Senior Director of Product Design, Joie Chung, is passionate about using design and technology to impact people’s lives. “I’m excited about the work we do to improve the home buying and selling process, increase home ownership, and help our customers grow their business and better support their clients,” she says.

While in college, Joie realized she was drawn to design work more than coding, so she switched her major from Web Development to Graphic Design. This change set the stage for the rest of her career. “Learning visual communication was a great foundation for me in UX and Product, marrying visual design with my love for technology and psychology,” says Joie.

After joining Realtor.com in September 2020 as a Director of Product Design, Joie led a design team focused on enhancing the home buying experience by creating solutions that support and connect buyers and real estate agents throughout every step of their journey. In her role now as Senior Director, she leads the Customer Product Design team as they build innovative customer tools and products to help agents and brokers improve their workflows and grow their business.

We sat down with Joie to learn more about her leadership role, the exciting work her team is doing, and how she can be her authentic self here.

Joie: Our design leaders have the important role of coaching teams of talented product designers and managers. They provide guidance and support to help their team members grow professionally while ensuring quality design work. These folks help define and communicate the vision and strategy for our product experiences, and work closely with their leadership partners and cross-functional teams to deliver value that aligns business goals with user needs. Throughout the product development process, they facilitate team collaboration, validation and feedback cycles, and communication of UX decisions. Our leaders also foster design culture across the organization, promoting user-centered principles, best practices, and decision-making based on data and user insights.

Joie: The people. During the interview process, I met so many lovely people who are passionate about solving challenging customer problems and bringing ideas to life. I could tell they enjoyed working together and trusted each other’s expertise and points of view. The hiring manager was someone I wanted to work with whose principles aligned with my leadership values. The company vision was exciting and thoughtful, and they made me want to be part of it all. Happy to report that my first impressions remain true after nearly three years on the team!

Joie: We’re about to launch a new product suite for agents that I’m pretty excited about. The tools will make it easier for them to work with home sellers, sell listings, and get more clients. Our team uncovered clear customer needs through generative user research, which informed the solutions we’re building now, and there has been a ton of cross-functional and cross-team collaboration to get to where we are. Really proud of my team and everyone else involved, and pumped to see customers using it soon.

Joie: I like to ease into the work day with a cup of coffee, catch up on Slack and emails, and organize my tasks for the day/week. After that, depending on the day of the week, I’ll commute to the office or begin my day of meetings. I start most weeks with a team sync where everyone shares what they’ve been up to, what they are focused on now, and where they might need help. I catch up with each member of my team in 1:1s at least once a week, attend various leadership meetings with cross-functional partners and other design leaders, and regularly review design work in progress or brainstorm ideas with the team. I also usually put together documents to communicate strategy or progress updates, and participate in strategy/resource/priority planning activities to help ensure that our teams are working on the right things with everything they need to be successful.

Joie: Supporting our teams in building products that actually help our customers and consumers with their needs and goals feels especially meaningful. I really enjoy the cycle of learning about their pain points, building and testing solutions, and then hearing from customers about how we’ve helped improve their lives or workflows. The designers get a lot of satisfaction when their products/features are used and can see the impact of their work. I get bonus satisfaction seeing my team members grow as designers and leaders themselves.

Joie: Lately, I’ve been thinking about our value of “Build, reconstruct, build better.” It’s easy for people to get discouraged when they build something imperfect, which often happens because rarely is anything perfect at first. Sometimes things just don’t go as planned, or you don’t get the results you wanted or expected. When this happens, I take it as a learning opportunity and a chance to iterate or pivot. If the first solution didn’t work, try another one. If that doesn’t work, then try again. It’s okay to pause and reassess, maybe even start over sometimes. It’s the only way to get to the right answer or the better solution. Our team demonstrates this value by seeing failed tests as a learning success.

Joie: The open and diverse work environment at Realtor.com empowers me to be my authentic self. I can talk about my life and self without worrying that I’m being singled out or judged, because we have people from all types of backgrounds and cultures. If I mention something new to the group, it’s met with genuine curiosity and an openness to learn. As a minority in most spaces across my life, often being the only woman in the room or the only Asian American in the room, has caused me to spend too much of my young life trying to fit in. I don’t feel that pressure now that I primarily seek out spaces in which I feel included without having to hide parts of myself. I felt like a member of the team as soon as my first day at Realtor.com, and genuinely love being myself with everyone I work with.

Joie: Our design leadership team is awesome. We have a lot of meaty problems to solve—everything from helping to build a vision for how we better help our customers and consumers buy, rent, and sell homes to shaping team culture and an environment in which designers can be productive, creative, and proud of the work they’re doing. If that’s something you want to be a part of, my advice is to share specific examples of how you’ve developed influence across an organization and built strong cross-functional relationships, how you’ve fostered a team culture of continuous learning and open communication, as well as stories about your own journey as a leader navigating challenges and bringing impactful change.

Joie: Our cross-functional product teams work so well together, and our leadership team is super supportive of each other. There is a sense of trust and respect for each other’s roles and expertise, so it’s easy to collaborate on our work throughout the whole product development and design process. The people I work with are talented and care about each other. They have the same passion for creating good user experiences with our products and tech that I do.