EP14. The journey from sales specialist to a career in User Experience Design with Viet Hoang
Welcome back to User Flows, everyone. This is a show where we talk about UX Design and Careers and I get to interview designers who inspire me about how they got started in the field so I can break down the patterns or best practices that you can use in your own career.
Today, I'm speaking with Viet Hoang. Viet has been a UX Researcher/Designer for 8+ years. In my experience working with him, he has shown an absolute comprehensive understanding of human behavior and psychology as it relates to both digital and physical experiences. Viet has worked with numerous clients in various industries, from fintech to food services giving him a broad perspective on users' needs and motivations.
I was really excited to connect with Viet again on the podcast and outside of work. He's an incredibly thoughtful person and extremely inquisitive. I think you’ll enjoy this one!
Listen now
on Spotify
on Apple
on RedCircle (All other podcast platforms)
Powered by RedCircle
Show Highlights
The differentiating skill of communication [4:20]
How he got started in UX Design [15:30]
How sales can help your career as a designer [20:00]
The most important aspects of your role as a designer [22:36]
Advice for Designers getting into the field [29:00]
Show Links
Viet Hoang on LinkedIn
. . .
If you haven't already, please subscribe to User Flows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. If you prefer video, you can watch it on the UserFlows YouTube channel. Share this episode with friends and family or anyone you know who's interested in UX design.
Help make User Flows better!
Complete a short survey and help me make the most of this thing. Thanks.
Transcript
Thomas Morrell 0:10 Hey, welcome back everyone to the User Flows podcast. This is the show where we talk about UX design and careers, and I get to interview designers who inspire me, talk to them about how they got started in the field, so I can break down those patterns, best practices so that you can use those in your own career.
Today I'm speaking with Viet Hoang, and I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. So Viet has been a UX researcher and designer for eight plus years and in my experience working with Viet, you know he has been an absolute, shown an absolute comprehensive understanding of human behavior and psychology, as it relates to both digital and physical experiences. And it was an absolute pleasure working and talking with yet. And so I'm really excited to have him on the show today Soviet Welcome. I'm really excited that you're here, and if you could please tell us a bit about yourself, you know more than we could learn on your LinkedIn profile.
Viet Hoang 1:04 Yeah, aside from my LinkedIn profile. So, I don't know how many of you are familiar with how BAM kind of brought it up but you gave me this nice quest like this little questionnaire, and it's really funny to me and I'm bringing this up now, because one of the questions is like what can we learn about you that's not on your LinkedIn profile, right. And I'm like looking at the question I'm like, Well what does my LinkedIn page. And like what should it say about me, right. So, again if you go to my LinkedIn profile, you're going to see is a science background, he's had experience working as a pharmaceutical sales rep for a diabetes company, things like this, right. So I started to look at my well what does it not say about me. One of the things are not one but an important thing that that's not in there is that my, my passion for the art, actually. So, no you can be then, I got my master's Ruckers in biomedical sciences. Actually, I grew up loving dance right we're talking like I saw Michael Jackson move, and this is before YouTube right so this is before it's like I know what full-on like so young. So I loved to dance. I love theater I love comic book art, and ultimately as I got older I actually asked myself this question as to why I love those things. And it's actually because of making meaningful connections with people. That's actually what gives me that brings me the most joy, and that's why I did those things with the kid. You're dancing in a circle and everyone's like having a great time watching your dance or whatever. So that's one thing, and maybe the other thing is, I do have a passion for martial art. So, I call it martial art right so visually in jujitsu something I did a few years before like I really hurt my back. But martial arts is something I've been interested in for a very long time. And those some people may see like martial arts as violence. I always saw it as a way to, You know, express myself artistically but again through the martial arts. But yeah, those are some things that you wouldn't be able to know about me but just by looking at my LinkedIn.
Thomas Morrell 3:29 I like that and yeah, you're definitely, you're a good communicator and you can tell that human connection aspect where you asked some of the best questions. I've ever heard just bumping into getting coffee in the morning, like, what, what do you view as the meaning of life or how do you go about your life.
