Insights on Product Design from Microsoft’s Alex Pereira

Alex Pereira emphasizes that a strong understanding of user needs is essential for effective product design.

### Insights into Product Design: A Journey with Alex Pereira
* 🎤 In this episode, **Alex Pereira**, a principal product designer at Microsoft, shares his journey into product design and the intricacies of his role.
* 💻 Alex works on Azure Communication Services, a developer platform that helps companies **integrate communication capabilities** into their solutions, highlighting the **collaborative nature** of his team.
* 🗓 His typical day involves tackling multiple product problems, from **identifying opportunities** to **prototyping designs using Figma** and **testing them with customers for feedback**.
* 📚 Product design focuses on creating **user-friendly interfaces** that facilitate users' goals, requiring a balance of **aesthetics and practicality** in software development.
* 🎓 Alex transitioned from a computer engineering background to product design, emphasizing that while a formal education can be beneficial, **real-world experience and curiosity are equally important**.
* 🔍 He advises aspiring designers to **engage in real projects**, pursue relevant courses, and develop a mindset of **curiosity towards everyday products** to hone their skills.
* 📖 A recommended resource is "The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman, which explores the **principles of good design and usability**.
* 📈 As product design continues to grow, Alex encourages those passionate about design to **actively seek opportunities and develop their portfolios** to stand out in a competitive field.

Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of this interview series. Today I'm joined by Alex Pereira, who is a principal product designer at Microsoft. In this interview, he'll be talking about how he got into product design. He'll be explaining what product design is and

how you can get into product design. So Alex, how's it going? It's all great. Thanks for having me. Yeah, well I guess we can, you can start off, you can tell the people what you do at Microsoft. Sure, yeah. So I'm a principal product designer

at Microsoft. Um, you and I both work on Azure Communication Services, which is a relatively new team and new business to Microsoft. So, um, for those who don't know, it's a, it's a developer platform, uh, intended to help companies and products basically build the communication

um, capabilities and experiences into their, uh, into their solutions. So, uh, so yeah, I'm a, I'm a designer working on that along with, you know, a few hundred other people. Yeah. So I guess walk us through your day. What's an average day like for you?

Yeah, for sure. So, uh, I think at any given time, I'm working on maybe about a half dozen kind of different product problems that I would say, um, so oftentimes some of those problems might be in the early stages where we're, we're trying to identify and really

understand the problem or the opportunity. Well, um, some of them might be a little bit more developed in, in that we're, we're thinking about potential solutions and we're ideating and trying to figure out what are the different options that are available to us.

um and then maybe further along in the process I might be doing taking maybe some of those leading ideas and actually producing design specs or prototypes um often in in Figma which is the the primary design software that I use um and then if if I'm not doing that then I

might be I might be testing uh some of these designs with customers um just to to help inform kind of what's what's going to perform well and what still needs refinement um so I would say like the bulk of my day is usually any one of those things and

it's usually kind of a balance of all those things okay so I guess so you're a principal product designer so walk us through product design like what exactly is this yeah so product design is basically the discipline of producing um and generating product ideas um uh at a high level at a software

company I think the discipline of product design more broadly outside of software has to do with just like the actual sort of form and function of any any product so it could be you know like your a remote control that you might use to use your TV but it also might just be

something a little bit more innocuous like you know how a handle is designed on a refrigerator um sort of as it relates to to software generally means kind of thinking through the interface between the human and the technology um so so often just trying to understand

and facilitate kind of what the user is trying to do in that moment usually in software the the person who's using um using the Opera service like they have some goal or intention in mind and good product design really um I think the goal of good product

Design is to really understand what that goal is and really facilitate it through software. So what's the journey like to product science if someone's interested in getting into this field? Yeah, the journey like to that, what was your journey? Yeah, so my journey was definitely, I would say,

not very typical. Um so for for me, I actually uh went to to University um in computer engineering, so like a traditional kind of software engineering education. Um through that process um I really enjoyed it, but I don't know that I was necessarily uh it wasn't

necessarily my passion. Um so as I was at as I was exiting my program and sort of looking at opportunities in the market um for for my skills, I came across the what they called program management role at Microsoft. They can now call it product management. So this is basically

the role of defining the product and the roadmap and facilitating kind of the product development process. So it definitely required a technical background which I had, but it didn't necessarily mean I was going to be coding every single day. Um so that seemed like a good and it was

