Designer Profiles: Abigail Hart Gray
Meet Abigail Hart Gray. She is the Director of UX for Google Ads.
Briefly describe your career path, including the reasons behind job changes and shifts.
I am in the third phase of my career. I was educated as an architect and taught/practiced for about 5 years. Then I moved into the digital agency space for almost a decade. It was an amazing place to cut my teeth in digital and get a lot of exposure to different verticals. Over time, I realized it wasn't as fun as I thought it would be to give my "babies" to others to raise, so I went in-house 8 years ago and am not fully product obsessed. For me, the thread of continuity is the idea of using design to choreograph interactions — in architecture it was spaces designed to bring us closer to my idea of equality and utopia. In digital, it's the same — you have to give people agency to do what they want but you're more encouraging of certain interactions than others.
What excites you about being a designer?
What excites me most is how design can be both a force for good and a driver of business. We have fought for our seat at the table, but the question is what are you going to do when you have it? We will win by telling compelling user stories that are backed by data and which push our partners in Product Management and Engineering to want to get on board. When you can convince them to take on your goals as their own, that is some big league accomplishment! You get a few of those under your belt and you're paving the way to have designers get into the C-Suite.
What advice would you give someone starting out in their career today?
I really like to surround myself with designers who bring a unique POV and a slightly off-center way of problem solving. I love that there are so many schools that have great design education curriculums, but I encounter more job applicants who feel a bit cookie cutter today than I did 10 years ago. Teams won't be interesting or innovative if they are a set of clones. We won't get to the best ideas — keep your you-ness close by when you are problem solving. One of the greatest thing about design is that there's no one right way to approach things.
“Keep your you-ness close by when you are problem solving.”
What’s one thing every designer should know?
Design is not about you, or how cool it looks. It is about problem solving.
What’s the most annoying design debate out there? You have the last word; what’s your take?
I'm pretty ready to put the ‘whether designers need to code’ debate to bed. If its interesting to you, then sure. Do you need it? Should it be a requirement of a design role? Not in my book. There's lots of people who will do it better because they've dedicated their careers to it. I think we benefit just as much from making friends with our engineers and learning big picture principles.
What’s the most inspirational thing you've seen / read / heard recently?
I am inspired by the breadth of people coming together to protest peacefully in this country, and the most for people for whom it might be riskiest. It makes me believe this time in history may produce long term, meaningful, systemic change for the better in this country.
What’s your favorite place to escape in NYC?
The period rooms in the Met. They completely take me out of this reality. I will wait, but I can't wait to get back to them.
Give us your favorite bad joke.
Where do cows go on the weekends? To the moooooooovies! [I have a 6 year old]
