends All-Stars event in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, however, we didn’t get a chance to interview Faker. What this tells me is that there’s still a lot of work I have left to do to make Blitz the premier brand in esports.

As we conclude this year and prep for next year, we are full of yet another uncertainty and hope, as we return to building products for esports fans and gamers. With this new product launch next year, my goal is to make Blitz the most powerful brand in esports and gamers’ lifestyle (And land that Faker interview ffs). Third year in as a part of Blitz and five years working on a startup including Iris, I’ve come to embrace that uncertainty and hope as a natural part of a startup life, and I can’t wait to share what’s to come.

Design. by Roka.

My biggest design project outside of Blitz was my annual portfolio update. I update my portfolio site every year, but this year’s update was the most effort I’ve put in yet, with over 4 months of brainstorming, including traveling around Korea to gather ideas, and trying new tech: react.js. I’m proud of what I’ve done with this update, since this is the first time I found my design identity when it comes to a portfolio site, borrowing my Korean heritage as a main source of inspiration. It’s going be difficult, but I am planning on a yet another portfolio update next year. I can’t wait to apply what I’ve learned in the year since my last update. Stay tuned!

Freelance

I worked with awesome new clients this year. For me, working on freelance part-time is a way for me to expand my design experiences, from not just gaming and consumer, but to broader applications like enterprise, finance, and developer tools. Next year, however, I want to be a little more selective when it comes to clients, as I am starting to feel I’m becoming a design factory when it comes to working with clients. If my main motivation for working with a client is for new experiences, I need to make sure I fully resonate with the problem the client is tackling. As such, I want to cut down on some of the freelance work next year, and make sure the ones I work with are projects that I am genuinely passionate about.

Witeboard

I’ve been working with fantastic friends Abhi, Rachit, and Jeremy on this side-project for nearly a year and a half. It really shouldn’t have taken this long, but I guess that’s what happens when we work on it only once a week and spend most of the time playing Dominion. We will most likely ship this soon (hopefully next month), but nothing’s been decided yet on what we will do next. What I know, however, is that my main motivation for working with this team on Witeboard is not to work on the next big thing or to make money — I just really have fun working with this team. Whatever project we work on next year, I know I will have fun working with this team, and I feel very fortunate to call these group of talented individuals as friends. I still shit on them in Dominion every week though.

Personal Life

Pickup from 2017

At the end of last year, I set three goals to invest and improve myself as a person. Looking back, I’d say I’ve achieved 80% of these goals. Next year, my first goal is to continue to build upon these same goals. If I stop going to the gym, driving, or cooking, there’s no point of starting these goals in the first place. That’s why for next year, I want to hit the gym harder, continue to drive, and improve my cooking.

• Gym: I’ve been hitting the gym nonstop for the past year, but not three times as I originally planned on. At the same time, I just feel I really need to eat more to bulk up — you can’t build a sculpture if you don’t have the materials to begin with! Next year, my goal is to hit the gym three times a week and gain 20 pounds. Though, I honestly think gaining 20 pounds is way harder than losing 20 pounds. Y’all are free to hate me.
• Driving: I finally got my driver’s license and a car this April, but the road to getting that license was quite a struggle. I failed the driving exam twice, only to pass on my third try. I take that as a warning that I should drive more carefully. I hope to continue driving safely next year, especially since I’m starting to enjoy driving and notice that I tend to drive a little more recklessly. Special thanks to Jonathan for helping me practice 😃
• Cooking: To be honest, my original goal at the end of last year was to pick up photography as a new hobby. What I realized, however, is that I didn’t really enjoy photography, as the difference between DSLR and my “Shot on iPhone X” wasn’t significant. I’m sure I could dig into it more, but I just wanted to pick up a new hobby that I can genuinely enjoy in my spare time, and that was cooking. I’ve become quite used to cooking Korean dishes, and next year I want to push myself to learn 20 new dishes, including 10 non-Korean ones.

Be Social

My biggest goal for next year is to be more social. One of my biggest mistakes this year was that I didn’t meet many new people. When I was in college or working at Box, I got to meet so many new people every week; in fact, that was the best part of going to college and working at a large company. Now that I am working at a startup where the founders are already my friends from college, it’s been difficult to meet new people outside of my social circle. (Don’t get me wrong, Rick and Jonathan are still awesome ❤)

I feel that mid-20s are the best time for anyone to meet new people. When people settle down post-marriage, or heck even in a relationship, it becomes more and more difficult to meet new people. I want to leverage my mid-20s to expand my network and expose myself to new people and new experiences. To this end, my goal for next year is to make 5 new good friends. (and a girlfriend, of course.) I know talking to new people is not exactly my thing, but I want to break that barrier and push myself to meet new people and make more friends next year.

