Esther Ahn - Designing for Scale and Building Culture

2025-04-15

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Esther Ahn reflects on the twists and turns of her creative journey, shares how critique can unlock better design without breaking spirits, and reveals why embracing the oops is essential for building resilient teams and products. Highlights include: 12:13 – How do you make sense of your career’s twists and turns?28:52 – What does a healthy culture of critique look like?35:24 – What works best when presenting design work to executives?42:19 – Where is the most tension between business goals and user needs?01:06:36 – How is the children’s book Beautiful Oops! relevant to y...

Highlights include:

12:13 – How do you make sense of your career’s twists and turns?
28:52 – What does a healthy culture of critique look like?
35:24 – What works best when presenting design work to executives?
42:19 – Where is the most tension between business goals and user needs?
01:06:36 – How is the children’s book Beautiful Oops! relevant to your career?

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Who is Esther Ahn?

Esther is the Director of User Experience for YouTube TV and Primetime Channels on YouTube—a role in which she brings deep expertise in human-centered design and research to enhance the viewing experience across platforms and at scale.

Throughout her career, Esther has pioneered new participatory design methods and conducted global research across the US, Asia, Africa, and Australia.

Before YouTube, she was Director of Digital Health UX at Stanford Health Care and a Creative Director at the world-renowned innovation firm Frog Design.

She’s also worked at two other giants of design—IDEO and Smart Design—where she shaped experiences through multidisciplinary practice.

Esther holds a BA in Architecture from UC Berkeley and a Master’s in Interaction Design from Carnegie Mellon University.

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Find Esther here:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/estherahn/

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