Hugo Welke: Design Lead - Canva

Hugo Welke, a lead designer at Canva, shares his journey from Brazil to Ireland and eventually Australia, where he’s been with Canva for five years. He discusses his transition from product design to design operations, emphasising the importance of creating a positive employee experience. Hugo highlights Canva’s commitment to inclusivity, both in the workplace and in their product design. He reflects on the challenges of maintaining simplicity in design as products scale and the importance of effective communication in design teams. Hugo also shares insights on career development, advising against rushing through career stages and emphasising the value of patience and reflection. He discusses his personal motivations, including organisation and adding value to others’ work. Hugo concludes by recommending design-related podcasts and offering advice to his younger self about managing anxiety in one’s career.

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Please note: this transcript has been auto-generated and may contain some errors.

Foreign thank you for joining us for another episode of Digitally Diverse, where we do a deep dive into the careers of the movers and the shakers in the Australian design and tech industry. Today we are joined by Hugo Welke, who is a lead designer at Canva. Thank you so much for joining us.

No problem. I’m very excited to be here. Thanks for an invitation.

Aylin. Of course. Well, thank you.

Thank you again. And I guess it would be really great to start off the podcast with just an overview of your journey and where you’re at in your career. Obviously you’ve been with Canva for a really long time and held quite a few roles with them.

So yeah, fill us in on your career up to date. Yeah. So my name is Hugo.

I go with the pronouns he, him. I’ve been working at Canva for the past five years as a design obsolete. Product design obsolete.

And if we’re going to talk about my journey, I probably need to start a little bit back a couple of years ago. I was going to say like around 15, 20 years ago, but that makes me feel very old and I don’t know if we should go there but. But yeah.

So I am originally from Brazil. I studied design in Brazil before I started my career internationally. And when I say internationally, I moved from Brazil to Ireland back 15 years ago.

That was my first country where I went to learn English. The plan was to stay for a year and then go back to Brazil, but that never happened. So I ended up staying for 10 years in Ireland where I found my first web design jobs.

At that time working with a few agencies over there, discovered that there was a big space for web visual UI design type of work that we had there at that time. So I worked with a few agencies. I worked with an airline when I was back in Ireland and then I started to go into tech where I worked with a company that had a software for HR departments for the people departments in companies.

They had like a whole reward program. And then I also worked with HubSpot, which is a marketing sales platform. These days they are much more than that.

They’re marketing sales services and all of that. And then I think was back, let me just think about seven, eight years ago when I moved from Dublin, I was living in Dublin and I moved to the US for a while. I moved there for a year.

Then I come back to Europe, moved for two years to live in Berlin where I work with the HubSpot as well. Like I just changed the locations. And then finally back in 2019 I got a very exciting offer to move to Australia and work with Canva, which led me to this now, like five years of Canva working.

I started as a product design lead for one of the teams that they had in there, and then a year, a year and a half inside of that role, I actually transitioned quite organically into product design operations because the company had some needs on that front. And I was also very interested in developing my skills in that space. The latest role that I had at Canva, which is product design obsolete.

Love it. I love that you wanted to learn English. So of course you go to Ireland, which probably has the most thickest accent that you could possibly go to.

But no, that’s what, what an incredible move between Brazil, which, you know, I. I imagine beautiful warm weather, nice and sunny to Ireland. That must have been such a.

Such a shock. Oh, it was. It was a shocking, dude.

It’s funny because when I look back, and even again, I said I lived there for 10 years, I look back sometimes, I was like, how did I survive there 10 years? Like, I was vitamin D deficient the entire time. Exactly. But I have to say that I think I so excited, so thrilled with the whole.

The novelty of like, living in a different country, speaking a different language, joining these companies and everything that I was doing there. So I didn’t feel the weather, but looking back, I look, I feel like I don’t know how, how I did that. Yeah.

I guess being. Being in Sydney now, it’s probably a little bit. A little bit more similar to what you’re used to growing up.

Oh, yes, big time. I feel that when I landed in Sydney because even like when I got a job at Canva, I moved to Sy and I’ve never, like, at that time, I had never been in Sydney or in Australia before. So it was kind of like it a blind move, put it that way.

And yeah, as soon as I arrived here, I saw the weather, I saw the beach and I was like, yep, found my space again. That’s good. I found the right spot.

Yeah, definitely. Tell me a little bit more about, about your time at Canva and what, what kind of problems the. That you’re solving there at the moment.

Sure. So I mentioned I joined Canva in 2019. The product design team at that time was much smaller than it is today.

At that time, we had. I think it was designer number 15 or 16 in the team. Oh, wow.

Yep. Yeah. So the team was quite small.

And I think from the beginning, talking to the head of design, he did mention, like, we are Going to scale this team, this team going to grow. And even during the interviews we talk a little bit about that, that I. I had some experience back in Europe on growing and developing teams, hiring, recruiting product designers.

So they said, so I think you’re going to be able to help me with that. Again, very exciting. And it was actually a very exciting part of the offer of this new role for me.

So since I started Canva, I started to help him on that, on that front, on hiring and recruiting these designers and also developing the culture of product design team inside of canva. So we scale like I think today Canva product design team is a little bit over. I think it’s just about.

Or a little bit over 200 people was a quite steep growth that we had on the product design front, which I’m very, very proud, very excited that I have been part of. It was what I mentioned before as well. Like I moved from a product design lead role which I was helping the ecosystem group in Canva, which is part of.

If you think about like Canva as one big experience, one product experience, we do divide like this experience in macro parts and then we have like supergroups, that’s the way that we call internally, like to own these parts. So I was working with the ecosystems, which was their goal at that time, was to make Canva not only like a design tool, a design editor, as you as a user can see sometimes, but more than that and make like a design platform so that other tools, other companies could come in and plug in their functionalities into Canva and vice versa. So we could help everyone to empower the world to design using different tools.

