Inside The Mind of Design Leaders Ft. Fred Truman, Senior Director of Product Design at MongoDB

By Kristie Craft

It’s human nature to feel like we have little to contribute to the world or society. In everyone's story there's always a unique path that people have taken that inspires others. So throughout our Inside The Mind of Design Leaders series, it's not about the Elon Musks of the world, or those who are ‘conquering’ it. It’s about those we can relate to. 

Kristie Craft sat down with Fred Truman, Senior Director of Product Design at MongoDB, to discuss his career path. They went right back to where his unintentional journey within the digital design space started.

Kristie: How did you get into design? When did you realise that you were going to take it as a career path?

Fred: “I don't think there was ever a moment where I thought, ‘Okay, I want to be a designer’ per se, but I was always into art.

When I was young, I was always drawing and doodling, but I was also into math and computers.

In high school, I started making websites. This was back in the 90’s, and you know, we didn't know what those things were. So I took an independent study, which was really cool.

My mom would always tell me about Commercial Art. That you could make a career and you could make money creating art. I think she was talking about Graphic Design.

Over time through high school, I was on a normal academic path, but I was interested in being creative and taking art classes. When I had to go to college, I studied Graphic Design because I thought it was a path towards being able to have a career and that it was going to pay the bills. That's how I got started.” 

Kristie: Did you do an internship or work throughout your studies? 

Fred: “I was definitely unstructured. In my undergraduate degree, it was Liberal Arts Education. I would focus primarily on Graphic Design, Art History... I was dancing around in that space. 

When I went to university, this was when ‘branding’ was a big thing. We were talking about branding a lot and no one knew what this was back then. I went to George Washington University and within the Creative Services department we really focused on building a brand for the university. So I was fortunate enough to get a job with them, which was really great. I was making posters, pamphlets and little flash animations for websites. 

I remember before that, I tried to apply for an internship or a job, and it was a disaster! I didn't have any sense of what someone who would hire a graphic designer would look for. I remember handing over real raw work samples. It was art, basically, it wasn't solving any problems. The education that I received wasn't like the calibre of education that is provided now for a Designer. So I give myself a little bit of slack there.”

Kristie: The state of education in Design has evolved for creative graduates. Moving on beyond education and throughout a design career, there can be both calculated decisions and organic progression. Moving companies, changing roles, working towards promotions and relocating cities. Throughout your career, do you feel like you were very calculated in the decisions that you made?

Fred: “I think I'm a very informal person. My approach to education and my career was very informal. Early on I knew that I liked being creative and found there's something interesting about technology, and I just wanted to do that! I was very happy just making things. Anybody who wanted to pay me to make posters, a t-shirt, or a website, I was happy to be doing that.

There was not one pivotal moment when I realised I wanted to be a Designer, but I can think of a time when I was working, the first real job I had in New York. 

Then I made a decision. 

I was working at a branding agency for nonprofits. I can recall a specific client, they help people who are dealing with addiction or other forms of abuse and people who are homeless. The founder had turned his life around. He had an accident and he wanted to leave the corporate world and just help causes, which resonated. I was really into branding at the time and they wanted to communicate their message more. During that process, it was my first introduction to user experience. 

Before the rebrand of the website, we spent some time talking to people who were in the local community and we were asking them what they would like this website to be, to represent that we're communicating what their community is. Out of that, there were some really specific, interesting things about how people wanted to use the website. 

So for example, I remember talking to people thinking they were going to say, ‘okay, I want the brand to be this reflection of us’ but really what they were saying was, ‘I'm involved in this community, I have a loved one, they have an addiction and it's really harmful to my relationship with that person. If I tell them they need help, I would love for this website to be a tool for me to reach out to them anonymously, through this community to see if I can pull them to get the help.’ 

And I got really stuck on that. 

It was right around that time where I started thinking, I could be making tools for people, I could be making things that do things for people, not just communicating. So that was the precursor to go back to grad school. Then from there, my career has been more or less intentional.

I just wanted to be a designer and focus on products and user experience. Then the opportunity came up here at MongoDB and I've been growing with that organically. 

I'm not super calculated in that regard. I knew I wanted to be working in technology, I knew I wanted to be working in user experience, but I never knew I wanted to be in management, I didn't know it was a thing. That was a whole other growth point and pivot for me. It was a new and different way of thinking about my career that happened, and it happened organically.” 

Kristie: Growing into a managerial role isn’t always plain sailing. What were the challenges that you faced going from taking on that managerial role?

Fred: “It wasn't natural at all. It’s not silly or trivial; looking back now it's hard to imagine how you would get stuck on it, but it's really, really hard. One of the first opportunities, I had to manage somebody who I had worked with as an intern, and then I worked with them on a product that was very familiar to me. So it was a really good chance for me to continue to mentor them in a similar way. 

