Design mentorship at Agoda

Giving feedback itself is a gift and I think whoever was able to practice giving that is a you know that's your superpower as a designer. I think the relationship between the mentor and mentee is the most important things to me a good mentorship program should have a healthy relationship between the mentor and mentee we both are improving in the better way. Hello and welcome to the design explorers. A podcast by the Agoda Design Team. Agoda.com is a global digital travel platform where you can book hotels, vacation rentals, flights, and airport transfer. In this podcast we will be sharing the awesome work of our design team. Discuss interesting trends in relation to design and travel and talk about product design in general. My name is Nacho Miamin and I will be your host for the show. Getting good and inspiring guidance in the beginning of our career is crucial for our success to become great designers. That is where mentors play such an important part in our journey. Today we are joined by Rachel and Pang. A mentor and a mentee who are going to share with us their mutual mentorship experience here at Agoda. Before we begin we would like to apologize for the audio quality in this episode. Since we are working from home due to the current situation with the pandemic we didn't want this to stop us from continuing sharing our design team knowledge and so we have recorded this session remotely. We hope you can still enjoy your listening in the show despite that and appreciate your understanding. Let's start. Welcome to our fifth episode of the design explorers. Today we are talking about mentorship and I'm here with Rachel and Pang. Rachel and Pang, welcome to our show. Hi Nacho. Hi, I'm in the room. Exciting to be here. Let's give our listeners some background about who you are and how long have you been at Agoda? Yeah, I'm Pang, I'm a Bantitati Pong and associate UX designer at Agoda. So I joined Agoda last year so back to that time before I joined Agoda I participated in the PVC Agoda design challenge and I passed the challenge so I have shun to interview with Agoda and finally I got my job here. And right now I'm breaking on YCS, it's a supply product on Agoda. So if you have no idea what is the supply product is, I think our second episode of this design explorers also like a half-dest answer so you can listen to it. Yeah, and right now on this episode right we are talking about the mentorship program so I'm a mentee of that program. Yeah, so I'm Rachel. I am a senior product designer at Agoda. This is my fourth year in this company. I started working with Pang, starting this mentorship program because I was very passionate about like, you know, after after craftmanship, you know, sharpening skills and the design, I wanted to do something more. So I used to, I work on various projects such as like post-booking experience and consumer-facing products, all kinds of stuff. Like all kinds of projects, I kind of, that's a little bit here and there. And yeah, here today I'm really excited to be here. I'm has been assigned to as a mentor to to Pang and we've been working together for, yeah, for the past year. Awesome. So as we mentioned in the beginning, today we're talking about mentorship and specifically mentorship here at Agoda. Can you please give us some details about what this program actually is? Yeah, for me as a mentee, I think the mentorship program at Agoda is a program that will junior designer to improve their skills for both our soft and hard skills. So by joining this program, you will have a senior designer to give you a citation. I mean an entire of suggestions, for example, when I for joy, I have no idea how to collaborate with the author people who should I talk to. And as you know, Agoda is a big organization. We have so many people with many different roles here. So at that time, ratio timing on how to deal with that. So yeah, I think the mentorship program is the program that you know, you to get the guidance from the senior designer. So they will give you a dissertation. And when you start with something, they will spot your window and help you to improve and also help you to flow into a career path at Agoda as well. Yeah. And for me, like mentorship doesn't exist in Agoda in any form before this. This was a learning experience for us to see like how can we build better relationship between designers and how can this, you know, we don't know what this will be in the future. But yeah, this is a new program that we're trying out. Can you walk us through how does this program actually look like in your day to day job? Sure. Yeah. So how did it impact me day to day is that I was spent about three hours a week for my mentees. I'm mentoring two person, two designers at the moment that includes design critique or how to pitch ideas or push back to stakeholder based on their daily work. But for me, that's basically a dedicated moment hour, an hour to 30 to 45 minutes for them to come to me with their questions. So it's not strictly to only a weekly one of ones, but it's good to have like this fixed schedule for this sessions. And it's time for them to reach out as well. Now you mentioned that this program is relatively new here at the Gota. So maybe you can tell us how exactly it started. How long have you been doing this? It started because I was really passionate about like being able to transfer the knowledge to some other