Our Lead(H)er series features impressive women leaders in the tech industry. In this Q&A, we are featuring Carolyn Pampino, Vice President User Experience at SmartBear.
Where did you grow up and how would you describe yourself as a child?
I grew up in a suburban community just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I am the youngest of six kids, and yes, I still make the face I’m making in the picture, especially when I’m making an important decision. <wink>
Early on, I was shy and perfectly content with creative projects or reading – until a YMCA opened a swimming pool. My parents were enthusiastic supporters. So much so, that when the YMCA ran out of money and could not finish painting the pool, my father collected exterior paint, rollers, and a crew of volunteers from the neighborhood. I have a vivid memory of standing in the corner with a paint brush while the volunteers bustled about with paint rollers determined to open the pool on time! The white was a funky beige, and the “black lines” were an eery blue, but the pool was painted! And it opened as planned!
Holiday Hills YMCA. Circa ...too long ago to admit, but check out those bathing suits!
That surge to meet deadlines has served me well throughout my career in tech! More importantly, the community felt like we owned that pool. After all, we made it happen! That spirit of coming together and allowing everyone to have a part in making something great happen has formed the basis of how I approach my job.
What did you study in college and what was your first job out of school?
I am the first in my family to graduate from college and work in tech. When I announced I wanted to study sculpture at Carnegie-Mellon, my parents didn’t know how to react. We were a blue-collar family, and Carnegie-Mellon is just as prestigious as an ivy league school. It would be great if I wanted to study something they considered practical, but art? Somehow, they managed to accept my ambition and support me. Then, I saw my first Pixar movie – Luxo Jr. At that time 3D animation was new, and I found myself spending time in the computer lab enamored by the idea. The processors were horribly slow, and there were very few classes, let alone a chance to major in computer animation. In my senior year, I went to a career fair and was recruited by an alumnus to join his software company in Boston. They developed high-end graphic design software primarily used for product packaging and high-end printing. They also rendered the design in 3D so manufacturers could test packaging ideas. Allured, I accepted the job and learned how to provide customer support to graphic designers. Hearing the customer confusion using our product helped me to develop empathy for their experience.
My favorite getaway with friends at Carnegie-Mellon dreaming of our future.
Can you share the details on your career path and what were the critical moments that got you to where you are today?
My path wandered a bit as I explored different opportunities. It wasn’t long before I was recruited to quality assurance as a tester. Then a rare opportunity opened to sculpt for the New England Aquarium, and I leapt at the opportunity. We created a groundbreaking work. Instead of putting sculpted pieces into the aquarium, we built great structures to hold the aquariums. The effect was like walking through the Amazon Rain Forest. We obsessed about the visitor experience as they moved through the aquarium from one exhibit to next – visitors entered into the Rainforest canopy seeing the birds flying among the leaves, next they were beside a rushing stream with three giant tanks of fish, turn right and come face-to-face with a poison dart frog at eye level in a tree! Looking back, this was my first lesson in experience design.
It was a temporary job, and afterwards, I reentered the software industry testing fonts, then to complex document publishing software at Interleaf. It was here that I discovered user experience design, and then progressed through a variety of roles such as project management, product management, and engineering manager. I was a product director when Interleaf was acquired by BroadVision in 1999. I will never forget snowshoeing in Vermont and receiving a phone call to come back to Boston. We drove late at night through a wicked snowstorm. The next day, I was participating in the due diligence meetings with the executives. BroadVision was a Silicon Valley success story, and we were thrilled to be acquired by them. Our stock options took off, and I was a millionaire – on paper, as most of it wasn’t vested. I sold some, and I will always remember driving down US 101 in Silicon Valley, telling my stockbroker Vinny to “Sell, Vinny! Sell!” It sounds like a Danny DeVito movie, doesn’t it?
After BroadVision, I joined Rational Software and soon after IBM acquired us. Rational was known for software development tools and its unified development process. A defining moment at Rational came when I was asked to do a “red thread.” The product managers were hearing our customers wanted integrated products. The “red thread” was intended to show how hard it was to accomplish a goal using more than one product. We changed the name to “green thread” to focus on the positive, or “to be.” If you have heard of the term “user journey,” this was an early form. In our case, we tracked the journey of a team of people working together to deliver software and identified the tools they needed to do their jobs. The shockers always came from counting the number of tools our organization was asking them to use, along with the gaps that prevented a team from using them efficiently. From then on, I was enamored by the storytelling that came with a user journey and the designing for an experience. I became a design manager, and then a director.
Now my focus is creating environments where designers can thrive. I’m attracted to roles where I can transform a team and create a culture of collaboration with the peer disciplines. Afterall, it takes a team working together on journey to deliver great software, similar to how it took an entire neighborhood of volunteers to paint the bottom of that new swimming pool!
What is your current role and responsibilities?