But then as I said, we start to hire and recruit more designers and that starts to take more and more of my time. And that’s when we decide with the head of design again to let’s create this product design operations team, which we didn’t have before. It would be a team of one at the beginning, just myself.

But then again we grew it over the years and now just I think we are over. We have five, six people on the product design operations. So I think the challenge is for myself that I have been working quite actively in the past couple of years is on how we continue to grow and scale the team, but also how do we keep the quality of product design at Canva from I think two perspectives even like the outcome that we deliver the output that we deliver and also from a employee experience.

So a product design that joins Canva, how can we make sure that they are joining and they are not feeling, like, just a number in the team, but they are also feeling a product designer that is being valued, that they’re growing, that they are developing their skills and becoming a better designer, a better person just working with us. So that’s, if I summarize, and I put it, like, in a nutshell, like, that have been most of the projects that I’ve been working on. Oh, super exciting.

And you’re involved with the Canva Global LGBTQIA Collective as well. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Of course. Yeah.

Being the leader of, like, the LGBTQI plus community inside of Canva, what we call Pride Collective. So that’s the name. The name that we use.

It’s something that I’m very, very passionate about. And I always been very passionate. Even, like, when I was working back in Europe with HubSpot, for example, I also helped them to create and open up, like, the LGBTQI chapter at the time in Dublin, Berlin.

For me, I feel being a gay man myself and the challenges that that can be, to have that true inclusion of the LGBTQI community in the workplace. I always felt very. I want to say, like, excited and interested in, if I’m working here, like, if I’m working in a company I got to support, I’m going to help our community to have its presence in here.

And I think at Canva, it wasn’t different. When I joined CANVA was very interesting. Like, as soon as I walk inside of the door, I always felt very welcome, very even.

Like, during the interview process, when I was organizing the. The moving to Australia, the relocation, talking to the recruiter, there was one moment where the question was like, oh, so you’re moving here. Great.

Are you moving with your partner? With who, like, or by yourself? And I was like, no, I’m moving with my boyfriend, and he is coming over. So everything was like. And they accepted.

They were totally fine with that, and there was no questions about it. But when I joined Canva, I felt that the community that I probably was used to, like, in other companies before, was just not there. And it was just like, there was not any formal.

I would describe congregation of, like, all the gays and all the kind of all the queer people. And at Canva, we have a very, like, company wide. There is clubs which is in other companies probably you’d call as affinity groups.

So Canva clubs is where people gather together based on, like, on an interest that they all have and that they want to get together to talk more about that. So we created the LGBTQI Pride club at that time, which was just like a place where we could get together and that I would describe, like, grew and exploded, like in a really nice way, because people start to join and we start to get together, do things together, like from parties to just kind of like very, maybe like a dinner, breakfast over the weekend. But then also we start to get ideas on kind of like, oh, we should run like a talk about this topic or we should get together to talk about these.

Even like sometimes like very pop culture, we would, like, get together to watch series that was like, with a whole LGBTQI theme. So it developed quite organically and I think it start to take a proportion that I was very, again, surprised and excited, proud of until last year when CANVA really worked on making that a formal erg, like an employee resource group, which now what I mentioned before, we call the Pride Collective. So now what used to be like just a little club of all the LGBTQI people became this formal group of the LGBTQI folks that we are constantly making sure that Canva is doing their best to kind of include the entire community and support the community.

And also we continue doing the gatherings and the fun part as well, like the parties. And you probably have seen Canva has been part of the Mardi Gras celebrations in Australia this year. We are celebrating Pride in other parts of the world because CANVA has different offices in different parts of the world, and we’re also joining like some parades back, like in the US and London.

So it’s very exciting time. Yeah, I love that. It’s really grown quite organically.

And, yeah, looking from an outsider looking in, it always seems like Canberra is such a progressive and welcoming workplace, which is really great to see. So the fact that it’s grown like that, you do sometimes feel like, oh, is this someone, is this just a corporation jumping on the bandwagon? But the fact that it’s obviously come from really grassroots beginnings is really great to hear. That’s super exciting.

Thank you for sharing that. No, and I just want to mention as well, because, like, I feel I hear you 100%. We, we talk a lot about how companies and how CANVA does not want to be in that kind of rainbow watching type of group of companies.

Yeah. So one of the things that I feel extremely privileged is working at Canva and leading this kind of LGBTQI chapter in there is that CANVA has always been super supportive, but. And not only on the inclusion of the queer people, like in the.

If you think about it from the employee perspective, but every Time that we bring a concern or a taught an idea on how can we make for example like the product more inclusive or that has always been accepted and like received really, really well. I remember a couple of years ago when we were discussing, you probably used Canva yourself before, where you have the images, the illustrations that you can use in your design. So people would search at a time, they would search the word couple and the results would bring heteronormative couples majority of the times.

And we brought that up and saying, listen, I think this is time to change. How can we, how can we work with the algorithms to kind of realize that couples is much more than just a man and a woman together? Our engineers, the product managers working around that space, they had a lot of other priorities but they just kind of very open, they listened to us and they’re like, yeah, let’s take a look at that. And literally in a couple of weeks we had that algorithm changed hands.

Since that time, which was back in 2020, I think everything is now kind of like more inclusive. If you search again, this is just an example but there’s so many other examples of how the product became more inclusive. And I do feel that because we do have quite diverse group of people working at Canva that are able to spot these opportunities, these changes that needs to be made and then having the entire of the team kind of like quite open to make those changes.

So yeah, I feel extremely privileged by that. Yeah. And that’s like spot on what the benefits of having such an inclusive and open minded team can bring.