Be Financially Responsible

Okay, I know I spend a lot. I still believe you shouldn’t hesitate to spend money on your happiness, but at the same time, I want to be more financially responsible next year. I started investing this year with a diversified portfolio on index funds, stock, and of course, a bit of cryptocurrency, but I feel like I am investing with a very limited knowledge of finance. Next year, I want to dig deeper into personal finance and hit my financial goal — at the cost of sacrificing just a bit of my usual splurge.

Why I set yearly goals

I almost religiously set goals on both macro and micro-level: I set goals yearly as in this blog post, quarterly on the plane from my travels, and weekly every Sunday. To me, the whole point of setting a goal is to define a direction for my life — I might not achieve them all, but the goals act as a North Star that help me push myself to a right direction. Case in point, my dream school was Stanford (yes), and although I did not make it to Stanford, it paved a direction for me to come to the Bay Area, study Computer Science, and pursue entrepreneurship by going to UC Berkeley.

Setting goals have helped me achieve thus far, and I hope to continue to push myself beyond my limits by setting new goals for the future. At the same tine, I want to make sure I don’t forget to take a break every once in a while. I’m in my mid-20s, which is perhaps the best time to both push myself and enjoy life to its fullest. As I wrap up this post and this year, I want to approach next year with the mindset to seize every moment and opportunity — push myself when I can, yet don’t forget to just simply enjoy life at any given moment.

Here’s to fantastic 2018 for everyone :)

We’ve come a long way since our rebranding as Blitz (formerly Instant Esports) this February. Since then, we’ve transformed ourselves from just a news app to a high quality esports publication that not only reports on major LoL and CS:GO leagues, but educates audiences on the scene as well. On the product side, we did a partial redesign on our mobile app and launched a brand new Blitzesports.com that serves as a destination for esports fans on the web. Looking back on the past four months as Blitz, and the past year as Instant Esports, I want to highlight some key product lessons we’ve learned along the way.

The (true) story of Instant Esports redesign

Let us start from our original blog post back in last year: Designing the ESPN for eSports. In the post, we touted our new Explore feature which represented each team, player, champions, and tournaments as cards. We thought it was an elegant way to represent esports data in a digestible and shareable format, borrowing the analogy from baseball cards.

Wrong. As it turned out, we spent a whole month building that feature and scrapped it in the following month. It wasn’t as easy to browse as a traditional list, and most of all, hardly anyone used Explore to browse esports data. What people really wanted was just a simple display of team standings, not fancy cards with pictures that only fit 3 to a page. It was the epitome of Form over Function

Since then, we went through some roller coaster ride as a product team — a few pivots here and there, and learned numerous product lessons along the way. Most important of all is that in our design process, we should strive to strike a balance between Function and Form: Not one over the other, but a delicate balance that optimizes for both efficiency and delight.

Function

Users don’t want a novel interface; they just want a good one.

Design with (better) purpose

I firmly believe that there are three goals for design:

The vast majority of designers try to satisfy the first goal — focusing on aesthetics — but fail to satisfy the product goal, and far fewer satisfy the business goal. The evolution of our homepage is an example of how we went from accomplishing the aesthetic goal to the product goal, and then the business goal.

The original homepage that we shipped this February accomplished the aesthetic goal — it set the voice for the overall website with a large cover story, followed by a list of top news articles. After we shipped the site, however, we found that the majority of users who visited the homepage left the site without clicking on any links.

From this, we figured the initial version of the homepage had three glaring flaws:

1. Cover Story dominated the users’ attention. More than 90% of users clicked on the Cover Story, and never bothered to explore other sections of the website. This is the mother of all the problems that follow below.
2. Upcoming matches were buried. One of the key goals of the homepage is to get users to check out the latest matches. Because the Cover Story received too much emphasis, however, almost no one clicked on the schedule bar that showcased latest matches.
3. Lists are suboptimal for news sites on the web. The purpose of landing pages for news sites is to surface as many opportunities for users to click on an article that they might be interested in. Lists, however, only showcase 1–2 news items above the fold. Scroll is “cheap”, but what we’ve gathered from our usage data is that most users just get off the site unless the top 3 articles above the fold are interesting enough.

