S1 E8: Like a Big Experiment (Grace / @graceleaf_)
Grace Ling joins the show to talk about her origin story, how she went from running and trying to biohack herself to run faster to working as a Product Designer at Electronic Arts, and everything in-between.
We discuss how to design your life for yourself, juggling all kinds of different hobbies and passions, and how her side project during school became a 40,000 member community called Design Buddies, not to mention their cute mascot.
Discussed Links
Transcript
Welcome to Episode 8 of the WebJoy podcast.
Eddie:I'm your host Eddie in this podcast, we interview guests about their origin
Eddie:story and what makes them excited and joyful to be part of the tech community.
Eddie:I hope you enjoy today's episode.
Eddie:"Like a Big Experiment" with Grace Ling.
Eddie:Hi Grace.
Eddie:Thanks for joining us.
Grace:Hi, Eddie.
Grace:Thanks so much for bringing me on I'm honored
Eddie:We're honored you decided to join us.
Eddie:If you don't mind, just give a brief introduction about yourself, to the
Eddie:community who you are, what you do, where you work, just some general details.
Grace:Yeah, for sure.
Grace:My name is Grace and full time, I'm a product designer at Electronic Arts and
Grace:for fun, I run an almost 40,000 member community called Design Buddies, which I
Grace:started during the pandemic as a student.
Grace:And I like to draw swim, run, hike, travel.
Grace:I do a lot of things for fun and experimenting with different things.
Eddie:Awesome.
Eddie:That sounds great.
Eddie:Sounds like you stay pretty busy.
Grace:Yeah.
Grace:I like doing a lot of random things all at the same time.
Grace:I think that's what personally I think makes it fun.
Grace:Oh, yeah.
Eddie:That's great.
Eddie:Yeah, it kind of gives you a fuller experience rather than just focusing in
Eddie:on one thing where you can get locked into
Grace:I tend to do all of it at the same time.
Grace:Cuz I tend to get bored if I focused on just one thing.
Eddie:I can definitely connect with that personally.
Eddie:I oftentimes try to pick up too many things at the same
Eddie:time which sometimes backfires
Grace:Oh, yeah, I can definitely relate as well.
Grace:It's all like designing and seeing what your threshold
Grace:is and iterating from there.
Eddie:Nice.
Eddie:I love that.
Eddie:So how did you get into tech what's the short version of your story?
Grace:I had a lot of career pivots.
Grace:It all started with just like me wanting to experiment with
Grace:a lot of the different things.
Grace:Growing up.
Grace:I was born and raised in Silicon valley, so all surrounded by tech,
Grace:and I didn't want to go into tech.
Grace:Actually.
Grace:I wanted to become an anime artist, and a professional runner.
Grace:I play a lot of games, and running were a huge part of my life.
Grace:I ran cross country and track very competitively throughout
Grace:high school and college.
Grace:Went to Nationals a couple of times, and that inspired me to study bioengineering
Grace:in college because I wanted to learn how to biohack myself to run faster.
Grace:And I thought bioengineering would help me unlock that knowledge.
Grace:so that's like literally my goal.
Grace:And I want to on the side become anime artist and continue, and
Grace:it's try to run professionally.
Grace:After a few internships in bioengineering.
Grace:My favorite part of that I worked with cell culture was taking photos of the
Grace:cells, or you might call them "Cellfies".
Grace:Cells.
Grace:Um, and I, I did enjoy me a lot work.
Grace:I just liked taking them "Cellfies".
Grace:Um, of my cells, and I felt like it wasn't the path I wanted to be,
Grace:cuz it wasn't giving me energy.
Grace:I've always loved video games, so I decided to pivot into Computer Science.
Grace:My college major was bioengineering and computer science and engineering.
Grace:And that's what inspired me to study because I just wanted to make games.
Grace:So I studied computer science, did a few internships in game dev.
Grace:And that's how I discovered level design.
Grace:Initially I wanted to become like a virtual reality level designer.
Grace:but I feel like that was such a specific job.
Grace:And I was graduating from undergrad, and couldn't find that many entry level jobs.
Grace:So I decided to look at different job titles, like top
Grace:tech companies are hiring for.
Grace:And I saw a lot of UX project designs.
Grace:I was like, oh, what's that?
Grace:And I did a bunch of Googling driven a bunch of communi.
Grace:And did a few projects, designing websites, apps.
Grace:I was like, oh, this is really fun.