I think it was hard to separate the role of a manager, from thinking, ‘in order to be a manager, I have to be an expert designer, have to have all the answers, people have to come to me first.’ That feeling that you're on the hook for everything.

Over time, you realise that it's a totally different skill, and you're not expected to know everything. Most people are humbled by it as well. You feel like an imposter. A little bit. People are looking at you like, Oh, you think you're a manager? Okay. Yeah. Cute, you know, that sort of thing. 

So that was all really new and different. I think sitting in the role over time, it gets a lot easier. And then you get comfortable with the expectations of the role.”

Kristie: Some designers live by a certain philosophy, others work from instinct. As a designer, do you have a design philosophy that you live by? Or is there something that you have at the core of you that you always focus on? 

Fred: “I think the superpower for a designer in the context of what I work on, and product design, or user experience, is that everything we do is very ambiguous. Maybe for a product person as well, you know, nothing's been defined, and they have to make order out of that chaos. 

And then, for an IT or an engineer, it's ‘we want to execute this, how do we build it’, you're the expert in how and a designer... we got a bunch of stuff we think we might know, and it's very uncomfortable for an engineer to exist there. They just want to know ‘what am I executing, tell me what I got to do, I'll figure out what's the optimal way to do that.’ 

For a designer, I think we're great going into those ambiguous situations and being an ear or a facilitator, and sometimes a therapist. Because we have to pull in business needs, we have to pull in the perspective of a user and what they need. 

And then there's the team. You don't build things by yourself, you need to put yourself in the context of a team of people who are going to deliver this. You have to make sure that everyone's heard, and you need to turn that into something that you can, you know, show back to all of those people that resonates with them, the user, the business, the team. 

I really think that's a great thing to keep in mind. As designers in the brand space maybe we think of ourselves more as geniuses, but I think as a product designer, user experience designer, the solutions really come through us. We're just supposed to be there and let all of that information, all of those needs just come through us and show it back to the people that need to rely on them. You don't have to have all the answers, you can just let the answers come through.”

Fred: “The good thing about having a background in graphic design and working with designers who have that background is that they have really great craft, and you don't even have to work on it, which is great. 

So you can really work on uncovering user needs, investigating strategy, whatever it is, and you can rely on that craft.

And that's hard to teach on the job, to spend time like, ‘Alright, let's talk about colour and typography and space.’ 

It's not the problems that the business is asking us to solve as product designers as much, they're taking it for granted that you have that skill set sometimes.”

Kristie: When you’re hiring people, is there something specific that you look for that is beyond just the craft or ability to design?

Fred: “Curiosity will drive them in their growth in a way that static skills won't, necessarily. You can have great skills, but if you get challenged in a new way, you might not pursue that. Whereas a curious person is always going to want to see where this takes them.

I think having great communication skills is another thing. Just being able to communicate what your designs are trying to do, what they're trying to solve. Doing that in a really clear way, written or spoken, asynchronous and synchronous communication skills are really, really great and can set you apart. 

And then anecdotally, if people have good things to say about others, are good collaborators, that's really key. For people who can work with other people and bring the best out of those relationships, I think it is really important.”

Kristie: This comes back to my point about being emotionally intelligent to really understand how to work or get the best out of people, which I think is probably a characteristic or trait that isn't seen as highly as people should regard it. So with this professional evolution described, if you could give your younger self some advice, what would it be and why?

Fred: “So again, I think I was a really informal person. I want to say this the right way, and I want to say it with the right humility, but I don't think I necessarily pushed myself early in my career, the way that I see students and interns now. They're amazing. The stuff they're studying and stuff they know how to do. It's really, really incredible. 

And I get envious. Wow, look at how they applied themselves. And they're here working in a similar context that I'm working in now, and it took me a long time to get here. 

So I probably encouraged myself to just go the extra mile, because I think you can always get by without putting your full self into it, but if you put yourself into something you can really excel. If you choose to; you have to commit and choose to do so. 

But on the flip side, I really appreciate some of the other experiences I was able to have, because I wasn't taking everything as urgently or as needing to be solved right now. 

You don't have to have everything figured out in your early 20s, or mid 20s, or even your thirties, you know, you have a long career in front of you, as long as you're open to learning new things you'll get there. So in that regard, I'm pretty happy that I was able to take risks and there weren't too many dead ends. But those are behind me. And I don't feel like I missed out on anything.”

Kristie: This is great advice, especially for those people that are in the stage of their career where they think - Am I meant to be more? Am I meant to do more? I've seen within design, there's a lot more competition, there's a lot more complexity because of technology that is just increasing. And the speed is really hard to keep up with. The availability of tools has contributed to that competition.

Fred: “And Patience is important. If you have a good idea of what the big picture is, and you can commit to the big picture; the details and the path is going to be a little bit frustrating perhaps, but if you have confidence you'll get there.”

Special Thanks to Fred for his insights.