less experienced designers. Not just because it's such a big company, but I also see the gap of how when we unborn new designers, I started joined I joined at a Gota when we have only 20 designers and suddenly we have 50. And there's a lot I see a lot of struggle between like transferring projects and I was pretty like a passion about how can we be better and like be a role model to other to unborn to make it easier to make the process. And also as a senior product designer, I think after a while, you know, working on skill sets, I was looking for new challenges like coaching skills. This is what I never get a chance to do. So that's why you know it all started there. I talked to my managers and you know it was just a possibility. How can we start this and we cannot learn in doing as we go. And how and when this program started for you? So for me, right, I joined this program since I joined at I think it's around like 10 months ago. And at that time I heard from my manager that we have the mentorship program. So you can join and like we have some senior designer to guide you. So yeah, I think it's a good opportunity to me to join this program because purely I work like on their startup company. It's only me as a new app designer here and still not sure and have no idea how to collaborate with the another designers. Yeah, so I think that's a good chance to me to learn from the senior designer here. Yeah, that's why I joined this program. So we also have your design managers to go to how exactly we draw the line between the responsibility of a mentor compared to a design manager. And what is your area of responsibility basically Rachel? For me, it's really about understanding like my my value of what I can bring to the table and aligned I go with their direct reports. So as as pay mentioned, you know, we spot weakness, something rooms for improvement. We start from there and be very specific at the very beginning of the mentorship program on where we wanted to focus. I think that's the main difference between the right reports versus as a mentor is that for example, you will be only focusing on on one thing like craft or they wanted to be giving better presentations. They wanted to have better communication with their stakeholders. Those are the things that the right reports couldn't really foresee the entire process. all the time. But as another designer who also, you know, doing the design work, I'm more familiar with the actual process. And Peng, how is it from your perspective? Yeah, as Rachel mentioned, right, in my standpoint, the difference between the mentor and the manager is the manager. He will help me to set the goal, like help me to grow in the career path and see, like, a wish earlier that I can grow and how to risk that. But the thing is, he will not have a chance to look in the detail of the design in my, like, a day to day job. So mentors can, like, a spot that. So I have a chance to work together with Rachel's and have a chance to showcase my design. So she can spot some issue on day to day works and give me some desired feedback as well as the works posted this back at will. So I think that's the difference between the mentor and the manager. How do we measure this program and how do we know if it's successful or not? Yeah, that's a, that's a really good question. Because like, design improvement is a very tangible thing. One can be very clear is that actually seeing improvement in terms of design delivery. So the quality of the design is improved. That means the mentorship on craft is, is, you know, it's working. And also, like, how do we measure it is that we align goals, I guess, monthly or by monthly with the mentee and their direct reports just to make sure that the mentorship program is like not adding too much extra work. And it's still, that it's still relevant to their daily job. And but for me personally, like the success is just seeing my own impact on the others. That's like very, very, you know, it's hard to describe, but it's a joy. It's a very different kind of joy. And for you, Pang? Yeah, for me, right. The success is like a mentor can give me the first task feedback and I really improve based on that feedback. So I think that's, that is the success of like a joy in this program. Yeah. Did any of you had any mentorship experience before joining this program here at the Gota? Yeah, I have once before I joined Akoda as I mentioned, right? I participated in PDC at Akoda Design Challenge. So I also got feedback and suggestion from Jeremy and Sari. They are the senior designer at Akoda as well. So but at that time, it's only the short time PDS, it's only four weeks, I think. So most of the feedback that I got at that time is about the design. Right. Yeah. But on this current mentorship program at Akoda that I have Rachel as a mentor, we have more time on that. So we have Shantu work together. So not only the feedback that related to the design that I got from Rachel. So I also like a talent from her about the working process, how to break down the complexity and a fire way to solve the user problem, how to corroborate with the auto stakeholder. Yeah. So not only a hill to improve on the design side, but also hill to improve in terms of the working process as well. Yeah. And how about you Rachel, what was your mentorship experience before joining this program here at Akoda? For me, like I had a mentor when I was university, that's how