Viet Hoang 3:48 Yeah, remember you're just like, Hey listen, it's like 930 in the morning. Give me a word. You know I can answer this question, but I do want to bring this up because you mentioned communication and why it is so important to me why to ask the question. It was during the time that I was working as a pharmaceutical sales rep actually where I started to question a lot of things I was just very curious reading all the time. But I had to. It's not like a revelation but I asked myself like, what if a human being, in order to create great thing ultimately we'd have to build better connections with each other, and then I asked myself about what Bill, like out of all skills you could learn as a human being which one of these skills would, you know, helped me build these connections in it, then he really came to communication. ultimately, and then communication such a big word well what about communication, are we going to work on the active listening portion. The question, how to be articulate ideas all of this stuff I started to dive real deep into. How does one, improve their ability to communicate with another human being, essentially. And so yeah, use that in my career and use that in my personal relationships and all that.
Thomas Morrell 5:18 That was a really big jump going from diabetes care specialists, the US design, how did you kind of make that transition. And what bird, to begin with.
Viet Hoang 5:30 Yeah, great question because, so even before the diabetes specialist career. I was actually already. Researching designing my own app. I figured before that I said to myself I wanted to, I want to design an app like … going back to the whole connection thing was, how do I build more meaningful connections at scale. Right. And so, I already started doing some exploration and research into what is UX design at the time like UX design wasn't really a career that you, you'd be proud to tell your parents about they'd be like, What are you, I told you you're not going to become an artist, right, yeah. So, so even before that, I had already been sued for UX design has like a bunch of failures to launches. Right. And then like, started a tutoring service, though, I look back at it now, I was like, this is probably pretty controversial now, but just the floor and out, what have you even started. Like I never even really thought about making money, honestly, like I didn't think about, unfortunately, you know, that's kind of a blessing just because my parents, you know, middle class, worked their butts off, I sports but I never really thought about my brother on them and it's all about money. For me, I just never thought about it and. But I started off the students are not even knowing what the business model is anyways. And by the way, you get used to me going off on these tangents, and good question. So eventually I do work my way into, into a career, pharmaceutical sales because I was like, I was living at home at the time, and I'm like, I think I need a W two like I think it's about a time. And, again, and when I made the decision to go into our let me, let me figure out how to get into pharmaceutical sales. At that time, I didn't actually know where I was uncertain if I had any feeling that a company would pay for it. Right. So I get some sales experience I worked my way into a pharmaceutical sales. And with, like, the principles of UX design. I actually took a lot of what I had learned before I enter the pharmaceutical sales market and applied it to pharmaceutical sales, and you're like well what do you mean by this, pharmaceutical sales made to them I have this perception that you go in there, you wine and dine the doctor and you get them to write the prescription is just not that simple, like, actually there's so much to, it's not just about the position it's about the office, it's about the entire healthcare experience. We're talking about the managers. We're talking about the nursing staff all of it. And it was been really great user experience problems,, that revealed themselves to me as a pharmacist as a physician, like for instance, patient education. Right, let's say, your doctor comes around. Hey Doc, I have some great diabetes education for your patients. It's unbranded so there's like no like, you should take this drug. And you give these offices, all the focus of education. And when I would revisit and I would see the purpose we're just collecting that the book has never been handed out and ask myself, Well why is that good number one Everyone's so busy. So, how can I help get this education into the hands of the people that need it most, The patients? And I don't know when the last time you went to your primary care provider, maybe last year. But then, in the waiting room, there's always that they were ready to see all of this, like in our marketing material from other like pharmaceutical companies I said, patients even care about this. So, I got permission from a lot of my offices to just clear out all that stuff. And I would make these phone calls to diabetes care centers for all the education there and now these things started flying off the shelf. Patients who waited to see their physician may be pulled this off the show. So, I started to realize I was like, I loved it I loved solving these problems, way more than trying to get my numbers up, and the numbers would go up, Just because you're solving problems for the physician,