Like it not only it just allows the product to be a lot more accessible to everyone and it improves things like if you have, if you have more, more thoughts, more, more diverse experiences going into creating product for a wide group of people. Yeah then yeah, it makes sense to have, you know, lots of different of people’s ideas and perspectives going into it. So yeah, yeah, I love that and I love how quickly they’re able to jump onto that.

That’s unheard of. Yeah. Like as I said, like this proves as well for me was like a moment where I realized as well, like that we’re not just, just making the noise that we’re inclusive or that we are diverse, but like having those folks and as I said, it’s a group of many, many people, like thousands of people working at Canva that not everybody is a queer person.

But it’s still being willing to kind of like, no makes sense. We need to change felt really, really. It doesn’t have to be a Big deal.

Exactly. And it felt really, really nice about it. Yeah.

So good. Obviously you’ve been at Canva for five plus years now and you’ve worked in a few different fields within the company, but our listeners about the current team that you’re in right now, the ops team, and you know, the culture within that team, I feel like talking about the product design operations part is something that I find extremely rewarding because one, I have a very, very talent team that we have been building over the years with product design operations folks and product design research folks as well. But I feel what I like to share normally when I talk about the product design operations at Canva is one of the principles that we had from the beginning and I still believe to be quite important.

And I also feel it’s quite important actually to anybody who is growing a product design team, which is the focus on the people that you’re working with and that are joining your team. Since the beginning when we were kind of like deciding on the idea, should we create a product design operations team or not, should we just leave that as kind of like this is product design leadership and that is it. I remember talking about the importance of creating something that is probably quite cheesy at this stage that I’ve heard many companies and many teams talking about the idea of creating an employee experience that is really the best experience of work experience for those folks joining the company.

So like I mentioned, and I carry that message with me saying, like every product designer that joins Canva, no matter if they stay with us for a month, for five years, 10 years, two years, no matter the time, I really want them to feel that this is or was the best time of their career. And when I say that is a combination of a few things that I would love them to feel, which is the idea that they have, first, that they really feel that they belong to this team and they belong to this company. And I mean that like in terms of feeling that you want to wake up in the morning, you want to go to work, and you want to talk to your co workers.

Second is making sure that these people are growing and developing their skills themselves as they progress with the time at Canva. And third, like that they feel extremely proud of what they have done, what they have accomplished in here. So I feel Canva has never been short of great opportunities for you to kind of like achieve good stuff.

So that one was quite easy to achieve, like having those challenges for people. But the focus on making sure that they’re feeling great at work has been A really nice one for me to work with. And again, having the talent team of product design operations at Canva made it much easier.

And I say that because, for example, we had a few events and other programs that we run every year that make that quite special. One of them is something that actually I think was an idea that was implemented by the head of design in his very first year, which is called like a Product Design Week. It is a annual event that we have at Canva where we get the team together, the whole team together.

And I mean whole as in we have pro designers, like in different parts of the world, in different countries. So we try to get them together physically when possible, when we don’t have Covid around and really get a few days where we really focus on the craft of product design to really kind of like reunite people through that craft. Because one of the things that we realize as we are again building and scaling a team to the skill that we have today is it’s very easy to kind of like hire people saying, like, hey, we need your talent.

And then they join this big team where obviously for us to be able to develop and produce the product that we have, we need to have some processes in place, some cadences in place. So it’s very easy for us to come in with all your talent, your ideas, and then follow these cadences and these processes and then kind of like put them into this very structured place. And we really try to avoid that because I think that the beauty of good design output, output, it comes from when the designer feels empowered to really use their talents and the knowledge that they have built over time to apply it and create something new.

So Product Design Week is a really good event where we create some activities where designers can actually go off and create their own thing and bring their ideas. We always have a team. Sometimes we, we pair up like the theme.

For example, there was one year where we did like everybody going to work creatively with their crafts, but are we going to pair that up with charities and not for profit companies that need some product design work? So these companies briefed us on some challenges that they had and we had the entire team then to produce really good ideas on how can we solve those problems, like using design. So yeah, that’s all comes to that point where I mentioned at the beginning, which is like, I want to make sure that people feel like super excited to work in here. And then even if they leave this job after a while, that they will be like, ah, that time that I had a canva, that was the best.

I felt supported. I had all the resources that I needed. I grew, I developed myself.

And I do feel that it’s a good principle. If you listener here is growing a team or thinking about like growing a team, I think it’s a good principle. It will definitely lead you to good places.

Definitely. And not only does it, you know, that that kind of employee experience attract really great talent, but it also retains people and. Oh, 100.

Yeah. So. And it’s.

It’s no surprise after hearing this that you do see people at Canva with such long tenures, like, it goes to show that it works. And if you do feel valued at work and are working on some really interesting, juicy problems, then that keeps people entertained. Like smart people want to be working on challenging stuff 100%.

And as I said, that part is something that, again, Canva doesn’t fall short in terms of having those opportunities because I feel that not only the team has been growing, but the product, the adoption of the product has been growing hugely in the last couple of years. So we always have good challenges, for sure. Yeah.

What has been like the main challenges for implementing those? Is there anything that really challenges you to implement those for your team? Yeah, definitely there is a few challenges that come on the way to achieve those principles or those goals. I think the biggest one is a challenge that we have is actually a product challenge that reflects on how we grow the team. And that problem is about the simplicity of the product.

So Canva has built its brand and its reputation on being a very simple tool to use, a very simple design tool. And people always felt super empowered to how to use Canva or how to design something using Canva because it was super easy. So for us, with the scale of the product, having more and more customers coming, having much more of a demand of features from the users, one of the challenges that we face, and we probably will face for the rest of the life of Canva is how do we keep the experience simple when we are continuously like adding more stuff.

And I think that we all know other design tools that are really complex that you really need to learn and stop and kind of like, because they have a lot of good functionality. However, that comes with a price, which is the complexity of the experience. And Canva is trying to constantly avoid that and make things simple.

