On a warm and sunny day in August I’m having my afternoon coffee with Valeria Ippolito, Product Design Manager at VEED. She’s sitting in her home office in London with a very artsy wall behind her and I’m over in my home office in Amsterdam, fretting over the camera angle and backlighting. Our awesome social media content creator, Claire, would likely have some pointers about my lighting game. Lighting is important, folks. Nonetheless, we start the recording.
Valeria joined VEED in June, 2023, but her journey with our product started much earlier. She’d been following us since the early days. Having worked in the video industry with companies like Sky, she found it fascinating how we were able to create such a simple yet powerful AI video editing solution that one can use.
She brings 12 years of experience in Design, spanning across graphic, motion, interaction and product and will share more about her journey with us today.
Describe what you do at VEED. How does a typical day or week look like for you?
I’m a Product Design Manager which means I am responsible for supporting and elevating our design practice and culture at VEED. A typical week for example might include leading our design rituals like work in progress sessions, weekly syncs, one on ones and participating in product reviews.
I also do a lot of hands-on work around strategic pieces for our product. For example recently I’ve been working on improving our onboarding, defining the content direction for our editor, and other more vision related pieces.
VEED is building a world class design organisation. We have a very dynamic environment, everyone is deeply involved in the product’s success and there’s a great feeling of ownership around the areas you work on. With our CEO & Co-founder, Sabba, coming from a design background, the company values and prioritises design at every level.
Let’s talk about ✨ Design ✨
Tell me a bit about how you got into Design and what keeps you in it.
I've actually had a varied journey. I’m a very curious person and have moved around different design fields along my career. Like many of us in Product Design, my roots are actually in Graphic Design & Communication. Over time, I expanded my skills to become also a motion and interaction designer and finally I found it a natural progression to start working on digital services and products. Design has been a great way to explore areas like typography, photography, colour theory, video and psychology.
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I’ve always had a deep interest in psychology, and this is what ultimately made me fall in love with this field. Or at least, the human part of it, the interaction with people, uncovering their needs, and finding ways to solve their current problems in a creative way.
How would you describe your design philosophy?
Holistic! I like to think of design as a bridging discipline that plays a big role within organizations not only in the actual output but also in the way it can better shape processes and rituals, and become a catalyst for innovation, for better product outcomes, and overall impulse the organisation towards a more human-centred approach.
What is your favourite part of the design process?
Tough one! I love the discovery part of it, everything that has to do with divergent thinking, talking to customers, exploring competitors, just playing around with many options before narrowing down.
You currently do product design and you started your career in graphic, brand, and motion design. How has your earlier work influenced your work in product design?
It’s very much present! They’re disciplines that are intertwined so there’ always something to bring in from the other. For example, I’ve always managed to enhance my work through motion design by creating interactions, and helping users flow naturally between different states.
Is there a difference in how you approach design now and how you used to approach it earlier in your career?
My approach has changed mostly in terms of having a much more holistic approach, understanding how my work fits a broader ecosystem and better balancing business and user needs. My early career and especially within graphic and visual design relied more on the aesthetic or visual side of things and over time I became much more human centred, research and data driven.
How do you keep up with the latest design trends and integrate them into your work?
I like to get my daily inspo from sites like Cosmos, Awwwwards, Creative Boom, Browsingmode.com, and many more! I also get inspiration from my surroundings, going to exhibits (I love art history and contemporary art) and being in nature.
The Product Design Team at VEED
Tell me about the design team at VEED.
I would say we're a small but mighty team. We're currently six super talented product designers, each bringing a special power to the team and their work. I like to think as well that the areas in which designers are working on are areas where they can excel and showcase their best work. We also collaborate very closely with our Brand and Motion Design team to align with our visual and brand identity.
We’re all very proactive, problem solvers and just overall great vibes!
What are your team rituals?
We love rituals! We do a Monday sync where we share updates, what we’re currently working on, but also it’s a space to connect, share what’s inspiring us now, what we did over the weekend. We also do this async once a month, we make a one-minute video to share our updates which has resulted in very creative and funny videos. This way we also get to use and test our product.
We also started doing design pairings every other week, we pair two designers to work together and give feedback on each others projects. This way there is more visibility and support, a fresh pair of eyes always work!
How does the design team approach work?
VEED is a place where we allow for teams to be autonomous and do work in the way they prefer. For us as designers the most important part is to make decisions that are rooted in research and data, with our customers in mind and working as collaboratively as we can across teams.
It’s also very important for us to socialise our work across design and other teams for which we also do videos from time to time.
Let’s talk tools. How do you collaborate with the rest of the team?
All comms through Slack, all documentation in Notion, Linear for design and engineering and all actual design is done on Figma + a lot of Figjam for workshops and rituals.
What did the team ship recently that you are all really excited about?
Kevin just shipped a new dashboard design and introduced Multi Brand Kit which will make team collaboration at VEED even better…and I can’t say much about this yet, but Anne has been cooking some exciting stuff on the Editor side.
Cryptic, I like it. We hope to see this very soon.
⚡ Lightning Round ⚡
Morning person or night owl?
Absolute Morning person, sleep early and wake up early, I love mornings! ☀️
Music, podcasts or silence while working?
Music all day long! 🎶
Beach vacation or mountain retreat?
Hard one, since I come from Venezuela, I had both mountain and beach so can I say a combination of both? I love a good hike but also love to swim in the sea. 🏖️ ⛰️
What's a hidden talent you have?
I can write backwards?
If you weren’t in design, what would you be doing?
Probably living in the Italian countryside, making olive oil and wine whilst tending to my goats. 🐐