Viet Hoang 10:32but I didn't want to always be looking at the numbers and what goals I have to hit, eventually I decided okay you know what, I'm going to do this full time because I was doing it part-time too. Right, so I decided to go full time, And most of the time I spend in pharmaceuticals or in Virginia, I moved back to New Jersey. And it was interesting because moving back to Jersey, go back to living with my parents as I tried to figure out my apartment situation in Jersey. And once I came to the conclusion for myself that I was going to go full-time UX design. I was like, how am I going to tell my, my parents, again like My poor mom who I really do feel for her. He's like, why does this, why can't this man figure out what he wants to do, he has his master's degree in Biomedical Sciences, and go that's the tough one. So, this is hilarious. And my poor dad My dad is my mom and dad is so funny. They're so different, and my dad is like someone I can always go and say hey listen, I'm about to do something this might cause your sleep quality, to decrease because you're probably going to hear from mom, like what before ready for that. And so I always go to him anytime I'm but doesn't make a decision like that, and this is the same case that they hate as a family. I know. Listen, I know this company, they're giving me an Audi they're like flying me out here and they're like, it's a great lifestyle, a lot of flexibility and the face great. But listen, I think this is no longer for me I'm gonna do I'm gonna jump into UX design, full time. And you got what is it, what is happening here. And so I basically have asked myself this question, so I quit my job and I quit my job and how do I tell this to my mom, and this goes back to communication, right, knowing your audience, like I can't just drop this bomb on there like over like a meal or something. And what I decided to do was make a slide deck, and go to Google slide deck, right, and I show this slide deck to a couple of people at this point it's hilarious. And within this slide deck, okay. It's so funny because as I was a pharmaceutical sales rep my mom used to love to read now that she's retired. She would always be my brother and I quote, you know from the Dalai Lama, or from Bill Gates, just think you call her to fence right. And or Confucius, like, whatever, like he was like, it was nice to be standing up with like inspirational quotes I think like those inspirational quotes about following your dreams and all these kind of things and then made sure to put those into my slide deck. So anyway, I decided I build the slide deck, and I tell my dad hey listen, we're gonna, we're gonna present this amount, the night, and he's like, Alright, listen. It's like the season finale of American Idol. And you know how we love that show. Do you mind if you just presented afterward, Like, just wait till American Idol is done, and it comes out to tell your mom whatever you need to do? And so is this fun, or is that whatever it is my life, you know. So American idol finances, it's like 10 o'clock at this point, I come downstairs. You know we have a living room, You know, TV that and basically, I take my laptop I hook it up the Google Chrome, or sorry you know the block device. And basically project my, my slide deck there I tell her what's going to happen. I follow my potential earnings, which is probably the most important slide that you know your numbers, and then I tell him that way. Anyways, it ended well, like, he's like you know what, whatever man. You want Well, ultimately,
Thomas Morrell 14:55 that's, I can only imagine from a parent's perspective if one of my kids came to me and said they're gonna show me a PowerPoint on some kind of life decision like just manually thinking Oh god, what am I in for?
Viet Hoang 15:21 Yeah, ultimately, you're gonna do it you're gonna do, and I think he chose right, so good on you. Yeah, and I mean how's the gurbin Since then, I mean I got to work with the Prudential which was a lot of fun. that's going on. Yeah, it's been, it's been, it's been great, honestly. Yeah, this is gonna sound. This may sound strange, but I realize for anyone who's starting in UX design like really like getting serious with their UX designer or needs to build the experience I think the financial industry is actually a great starting point. You know, because a lot of these older institutions are trying to build out their design teams now you can learn a lot from that versus I know, I'm sure people like I want to look enough like Amazon, qualified all this stuff, but they're very mature and most likely, you know, they have a fully built out design process where you can come here, You can learn, you can make mistakes, you can experiment, right. So, anyway, it's been great. I think for me, I definitely chose right. I expect to like figure out what part of the design process, I love the most. And for me, it's building research. This thing is I feel like research is one of the few pieces of the design process if we don't have time for that, like, that's one of the first things to go. Yeah, like, All right, so one of the biggest challenges that I, that I've had so far in my career, is being able to really design, certain design processes or Jen aspects of the design process, like being able to link his business outcome, right, to $1 amount oh yeah like can you quantify this, if we don't do the UX or we are sorry, we don't do the research when we do the research, how much does that cost, right, there's so much emphasis on delivery. So, but, again, there's, like, even right now, because my, my team is still growing. And we're still actually working out our process, there are good people in place now. And I definitely wouldn't say that but there are definitely some good people in place now where we might actually be able to create a solid foundation for design and product development, overall. Yeah. But yeah, and yeah, one other thing I wanted to say was, I would love it if I could get more exposure to design like real quality design mentors and leaders, that's definitely something that I feel is lacking, to some extent.