Grace:And I feel like the skills I learned really translated across like level
Grace:design user experience and all of that.
Grace:And so that's actually how I got to UX product design.
Grace:So I graduated from undergrad in June of 2019, and then started a
Grace:Master's actually after, because I had no idea what I wanted do my life.
Grace:So I literally bought myself more time to figure it out through my Masters
Grace:in Computer Science Engineering.
Grace:I was like, I kinda wanna do everything.
Grace:So I'll just take it slowly.
Grace:And I wanted to have more time to build my portfolio.
Grace:And so around that time I was stuck between do I wanna do game dev
Grace:development or UX design or level design game design had no idea.
Grace:So I started learning more and more about product UX design.
Grace:I found it was pretty enjoyable.
Grace:I really love solving problems and learning about the business
Grace:side and the user side, and working with product, engineering,
Grace:research and all those nice people.
Grace:So I decided to pivot into that.
Grace:My transition to design was actually pretty rough because it was during
Grace:COVID and I was applying to a bunch of internships and a lot were closing
Grace:the internship programs and stuff.
Grace:So I started networking on LinkedIn and I reached out to my current director at EA
Grace:and that's how I got an internship and I got a full-time offer in December of 2020.
Grace:And it's been great while continuing my master's studies part-time and
Grace:graduating just last week and being promoted two weeks ago as well.
Grace:So it's been fun.
Grace:it's been a journey of try new things, seeing what gives me energy,
Grace:seeing what I'm good at and seeking the opportunities are available.
Eddie:So much at one time, getting promoted in your current position and
Eddie:graduating and all of that at one time.
Eddie:That's super exciting.
Grace:Thank you
Eddie:You were tossing around a couple things like game development, product
Eddie:design, what pulled you in the direction of design and has you the most excited and
Eddie:interested in product design right now?
Grace:Yeah.
Grace:I feel like it's like everything at once because I'm learning a lot about
Grace:the business side, the product side, the technical side, the user experience
Grace:side, what I wanna do in my life.
Grace:And thanks to EA.
Grace:I gotta work on a lot of really interesting marketing and
Grace:player experience products that impact millions of players.
Grace:So I thought it was really fun.
Grace:Seeing what product I could build and the day to day life of working with
Grace:so many different types of people and learning all these skills and
Grace:trying to build a product together.
Grace:I thought it's fun.
Grace:Just keep building on stuff and solving problems.
Eddie:That's really awesome.
Eddie:You mentioned all these different things that you do.
Eddie:And you know juggling them and figuring out how many things you can
Eddie:do without overwhelming yourself.
Eddie:That's what we wanted to talk about today and kind of the topic of joy is right.
Eddie:You mentioned, you wanted to talk about the topic of designing your life.
Eddie:Can you talk to me about what does that mean to you?
Eddie:What have you thought about as you've tried to design your
Eddie:life and fit things together?
Grace:Yeah, I think of designing my life as like a big experiment of
Grace:seeing what brings me joy and what I like to do and what I'm good at.
Grace:And just trying a lot of things out and being with testing stuff, because
Grace:as a designer, or as myself I used to feel like I need to be perfect.
Grace:I need to wait for the perfect time, to ask for permission, to make
Grace:sure everything's pixel perfect.
Grace:But then that really held me back from actually executing things.
Grace:And so I think of myself as having discovery and just testing things
Grace:out and seeing what I like the most and what I'm good at to see
Grace:what I can make the most impact.
Grace:And going from there and having no finish line.
Grace:So it's also having an infinite mindset of just trying things out
Grace:and seeing what works or what doesn't work, and iterating from there.
Grace:Keep improving instead of worrying about being perfect on the first try.
Grace:So I seeing designing my life as like building or like designing
Grace:a product and collecting data and using that to keep improving.
Eddie:Awesome.
Eddie:That sounds very exciting.
Eddie:You're passionate about so many different things, right?
Eddie:I mean, you were interested in biohacking, you've gotten into programming,
Eddie:design work, artwork and anime.
Eddie:I feel like a lot of these things.
Eddie:if someone kind of fits the mold of an artist, they may not think
Eddie:about going into programming, or if you're programming, you may
Eddie:not think about going into design.
Eddie:What was it that kind of helped you discover which things you were
Eddie:passionate about, even though they were so different than the other things that
Eddie:you were engaged in and interested in.
Grace:Yeah.