The homepage didn’t really achieve the product goal: a destination for visitors to discover the latest news in esports. Because the homepage didn’t align with users’ intent, it naturally didn’t satisfy the business goal either, with a high drop-off rate and low engagement.

In turn, we set out to redesign the homepage with the product goal of improving discoverability of articles and matches, and business goal of increasing our retention rate.

Here’s what we did:

1. Moved the top emphasis from a cover story to latest matches. Placing the latest matches as cards on top of a cover photo affords higher contrast and gets immediate attention from the user. The cover photo still gives the site a uniquely esports feel, while not taking up as much space as a full-bleed news article.
2. Showcased top stories as a Grid. Grids use space more efficiently than lists on the web, surfacing more opportunities for users to discover interesting news items. One of the downsides of a grid is that it is difficult to establish chronology. (Ex. Vox and Engadget) In turn, we opted to feature the latest article on the top left instead of the center, so that it’s clear to the user which article is the latest.

Key Takeaway: Design must accomplish more than pleasing the eye — it must help users accomplish a task, and businesses reach a target metric.

Let your metrics guide you

Sometimes it’s difficult to figure out what’s next on your product team’s roadmap. Metrics come in handy here — they define the success or failure of your past product launches and guide you in determining what to tackle next.

Let’s take a look at changes we brought to our content pages based on what our metrics showed. We started shipping written content on our website and getting referral traffic from social media this April. This brought us a huge surge in new visitors from referral traffic, but the growth didn’t really mean much without the visitors staying on our website. The vast majority of users landing on our content pages left the site without clicking on any other links.

The dilemma for blitzesports.com is that it’s more than just a content website — it’s meant to be a destination for esports fans on the web, with the latest schedules and match stats that fans can use to keep up with esports. For the new visitors to blitzesports.com, however, the content pages that they landed on created the assumption that our website was just like any other news website.

To fix low engagement on the website, we introduced Match Cards to our content pages. Match Cards provide match stats related to the content users are reading about — ex. C9 vs. TSM pregame votes or postmatch stats on an article about Bjergsen.

Although we shipped this feature only recently and most articles currently lack related match information, we saw a 17% lower drop-off rate for articles with Match Cards. We also found that users who visit both our homepage and match pages come back to blitzesports.com far more frequently than those who have never visited our match pages.

Key Takeaway: Use metrics to evaluate your past product launches and decide which user needs and future metrics to tackle in your next product feature.

Form

We are not building just another news site. We are building a center for Esports. Not New York Times, not ESPN, but Blitz. That’s why our design must live and breathe esports.

What makes designing Blitz extra difficult is that it’s not just a news site, but an esports site. When designing most other apps and websites, you can focus mostly on creating an interface that helps users accomplish tasks. There are obviously emotions that you must embody in your interface, but in most cases they are rather general — trustworthy, delightful, intelligent, secure, so on. For an esports product like Blitz, we set out to create a unique design language that lives and breathes esports without sacrificing usability.

Design Language: Brand

At the heart of our design language is the emotion we want to convey with our brand. In both our content and product philosophies, we seek to embody 5 core values:

1. Blitz is digestible: we deliver content that’s easy to consume and accessible to everyone.
2. Blitz is creative: we strive for innovation in both content and product in order to satisfy the needs of esports fans.
3. Blitz is accessible: we seek to expand the reach of esports to audience of all types.
4. Blitz is playful: gaming culture is fun, spontaneous, and informal — Blitz embodies the culture to create delightful experiences.
5. Blitz is exciting: we convey the adrenaline rush behind the plays at the heart of esports.

Based on these emotions, we ditched the old 14-letter product name Instant Esports and created a new logo with a new name: Blitz. The new logo is a geometric lightning bolt that signifies speed, passion, and futuristic vibe of the Esports.

At the same time, we retained some parts of the old design language that were effective — namely the primary color (Salmon Red: #F35353) and the heading typeface (Industry). We introduced a new secondary color (Blitz Orange: #FF9B3C) for better contrast in our content graphics, and a new body typeface (Maison Neue) for better legibility.

With this design language, we set out to create a unique voice within the world of esports. Blitz breaks down the complex world of esports with narratives supported by digestible motion graphics and visual aids. Our goal is not only to report the “what” of newsworthy events, but also to dig into the “whys,” the “hows,” and their implications — all in sleek formats that are easy to view and understand.

Design Language: Product

The design language we created for the brand and content carries over to our product as well. We established thematic components that make our products feel uniquely esports, such as skewed boxes in the schedule bar and yellow highlight in section headers that gives the site edgy, futuristic feel.