very well aligned to some kind of roles that I found myself in in like group projects and stuff at school. So it seemed like something that I was it was well aligned to me. Um so I actually, I don't remember actually knowing much about design or

even the product design role or discipline as I was exiting school. Um I'm not sure why that is, but that's kind of I I remember that kind of being the case. Um but when I joined Microsoft, uh I happen to have joined a team I

think by chance that was very um sort of they're they're very focused on the user experience of the product specifically on Windows at the time so I found myself surrounded by a lot of people who some of whom were designers some of whom were program managers like

myself but all of whom were focused on the user experience and the design of the product and I found myself really enjoying that part of the job which I was lucky enough to be able to do um much more than the traditional kind of aspects and responsibilities of the

the product management role yeah so it was about three years into my career at Microsoft I was still a program manager I was doing great you know moving up the ladder within the company however there was a bit of a redefinition of the rules happening both on our team and just broadly at

Microsoft so this is when they're transitioning from the discipline of program manager to product manager and there are a lot of people like myself who were technically program managers but who are taking on the responsibility of design in some respects so those people um they were basically given the choice

to become product managers or become product designers so it was a very interesting and unique opportunity not one that probably happens all that often but it presented an opportunity for me to decide kind of the next step in my career whether I want to continue down their program management role which I

was doing you know I was doing well at um but I could tell wasn't necessarily my passion or pursue this new product design role which was frankly like really scary um it was a lot of unknown I was doing design in some ways but there was a lot

of sort of the basics of the discipline and a lot of the rigor and a lot of techniques and this technical capability in the design world that I hadn't quite learned yet so uh but I took that leap of faith and I I found myself in that role and I

thankfully had a manager at the time who was very supportive and very uh showed a lot of belief in me um and my peers who were making similar jumps so so yeah I was able to make that transition and I've been sort of progressing since then and constantly

looking looking to learn more skills and have new kind of experiences on different products and so I've been doing that for the last seven years or so as well as a practice honor yeah well I didn't know that so you transitioned from a computer engineering background

to design background yeah okay yeah so how do so people who want to get into this design industry who don't have a like a tech background like yourself and computer engineering or computer science but they're like they had a background in design and they want to get into the

design industry so how do they get themselves noticed like what do they do to set themselves apart specifically for product design yeah so I would say that's actually probably the more traditional route towards product and and user experience design which is I think more specific

so so there's I feel like there's a pretty decently carved path for those uh those types of people there's a lot of you know there's a lot of arts and design schools um you know there's a few here in Vancouver that offer

um that offer kind of the foundations of design but also a pathway into more technical roles specifically in digital product design or user experience design like what we do here at Microsoft um so I would say I mean generally I would look out for those programs um in terms of just like advice for

those specific people I think trying to work it's important to work on real projects um things that are actually like real things that you're either you're building or a broader team is building um it's really easy I see a lot of people online building kind of hypothetical products I

think that's a that's a cool exercise and definitely something that is is great to kind of uh demonstrate your skills and to kind of explore new avenues and new technologies that you might not have experience uh other you know experiencing otherwise however I think it's important to

balance that with building real products uh the reason being there's a lot of in building products there's a lot of difficult constraints that you're often met with and I think part of the challenge and also the opportunity in product design is to is to

sort of work around those constraints and and deeply understand them and um and and deliver something that's compelling to to your users yeah I've noticed that as well like just just researching online like say mock-ups on say like a restaurant website yeah a lot

of stuff that like I wouldn't find any restaurant implementing like a lot of a lot of fancy design going on yeah I'm not exactly practical I've noticed that as well exactly and you should ask yourself like why would nobody why is it looks cool but it looks great yeah it no

Doubt looks great, yeah. And I see a lot of people like high-fiving and like getting really excited about this type of like work. And I think it's great for, you know, setting whether it's like an aesthetic direction, um, or exploring, you know, very hyper-simplification of

certain experiences like, you know, really minimal UI. But I'm, maybe it's just me, I'm really interested in actually pragmatic and realistic solutions. Uh, it doesn't mean it can't be beautiful, it should be beautiful. Uh, doesn't mean it can't be

aesthetic, it, it should also be aesthetic. Yeah, but I think fundamental and the, the most, yeah, fun, more important than all those things is that it's, it's usable and that it solves the user's need, and it can do so in a way that the users are going to

understand. And I find a lot of these exercises, I look at them and I think, you know, and this is just a hypothesis where we have to actually test the experience, um, I, I think to my, I can't help but think to myself, it looks amazing, I don't