my school operates, is that every after sophomore year you got to find, you got to pitch to your mentor so that they would take you as their mentee. And my school is kind of famous for like being really tough. But I was really benefit a lot, a lot, a lot from a mentorship two years with my mentor. I still stay friends with him. Like I still visit him every time when I go back to to Taiwan, whatever I had a chance to catch up with him. And so I know the feeling of successful, a water successful mentor should look like. Like I had a great experience. I had a great mentor before. When you started this program, what were your expectations in the beginning? Yeah. For me, right, at the beginning, when I first got my expectation, it's like I had to have someone to guide me, suggest me on how to deal with the issues. Yeah, I signed my contract before, because before that, I only went designer, so I have no idea how to work with like a lot of people here. So it's really helpful to have someone to guide me on this. And after that, I'm looking for someone who can spot my week's net and give me the suggestion on how to improve, yeah, and finally heal me to roles and become a good product designer. That's my expectation. I think my expectation was this was a very an act of passion. Like the expectation was that, okay, I wanted to be a mentor and transfer the knowledge. That was the initial expectations. Yeah, but the expectations kind of changes as we go, because you learn on the way that, oh, okay, you're not telling other people to do something. You are coaching them. You're guiding them with different frameworks. That's more important. So I think the expectations of mentorship program actually becomes clear and clear as we go. At the very very beginning, the first two months, I think that was a lot of just introducing to both of us to each other, knowing who you are, getting to know each other. The expectation was just that, oh, okay, we're going to try this out and have something outcome at the end of the year. That was the very beginning, but I think as, as Penn mentioned, as we go through the program, we start to have a clearer goal of the expectation, what do you want the outcome is? What sort of challenges were you facing in the beginning and how did you overcome those? The challenges is, yeah, there was a definitely building trust is one of the biggest challenges. I think as a mentor, it's about people. It's not about how you design this and that. For me, as well, it's also in post-terrism syndrome, who am I to coach the others or am I adding extra burden to the designers? I think those are the challenges that are very self-absorbing. It was a big step outside of comfort zone. There is a learning curve of, like I said, coaching versus telling them what to do. This job is to guide them to figure out by themselves. I think that is the, for me, that was a very challenging things to do. However, I did overcome this is by, again, understanding the value what I can bring to the table and then be as specific about the goal as you can be. With that, it kind of helps along to ease those challenges and to overcome them. How about you, Peng? Any challenges in the beginning? Yeah, for me, right. I think as this program is very like an early stage, we don't have the context panel of how Brogan gonna look and what the process or approach that the mentor will give me to do. At that time, we are facing some challenges that are very difficult to give me some side work. It's not related to what I'm breaking right now. At that time, I started with the workload. It's quite unlike from me. I talked to it for like 10 years. That was a very interesting time because as the beginning, we didn't know what to do. We try role play, like me, and PM, and she's a designer. We try like practicing communication with big projects. Those are failed attempts, but it was very important lessons. For the time being, we learn from what is work well or what is not work well, so we share with you. Right now, I think it's better than the early stage. Speaking about the learning, what are some of your main takeaways or lessons learned so far from this program? For me, as a mentee, I've got a lot of feedback. Many ways to improve men by drawing this program. If in doors, I got a good suggestion from mentors, but I will not get a benefit if I don't. like I improved myself. So I think the important thing is like you are willing to listen to the feedback and then take the advice and improve yourself like in all the times. So yeah, if you do that then definitely you will have a lot of benefit by drawing this program. Yeah, for me like I definitely encourage every designer that after some years of practice and design go explore outside of craft craftsmanship as individual contributor because it's a completely different kind of reward when you are able to grow someone else. The impact you see yourself on them is incredible. That's a that was very rewarding for me and that's why I've been doing that and still am very passionate about it compares to me like a year ago a year and a half ago. Do you feel this program and experience change you change you in some way and if so how? Definitely it's changed me a lot. I can give you some example. So I am an introvert person so it's really hard to me to like a prison in front of like many people or in the cloud. So at that time I really want to improve my communication and