I am the VP of User Experience Design at SmartBear. SmartBear creates products to help development teams deliver quality software. I view my responsibility as creating an environment where innovation can thrive. Our customers deserve to experience one SmartBear. This means our products must be easy to discover, try, buy, use, and support. It is my responsibility to make it easier for our product teams to work across boundaries, to think differently about the problem to solve, and to enable them to do their best work. This means we collaborate with our product peers and also our web, branding, sales, and support teams. In terms of the UX design team, I am hiring designers and writers to create a team and a design practice. All design practices come into play, such as visual design, interface and interaction design, user research, user experience design, UX Writing, and Technical Writing, along with the lesser-known practices of information architecture, content strategy, service design, design thinking, and design system design.
Looking back, is this where you thought you’d be professionally? Was it always your goal to be in this position?
Definitely not when I first started. Initially, tech was my back up plan to fund my desire to sculpt! Eventually though, I was lured into the excitement of creating software solutions to improve people's work lives. Then it became a mission finding ways to work with my peers to empower teams and deliver better software. As important as this all was, the pride in my dad’s eyes as I advanced propelled me the furthest.
For people who are looking to be in a similar position, what advice would you give to others in terms of helping them achieve their career goals?
I heard an expression used by TV writers: “Be good on the page, be good in the room, and be good to work with.” This translates perfectly to designers, and any discipline in my book.
Designers today are more likely to be learning and growing in organizations that are supportive of their work. Designers and engineers are graduating with the training to collaborate as a multi-disciplinary team. However, not all organizations have this culture. This was the case for me. So, the first piece of advice is to ask questions about the culture before you join. Some companies are product-led with a strong emphasis on design, others want designers but don’t incorporate them into the culture in a healthy and meaningful way, still others diminish the role all together. A good designer knows how to ask open-ended questions and listen to the themes. Do that with your interview!
Once in, be good on the page. Learn your products, your domain, and your design system if you have one. Most importantly, get to know your users! Make sure your designs meet the needs of your users while fitting with your brand and design system. Design and usability test with the people who will use your product when it’s released. Bring the best from the outside into your practice and hone your craft.
Be good to work with. Get to know your peers on a personal level. Also involve them in your design decisions. Be prepared and ask meaningful questions. Collaborating to co-solve problems will improve your reputation as someone others want to work with. As a trained designer you have a unique advantage. You can use your powers of empathy to understand the pressures your peers face, and then use your creativity to solve their pain points with a design method. By this, I mean there are many situations where the team you are working on is struggling. In that moment, do you know a design method that can help them solve the problem? Try to convince them to do it together, or just do it yourself and present it back to them. Sometimes it works on the first try, sometimes it doesn’t. But try – with moderation. Go too far and you are no longer good to work with! So, try to balance it by reading the response. Are they open to your suggestions because you are winning them over or are they turning away? Through it all, you are gaining skills in problem solving, collaborating, influencing. When it works, it not only wins trust, but it also shows leadership. You willingly leaned in, made a recommendation, and helped advance the team’s mission!
Be good in the room. Throwing your peers under the bus in meetings is a bad way to advance your career. A friend once taught me the expression of being “dead right.” It means you are right and you’ve angered everyone around you to the point that they no longer listen to you. Don’t do that. 😉 If you are good on the page and are appropriately involving your peers as you evolve your designs, team meetings and reviews will go much smoother. Learn how to present your work and to listen to feedback. This may be one of the most important skills you can hone – how to present a design and direct your audience’s attention to where you need their feedback. David Royer and Suelyn Yu offer good advice for presenting a design in this blog.
Read obsessively. Not just design blogs & books, but business blogs and books, too. It’s important to learn the language of the business to align your work with business outcomes. Learn about leading change, about influencing without authority, and apply one lesson at a time. Then, when someone opens a door of opportunity, run through it with all your glorious superpowers!
What are the most important skills that you need to do your job well?
See the previous answer. 😊 Design can be a misunderstood discipline. Many people assume that designers make something look good, when in fact, good design defines how a product works and the impression it creates in the mind of the user. This involves uncovering what people need, help defining the problem to solve, then solving it by working through a strategy, creating, and testing prototypes, and eventually nailing the screen layout and visual impact. Educating our peers, winning trust, speaking the language of business, and gaining trust are fundamental to your success.
What do you find most interesting/rewarding about your work? What’s the most challenging?
A designer's job is to create solutions that make people's lives better. Studying people is fascinating. Ideating with a group of people to solve human problems is energizing. Making that solution easy to use and aesthetically beautiful is both frustrating and rewarding. It is incredibly difficult to make hard tasks easy. It is equally challenging to scrap a design and start over. But when you observe those people take delight in using your solution, it is worth it!
There are many situations where the different disciplines on a team haven’t figured out how to work together. Often, design skills are misunderstood, and designers are brought in too late. This creates frustration for the designer and places an unfair burden on the product managers and developers to do the work a designer could have done. When you get the mix right, the designer thrives, and the product manager and developer jobs get easier. You can feel and see the stress levels go down. Together, they build momentum and the solutions they deliver to their customers are better as a result. I find this incredibly rewarding. It’s human nature to rely on what you know when you are under pressure. Introducing change and convincing teams to try working differently can be challenging. So, I look for opportunities and coach my designers to look for opportunities to lead. There is always a moment where the designer can lean in with a proposal to solve a problem. Once they do, trust builds, and eventually the designer can find themselves exactly where they belong – as a trusted leader on the team.