Grace:That's actually something that held me back for a while, because
Grace:I felt like I can only be one.
Grace:I can either be art or engineer.
Grace:I can't be both, but I feel like designing your life also comes
Grace:with discovering who you are.
Grace:And not molding yourself to other stereotypes you might see out there and
Grace:being not afraid to break stereotypes so you can pursue what gives you personally
Grace:the most joy without worrying about what other people think of you or how
Grace:other people might fit you into a box and just going from there and designing
Grace:your own journey without following any like stereotypical path or path that was
Grace:taught to you when you're really young.
Eddie:I think a lot of us, all of us really can easily feel like we need to
Eddie:fit into this box that people give us.
Eddie:I know I've struggled with that as I'm a developer, but I don't
Eddie:always fit the mold of developer.
Eddie:In many jobs I've ended up kind of being a bridge between design and development,
Eddie:because like, I can't really design from scratch, but I understand the
Eddie:thinking of a product designer, even though I'm a developer, which kind of
Eddie:puts me at odds with myself at time.
Eddie:And I'm sure you have struggled with that as well, being in product
Eddie:design and computer science.
Eddie:So it's interesting to struggle with that and figure out who we are, despite
Eddie:the boxes that people want to put us in.
Grace:Yeah, I agree.
Grace:I feel like that held me back for a long time from pursuing anything
Grace:creative, because I felt like I'm computer science student.
Grace:I should be technical.
Grace:I shouldn't be interested in these things, but at end of the day.
Grace:There's not really any instruction manual to life.
Grace:It's however you make it.
Eddie:When you start to get into something new . And you're breaking
Eddie:out of your box and saying, Hey, I'm interested in this thing over here.
Eddie:I'm gonna try that out.
Eddie:How do you get started?
Eddie:Because I know that can be intimidating to enter an area that you're not necessarily
Eddie:comfortable or have experience in.
Grace:Yeah, that's actually a really common struggle that I've dealt with
Grace:because I pivoted careers so many times.
Grace:So it's always a struggle, feeling like a beginner, but also knowing that you're in
Grace:this for the long run, like that feeling of being a beginner is only temporary.
Grace:You'll only have to experience it once.
Grace:And it's always fun to learn because I feel like when I'm learning,
Grace:I'm growing and I'm improving.
Grace:And so that feeling that excitement of learning new
Grace:things is what keeps me going.
Eddie:That's awesome.
Eddie:Rather than learning, being something that's intimidating and something that you
Eddie:have to do instead, that's the activity of fun that you can embrace and you can
Eddie:just enjoy that as an action in itself.
Grace:Yeah.
Grace:It's like an opportunity to improve yourself.
Grace:Cuz I also struggled a lot with imposter syndrome, especially growing up.
Grace:In high school, people would ask me like yo, what's your GPA
Grace:and what are your test scores?
Grace:So that was a kind of environment that I was most used to growing up.
Grace:And so it's always that comparing with others.
Grace:Especially as a runner, people compare you in your times with other people.
Grace:So that was always in my head, but letting go of comparing myself to
Grace:others, instead of seeing others as competition, I see them as inspiration
Grace:or how can we work together instead of trying to one up each other and stuff
Eddie:I love the idea of switching that Because imposter
Eddie:syndrome, it affects all of us.
Eddie:And it really does come down to the fact that if you're not looking at any
Eddie:other people, if you're not comparing yourselves against others, you'll
Eddie:never truly feel like an imposter.
Eddie:I love the other fact here you're talking about trying new things and
Eddie:learning and feeling imposter syndrome.
Eddie:And it's funny because for me, I feel like those two really overlap.
Eddie:Do you feel imposter syndrome more when you're in a new territory
Eddie:when you're exploring something new than when you're in something
Eddie:that you've been in for a while?
Grace:In the recent few months , I don't feel that much imposter
Grace:syndrome or I don't feel any and the reason is I just stopped caring
Grace:about things I can't control.
Grace:I used to care a lot about what other people thought of me.
Grace:But then I can't control it and it's not my life goal to please
Grace:everyone cuz that's impossible.
Grace:So I stopped chasing that.
Grace:And then I realized I can just not care about a lot of things
Grace:by simply changing my mindset.
Grace:It's not like I just woke up one day and decided, oh yeah, I don't care anymore.
Grace:But it's a process of unlearning.
Grace:It's like, whenever I feel like an imposter, I was like, wait, I don't
Grace:care about this because there's something I can do about this.
