LINE Careers

About work

Q Please give us an introduction of your duties and responsibilities.

I am responsible for the LINE New Design project as a part of the LINE Design System Team under the Product Design. We are the team that establishes LINE’s design standards and makes design guides for designers and developers. Recently, we led the LINE New Design project, completely revamping the messenger app's design for the first time since it launched 10 years ago. We united the UI components to set up a basis for the new design style to be applied with consistency and unity. Before I took on this role, I was in charge of designing a variety of features within the messenger app. I worked on designing services like LINE Square and LINE Call, and was also responsible for enhancing the Home tab (Friends list), which is the face of the messenger, and restructuring how the contents are arranged.

Q Could you please explain a little more about LINE New Design project?

As the LINE messenger app had been through many updates over the past decade, adding a variety of services along the way, we had slowly lost the overall unity of the app. As a result, we needed to revise the design, to give LINE a greater sense of unity and better define the visual rules it uses. Unlike regular projects, this overhaul was focused mostly on the design, so the design group proposed it and served as the main planners. It was not easy to fulfill the roles of designer and planner at the same time. There were countless steps involved and so many people to convince, and I remember worrying whether I’d ever get this project done. To get it all done, we first concentrated on our role as designers. Our main goal was to enable users to focus more on the contents, with a clean, tidy screen, so we made the bold choice to change the header to white. We also organized our design direction as the designers went through a series of drafts to test the overall look & feel and the UX, going through several iterations. Once we decided on the main direction, we applied white headers to the major tabs of the messenger app, including the Home tab, Talk tab, Timeline, News (or Today in some regions) and Wallet services, and we proceeded to modify the overall UI design accordingly. While working on the design, we also shared our progress with the developers and other designers so we could have a guide everyone could use. It was particularly important for the design outputs to be applicable in the actual environment after development was done, so we carried out some intense discussions with the developers to adjust the LINE messenger. Finally, after months of work, we were able to launch that new look for the LINE messenger. Fortunately, we received a lot of positive feedback, with many people saying that the old, dark navy headers had felt a bit heavy and out-of-date, whereas the new, white headers felt fresh. There’s nothing as satisfying as hearing great reviews like that.

Q Is there anything different about working for a company with such a global user base?

When designing the UI, we have to keep in mind the variations from one language to another. For Japanese or Chinese, characters with many strokes are not clearly legible once they become bold or smaller in size. Russian, on the other hand, has many words that are longer than you think, so more often than not the text get wrapped unexpectedly. Our core design is made based on English, but for languages with special characteristics, we make sure to test them thoroughly. In addition, I remember that we once had to change the overall colors of the functions used globally after receiving feedback that gray cannot be used in certain places due to cultural differences. There are also matters to be considered when communicating with colleagues overseas from various countries. I mainly communicate with them on the LINE messenger or Slack but there are times when it is difficult to deliver the subtle nuances, so I take a lot of time thinking about whether I am accurately expressing my intentions. I try to avoid a situation where poor communications lead to having to repeat conversations two or three times.

Experiences of failure and growth

Q Please give us an example of a failure you’ve encountered.

It was not really a failure but I did have a sad experience where a project was suspended or canceled. I think it was my second year and there was a design project that I had put my heart and soul into. Unfortunately, I learned towards the very end of the development that the project was canceled due to business reasons. The lead and senior designers were probably dejected as well but they comforted me by saying that these things can happen. At the time, I felt I was going to be fine but, as I sat down at my desk, I suddenly realized I had nothing to do, which made me feel great emptiness. I think I was deflated for about a week. However, thanks to that experience, I realized that a project can be scrapped at any time for any number of reasons and that I shouldn’t grieve too much over it. I also learned how to break out of a slump on my own.

Q Please tell us about any experience in which you felt you are growing.

I think my vision has expanded for sure as I’ve accumulated experience. I have become capable of getting absorbed into a project quickly regardless of what I’ve been given, and I’m good at proposing different ideas no matter how rough they may be. I have also learned to draw the UI according to the UX that I have in my mind even if we don’t have any detailed plans in place. Instead of producing pretty designs, I have learned how to utilize my time efficiently, which helps when I have a task that needs to proceed quickly.

Thoughts on competence

Q What kind of competencies do you think you need to perform your work well?

I think the most important thing is to follow trends closely. I constantly examine services that I believe are the best when it comes to UI visual or UX elements, and strive to make them my own. In the past, our job description was limited to UI design, but nowadays we call it product design. That is why I think it is necessary for us to experience all sorts of different trends to learn an UX-oriented mindset and to study and examine usability more in-depth. The LINE STYLE item I try to follow the most is the “Perfect Details: Good is never good enough.” In the design world, small differences may be extremely important, even if they seem trivial and are difficult to apply. Designing a feature that a user wants and knowing where it should be located so the user can access it without thinking about it is critical. So, I spend a lot of time thinking about putting features in their right place and designing them not to be easy to use without troubling our users.

Special experiences at LINE

Q Is there any benefit or culture that you think is particularly notable?

I attended a Facebook conference in 2019 on a company-funded business trip. I was surprised that the company has a system for sending employees to international conferences, but I was quite happy to see LINE supports the growth of its own designers. To make the most out of the trip, I made of point of learning all I could at the conference, going to all sorts of events. It really boosted my confidence and gave me a chance to broaden my perspective as a designer. Another part of LINE that I think is notable is our work-from-home system, when has been important in the face of COVID-19. I talked a lot about it with my friends and they are quite envious of me. For most of my friends who work for other companies, they only get a couple of weeks of work-from-home or they have to take turns using it. But, at LINE, most of us are working from home most of the time. Furthermore, rather than implementing the work-at-home system reluctantly, LINE actively recommends it and provides guides to help everyone be as productive as possible while working from home.

Wrap-up