Women in Design: Ethelia Lung

Despite women making up nearly half of the design industry, few hold leadership positions and many still need help to be equally compensated and recognized for their work. Design is one of the few industries that offers multiple paths for entry, from earning a standard degree to being self-taught. The Women in Design series aims to highlight the unique stories and lessons of women in the design industry, across different experiences and expertise, at every stage and niche.

This week, we had the chance to interview Ethelia Lung, a Senior Interaction Designer at YouTube. With over 5 years of experience in user experience design, Ethelia has designed for a wide range of users and clients, including mobile content creators, video enthusiasts, wine distributors, and university departments.

I wish I knew how to protect my time, how to be okay with saying no (with good reason), and how to aggressively prioritize tasks.

Can you share a bit about your journey into the design field?

I initially stumbled into design young–I may be dating myself here, but it was the era of custom blinkies and dolls, affiliates and pixel art quilts, guestbooks, and forums–and just loved this global community of people sharing their artwork and writing online. I taught myself how to make various kinds of graphic arts, and code and host my website, and that had initially inspired me to go into computer science. After taking it in secondary school, I realized that CS wasn't for me, and I didn't know about software engineering or any front-end facing degrees, so I opted to instead risk turning my hobby into my career.

I didn't know about interfaces or user experience design until college. I went to school for New Media Design, a degree that built up a super useful toolbox of skills such as 2D, 3D, motion design, and interface design. It was there that I found internships in User Experience: being able to work with clients and/or users to understand and creatively solve problems through interfaces (be they mobile, web, or others). As they say, the rest is history!

What inspired you to pursue a career in design?

Early on it was Lissa Explains, where I learned that I could build websites and use them as a form of creative expression. Then it was Georgie from Hey Georgie who sparked my interest in building a creative outlet for myself in a little corner of the web, alongside countless other designers and devs of the time.

I built my art portfolio for college applications courtesy of Karen Kavett and then met some incredible professors in college including Miguel, Adam, and Hye-Jin, who helped me set robust foundations and inspired me to always seek to create better things.

I've also been so lucky to have had influential mentors in design managers every step of my career. From David who took a chance on me in allowing a young fledgling designer to work in UX, to Christopher who helped me hone my visual and product thinking skills, to Judy and Cielo who supported and taught me to think about my personal and career growth, to Nick who inspired me to always be curious about where creative tech is going.

And of course, there's such a massive community of designers from industrial to fashion to digital products, and it's so energizing to see people constantly push the boundaries of their fields.

What does a typical day look like for you in your current designer role?

I'm in a unique position where my team works like a small start-up within a big, established company, so my days consist of heads-down work time (by myself or jamming with other designers on my team), a couple of meetings with my product manager and/or engineering stakeholders to share work and iron out any feasibility issues or bugs, and meetings like critiques or design reviews where I can either get feedback from or give feedback to designers on partnering teams.

When it comes to actual design work, based on the project it completely varies from early-stage concepting and compiling insights from my researchers, to diving super deep into all permutations of potential solutions for the problem space, to highly tactical specification and iteration with my research and engineering partners.

Can you describe one of your favorite projects that you've worked on? What made it memorable?

My favourite project is by far the current team I'm working on - we had the opportunity to build this app from 0 to 1, so I got to touch the earlier product planning and strategy stages all the way through go-to-market positioning. I had a significant amount of ownership over the features, design system, and product strategy, which was greatly illuminating to me.

Our team is so capable, and we moved so quickly to get our product to where it is today, and we continue to highly value user research (at its most frequent, we had weekly research studies to challenge our assumptions and validate new design iterations).

How do you cultivate creativity in your work? Are there any particular sources of inspiration you turn to regularly?

I try not to overwhelm myself with design resources, but try to make sure to have some connection points to the latest in the community through things like

1. The Maxi Best-Of new Chrome tab plugin
2. Following along channels at work where designers from all over the company share great examples of design across industries
3. Following smaller creators in the space like @designteamofone because they tend to be the first ones trying out the newest UX tools (Google is a walled garden when it comes to workflow tools because we use in-house tooling for almost all of our processes)

What is a current design trend that you're most excited about?

I'm a huge fan of all the typographic play I see on websites nowadays! Playing with weights and variable fonts, with styling and pairing... funky fonts mixed with grotesks (my fave).

I also love small delightful interactions on websites. The key is to be tasteful and not overdo it. And sites that do little throwbacks to my earlier days on the internet (such as colorful scrollbars and cursor trails) really tickle my fancy.

Looking back, what is one thing you wish you had known when you started your career in design?

This isn't so much about design as it is about working: I wish I knew how to protect my time, how to be okay with saying no (with good reason), and how to aggressively prioritise tasks. A lot of this had to be learned on the job, but I was constantly so stressed because I treated every task as urgent, and had the tendency to take on more work than I was prepared to do.

The most rewarding and most challenging part of being a woman in design.

I'm grateful that I haven't experienced any discrimination about my being a woman or Asian in design, and I've always felt that my voice has been heard (massive props to my managers and all the teams I've been on). That being said, I've heard stories from friends that speak to the contrary, which is disappointing and sometimes infuriating. I appreciate how many communities and avenues exist to support women who have found themselves in sexist or degrading situations (whether it's through work channels or external to work). Knowing that you're not alone is empowering in itself.

What's your (recent) favorite design tool?

Figma - such a basic answer, but they do such a great job with responding to the community and incorporating the community in their work (whether it be through talks, workshops, or plugins...)

Stay in Touch with Ethelia

Follow Ethelia on LinkedIn

Visit her portfolio

Discover more in Women in Design, our interview series where talented designers share their creative journeys and personal thoughts.