Grace:Might as well focus on what I can control.
Grace:So I guess that's how I overcame imposter syndrome, like my way, but I feel like
Grace:everyone has their own different ways.
Grace:But that's what worked for me
Eddie:That's really So as a community, we love to support each other.
Eddie:I'd love to hear if there's anything that the community can do to support you or
Eddie:anything that you're involved in that you'd like to share with the community.
Grace:Thank you.
Grace:Appreciate it.
Grace:Design Buddies is actually a community I founded on my design journey when
Grace:I was feeling lost in my career.
Grace:I created this random Discord server called Design Buddies.
Grace:When I was bored in class and two years later it's grown to almost
Grace:40,000 members and our goal is to help designers level up in their career.
Grace:And this means meeting other designers, connecting with people, finding job
Grace:opportunities, accessing resources, to help with leveling up in your career.
Grace:And so it's definitely 100% free.
Grace:And I do this just for fun and along with other friendly team members as well.
Grace:So yeah, y'all welcome to join us.
Eddie:First of all, wow, like mind blown.
Eddie:I have a hard time wrapping my mind around 40,000.
Eddie:Like when did you all start this?
Grace:April 10th, 2020 is our birthday.
Eddie:Wow.
Eddie:How did you all get that much attention and grow as a community so quickly
Eddie:in only a little bit over two years?
Grace:yeah, a big part of it is just us doing it just for fun.
Grace:And not really have any like end goal and also me just not being afraid to like
Grace:experiment with things and encouraging other people to experiment and just keep
Grace:launching and keep learning and keep iterating and not being able to fail.
Grace:So it's like how I designed my life is how I designed the Design Buddies
Grace:and then taking opportunities and evaluating them as they come and
Grace:seeing what works, what doesn't.
Grace:Before this, I had almost zero experience with community building
Grace:let alone like project management.
Grace:I was a student, I was like deep in class, so I had no experience in
Grace:business, any legal stuff, any management stuff, that's a big part of it as well.
Grace:So I didn't let that stop me from creating a community.
Grace:I just took that as an opportunity, like, oh I can learn.
Grace:Might as well, impact other people at the same time, like win, win for both of us.
Grace:So it's kind of My big playground, I guess, as a life experiment, but
Grace:also an opportunity for me to be able to impact thousands of people and
Grace:help them improve in their design skills and even land a lot of jobs.
Eddie:That is awesome.
Eddie:What do you all do as a community that helps people level up their career?
Eddie:Do you have certain kind of content available?
Eddie:Is it about people meeting together and being mentored or peer conversations?
Eddie:What do you all do?
Grace:All of that actually we host a lot of events, have resources, have content.
Grace:I've been getting into TikTok and stuff, and we also have a job board.
Grace:We have a network of hiring managers and companies looking to hire.
Grace:And we also have people conversing with each other, like peers
Grace:connecting with peers and also upcoming mentorship program.
Grace:We also partnered with a lot of design education programs that provide
Grace:scholarships that are free for the community, especially for Design Buddies.
Grace:So we're always experimenting with things.
Grace:So things might look different like a few months from now.
Grace:Whatever it takes to just be happy and make people have fun while
Grace:leveling up in their design careers.
Grace:Also we invest a lot of time in our branding.
Grace:And so we have a nice mascot called fluffle, which is kind of
Grace:like Clippy from Microsoft word.
Grace:But it's like your guide to design we just love personifying things and making
Grace:things fun and adding some spice to life.
Grace:A big part of me growing up was I was always really intimidated
Grace:about the workplace because I thought you had to be like super
Grace:professional wearing suits and stuff.
Grace:For me, I've always liked to be playful and just to chill.
Grace:So I wanna bring that energy to the design and tech community
Grace:as well with Design Buddies.
Grace:And that's like our long term, my long term vision with why I decided
Grace:to go with all these bright pastel colors and buddies and our friending
Eddie:That's awesome.
Eddie:I love that.
Eddie:I love when we can have things personified.
Eddie:I definitely have always liked MailChimp having the monkey and everything.
Eddie:I like when there is a personified mascot, that's friendly and engaging.
Eddie:And of course who doesn't love Clippy.
Grace:Yeah, like Wumpus from Discord.
Grace:It's like a mascot that represents them.
Grace:And Fluffle the definition English definition is like a group of bunnies.