presentation still. So Rachel will tell me to improve that. She motivate me to like a prison my way in front of the whole designer. So yeah of course when I prison I feel so so nervous but after a presentation yeah I got like a good feedback from other designers. So yeah it's really meant to me so it's made me feel more confident and more comfortable to to do that. So yeah that's one example of her mentorship program like that sent me in the better way. I'm so happy to hear that thing. Yeah as a mentor like this entire experience has taught me more about empathy than any project that I've been I work with because it's all about people. You know you're sharing the spotlight you are practicing being being humbled and it makes me more mature and sensitive when I encounter like conflict with my stakeholders or when I do designs. I have completely new perspective of how you know how someone who who onboard with this project with thing and through this experience it definitely makes me more mature and more empathetic. Yeah. So we talked about the challenges and lesson learned but if you could go back in time and do something different about this program what would that be? So we honest I don't want like to go back in time and do something different for me I think it's already like a good for me. It was a perfect experience. Yeah, in the art of hand right maybe in the future if I can go in the future I also want to be a mentor so I think it's really like a really a big like a challenge to be a mentor so you will learn a lot of things yeah how to give their their constructive feedback and how to spot auto issues and how to guide them I think yeah it's really interesting. That's really cool so Rachel basically inspired you to be a mentor yourself. Yeah yeah nice. I'm going to cry. Yeah this whole deal like it's it's it's definitely a learning experience as we go but yeah same I wouldn't want to change anything either you know we try those those fails attempt and there was some issues communications and like self-doubt but those are the very essential part of for me it's an important lesson when I how to in terms of how to scale this program up because right now it's only one designer versus one two designers mentee mentor but if we wanted to you know taking this to a higher level in the organization level in the team level right how do you scale this up and what we've done with what we've been go through are all very important lessons to to understand and yeah I feel so happy to you know to have that feedback from paying as well like in inspire you to be wanted to be a mentor giving feedback a feedback itself is a gift and I think whoever was able to practice giving that is is a is a you know that's your superpower as a designer so based on your experience and a very good experience from what I hear in both of you had how would you define a good mentorship program for listeners that you know curious and would like to mentor others I think the trust would be the base of everything right like you have to be really care and emphasize with another person like what is their passion what is their pain what do they want to learn from you and the best outcome of a good mentorship program is that we both ended up growing to become better designers that's yeah that's from from me how I would define it yeah I definitely like are agree with ratios I think the relationship between the mentor and mentee is the most important things yeah to me a good mentorship program should have a healthy relationship between the mentor and mentee so we should like provide a feedback and not only mentor that can give the mentee feedback but the mentee also can give the feedback to the mentor as well so yeah make sure that we both are improving in the better way yeah and Rachel understand this program is open for people not only to go that actually we open this program for our listeners so if someone would like to join a go and join this mentorship maybe you can give us some details how they can do that yeah sure um so currently this mentorship program that me and paying is is a more of an internal project but if you want to have a a taste of it we are collaborating with TDC Thomas Out Design Center which is the program that paying joined in in Thailand it's a it's actually online courses so it's open for everyone it's in English speaking we provide slots for mentorship program with a go to designers with full scholarship so check them out if you you know really interested in in working with us it's a short period of time for a month but for the feedback the for the feedback that we gained so far from either the participants and also TDC themselves people are really enjoying these sessions awesome thank you so much for this inspiring talk today Rachel and Peng it was great to hear about your very good experience as a mentor and a mentee in this program and I think it can be very useful for our listeners to learn from your experience thank you so much now we're having a really enjoy thank you so much for listening if you enjoy this podcast please leave us a review on apple podcasts spotify or anywhere you are listening and share it with your friends and colleagues don't forget to subscribe to our show to get notified when we are releasing a new episode and if you want to learn more about the work of the design team at agora visit agoda.design thanks again for listening and hope to see you in our next episode