This looking for a simplicity problem challenge that we have is something that, as I said, it comes on the way on the employee experience that I was describing before. Because if you think about some really talent designers, they might have amazing, great ideas. But in order for those ideas to be implementable and to be usable, there is a tone of communication, internal communication that needs to happen, a ton of strategy that needs to happen.

And all of that takes a lot of like work from the people that are working there. So one of the things that we see a lot of canvases, like designers and probably even though there are what do we call specialties that canva talking about, we have a lot of busy work and by that we mean everything. If I summarize, a lot of people see the work that is not the craft related work as busy work where you kind of like, okay, I just want to implement this idea that is a very product experience.

But for that they’re going to have to communicate through a doc, a deck and I’m going to have to have a few meetings and we’re going to have to discuss this. It can take a lot of the time, a lot of the energy from the people that you have hired to do great work. So that is a challenge that we’ve been facing the last couple of months and even probably in the last year to how can we improve the volume outlet, Kind of what I called before the busy work, the idea that there’s a lot going on and the communication, how can we decrease that, how the processes can be more effective and shorter.

So it is a challenge that is on the way. And I think that challenge, the more that they scale, the more you see it. So it’s a very interesting challenge because you can flip that in so many different ways.

And even sometimes I even see that talking to other designers. It’s the type of work that might not be necessarily the craft work that you signed up for, but without that work you cannot actually do the work that is necessary to do. So there is a little bit like as well that acceptance of like, okay, I need to communicate my ideas and that’s part of my craft, part of my job.

Yeah. And that’s something that comes up with a lot of people that I speak to that have been through the scale up journey. Like if you’ve started that design team, you know, with I think it was like 15 people you said, and now it’s at 200.

Like how do those processes evolve with the, with the growth of the team? And how does that, you know, that operation side, how does that evolve, you know, when, when it’s a drastically different landscape now to what it was five years ago. So yeah, that’s super interesting that and it makes, it makes total sense when you talk through it that it’s, you know, in essence it’s one of the goals of Canva to keep it accessible and simple as a product. But there must be so many things under the hood that are just ticking a.

So yeah, I think that’s a super juicy problem for anyone who is interested in design ops for sure, 100%. And as I said, I feel that is beyond design operations as well. It’s kind of like design leadership because you’re trying to orchestrate all those designers.

Even at Canva, when I said that we have over 200 people in the product design team. This is not only core product designers, I’m talking about like UX UI designers we’re talking about as well. When I say a product design team of 200 plus people, we’re talking about product designers, designer researchers, content designers, digital designers, creative technologists.

There is a bunch of like variations of the types of craft that is in there. Like that all goes under the umbrella of product design. But even the coordination of those specialties between themselves, it is a challenge in itself, but it’s a very, very rewarding challenge.

And working from an operations leadership perspective. Yeah, definitely. So, Hugo, obviously you’ve been in the design and the tech world all over the world literally for quite a number of years now.

Was there any catalyst or any. That one moment that you had that Eureka, I want to be a designer kind of moment, what did that look like for. That’s a really good question.

I love talking about that because I don’t know, definitely at that time I didn’t call as the Eureka moment, but I feel looking back, I probably had it when I was very young. I got my first computer when I was 14, 13, 14 years old. I don’t know if I should have realized, but while all my friends were all interested in games in the computer, how to play games, I was always interested in how to design, how to use tools to design, like starting obviously from Microsoft Paint to.

It’s funny like in Brazil we all grew up. Adobe was not like the tools that designers would use in there. But.

And again, this will make me sound very old, but it’s like I don’t know if you ever heard about Corel or Corel CorelDraw. So it was a very old tool. And that’s where I start kind of like playing with design and vectors and all of that.

So I feel that the interest in design and the digital design space, it appeared very early in my life. Then I think when I decided to study web design as my bachelor back in Brazil, I Feel that I was already quite plugged in to the idea that it’s like okay, I want to work with design, I want to work with computers and I want to combine these both Internet is exploding with let’s do something related to this. So that was I think the decision moment where I was like okay, I definitely going to go into this space.

And then I feel that I did for a few years just graphic design, just doing a little bit of branding, a little bit of overall graphic design, working for a few agencies. But then I think was back in around 2010 when I got my first role like in a tech company as I said like that HR platform they had like rewarding programs for HR teams where I start to see the really I think like the values and even like the progression that design was having at the time coming from like web design where I was already working in agencies and creating websites. And the main goal for myself as a designer at the time was to create beautiful web pages which I loved it.

I loved working with the very visual spectrum of web pages. But when I entered that job that it was literally like a tech job. When I started to see the value of user experience over or at least at the same level as aesthetics, I got really, really curious about it and very interested.

And then after that job I moved to a airline as I mentioned before, working with the digital UX team and digital team in the airline in back in Ireland. And that was also very interesting for me to see of like how the web design plus user experience was using in a very, very commercially. So it was pretty much like designing for E commerce which for me it made me feel excited but I kind of, I felt I got like burned out very quickly with the idea of using my skills to again like I want to say to sell more like things in that case like I was working with airlines.

There was a lot of like design choices that we had to make which was based on commercial sales numbers like I think E commerce at the end of the day a lot of the E commerce goes into that side. So it made me feel like very ah. I don’t know if I want to work in this space of E commerce because making people buy and sign up for things that they don’t need to, don’t know didn’t feel the right thing for me at that time.

I can totally see the value of it again I see the value of design in that space but for me at that time it didn’t go in well. And that’s when I moved into HubSpot where I their mission in HubSpot was to make companies grow better. And I felt that’s a mission that I was much more connected to my own principles of how can we help people to do better, grow better.