Grace:So it represents like everyone, the group of Design Buddies were design
Grace:bunnies in fluffle . (laughing)
Eddie:That is so awesome.
Eddie:I love that.
Eddie:so if anyone is interested in checking out Design Buddies, we'll
Eddie:have the link in the show notes.
Eddie:So feel free to go over there and click on that at the very least to
Eddie:understand the exact scale of what Grace is talking about, because
Eddie:she makes it all sound so easy.
Eddie:I looked at all the photos of the people involved in actually making this
Eddie:thing happen and there's ton of people.
Eddie:So if nothing else go over and look at that page to understand exactly what
Eddie:all is happening, it's incredible.
Eddie:And then yeah, if it interests you, sign up and get involved.
Grace:Yeah, definitely.
Grace:And also thanks to all of our friendly team members for making all this possible.
Grace:Cuz definitely.
Grace:I like to also try to give leadership opportunities to other people as
Grace:well, so they can put on your resume.
Grace:I can write them a letter rec.
Grace:So it's been really fun being able to give leadership opportunities
Grace:to other people while growing Design Buddies and just helping
Grace:everyone have fun at the same time.
Grace:So definitely check out our page.
Grace:We have a lot of teams and a lot of friendly people who are also helping us.
Eddie:That's great.
Eddie:That's one thing that throughout all the episodes I've been noticing is
Eddie:there are a lot of really amazing communities, whether in the developer
Eddie:space, with FreeCodeCamp to in the design space with Design Buddies.
Eddie:So I love that this podcast is a platform where everyone can find out about all
Eddie:the really friendly, fun communities to be a part of because sometimes it's
Eddie:hard to find them, you know, a lot of communities can be toxic and so it's nice
Eddie:to find the good ones to be involved in.
Grace:Actually, one of big reasons why I started Design Buddies is
Grace:when I was starting in design.
Grace:I found a lot of design communities at that time that I was
Grace:particularly in not very friendly.
Grace:I felt like really intimidated and to me, they seemed a little bit elitist.
Grace:So I 'll just create my own community and just make some friends and be wholesome.
Grace:I feel like, there's people out there who don't like to be elitist.
Grace:And low and behold, it went viral.
Grace:So yeah.
Grace:So it's also like solving a problem.
Grace:It's a very like UX project for me.
Grace:(laughing).
Eddie:Yeah, for real cuz it's like, oh, surely someone else wants a community
Eddie:that isn't elitist and wants to have fun.
Eddie:And it turns out yeah, actually the majority of people want that.
Eddie:There's just a small minority that think in their head that they wanna be elitist
Eddie:and they get drawn to those communities.
Eddie:Thank you for joining us and chatting today.
Eddie:It's been really fun.
Eddie:Grace.
Grace:Yeah, Thanks for having me on this was fun.
Grace:I appreciate it.
Eddie:Thanks for joining us for Episode 8.
Eddie:"Like a Big Experiment" with Grace Ling.
Eddie:You can find out more about Grace on her website or on her Twitter @graceleaf_.
Eddie:You can find the links to everything we talked about in this episode, as well as
Eddie:a link to Grace's website and Twitter.
Eddie:In the shownotes.
Eddie:If you enjoyed this episode, help others discover as well by rating and reviewing
Eddie:it in your favorite podcast directory.
Eddie:And don't forget to follow us on Twitter @WebJoyFm.
Eddie:Thank you for listening and have a great day Next episode on WebJoy.
Nick:Front end is an example, like, pretty much our entire tool chain is all
Nick:open source, started off with stuff like Broswerfy BrowserSync then we have Webpack
Nick:and we've got stuff like Parcel, Babel, Rust is open source, all these things,
Nick:they're literally all open source, and you can see that it's actually pushed
Nick:forward, tool chains and development through all that collaboration, because
Nick:all of that code was put out there.
Nick:You know?
Nick:So I really like that about it, but another aspect which gets back to
Nick:people is I really like interacting with the developer community.
Nick:It's something I enjoy a lot.
Nick:You know, by having all that out there, it's a great way where people
Nick:can also learn, maybe they realize it, but they forget sometimes.
Nick:You literally have all this code out here.
Nick:You're trying to learn something, you know, you wanna figure out how something
Nick:bundles go look in a bundler project, the code is literally all there.
Nick:I think those are kind of the things that bring me joy, at
Nick:least right now in in my career.
" Eddie:We're like Detectives" with Nick Taylor.