know if users would actually be successfully using this product. So, talking on this point, were there any like books, courses, or things that you did like to help you understand all these design principles like staying like minimal like, like designing like practical solutions like to get a sense of those principles were

there any resources that helped you? I would, I would say there's not one resource, there's a lot of things out there. I would say like how did you learn like how to create a usable product? Yeah, I would say honestly the, the thing that

has probably developed my my design thinking and design philosophy up until this point has been more so not necessarily a resource but more so a mindset and the mindset is of curiosity of all the products that I use and interface with on a daily basis so

there's actually maybe so I can probably trace it back to a book that I read um called the Design of Everyday Things I think it's Don Norman uh who is the author I might be incorrect yeah Design of Everyday Things and it's a it's a really easy read it

might be like 150 Pages or something and basically the premise of the book is it explains uh how to think about the design of all the products that you use on a daily basis um and all of the attributes that go into really good designed products

um and poorly designed ones and you actually by by in the book they lay out really good examples of even products that most people would consider very well designed uh but are actually terrible designs and maybe an example of that is similar to what we're just

discussing something that's that's very aesthetic very very minimal but not practical um and when the the practicality and when the usability um suffer as a result of the Aesthetics of a product um that can have like very real consequences

um in the world so like some examples of this I think a famous one he uses in the book and maybe one you can relate to are doors that have handles that are vertical and where you grab the handle like this but and so it sort of implies that you're you're meant to pull on the

door to open it but these are actually push doors so how many of those doors do you pull yeah um and it doesn't move and you have that moment of frustration thinking like why doesn't why do I feel like it should work this way that's a perfect example

of you know just a poorly designed product so well yeah so I guess on that note when you're talking about say like this book outlines design principles like being practical well compared to say software engineering so now with the internet a lot of people can just learn how to

code online like learn how to create software and they don't necessarily need a degree so that traditional pathway is now optional it's not mandatory now yeah with engineering roles now with design considering so my my thought is that it's harder it's more competitive in the

design field because you always have like more engineers and designers like for example in our team like we have you but then there's so many like three four teams that are talking to you yeah so considering like taking that into consideration as well do you think for

designers who want to get into like the high level industry level like product design area do they need the traditional like University get a diploma do this like training route or is that all accessible online do you think now like yeah a few things like without going to a university or like a formal

institute people would make good designers I I think and I think honestly this applies to most technical disciplines you don't necessarily need a University degree but it helps a lot so I think it's the same answer for engineers as it is for designers I don't know if you

feel that way for engineers um but there are certainly examples of people who you know either dropped out of school um or didn't do school at all who can be phenomenal engineers and similarly for design that being said uh for the average person it's going to be very

beneficial to go to school and it's for a lot of reasons outside of just learning design skills I I personally exited my degree learning next to no design skills but what I did learn is how to you know break down really complicated problems how to handle

situations when I had no idea what was going on and have confidence in my abilities to kind of like slowly figure things out bit by bit um understanding how to work in a large team where people are all moving in different directions and how to leave

the team all in a singular direction so all of those are they're not necessarily hard skills uh they're all most of them are you know soft skills but those those are skills that are difficult to replicate um outside of school it can be you know if you're dropping out of

school if you're not taking school because you're starting your own business or trying to build your own product then you're going to learn a lot of these things especially in the context of a team um but uh but for for most people I think uh it's a much safer approach just

to to get that foundation of of a you know some technical ability as well as just the soft skills that come with uh you know working on a team and in a school project or whatnot um and then going from there okay so it's almost the same you're saying I was

engineering, like I think so because I was curious about that because engineering now, I mean, the traditional route is still pretty valid, like going through an institute, yeah, but now we're seeing more and more examples of people who don't necessarily go through formal training; they can still break

into the industry. So I was curious about, like, design, about product design, if that's still the case or not, because I think, well, my theory so far is like getting into product design is way harder than getting into software engineering just because there's so less

opportunities. So yeah, so I was curious about that. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting that you say that. I don't know, I don't really have... It'd be interesting to look at kind of the, the metrics to, to validate that hypothesis, because I would

agree, there's definitely fewer job positions, but there also might be fewer, uh, the labor market might not be saturated in that role compared to engineers. You know, like, for the last five years, it's like everybody needs to learn to code, so yeah, okay, it's become

an engineer, so there's that element. Um, so yeah, there's, there's certainly not as many designers at Microsoft as there are engineers, but, um, but yeah, there also might be fewer people studying it, people are fewer people pursuing that career path. Okay, well, I guess we'll end off with this one.