And since that time, I think that I combined the passion of tech and design and I kind of made a promise to myself, I want to say, to really pay attention to the missions and visions of the companies that I would work for moving forward, to make sure that I have, like, more alignment. And that’s what I kind of like, kept me. And I’m still here working with tech companies because I do believe that technology has a really big part on the development of humanity overall.

So I just want to make sure that if I’m using my skills to be part and to help on that progression, I just want to make sure that I feel good about it too. So, yeah, that’s my involvement with tech, with design and where I am. But it starts very early, for sure.

Yeah. And it seems to be a common thread with a lot of people that come on the podcast is for me personally, I was just obsessed with retouching movie posters, which was hilarious. So I was the same as you, except I was on Photoshop where I was just like, yeah, obsessed.

Like the time time would disappear and I would just be like, on that screen and you just wouldn’t know about the world outside. Yeah, it’s. It’s really interesting that you, you know, had that journey into the commercial side of things and then moved into more of, like, the tech and social.

Social good aspect of working in tech companies. It seems to be quite a big theme for a lot of designers where there’s definitely a time and a place for designers in commercial settings, but it seems to be like a growing trend for designers and anyone in tech to take that step back and be like, okay, what is the impact of this? What am I doing? So, yeah, interesting that it takes that little bit of time and you eventually figure out where you’re going 100%. And I saw like.

And I was like, this is the. The privilege that we get as well for working tech, where for the last couple of years, putting it right, like, we have. We have had and we still have, I feel perhaps like slightly different, but always we have the choice.

Do you know what I mean? Like, you can choose to say, like, oh, this is not aligned with me anymore, so I got to move on and I got to do something else. There are so many industries where the choice is not possible. You’re going to get A job and you’re going to have to do what needs to be done and you cope with your feelings.

Yep. And is that kind of question or that challenge made you want to jump more into the ops side of things? I feel that I got to a point where I was doing design leadership on the craft side, and I started to. Because I was very involved on the hiring and recruiting these new folks, I start to see that my strengths actually were much more.

I had much more joy and energy every time that I got a people challenge to deal with. And with that said, as much as I loved product, I haven’t had my hands on that for a while now, but I would still do. I enjoy the idea of solving problems, product problems, user problems, but having those people and I describe like people problems is a funny word.

But it’s like these people challenges, especially like around growing and scaling and aligning people, making sure that people are. There is cohesion, there is harmony between people. It’s something that I feel very, very interested in.

And it’s a passion that I obviously discovered once I start to. That I became involved on this task of like doing it, aligning people. Love that.

And I guess it would be great for us to maybe take a little step back and tell me about your university and the degree and the education, that path that you took. What was that? And would you. Would you choose that again? Yeah.

So the course that I took in Brazil, the bachelor course, was called like Communication for Web Design. It was very early days, I feel on how these courses were laid out. I think the terms like UX UI was not.

It was not even in there at that time and. But it was, if I look back, the content of that course was exactly what I loved. The time doing design for the web, understanding design, we had a lot of teachings around, like the history of design, the basics of design, and.

And obviously that set the foundation for my design skills so well that it also had like, I had one really good teacher that always would connect how any type of like history teaching, if it is around arts, around design, could be replicated in other parts of the human life. And I found that like, so, so fascinating that I still connect a lot to that. The idea that is like you have so many natural rules within design and as I said, to create the harmony between shapes, lines, colors, typography and all of that, that when I’m dealing with the people challenges these days, I feel that it’s the same.

We need to find that harmony. So it’s like you have people, people have Skills you can kind of like shift around and say, like, you have shapes, you have lines, you have colors, you have to make them work together. We’re all triangles and circles.

At the end of the day, we all have to work together. That’s what I say. Sometimes I feel like, yeah, you were trying to put five circles in a box.

That is a triangle box. And how do we do this? And does that work or it doesn’t. So, yeah, I think that was the connection.

And as I said, the course communication for design is something that doesn’t probably exist in that with the terminology anymore, but it’s definitely something that I. I still recommend people, like, these days, obviously the courses are around like, user experience, product design. I have a lot of people that I have mentored in the past couple of years.

I always recommend them to study it because there’s a huge value. And I think that will be a knowledge that will continue to evolve and be required for a good few years, I believe. Yeah.

And I would love your input. Obviously, pretty solid career in design, full stop. But also, now that you’ve worked on the people and the ops side of things, is there any particular education pathways that you would recommend or how do you feel about the.

Obviously, a degree versus a boot camp is very, very different. What are your thoughts around that? I feel there is value in all the options that you see these days. I think what you just said there, like, if you go for third level, third degree, kind of university or bachelor on something design related, 100%, it’s a good option.

If you feel already quite connected, passionate about that topic and you want to do that. Especially again, for the young folks that are kind of like, I’m deciding on my profession now. I want to embrace it.

I’ve done a little bit of this and they’re like, here and there, 100%. I think it’s a good course. No, I don’t see any risk on that.

The boot camps that you’ve seen there, I feel, again, they have their value, especially for those friends that want to perhaps change career or if they are not 100% sure about the option they have, they feel that they enjoy it, they like it, they want to explore more. I find it amazing that we do have bootcamps to do that. So you can kind of like immerse yourself in the world of like, product, ux, UI design.

Just doing a course that is probably like, what, six months, nine months, 12 months. Imagine if you were to have the option to say, like, oh, you want to become a doctor? Yeah, there is just this bootcamp that you do six months in here and you can get a taste of it, it would be great. So I think that there is a lot of value in that.

And again to the people that are planning to pivot careers, it’s a really good option. It will definitely, if you are planning to pivot and you really kind of like solid that you want to do this for whatever reason, perhaps you have been working already. I had a few people that came to me that worked in very related areas.

So it’s like somebody who was working as a project manager, product manager or somebody working in marketing and it feels like, oh, I have seen a lot already of what product and UX design is. I think the bootcamps are amazing for anyone wanting to pivot. Like it’s such a.

