Episode #38: Building Accessible Products Through Research with Tracy Dai

A designer does not need a conventional design education to develop a strong research practice. Tracy Dai entered product design through journalism, art history, communication studies, and marketing. In Episode 38, she shows how those disciplines still shape the questions she asks, the evidence she gathers, and the way she approaches accessible product experiences.

What you'll learn

• How journalism and art history became practical product design skills

• Where research fits across the product development cycle

• How LinkedIn supports accessibility through training, guidance, and tools

• Why broad feedback still requires a designer's judgment

• How simple routines can protect focus in a remote workday

Turn an unconventional background into a design advantage

Tracy began college in journalism school in China, then transferred to the University of Michigan to study communication studies and art history. Later, Northwestern's Integrated Marketing Communications program exposed her to qualitative consumer insights, quantitative work, and courses across design and business.

A consumer insights instructor who worked as a UX researcher at Dropbox introduced her to UX. Hearing how global research could influence a product roadmap and product strategy made the field tangible. Tracy then took a General Assembly course to learn the design thinking process before joining marketing automation company Marketo in her first product design role.

Each part of that route remained useful. Art history and photography fed her attention to visual qualities and her interest in making products both useful and beautiful. Journalism supplied interviewing habits: write considered questions, probe beneath an initial answer, and notice facial expressions that may reveal emotion. For designers arriving from another field, her experience offers a practical prompt: identify the methods you already know, then translate them into the work rather than treating your past as irrelevant.

Research the user's job before refining the interface

At the time of the conversation, Tracy was a senior product designer on LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. The role connected her marketing technology background with product design and introduced an intersection between B2B tools and the member-facing feed. She also described LinkedIn as applying the jobs to be done framework across its work.

Her account of research starts before interface options exist. Early in the product cycle, teams conduct generative and market research to understand and prioritize the user's jobs to be done. This keeps the work centered on the problem a person is using the product to solve, rather than allowing a business or technical issue to stand in for the user's goal.

Methods then change with the question. One-on-one interviews can provide qualitative depth while designers explore broader options. Large-scale experiments can compare smaller variations such as copy or color. Alpha and beta stages create controlled opportunities to gather feedback before general availability. The useful lesson is not to apply one favored method everywhere. Match the method to the maturity of the work and the decision the team needs to make.

Make accessibility part of the operating system

Tracy connected equitable design to LinkedIn's global reach and the need to make experiences usable regardless of ability. More importantly, she described mechanisms that turn that value into repeated practice.

Designers receive mandatory accessibility training during onboarding. Weekly design all-hands include accessibility tips from a team dedicated to the subject. Designers also use checklists while preparing files for engineering handoff. LinkedIn's internal tools and design system teams support that process with Figma plugins that help designers specify accessible behavior for engineers.

Taken together, these practices show why accessibility cannot depend on one person's memory at the end of a project. Training creates shared foundations, recurring guidance keeps the subject visible, checklists reduce omissions, and tooling places expectations inside everyday production. Product teams can use the same layers even if their organization is smaller.

Pair feedback with judgment and intentional growth

Tracy encourages designers to gather feedback from many perspectives and remain humble about it. She also makes clear that more input does not remove responsibility from the designer. Feedback can arrive from different departments and angles, sometimes in overwhelming volume. The designer must analyze it, distinguish among perspectives, and make the final judgment call.

She applies similar selectivity to career development. Early in her career, she wanted to learn coding, product management, and many other skills. Mentors helped her see that time is limited, so growth should be planned around the direction she wants to pursue over the next five years. Curiosity remains valuable, but investment should be intentional.

Her focus habits are equally concrete. Putting on large headphones signals deep work, even without audio. Cafe noise or lyric-free music can create a useful background. Setting a focus status and muting Slack protects a defined block. A visible list of two or three outcomes keeps the day manageable.

Tracy also reframed being a non-native English speaker as a reason to ask about unfamiliar acronyms, words, and phrases. Those questions often produce more information for everyone. Listen to Episode 38 for a grounded discussion of research, accessibility, focus, and the value of asking for clarity.