Thomas Morrell 18:27 No, I like that and I definitely feel about working in things like FinTech, and even medicine, which is hugely popular in the New Jersey area where you're located. It's all banks and the medical facility right. There's a lot of need for UX designers in those fields, and there are a lot of really big challenges. You know, lots to learn lots of opportunities for learning. But also, I feel like working with those older institutions that people aren't fully bought into a design thinking or human-centered design so you kind of has to learn to be a good salesman, but we probably use some of that experience, like, you know, teaching people, educating them on, you know, the design process then how it can be used and how it might benefit you. And that's a really neat idea that you bring up and it's probably something that most designers don't think about very often is how do I relate what I do. Do you know, ROI, or businesses, what do they get out of this, what is the cost of not doing things right versus making cut in the process in order to get there quicker, that's really interesting, though, I think that's yeah. And as far as finding mentors. I'm with you on that, there are things out there now like ADP list and those things. But I don't know that they're so much for you, kind of been your designer, there was more for the junior designers looking to get started in the field to be interesting to start some kind of mastermind group, I think you're onto something.
Viet Hoang 19:58 Yeah, yeah. It's wild too, um, well, Two things I like to comment on the sales aspect, It helped a lot of younger designers. And when I'm doing a new theme. I emphasize how important that experience was, I didn't. I knew how US design, essentially impact, myself, but I didn't quite realize how my sales experience would impact my UX design career. Right, right. And when we discuss something about how do you explain your designs and things like this but trust me, there was a lot of cleaning when I was in pharmaceuticals. It wasn't just about the quote-unquote, education, of what, you know, what is it like the education of the design process from research to wireframes to entity mapping journey mapping, it wasn't just about well what is it, educate us on the benefits of that. Yeah, that's cool I did that a lot in my career as a pharmaceutical sales rep, like hey this is what this does is how much it costs, but to actually get them to change the behavior, that's where the sales came in. Right. And without it, and I don't know how you teach it in terms of like for like a design course, like do they have, they'll have a study design, maybe, I think I'm maybe a few things like that online on YouTube but,
Thomas Morrell 21:38 yeah, there are some good books out there and I can remember them I'll link them in the show notes, but also IDEO has a course on creative competence, which is kind of around that, like, how do you, you stand up for your design. How do you explain things well and I could see you being really good at sales. Being a fantastic opportunity for a UX designer because not everybody's bought in, from the beginning, and there's, you do spend a lot of time and coaching and helping people understand the benefits of the really robust design process, and so
Viet Hoang 22:14 it's a great, yeah, in like a 22 right to get someone to change the behavior. There also is this other trust component. Like, even trust me as a person for you and hear what I have to say first. Don't trust me, I could say that I could have the best sales pitch ever. And it all be for nothing. But yeah, yeah,
Thomas Morrell 22:41 yeah, no, that's perfect. And that's one of the questions I asked a lot, and when I'm interviewing UX designers, You know what do you feel are the most important aspects of your job, or aspect of your role and what I usually like to hear back, the most is the communication and trust. Because I mean anybody can make a great design, well, not anybody but no matter how good that design is it's going to take a lot of communication with developers with, you know, business analysts with, you know, senior leadership teams in order to kind of spell it across the word get everybody by in order to trust you and kind of build those relationships so that you can get done the things you need to get done.
Viet Hoang 23:26 Yeah, absolutely. I mean that's, that, that's another challenge, right, is to get a get like we own, like, almost cross-functional names and stakeholders and things like that but like, ultimately, we should see each other as being one of experience, experienced a lot is because there are different stakeholders and product team members are. It's unfortunate, but it's not like, Okay, listen. If we win the game, and score this many points where we wanted to deem it, like, what I mean by this is, everyone has their own sentence structure. And those incentives. A lot of times conflict. Right, like for instance, if I'm just focused on delivering, do I really care to go to Design real quick for a quick QA to see if this looks right. No, I'm under the gun. Right. But then that developers were under the gun because they were never consulted about these designs before they got approved by the business. Right, so and all these different promises are made and so it's, it's actually put like product teams at conflict with one another. It Key said she said type of situation, right, yeah. So yeah, they lack the indication and trust component is essential in delivering quality products.
Thomas Morrell 24:53 And going back to the sales is um, I remember one of my early mentors when I was the first kind of getting into business for myself, I ran a business for like eight years or so, big design or design and marketing for a number of different companies. I remember saying something to, like, I'm not really very good at sales not really interested in sales, he's like dude, you're in business for yourself, like every, everything is sales now, like every meeting you go to is a sales meeting everybody is a sales pitch, it's like oh, I guess you're right.