One particular page on which we worked really hard to convey the esports theme is the match page. Matches are at the heart of esports. Our match pages hype up fans before the game with head-to-head comparison of the two teams, and it archives the sick plays during the game with postmatch stats.

When designing the match pages for blitzesports.com, we set out to make sure:

1. Present stats in a digestible format: Establish a clear information hierarchy with visual aids such as graphs to help the user understand what happened in a game.
2. Convey the rivalry between players: Players represent the emotion in esports — the intense rivalry, sportsmanship, and passion. We present key players side by side in large thumbnails to bring them into the spotlight.
3. Involve the audience in the game: Esports fans can be opinionated and vocal, and we wanted to reflect this in their match browsing experience. As such, one of the key call to actions in match pages is voting.

Of course, we wrap these key objectives with our design language, like bar graphs, player thumbnails, and vote buttons that feel uniquely Blitz. Our philosophy to product design is that an interface that simply works is not enough. We strive to make design that works and feels uniquely esports, and most of all — Blitz.

Going Forward

Since our launch in February, we’ve become a premier esports publication in just four months. That’s not to say our product and design have no room for improvement — we’re just getting started.

Looking back, and going forward, one thing we’d like to improve on is not half-assing our projects. We built many, many features in the past four months, from match stats and standings to chat and 30s highlight clips. We cut down on a lot of specs for these features to make them minimum viable products — experiments to see if they satisfy user needs first, instead of overbuilding them. The purpose of MVPs, however, is to be iterated on. If you find a good fit, then you should continue to iterate and polish these features. Rather, we took a breadth-over-depth approach to our product development, and built many features that we eventually realized were half-baked. Going forward, we hope to bring more polish to our features that bring good traction.

Most important of all, we want to listen to esports fans more. Our goal is to ultimately make the esports scene better for fans, and to do that we will try to loop in esports fans’ feedback in the process as much as possible. We would never have gotten this far without our users’ help, so huge thanks to our users — old and new! As we venture into the next frontiers in our roadmap, we hope to listen to fans’ feedback, and bring more products and content that fans really need and love. Stay tuned!

Made with Lots of Love and League at Blitz HQ in Berkeley and Los Angeles.

Check out our content @ blitzesports.com and download our mobile app for iOS and Android.

Follow our journey on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

My mom used to say life is a sine / cosine graph. Yes, my mom is a middle school math teacher and I guess this is her way of saying life has ups and downs. This year was that lower end of the graph. I don’t know if this makes me feel better but I wasn’t the only one who had a shitty year:

Trump happened.

I really thought this was a no contest until 7PM November 8th. Then my Facebook blew up.

…and back in my motherland, we got rid of the worst president in our history.

I’ve never felt more ashamed of my country than this. For those curious here’s an excellent WP article that sums it up: Link

This year wasn’t the best year for me personally, either. It was one of those times where things seemed to get stuck, without much progress in both my professional and personal life. So what happened?

Pivots, Pivots, Pivots.

When I joined Instant eSports November 2015, I thought I was getting on a rocketship, destined for success. Little did I knew that joining a seed-stage startup is not really getting on a rocketship, but a rollercoaster.

Around May, we realized that our original value proposition — helping people keep up with eSports — was not a unique value proposition anymore with new competitors like theScore and ESPN eSports. The eSports space was becoming more of a content space, and we (as a team of techies) were reluctant to produce our own content. Shortly after, we pivoted from Instant eSports to Codex, an app that helps League of Legends players win more games by giving them accurate analysis of their opponents. It was a captivating idea, and we even spent weeks grinding on ranked as a team to figure out the heuristics to help people win more games. Unfortunately, we had to scrap the idea because of technical limitations in Riot’s API and difficulty in scaling to different games.

This August was perhaps the lowest point in my morale. We literally showed up to work at 11am and left at 3pm. Everyone pitched their ideas for our next pivot, and we shot down most if not all of them. It’s extremely difficult to come up with a startup idea in a meeting room, and it wasn’t the most productive use of our time. Frankly, I debated a lot whether to pursue another opportunity, and had I not had the confidence in the team and in our next idea, I might have. I knew, however, that this team has everything I imagined — from skillset and passion to team culture — and I didn’t want to give up on the opportunity to work with such a brilliant team.