Yeah, and you’re right. How blessed are we that you anyone has that option like for the vast majority of other careers you could never pivot into something else by you know, taking on a part time course or yeah, you’re kind of stuck where with design or anything creative. You could, you could sign up to one of these bootcamps and at least get a taste of what things are like and see if you actually like it 100%.

So I think like there is options and options for people out there. I think in Australia we have a few good courses that are kind of like the long term versus the boot camps. There are a few options.

But yeah, yeah, that’s great. And yeah, I completely agree. There’s always going to be a need for a really solid degree.

I think learning a lot about design history and design context is very, very valuable. That’ll never go away. But yeah, I totally agree.

But also like I just want to say like when we talk about this further education, I really believe that you could for example, somebody considering a pivot like their career in different of the area that they’re coming from, they do let’s say a boot camp in product design and they touch on every single space of product design. But then instead of jumping straight like oh, you’re doing a very unrelated job before and you’re trying to pivot and then you would go, let’s say directly into a specialization of UX design. Imagine like then you study for three, four years and after that you discover that what you like actually in UX design is design research.

Meaning that you could actually have done like a boot camp, explore the options and in six months, a year time already discover that you are into design research. And then oh, I’M actually going to study psychology. Do you know what I mean? Like, that is, it’s relatable to debt and you could go even further into research, for example.

So, yeah, I think there is value and this specialization is, there’s always a space for that. But if you have the chance to have a little taste of things before, just go for it. Yeah, no, I 100% agree.

Especially in Australia, where there’s more and more opportunity to get into more specialized design roles. But the vast majority of opportunities are in like that generalist product space. There’s always, and I will say this to everyone, there is always a need for better research skills, something I am very passionate about.

Yes, I would, I’d love to know as well, like during your career, have you faced any speed bumps and like how, how have they shaped where you’re at today? Oh, yeah, there was definitely speed bumps and I think a lot of them, I probably, I still have speed bumps these days. Just not able to always acknowledge them on the spot. It’s always like, it’s easier to acknowledge them like later on in reflection.

But one thing that is, I would describe like a speed bump that I’ve seen. I had a few of those and I continued to see designers. Having them especially like mid level, senior level is trying to get too much speed into the career development.

Meaning kind of like there is definitely that ambition on kind of like growing and growing and becoming a better and better designer and better design lead, which I find it’s obviously the catalyst of so many good things that can happen to somebody. But they also put you in this risk of just making kind of like decisions, choices that actually get on your way. As I said, it becomes the bumps for yourself.

One of the examples that I felt is for myself is like, I think that transition between a mid level to a senior and even like into the senior roles that I had because that ambition of like trying to be better every single day, every single minute, every single hour of, of this career, as many of us, I probably that helped a lot on me developing anxiety, which then affect my overall health and which then affect my overall life. So I think that there is, if we could make it more accessible for everyone to understand that it’s okay for you to not get a promotion every six months. It’s okay for you not to get a bump every year.

It’s okay for you to be that senior designer for two years, three years. And that doesn’t make you feel worse or not good or like, what, Whatever it is, I’m still Thinking, like, how can. Can we kind of, like, normalize that a little bit more? Because I.

I do feel that that is one of the speed bumps that you see a lot of people passing through. I. As I said myself, I passed through that so many times where I would feel frustrated about the things that were happening around me, the choices, and even, like, thinking that I was like, oh, I think I can make this now, and I could be the design lead for these.

I could be the design lead for that. And I think I. There was a.

You probably heard a lot about, as well in your. On the Arab space, Ellen, about people saying the designers that come with ego and come with entitlement. And as I said, I’ve been there before, and I know that it’s quite natural because you’re just trying to grow.

It’s just part of the ambition. But if we could normalize a little bit more about. Let’s calm down a little bit, and let’s kind of develop these skills, continue to grow with one another in a little bit more calmer way.

Yeah, I totally. I. I see it all the time.

As a recruiter, that’s like my bread and butter is to have conversations with people who are looking for the. The next. The next thing or the next challenge or, oh, the grass is greener on the other side.

From my personal experience, I can definitely say that some of the best designers that I speak to are the patient designers who are patient, and they can sit in a role for two or three years and absolutely, like, soak up every single morsel of inspo and information and, you know, talk to as many people on their team as possible and learn from them. It’s not necessarily a red flag when people jump around a lot. You know, those things happen.

But it’s a prompt for me to dig a little bit deeper and be like, what are your motivations, and why do you want to be onto the next thing so quickly? And it’s. And sometimes they are amazing, and that’s great. But, yeah, I think there’s a lot to be said about, you know, just sitting for a minute and trying to soak up as much as you can from each position.

And I feel like they are also some really thoughtful designers as well, because they know their product back to front, and they know really, really great strategies and ways to go about things. And, yeah, I think everyone goes through that. And you’re right.

It’s pretty much. I see it a lot happening with midweights jumping into, like, their senior role. They get stars in their eyes.

And they’re really excited. And sometimes, sometimes it’s good just to. Just to chill for a second.

It’s okay. Yeah. Yeah.

And I have to say, because it’s being a topic like working with big teams and trying to always making sure that, as I mentioned at the beginning, that these people have the best experience of their lives. It is a topic that is very close to my heart that I always try to study and understand a bit more. I would try to summarize a few things that I normally pass on to my mentees, but one of them is the concept of what motivates you.

I think you said it before as well. I think there is definitely a framework out there that uses the same concept. And I don’t know what exactly name, but it’s the idea that there’s always three pillars onto the motivation space of somebody.

One is the nature of work. Do you get motivated by the actual nature of work? So it’s like, are you aligned with what you’re going to have to do? What’s the problems that you’re going to be solving? The second is money. Like, I get motivated by money or like, I want to do this in life and for that I need money and so I need to find a job that I can do happily and get that money.