Viet Hoang 25:27 Yeah, Yeah, that is funny, that's absolutely true theory every encounter, you're selling is funny too, and this is always going to go off topic but I was talking to several of my friends when I was moving around the FBI. And one thing you hear whispers when you move to different big cities, you'll hear or I heard was so hard to meet people, by write-in your people, the people that you want to. Yeah. And yes, it's hard to find them. Right, and I started thinking about this, this problem that I started to be like okay well what if you instead of having to search for like needles in a haystack, you could send out a bad signal instead. You could draw them be. Right. And as I go, How might someone do that well there are many different ways whether it's in like social media, right, but just for a simpler example, like fashion, right, like right at a start to see like, Okay, imagine you're in SoHo in New York, and you're walking through Soho, and you're walking past doors that are boarded up. Or maybe there's nothing in the windows. Of course, you're not going to step in, you might think it's closed. You don't know. Either way, I said this thing they're fascinated by your storefront. Oh, this is interesting. Okay, Okay. Hey, because they might say hey nice glasses. Nice sneakers nice whatever. And all of a sudden you're having a conversation with this person, right, and now I started to expand that idea of your storefront, so it goes beyond what you wear, and how you carry yourself to it if I look at what does your digital presence, look like and feel like and I know, admittedly I'm not good at that, and that is not that I'm not good at I haven't spent enough effort and time into it and I'm starting to think more like maybe I really need to work on that digital presence to draw these people in.
Thomas Morrell 27:41 Yeah, no, that's, I mean, having a good way to meet people. Right, exactly, kind of stuck with you for like 45 minutes those Jasmine questions badger them, but uh, no, and I just relocated, I'm not sure if you know who has been in Georgia, and it's been the same thing and so I've been kind of reaching out to local designers, some of the local like design educators, and to see like what kind of groups are out there, what kind of your meetups they do, I reached out to the IFTA and USDA to ask please set up the local chapter here. So, you can start talking to people get to know people kind of expand my kind of reach here in New Jersey, I felt like it was very easy, like, you can grow a stone and you're gonna hit a designer somewhere.
Viet Hoang 28:28 Yeah, you're the right guy for it though, you're the right guy for it. You always had this, to me, you always had this very relaxing vibe. They could be real attention, and maybe there's a different internal dialogue going on inside your head, but like, externally as an audience member, I'm like wow, calm, collected doesn't matter how many people in the room, we be. It's very calming. So, podcasting is natural and if you're running any, you know, if you're facilitating any workshop, I'm like yeah that most likely can be pretty successful or at least enjoyable.
Thomas Morrell 29:08 Yeah, I appreciate that and if people think I'm coming off as relaxed that's great because inside I'm freaking out pretty much all day every day so that's wonderful. Okay. Obviously, I mean, you made this transition. You have a whole new role. Now, That being why Mellon, which is awesome, congrats on that. Um, hey, you danger advice for somebody who maybe like you was didn't know what they want to do, they went into a field that possibly wasn't the best thing for them. Maybe it's medicine, maybe it's something else. What would be your advice for them to, if they were interested in us to design, to kind of get started and you know work their way into the career.
