Three New Habits for the Age of AI

This is the second in a series of three pieces on “unlearning,” in partnership with Maven, the expert-led course platform. In the first installment, Hilary Gridley explained why faster prototypes don’t make product decisions easier. This week, product designer Xinran Ma shares what he had to unlearn when he left his corporate product design job to work for himself. He explains how moving faster and experimenting helped him build a point of view without abandoning rigor or judgment.—Kate Lee

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I was ready to start my own business. But for six years, I couldn’t.

I came to the United States to study architecture at Columbia University and spent a few years in the field, designing art centers and multi-family residential buildings. When I moved into product design, I found the work much broader and more fulfilling. It spanned research and information architecture, visual design and interaction design. It brought me closer to customers and the business, and I could see the immediate impact of my decisions in a way I couldn’t with architecture.

The pandemic, however, exposed the risk of relying on a single employer. When a coworker lost their job a few months before having a baby, I began thinking seriously about building something of my own—a second source of security for my family and an investment in myself.