And then the third, there is this kind of, I think people use the word like either title or the fame side, where it’s just like I get really motivated of being seen as a senior designer, as a lead designer. Just that gives me the dopamine, the energy that I need to keep going and kind of feel excited. And generally what I see is that in any given job that you have, you very likely, if not for sure, actually be able to align only two of them out of these three.

So it’s like in this job you might have, it’s a really good salary and you’re going to love what you do, but there is no title is something that you’re going to be okay with being a product designer. That’s it. Yeah, product designer, full stop.

And that’s. That’s. I’m going to tell.

Like this was the situation with me at Canva. Like, I loved Canva because Canva had and still has like this concept of like trying to keep as flat as possible. And titles is something that has been in development for many years at Canva, and this is still in development.

But titles is definitely not the number one thing when it comes to job offers. So in that case, it’s like for me, it’s like, yeah, I feel that I’m reward compensated fairly and I love what I do. I’m happy with that.

But I do have examples that I normally mention of. Like, I have a friend of mine that for many years focus on the title. Like, in terms of like, I want to make sure that I become the design lead, the design manager, the design director, the VP of design.

Because at the end of the day, if you look in the professional scale, these titles, they do bring you not only the prestige of the title when you’re looking from the outside community, but a lot of the times it’s very connected to the money side. So it’s almost like if you get those, you can get the money kind of automatically. This frame, for example, that I was just mentioning, she would be like, very happy with, give me the title.

I’m going to be the director of design. I don’t care if I don’t like the work, I can do it. I will manage to do it.

I will manage my emotions of dealing with work that I’m not happy to do, which I normally say as well. That is like, it’s totally fine. There is people and people and different ways of dealing with all of those three pillars.

And I think people should think about these three pillars and what motivates you and what are the two of them that you can combine, which one you can compromise and be okay as well with the idea that this can change. You don’t need to carry for life these pillars. Do you know what I mean? It’s like today for me, as I said, I am on right now in the phase of my life where title is not something that I kind of give too much attention, but I do and I make sure that I do feel very rewarded, fairly rewarded for what I do and I need to do something that I love, otherwise I’m going to be very miserable in my life.

And a lot of the time, and you mentioned this before, that it’s not until you find yourself in a situation where you are a bit unhappy that you’re like, oh, actually this is a priority for me to do that work that I’m connected to and I’m connected to the vision. Yeah. And it’s not until maybe you get into a job where you’re like, oh, I feel like I’m not really well financially compensated for this, that it then becomes an issue and you’re like, oh, actually this is really important to me.

So it’s, it’s, it feels a bit icky at the time, but it just kind of narrows down where people’s priorities are at. So, yeah, I think the quicker that you can figure that out, the happier you’ll be long term. It’s definitely like, I feel like being a designer, and I mentioned that that is in every profession, but I talk just from obviously having the lived experience of being a designer is just like reflection is something that you have to do in a daily basis.

It’s like, am I doing the right thing? Am I doing the best that I can? Am I doing the wrong thing? Am I doing what am I doing? And that reflection kind of is a concept that I really encourage everyone to do it. Yeah. And having that reflection very regularly I think is super important because.

Yeah. What worked for you a year or two ago may not work for your life right now. And that’s okay.

Life happens. But I guess with that being said, is there anything that you do regularly other than that reflection piece? Is there anything that you do regularly for your motivation or your productivity? Do you have any habits or anything set up that really allows you to excel in that area? Definitely. I think I had recently and I say like that in the last two, let’s be two and a half years now, I got a diagnosed for adhd and that made me quite.

I became like much more active on researching what actually motivates what excites me, what works well for me and what makes my kind of like my resilience, my patients to work. So I always say that, like, I feel that I wish that I would have done any sort of. Like, it’s not about the ADHD diagnosis itself, but I wish they would have stopped earlier on in my life and done that reflection on like, what is actually that motivates me.

Like, is this like a brain thing? Is this just the way that I go around? But I feel that for me, it’s very clear these days that one. I will always thrive in organizing spaces. So talking about physically or digitally.

So if you look the way that I organize my tasks digitally, I have notion boards. I have other tools that I use to keep everything organized. My room, my desk.

I try to organize as much as I can before I start work because I feel that that is something that works. My brain doesn’t need to be distracted with the mess around. Yep.

I second that. I have to have. I think like an uncluttered desk equals an uncluttered mind.

Oh, totally, totally. And it’s funny because, like, this is something that I cared for life as well. Like, I always enjoyed cleaning.

Like this cleaning is something that every. Everybody Makes fun of me of like, how much I clean. And all the time I’m cleaning.

And to be honest, it’s not even too much about the cleanliness. It’s about the organization. It’s like, I don’t like the messy places and messy spaces or anything.

So I will automatically organize anything that you put in front of me. Even sometimes without knowing. I give an example that sometimes people send me like, oh, Hugo, would you mind just to review this document? I have this idea and I put in this document and I will kind of like, as I read, I’m going to be formatting your titles.

I’m going to be putting the bullet points. I’m going to be make that kind of organized because my brain, it would just process the information much faster and much more that way. So organization is definitely something that gets me motivated.

The other thing is I really believe that my work, especially whatever I do for work, when I’m working with other people, making sure that I’m adding value to them is another motivation. So I can point out very clearly and very quickly to you that if I am struggling with a task, it’s very likely that I didn’t measure of like, is this adding value or not? I didn’t do that. Reflection.

And sometimes it’s not about that. That task is actually not adding value to other people, but it’s just the perspective that I’m working on that it’s just like, oh, I’m doing this. It’s very tiring.

And it could be small things like organizing some paperwork, for example. And I would be like, oh, I’m so tired. I don’t want to do this.

It’s been sitting here for five days already or whatever. But when I get to the point where it was like, why? Why? This is something that I know that I have to do. Why am I feeling that is not important that I don’t want to do it and then just change the perspective of it.

And I’m like, okay, because if I get this organized, then the payment’s going to come in time. I will not need to pay the taxes that way. I need to do this and this.

And all of a sudden it’s just like, okay, let’s do it. Let’s get. It’s 10 minutes.

I will get done and we’re going to move on. Yeah, having that deadline there and that motivation to be and thank you for reminding me to do my taxes. I do need to do this has been sitting there on my to do list.

We all have that pet peeve. Of tasks that is just there. But I will get on at some stage.

Yeah, I know. And just figuring out the motivation. And half the time the motivation doesn’t even need to be there.

You just have to start and then you get into the flow. It’s a tale as old as time. Just get started on things.

You probably heard that before as well, that motivation never starts from nothing. Yeah, you just start some things so that motivation can start. Yeah.

You know, I love to ask people if there’s any great podcasts or, you know, just content in general that they like to consume. You know, some people I find and for those people who have listened in the past, there’s usually two camps. There’s usually people who really love listening to, you know, design related podcasts or, you know, they’re marketing influencers on YouTube or they can just be like completely out of left field.

Is there any particular podcasts or thought leaders that you like to follow? Yeah, yeah, definitely. I feel that I have a few podcasts that come to mind. One of them very, very biased in here.

Just talking about design services is like the podcast from Canva. Yeah, from the Canva design team. When it started, it was hosted by the head of design, Andrew Green, but now we have been kind of like changing the hosts as well.

I always find very interesting because even though that I work with those people on a daily basis and the podcast, there’s always something new, something different, interesting to hear. So Design Surfaces is a podcast that I recommend. The other one that I really like to listen to is a podcast called Design Better.

It’s very eclectic, I would say, like in terms of the content that you’re seeing there, it’s all things related to design, but you have very different angles, perspectives, different people, different parts of the world, which I also recommend. I also, I think this is a little bit of like the ADHD of me. Part of me that is I get obsessed with a few people sometimes like people that I kind of like.

I go into this rabbit hole like of trying to understand everything that they say. And currently I am obsessed with this woman, Dr. Tara Swart.

So she’s a neuroscientist and psychologist. She has a bunch of degrees in her backpack. But she wrote a book called the Source.

And she talks a lot about how our brain works with how the. It’s almost like society works, the universe works. Like she mixes everything.

So psychology, neuroscience, quantum physics, everything that you can imagine in that space. And I find super interesting. She always has really good.

She has been doing a lot of Interviews with these famous podcasters. Like, the latest one that I watched was with the Diary of a CEO. Oh, yeah, yeah, it was really, really good.

I forget his name, but yeah, that would be super interesting, him being in the interviewee seat. That’s correct. And so it’s a really, really good one.

I recommend Tara Swart. Great. Thank you.

Yeah, and thank you. You were super organized and sent us the links of these prior to us recording. So, yeah, I’ll try and put those onto the notes once we hit publish for this episode.

But I guess I really love to end the podcast on one of my favorite questions, which is if you could give your younger self some career advice, what would that be? Just me think about it, but I feel I’m probably going to touch on something that I already mentioned before, but it’s quite big for me, which is. And the way that I’m imagining is like, if I put myself right now in front of Hugo, 20 years old, couple of years ago, I will probably tell him that you likely feel anxiety throughout your career, even though that you will not be able to name that as anxiety for a while. But if you can learn how to identify when that is anxiety or not as soon as possible, it will really help you to feel better in life.

And I think that goes with what I was saying before. There are so many times in our careers where we will feel that things are going wrong, things are collapsing. You are not great.

You’re not the greatest design that you thought that you are. You didn’t get the job or whatever it is. There is so many signals that will make you feel bad about yourself and about the professional that you are.

But so many times, like majority of the times that is coming out of anxiety. And as much as you need to listen to those signals and reflect on them, because they will also help you to really question the quality of your work, the quality of your knowledge. For a lot of people, there is a moment where the balance of that scale, it goes to the side that is quite harmful.

So learn as quick as possible to identify if it’s anxiety playing on you or if it’s reality, because that will help you to really grow in a much more solid way than actually an anxious way, which is not great. Yeah, I think that’s really, really solid advice, especially for a lot of our neurodivergent friends. You know, having that reflection based in reality is so, so important.

And also like having an outside perspective to kind of keep you in check as well is 100, I think for, for me, really really helpful because. Yeah, no one likes to spiral. But it happens.

But it happens. Yeah. It goes so smooth, like, and then it’s like, yeah, yeah.

And I think especially in design or any kind of creative industry, there’s so many. It’s so subjective and it, you know, there’s so much gray area and nuance with a lot of the decisions that are made. So, yeah, having.

Having that reflection based in reality is a really, really helpful thing. So, yeah, thank you very much for that advice. That’s really great.

Of course. No, I hope that I. That, as I say, like, that does good to somebody who is possibly passing through that moment right now where questioning, like, am I doing the right thing? Calm down, take a cup of tea and reflect a little bit.

Your reality more than often will tell you the opposite. Yeah, 100%. Well, thank you.

Thank you so much for joining us, Hugo. Really, really appreciate your time and your advice and your nuggets of wisdom and, yeah, can’t wait to see all of the amazing things that you continue to do in the OPS team at canva. No worries, Ellen.

I just want to thank you as well. It’s been great. Love, love talking to you here.

And if anybody wants to reach out to me for any questions about anything that I said here or anything related to product design, product design leadership, feel free. I’m on LinkedIn with Hugo Welke or on Instagram with Hugo Welke, so you can find me there. And I would be delighted to talk to you.

I love that. Spreading. Spreading the good vibes.

Yes. Thank you, Hugo. Awesome.

Thank you very much, Ellen.