Viet Hoang 29:47 Yeah, you know, for all those Asian kids that end up going to biomedical, not for anyone basically. But, you know, specifically, the sciences, right. I know, again, it's no surprise that a lot of Asian cultures push their kids into the sciences, right. If you're currently in that situation I can tell you that your science background will definitely be helpful, especially when it comes to research, write, and when you're in a sciences degree, and especially if you're part of a graduate program, you're doing a lot of research, and you're familiar with different research techniques about how to handle bias. Not to say that you know scientists aren't racial biased in their research but you're aware of all these things. So, definitely a leg up on that, of how valuable that is. But if you aren't a lab, often by yourself and you have an introverted personality. I would definitely encourage you to maybe step outside of that a little bit, maybe facilitate some study groups, right, because that is something I kill that needs to be practiced for sure. And then during the design what because right now, we have a great tool, right, for UX designers and a lot of companies now are creating their own design systems or leveraging other design systems. So, a lot of the types of designers we're looking for is, how do they solve problems. Ultimately, right. And again, if you're coming from medicine, something you're probably going to be familiar with, again, when we were in the land, how do we, how do I think with a neuro stem cell that was how do we grow neuro stem cells, how do we get them to grow. Being able to break down problems and things like that, I think, as I'm thinking about it. You have a leg up if you're coming from the sciences to get into UX design especially if you always wanted to be an artist, and your parents are telling you how much money you won't make and how you know you're most likely end up doing characters the central part. And the first thing was like, like, I'm like, I'm thinking about. And again, I don't know what their situation is or why they're doing characters in Central Park but they kind of, I wouldn't say they ruined it for us, as is, because they didn't ruin it. But that was the image that was plastered plastic to our parents whose minds. Oh, what does an artist do oh they end up here isn't great. So anyway, that's kind of some of these stages I failed my communication. I know a lot of people think of UX design and making beautiful UI or beautiful animation. I want to make Instagram or I want to make Netflix, things like that, and they sign up for courses that teach them how to use the tools and that's all great, but being able to focus or at least spend some of that time as you're learning about the UX design process, focus that time on, on, on sales and communication. Maybe the one other thing I would say is, understand, really try to get some grasp over CSS and JavaScript. You don't have to do to build your own app. But once you enter, you know, the word board as a professional designer. It's going to help you tremendously to be familiar with how a product is actually built and help programmers think, right, so those are some of mine that have helped me out, that I've had to learn, kind of on the fly but by.
Thomas Morrell 34:06 And so I noticed, is something working with you is that you are pretty strong on the UI side of things, you obviously you had the kind of, you know, the research aspect coming from the medical field, but was the UI, and, you know, learning JavaScript, things like that. Was that something you had to work on, is it kind of any particular way you went about that.
Viet Hoang 34:26 You know, I did some I paid for some courses online, there's one call like learn UI design just to kind of refine your skills on that but I do, like right now I'm actually doing some Code Academy. Khan Academy, JavaScript courses. Because, you know, as a design a lot of designers will be like, okay, especially designers, you want to start up their own thing or create their own app, they're like okay, I'm gonna create this great idea, and I'm going to come up with a design, and I'm gonna pass it off to death, and definitely look at you like, you know how long it's gonna take me to do this and how much money I have to charge you. So it helps, again, to be able to code. But again, to answer your question, it's interesting, right, like the one thing I didn't bring up so far on the podcast was after I graduated in biomedical sciences. I actually took one full year. And moving down to valid exercise and the question was, essentially, what would you do with your, what would I do with my time. If I didn't have any peer pressure. Let's go to Dallas is cheap to live in I went out there with my brother and my good friend David, and it was just that What do you want to do, and I spent that time, formally learning design. Right. I was drawing traditionally taking an art class I was starting and I never really thought of digital art as real art. I know that a while ago because I was like there's nothing there's nothing tangible. Right. But once I started like again, even with animation micro-interaction. A lot of that is based on what Disney animators created, right, the movement of things and helping Wishon and elastic standing like that. So, traditional art, that's really where I got some of my, that's kind of where like my foundation of understanding, like UI, like came from, like how to break things down and how to animate things in and out things like that so
Thomas Morrell 36:47 I was like, Yo, thanks for answering those questions. I really appreciate that but um so somebody's kind of in your role now. Where do you go for inspiration?
Viet Hoang 37:00 Oh, where do I go to for inspiration? Um, so, I read a lot. And so, and I think the latest book that people, I don't need talking about is, is the School of Life. YouTube channel you're familiar along.
Thomas Morrell 37:24 Yeah, do something I can't remember his last name. Yeah, yeah, he wrote a book called Help route can change your life. Like, this changed my life.
Viet Hoang 37:36 Yeah. Oh, it's really great actually, I gifted it to people for Christmas last year, but it basically talks, like, it shows in the most beautiful. He just is able to articulate that, like human behavior and psychology in such a beautiful way. And I focused a lot on human behavior, why we do things we do, trying to understand that it helps tremendously when you're designing experience for human beings, right, and asking these questions of, well, why would this person do this particular action, and you're asking this constantly. So I do that, I have a couple of newsletters that I get, like, actual newsletters that I read that again, are kind of focused around philosophy communication human behavior. And in terms of like UI things like this, it's just for me to paying attention, you know, due to whatever app you're using as Spotify releases a new update Netflix releases a new update, or any of these guys that are like on the actual cutting edge of design Airbnb things like this, that's typically where I'm going for inspiration medium, great like they're constantly serving me quality content. But yeah, those are some of the places I go for inspiration.