We tried out another idea in September called Ramble — chatrooms for topics with your friends. It was an interesting idea especially for me because I had worked on a similar idea, Iris, two years ago. We took some of the lessons we learned from the past eight months and adopted a more rapid approach to product development. Everything we built was a test. We built a scrappy iOS / Android app in 2 weeks using React.js, shipped to around 50 beta testers, and saw how that worked out. We repeated this 2 week iteration cycle, and this helped us find a product-market fit much faster than launching a fully polished app that would take us a month with no guarantee of success.

An early stage startup’s challenge is that its product hypothesis hasn’t been fully validated yet. To overcome this, a startup must iterate fast through user feedback to find a product-market fit. This is precisely what gives startups its strength over bigger companies — the ability to move fast in short product cycles.

Essential ingredients to a successful startup team are skillset, team culture, and passion. When it came to Ramble, however, we weren’t as passionate as we were in Instant eSports or Codex. We were a team who came together with a passion in eSports and gaming. We still had office walls covered in League of Legends posters. We still played League of Legends together after work, and some times during work. Heck, we never touched Instant eSports app for half a year and we had the same number of active users. This November, we looked back on what went wrong with Instant eSports, and evaluated how we can make it better. We wanted to do content, in a much better way — one that’s more digestible, educational, and fun — like what Vox and NowThis is doing with traditional journalism. We were down to make Instant eSports great again. First, we are dropping that ugly long name and calling it: Blitz.

In 2017, I want to make Blitz the brand that people associate with when it comes to keeping up with eSports. With Blitz, I want to make eSports more accessible, digestible, and fun. I am confident that we can make this happen with our stellar team and the product lessons we learned over this past year.

Breakup.

I won’t tell the whole story here because it’s quite a personal story — if you are curious just hit me up and maybe we can get beer. Or soju, that works too. But long story short, I just couldn’t see us going long-term. About a year and half into a relationship is a point where you start to consider if this person is the one you should be with long-term, if not forever. Yes, we were really, really happy together and I loved her even at the point when we were breaking up, but I just didn’t see us a year, a decade, or a lifetime onwards. At first you would think this person is perfect, but over time, you see this person’s flaws, and each of these flaws started to overwhelm the fondest memories you had. The past year and a half was still one of the happiest times I had, and even now I sometimes look back and miss it, but I think it’s best to keep it as precious memory to treasure.

I want to take this as an opportunity to invest in myself. I am in no position to point out anyone’s flaws — if I want to be happier then I need to first improve myself as a person. With that in mind, I set myself three personal goals for 2017:

• Hit the gym. I’ve been saying this whole year but I didn’t do it. It’s not just for going to the gym’s sake, but it’s more for getting over my biggest flaws: postponing my to-dos. Fortunately, I’ve been at it for a month so far. If any of you are reading this and see me next year, feel free to ask me if I am keeping up my streak.
• Get a car. At the beginning of the year, I calculated the costs and found it’s actually cheaper to get Uber all year instead of having a car. However, I am beginning to realize that owning a car comes with not just transportation, but freedom to go wherever, whenever you want. Want to practice photography in Marin? Want to hang out with a friend in Sunnyvale? I can do this anytime I want if I have a car, whereas if I use Uber, I feel bad every time I see that fat $50 one way Uber cost. By the way, I am probably going to get a MINI.

• Practice photography. I always thought my iPhone 7 is enough for taking good photos. I took some good photos with iPhone 7 in my trips this year, but whenever I see quality photos from my friends with their DSLRs on Facebook and Instagram, I feel like my photos could be better. I gave up on DSLR last year because I always thought they were bulky and hard to learn. Now, I feel like I am only 24, and if I am this reluctant to learn new things now, then I would be even more reluctant to learn when I get older. That’s why I want to pick up a new hobby now that I have more time, and photography would best complement my career as a designer.

For 2017.

When I think about life as a sine and cosine graph, it means two things:

• When you think things are going well, that’s when you get complacent and are prone to falling off.
• To go back up again, you must invest time and effort into your personal and professional goals. If you solely think it’s going to be better because you just had a bad year and not really improve, nothing will change.

I think my 2015 was pretty good — I learned a ton as a designer at Box, joined an awesome team at Instant eSports, and I was having a blast in my personal life. Looking back, maybe I was a little complacent this year. For 2017, I want to try my best and make Blitz successful. For 2017, I want to improve myself as a person and accomplish the three goals I set. This blog post is a promise with myself and everyone who reads this. At the end of next year, I hope to look back and say — 2017 was 🔥🔥🔥

p.s.: One more goal I left out — I am going to hit Plat in League. I consider it as a part of my professional success.