What is your proudest professional accomplishment?
I have a couple. Interleaf, 1999. Uniting as a team to have Interleaf acquired for $851 million was an amazing experience. We were a small but united team that managed to get noticed by one of the early high-flying internet companies, BroadVision. It was thrilling, and that’s what created the “Sell Vinny sell” moment on US 101. Then about a decade later, the scenario work at IBM Rational became the underlying thread that drove a line of products. By driving integrations across three products, we managed to triple their revenue. The value proposition is what was implemented, tested, marketed, and sold. Again, a team of people came together and united around a mission. Moments like these give me goose bumps. My last one was at my prior company. We had groups of designers who were brought in by acquisition, who hadn’t been treated appropriately for their skills. The same could be said for the technical writers. By the time I left we were a united team, and the individuals were thriving and growing. I know I left them in a better place than where they were when I met them. It’s now my newest mantra: If I were to leave today, are they better off than how I found them? This drives me each day. It’s less about perfection, and all about incremental improvement each day to enable designers to do their best work.
Are you involved with any professional organizations outside of the company? Volunteer work?
I try, but honestly, I leave it all on the “working field.” I do donate food to a local food pantry and the Newton Freedge. The Freedge is a 24/7 pantry that anyone can donate or take food from. Food security is something that is personally important to me. It feels good to stock the shelves and the fridge with food people need.
Q&A
What do you enjoy doing in your free time?
My Cardigan Corgi’s hypnotize me into giving them most of my free time. They make me smile, play, and take long walks. I’ve had other dogs, but the Cardigan Corgi is different. It is as if they have hypnotizing powers, and before I know it, I am doing exactly what they want me to do. Their full names are Shapeshifter Sam, and Sookie TruBlu, but they answer to Sam, Sookie, and ‘treato!’ I could fill this entire article with their stories.
I’m currently tending to a small vegetable garden – I have seven varieties of potatoes in grow bags. I can spin quite a tale about the virtues of growing your own potatoes. Really, home grown potatoes are better, just like home grown tomatoes are better. Seriously. I haven’t bought a potato in three years. And the varieties you can grow are so much better than the store offers. All it takes is a growbag.
I still pick up a hammer and chisels to sculpt alabaster when I can. Right now, I’m creating two clay sculptures for a friend from college. I gave him a sculpture when he graduated, and recently a new cat knocked it off the shelf. He contacted me asking if I could recreate it! The first led to a request for a second, new piece that includes his children. Here’s a photo of the original, and the recreated version still in “draft” form.
How do you manage stress?
See my free time. 😊 I have many approaches to suit my mood and energy levels. The fun I have in my free time is my best stress reliever. When that isn’t enough, I practice yoga, cycle using the app called Zwift, or solve puzzles.
How many cups of coffee do you have in a day?
One
Any book or podcast recommendations?
Professional: The Outward Mindset: Seeing Beyond Ourselves. The Arbinger Institute. This was introduced to me by a peer, and it’s a fantastic example of how approaching situations with empathy can lead to extraordinary outcomes. The book is filled with stories which makes it an easier read and inherently creates an outward mindset in the reader. For example, one story involves a police team raiding a home. Amidst the chaos one officer notices a screaming baby in his mother’s arms and warms a bottle of formula to comfort the child and the mother. They were a group that took a very different approach to their role in their neighborhood. We could use a lot more of that now.
What advice do you have for recent college graduates?
For design graduates, I have two requests.
First, apply to the appropriate position for your level. I don’t know how many new graduates I see applying for senior and even director positions! The second I see that, you’re out.
Second, your resume and portfolio are your key to the interview. Apply your design process to creating these two important representations of your talent. The care and attention you give to these two artifacts speaks volumes about you as a designer. Start with empathy for the hiring manager. Hiring managers have open positions – this means they are understaffed, which means they're incredibly busy! They receive upwards of hundreds of applicants. How are you going to catch and hold their attention? What do you want them to think, feel, say, do when they look at your resume? Now design it for the right outcome... which is to open your portfolio.
Now that they see your portfolio what do you want them to see and do? Take everything you know about design into account. What is the ‘gestalt’ impression. How about the visual hierarchy? What story are you telling us? When you only provide images of your work how likely will they understand what it is, what your contribution was, and whether it solved an important problem or not? The details matter! Please take the time to explain your process, the key decisions you made and why you made them, whether the design succeeded at the intended goals, along with the key learnings. Consider choosing one case study and explain the full process. This is more valuable than a bunch of images with no words. The designer who can tie their solution back to the user problem and back to the business goal is that one that impresses the most. And don’t password protect it! I pass over applicants simply because they added a password to a portfolio. I’ve adopted this because of the number of passwords that didn’t work! Interviewing is labor intensive. Adding any friction to that process, such as a password on your portfolio, could lose the chance of an interview. So, apply the design process and win yourself that job!