So, people who want to become a product designer, yeah, they don't know where to get started, but they, they want to do this, like, they have a passion for designing stuff, like making designs, uh, user experiences. What do they do? How, what roadmap can they follow to get

in order to be qualified to be considered for like an industry level product design job yeah so I would say it kind of depends on where they are already in their in their kind of career say like um high school or college students they're not exactly sure what

they want to do in life like what career but they like they they have interest in design they have a passion for it so what about those people like what do you think like what's a road map for them like if you can like simply outline yeah

so if you're already in school maybe you're not you know in a computer program maybe like you took arts or business um I would say try to find opportunities where you can start to just put yourself in a position where you know you're going to start to develop these skills

and put your kind of your skills to the test so you know it might be um you know I remember at UBC there was a there was an entrepreneurship opportunity where they actually paired people with businesses who are in the business program with people

who were I think in the engineering program or CS program and they combine to like create businesses so I can imagine you know even if you're on the business program like you could do that sort of thing um and and be the the product designer um similarly like maybe you have

opportunity to take uh sort of product design classes yeah in your University if you have electives I know it's it's a bit ironic uh but when I was at UBC I think I was I had actually already gotten hired at Microsoft and I I think

I had one and a half a term left and it was a very light term um and I remember I didn't even officially take the class but I audited I think it was a some sort of design class um so I it's funny that I didn't

actually take that yeah um I think it was very they didn't call it product design I think it was called it like HCI a human computer interaction which is kind of an old school term but so yeah if there's opportunity for you to to take those classes uh then I'll

absolutely take those um in the absence of those I think I think there's a lot you can do just in terms of your personal projects like find uh when I was applying for Microsoft I think one of the the things that maybe stood out because I didn't

actually have a lot of work experience was I had some sort of uh personal projects that I was able to talk about uh they weren't design projects because I wasn't applying for a design role but in my case they were sort of coding projects and and sort of showed both my

technical ability but also my ability to like understand a problem and develop a solution so similarly in the design discipline I think um I think maybe you know seeing finding like a finding an app that you you don't like using because you think it's poorly designed

and like going through the exercise of like designing it better coming up with a process for how you might actually if you were the designer on this like how would you actually make it better um just to kind of to force you to go through the the steps of of you know

enumerating the problems, maybe validating some hypotheses that you have, and coming up with some solutions to make it better. Yeah, yeah, because I think that's definitely important because product design is an emerging market now. It's only growth because like you look at all the apps that are available, for example like

say TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, yeah, YouTube Shorts, yeah, all three like have the same level of functionality, but what makes them different is the experience, user experience that provides. Yeah, so this is an emerging market and well, thanks so much for joining me. Thank you for explaining what product design is,

going through your journey. Absolutely, yeah, and I hope you guys have enjoyed our conversation as well. Let me know in the comments below what you thought of this and I'll see you in the next video. Foreign [Music]

How to get UI/UX Design jobs at FAANG, what product design is, and more | Microsoft Product Designer

Rayyan Siddiqui

Introduction and Alex Pereira's Role at Microsoft

Introduction of Alex Pereira, principal product designer at Microsoft, and the interview topic.

Alex's role involves working on Azure Communication Services, a developer platform for building communication capabilities.

Description of a typical workday, involving various stages of product problem-solving.

Explanation of product design as a discipline, encompassing both software and physical products.

Alex's unconventional path from computer engineering to product design.

Initial role as a program manager at Microsoft, transitioning to product design after discovering a passion for user experience.

Transition from program manager to product designer due to a redefinition of roles within Microsoft.

Discussion on the path for individuals with design backgrounds entering the product design field.

Importance of working on real projects to gain experience and understand constraints.

Discussion on resources for learning design principles, emphasizing the importance of a curious mindset.

Recommendation of the book "The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman.

Comparison of the traditional educational path for design versus software engineering, highlighting the increasing accessibility of online resources.

Education and Career Path in Product Design

Discussion on whether formal education is necessary for a career in product design.

While a university degree is beneficial, it's not mandatory; soft skills and problem-solving abilities are also crucial.

Comparison of the job market for product designers versus software engineers.

Advice for individuals passionate about design who want to pursue a career in product design.

Suggestions for students to gain experience through projects, classes, or personal initiatives.

Importance of personal projects in demonstrating skills and understanding of the design process.