Thomas Morrell 39:18 So what's on the horizon, what’s up next?
Viet Hoang 39:22 Right now we're building out a team. Being why Mellon, and it's, it's gonna be interesting, as to how we grow because for me what I'm starting to really enjoy is this leadership component. Right. The being a design leader and what does that mean, right. And I've seen great leaders, but from afar right like you can go to YouTube and all these other things. But in terms of like, working alongside great leaders. That's been very rare, like, a great manager and great leaders are rare as a great teacher, Right, we were to ask them like Hey, tell me about your top five features that have impacted your life and what you've decided to do, etc. Maybe like they might actually say I don't know they have three features that really impact them I can recall my name, and unfortunately, that's been my experience when it comes to my career. Right, so there's a select few that has been great. I mean, you know, Tatiana she's awesome. But, but yeah so now for me. There's a piece of me that wants to develop my skills as a leader. And maybe we do this at being why Mellon, or we'll see, we'll see. And again, I still haven't given up hope that one day I'll build my own app. And so right now I'm learning JavaScript, and it was actually really funny. My, my brother was, basically, he came to me because I was working for myself recently. And he's a programmer or used to be in real estate now, but I was telling about my idea and it's like this great idea, designed to increase balance. We're going to build it. I was like oh yeah my I'm gonna work with whoever, and then he's like, Listen, you need to learn how to code because he's like, even if you can only code 10% of it. A programmer is going to be like, Okay, this guy, genuinely cares to learn this, and maybe you take it 10 to 20%, they may help you take it to 50 and then maybe, so I'm surrounded by programmers that are willing to help me, my when I leverage their experience, their knowledge, that, you know, we remember they call it like holding time. And that's the other thing that's like mentors, great teachers, leaders, they help you avoid some of the pain that they went through it themselves. Right. So, and they give you feedback. But the other thing right like you can want an academy, you can look at Code Academy but who are you going to ask when you get that right. So, yes, my long-winded answer. Right.
Thomas Morrell No, no, I love it. That's great. And I think there is something new that you know, finding leaders as mentors or inspiration. And, I mean, definitely a question, I'll want to dive into open to have the more kind of like you know those senior leadership type people, and join this podcast and hopefully we'll get a, an answer somewhere, how to go about, you know, cultivating and building that skill.
Viet Hoang Yeah, yeah, absolutely, like, you know, the one thing I'll say is, no one wants that. So one thing I will say, I love taking the opportunity to ask these leaders like one thing we are members I'll ask questions the leaders, very hard, very hard questions that I was hoping that either they said hey listen, I'm so glad you asked this question I've been thinking about this day and night, or, I don't know.
Thomas Morrell Unfortunately, I usually get some. Anyway, some blank stares back at you know, we are almost at the time but I really appreciate you coming in and coming on the show and talking to me and we can't thank you enough. But where should people go to get in touch with you?
Viet Hoang Yeah, they can reach me. My Instagram is really stupid but when Instagram is @MyVitnessPal. My finish oh my goodness I didn't figure, and you can reach me on my email, unfortunately, V.Hoang @ gmail.com was taken by my email is v.hoang1983@gmail.com I have numbers, yes. But those are the primary, those are the primary places or even on Facebook even, I mean I still check it because my family that's what they post. And, and, yeah, that's, that's, and LinkedIn, obviously, LinkedIn as well.
Thomas Morrell Yeah, really appreciate it man and I'm really nice to catch up with you too. It's been too long, though.
Viet HoangYeah, yeah I mean hey listen, you know if the audience loves this podcast as much maybe we have a part two, you never know. I like it. I like it. Sounds good. But thank you, Tom, I appreciate you bring me out.
Thomas MorrellYeah, my pleasure. And that's the show everybody thank you so much for tuning in today. If you haven't already please subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. I will be releasing a show about every other week or so, if you'd like to be a friend to the show, leaving a review or a comment on Apple would be very much appreciated. Share links to the show with your friends, or anyone else you might know who is interested in UX design. Feel free to recommend topics you'd like to hear discussed and if you have any questions about design. Design careers or anything else for that matter, you can DM me on my Instagram at user flows. If you really like to help me out, you can visit, Thomas morrell.com slash survey to let me know what you'd like to learn on the show or here more or less. So, thank you I appreciate you listening, and let's go create something.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai