Felix Lau

Anywhere that is always warm, generally not too rainy or dry. With excellent coffee and some way to stay physically active. Currently in Mexico City for 3 months — really thinking of home basing here !

I have a strong sense of what is just and unjust. If teammates, and especially managers, "get away with" or even be supported for behaviours that I wouldn't want to see in my work culture — I instantly want to detach from and maybe even leave a workplace. Red flag behaviours: PMs talking about my work but doing a poor job of it (just let me present smh); meeting cultures dominated by just one or two voices; "better than thou" management that won't give you the time of day; taking credit for my work

Achievement and success has always been a core motivation for me. (Lack of) fairness in the workplace has emerged as something I react strongly to – including just treating others with kindness. Autonomy and creativity balances out achievement and fairness – when the two sides are in harmony I'm happy!

The best of my designing happens when there's spaciousness and time to think and explore. Peppering meetings throughout the day prevents the deep work to happen and I just choose the easiest or most familiar patterns instead.

I equate success in life very closely with a sense of progress and building something meaningful in my work. This is usually done by working with struggling through learning on the job, getting compensated well, and having a good time doing it with people I like!

Give me the largest, most ambiguous problem to solve

I live for the 'high effort high reward' type problems. The ones where I'd have to read between the lines of what's not said in UXR sessions, iterate many times on designs, and have the problem on simmer in the back of my head for months until the final unlock moment.

Just give it to me straight and quick. Recency and hard examples give me context for how to improve. Do NOT shit sandwich me (compliment-feedback-compliment) because I can see through it, you come off as disingenuous.

Warm weather, blue skies, being in proximity to mountains or trees, and good coffee.

self-motivated, curious, kind, and confident in their craft.

I find myself drawn to small teams and startups because people must be honest with what they do and what value they provide. In larger companies, I've witnessed so many layers of in-between that spend so much of their day managing how they present to others. That's a waste of energy to me. I love teammates that just do things on their own, do it fast, and take pride in what they made!

I'm kind of reflecting on it right now while I'm learning Spanish. It made a huge difference when I had to write, and then review it later. Course structuring also made it easier for me to absorb an idea (ie learning future and past tense was best done by listening, then reading, then writing, then speaking, and then reviewing)

Contract renegotiations

It's the same as learning how to ask for a raise, except depending on the client they might see you as even more expendable and undeserving of any more than what was initially agreed upon – even if it was years ago

I sometimes unknowingly repeat what you say thinking it's my own thought.

What you said might not register, but it sinks in subconsciously. And then I repeat it truly thinking it was my own original thought. And this can happen seconds after you said it. I don't know why this happens but it does. I apologize in advance.

I like to see the shape of the entire forest that we're headed, and then dive right into the trees

ABnB experiences wherever I am. Water activities lately.

Kayaking, paddleboarding, surfing – because I'm doing tropical coastal travels

Give me a fuzzy, undefined problem. I'll get to the bottom of what is needed, articulate it, and deliver a clear vision or path forward on what's needed.

Pointless sync meetings that break up my productivity blocks

If it could've just been an email, some slack messages, comments on figma or shortcut, or it could've just waited til our next pre-scheduled meeting... why do sync? It takes about 1 hour to get into whatever I'm doing and to break that up is very disruptive!

Candor profiles are now full, beautiful, honest and informative!!

Having the right flow that encourages everyone to fill their profile fully has been months in the making. So happy to see people doing that organically now.

Tell me some vague unsolved problem. Let it sit in the back of my mind for a day or two. I'll jot a bunch of questions and assumptions down, sketch some stuff out. Follow up with a sync meeting, more unsolved problems. Rinse and repeat!

Procrastination

It's the hardest for me to just get started, so often I really do just put something to paper as quickly as possible. Otherwise I'll just never get around to it!

Spanish, Rive, Woodworking

I've been travelling to mostly Spanish speaking countries and forcing myself to use it. Rive will bring my animation background into my product design practice. Woodworking because it's the analog thing I want to do!

My independent working preference has a natural edge with nurturing a high performing team. I've been working on being more present for my teammates.

I used to play a lot (10,000 lifetime hours probably) of video games

I see a lot of parallels in product design and so many patterns in the games I've played. Even Candor right now is heavily informed by deck-building rogue lites etc

When I was just learning the ropes with mail merges, I may have sent out 'thank you here is your $50 compensation' gift cards to a bunch of research candidates that we never even did sessions with...