{"id":4399,"date":"2022-04-04T14:09:14","date_gmt":"2022-04-04T21:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interactiondesignhistory.com\/2022\/?p=4399"},"modified":"2022-04-04T14:09:45","modified_gmt":"2022-04-04T21:09:45","slug":"anisha-jain-vp-of-design-at-cruise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.interactiondesignhistory.com\/2022\/anisha-jain-vp-of-design-at-cruise","title":{"rendered":"Anisha Jain: VP of Design at Cruise"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I was a bit hesitant, at first, to choose Anisha Jain for my second biography. After all, virtually nothing is known about her \u201cearly life\u201d (i.e., anything pre-college). I can\u2019t provide any details on where she was born, for instance, or where she grew up \u2013 not even the dreams she held close during her childhood. Even so, the more I read about Jain, the more invested I became in not only her point of view but also her origin story. How did she go from teaching science at an Oakland high school to becoming a VP of Design? What skills did she acquire across careers at Facebook, Dropbox, and Cruise? What can we, as designers, learn from her accomplishments?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The earliest known fact about Jain\u2019s life is that she spent her undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Majoring in mechanical engineering, Jain\u2019s path into UX \u2013 like that of many others in this field \u2013 was not exactly a straight-shot. She interned twice as an engineering (or technical) hire, even staying three years at one company, Sandia National Laboratories. Also during this time, Jain taught 7th grade science at Teach for America in Oakland. Looking back on this experience, she likens the role of a product design manager to that of a teacher: \u201cAs a teacher, you are constantly thinking about the environment you are trying to create for your kids and how you want them to grow and change over the course of the year. Software design is similar \u2014 you imagine what behaviors you want to support and drive, and then execute to reach your goals\u201d (Justinmind). Jain\u2019s true break into design came with her 2010 product design internship at IDEO. Given the multifaceted nature of the design agency, Jain ended up with projects steeped in experience design<\/em>, allowing her to learn the ropes of a more holistic design process. For example, Jain designed for JetBlue\u2019s physical, digital, and service-oriented pain points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jain also attended graduate school at Stanford University, studying product design and strategy. She\u2019d always wanted to work within \u201ca digital space\u201d (Medium) but hadn\u2019t yet had the opportunity. In 2013, she made what she calls her first \u201cintentional career decision,\u201d joining Hot Studio (a design agency). Part of Hot Studio\u2019s appeal was its abundance of female leaders; Jain wanted to experience their direction and work within their practices. Her phrase \u201cintentional career decision,\u201d I think, is a big takeaway because of its implications of intention. <\/em>As designers, we must always have intentions, designing for <\/em>not just to<\/em>, and from this moment onward, Jain held this point of view close to her design practices and processes. Of course, intention isn\u2019t the only force of nature out there; there\u2019s also just plain luck. A mere four months after joining Hot Studio, the design agency was acquired by none other than Facebook. The change was so sudden, Jain calls it an \u201cabduction\u201d rather than an \u201cacquisition\u201d (Medium).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite this, Jain flourished at Facebook, climbing the ladder to become a Manager of Product Design within a year. The move into tech gave Jain the digital experience she\u2019d been looking for, as well as the connections that would take her to greater heights. She recalls attending an event hosted by Dropbox in South by Southwest and being introduced to Dropbox\u2019s Head of Design, Alex Castellarnau. He asked her what she thought about Dropbox\u2019s design, and she responded honestly: that it felt \u201cbro-y.\u201d This type of honesty is something we students tend to fear (as we\u2019ve been more or less trained to accept the realities presented to us by those \u201chigher up\u201d in the industry) and yet it\u2019s the foundation of design \u2013 specifically with the discovery of problem spaces. Thankfully, Castellarnau seemed well aware of this. As Jain says in an interview with Hiring Guild, \u201cHe could have left the conversation at that and sort of let me go. Instead, he chose to use that moment as an opportunity to acknowledge something that had been a challenge at Dropbox\u2026that was such a powerful moment from the recruiting perspective because it showed me that A) he was willing to admit some of the weaknesses that existed and it also meant B) we could have a conversation about what having a more balanced design team would mean.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jain became a Product Design Manager at Dropbox in 2015, then the Director of Product Design two years later. Her main area of focus while at the company was collaboration, working on tools like Dropbox Paper. Given how many perspectives there are within collaborative settings, it was a challenging problem space: Jain cites the importance of prioritizing use cases and aligning with your teammates on the foundational purpose of a tool, not just the dozens of ways it can help users. More than anything else, Jain advocates for advocacy. As seen in her conversation with then-Dropbox Head of Design Alex Castellarnau, speaking up <\/em>is an essential part of a designer\u2019s toolkit. It will improve the space you\u2019re in, guide you to new ones with potential, and help you avoid ones that have bad intentions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, Anisha Jain is the VP of Design at Cruise, presiding over Product Design, Brand Design, and Content Design. The self-driving car service is at the forefront of new technologies, automating transportation without dehumanizing it, and it is there that Jain continues to make an impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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WORKS CITED<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DM 18 \u2022 Interview \u2022 Dropbox \u2022 Anisha Jain<\/em>, Design Matters, 9 Jan. 2019, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Vpsg2akIFFU<\/a>. Accessed 4 Apr. 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hoy, Greg. \u201cGreg Hoy &amp; Anisha Jain: Intentional Career Decisions.\u201d Medium, Hiring Guild, 29 Mar. 2019, https:\/\/medium.com\/hiring-guild\/greg-hoy-anisha-jain-intentional-career-decisions-4069b566bac7<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naji, Cassandra. \u201cHow Dropbox Solves Design Problems: Q&A Design Manager.\u201d Justinmind, 15 Nov. 2016, https:\/\/www.justinmind.com\/learn-ux-design\/how-dropbox-solves-design-conundrums-qa-with-design-manager-anisha-jain<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was a bit hesitant, at first, to choose Anisha Jain for my second biography. After all, virtually nothing is known about her \u201cearly life\u201d (i.e., anything pre-college). I can\u2019t provide any details on where she was born, for instance, or where she grew up \u2013 not even the dreams she held close during her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.interactiondesignhistory.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.interactiondesignhistory.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.interactiondesignhistory.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.interactiondesignhistory.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.interactiondesignhistory.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4399"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.interactiondesignhistory.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4401,"href":"https:\/\/www.interactiondesignhistory.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4399\/revisions\/4401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.interactiondesignhistory.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.interactiondesignhistory.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.interactiondesignhistory.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}