Blog Posts:

5 Things I Learned About Leadership from the Death & Rebirth of Microsoft by Dare Obasanjo

https://dareobasanjo.medium.com/5-things-i-learned-about-leadership-from-the-death-rebirth-of-microsoft-3eaf42567061

How much influence does a leader really have? A TON, especially over the culture of a workplace, which impacts everything that comes out of it. In this post, Obasanjo talks about what Microsoft’s Lost Decade was like from the inside, and what it was like after. An illuminating read.

Don’t make “data-driven product decisions”—build a data-driven semantic environment by Pavel Samsonov

https://uxdesign.cc/dont-make-data-driven-product-decisions-build-a-data-driven-semantic-environment-3220d177b73f

A fantastic look at why it can feel like you’re speaking past coworkers when presenting data insights. Samsonov talks about how companies develop collective mental models, and how no amount of data-points can hope to dislodge these assumptions. To change people’s minds, you’ll need to change the semantic environment of your organization.

“When you over-rule designers’ judgment about users’ needs, you are telling them to spend less energy solving problems and more energy selling you on solutions.” –Jonathan Korman

Podcast:

Rosenfeld Review Podcast

https://rosenfeldmedia.com/podcasts

Influential industry publisher Lou Rosenfeld hosts a variety of guests on topics of import to UX and Product Design. Recent episodes have offered interesting perspectives on both working with AI and working on AI. This show is a treasure trove of names and concepts of import in our field.

Book:

The Art of Explanation: How to Communicate with Clarity and Confidence by Ros Atkins

https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-art-of-explanation-how-to-communicate-with-clarity-and-confidence-ros-atkins/21172586?ean=9781472298416

Clear communication is essential to rallying your team, persuading your boss, and having impact in your role. BBC journalist Ros Atkins shares what’s he’s learned about effective messaging.

In Pop Culture:

Controversy around Crush! Apple’s iPad Pro Commercial

It turns out human being have a deep emotional connection to the physical world and don’t enjoy seeing objects that signify their culture being obliterated by a hydraulic press. Why is that sentiment perpetually surprising to tech people?

This ad was great in a lot of ways, and while its easy to see the elegance of the visual message (“You can do all these things with our tidy, clean, ultra-thin device!”,) and there is value to controversy in advertising (when was the last time anyone cared about an Apple ad?,) the general reaction to its release highlights how the insider nature of the industry leads to big, faulty assumptions. Early Aughts Apple was able to capitalize on the promise of “culture in your pocket”; but now? The optimism is gone, and a reckoning with how absolutely under attack non-tech people feel about the role technology plays in their lives is in order.

Have you read, watched, or listened to something really great and UX-y lately? We’d love to share it!

It’s still true: understanding your users makes you a better designer, better designers make better products, and better products result in bigger companies (among other things).

When you work with printmaking ink, or oil paint, you must learn to work with solvents. Solvents are the eraser mechanism for oil-based media, just as water is for water-based media. To control a mark, you need to be able to remove it. Creation is entwined with destruction.

I’ve been thinking about solvents and materiality in general, probably because I’ve been spending much more time glued to a screen. This is something I don’t think people working in tech really understand on a gut level: no one else has the relationship to computers that we do. Even people who are working with computers all day are not so immersed in them the way we have to be. They don’t see computers as a medium they’re working through. For most people (Yes, most. Yes, still.), a computer is more like an expensive plate their work is trapped inside, and they are a hostage negotiator.

It matters because I suspect this disconnect between designers’ assumptions and user sentiment around their relationship to computers is part of the puzzle of why many in the UX field feel (according posts I’ve come across in the last 6 months) they aren’t making a good business case for the role true user research plays in creating a better product. UX’ers believe our unique blend of research and design ultimately contributes perhaps the most value of any department in a tech company to that company, so this ought to be a pretty easy case to make. How have we lost the faith?

Let me ask a different question: when was the last time you observed someone using your product IRL?

If you are responsible for the design of a product and you’re relying exclusively on a contrived series of tasks that you dreamed up with no meaningful pushback from your team, and loaded into a website that lets you test small pieces of your designs anonymously and asynchronously to be your only window into how your product is being used, then you may well be de-risking some small element of the design of a product. And you could probably think critically about this information and spin it up into a compelling case that if you had gone with the initial, untested version, usage would have been impacted by X, and over the last quarter the combined impact from not testing would have likely resulted in a decrease of Y & Z, etc.

(Side note: If you don’t have friends in your marketing department, make some. Marketing is a very mature field and they have all sorts of battle-tested ways to justify creative decisions in a corporate space. Messaging is a collaborative process, a two-way street. When I hear people complain about the “design maturity” of a company, I can’t help but wonder how much of our message is lost on leadership due to the fact that the UX field still has some growing up to do.)

Regardless of strides towards better internal marketing of UX, however, you’re never going to have the real impact that truly good design can have by focusing your efforts on hedging your bets and checking a box. You don’t get credit for innovating if you’re not innovating. To put it bluntly: maybe we can’t make the case for real UX research because we haven’t been doing real UX research.

Your customers are not going to love a product they are actively erasing with their behavior. “Good enough” for people who live and breathe computers (you) and those who managed to find a user testing site on their own and voluntarily opt in to participation in such tests (your participants) is not going to tell you anything even remotely meaningful about what will be good enough for “most people” (your actual users). You might be shocked how many of your existing customers are “most people.” And even more shocked how many more customers you could reel in if you were actually designing a product for them.

It’s a scary time to think expansively in a field that is feeling the squeeze. But here’s a secret: it’s never going to feel safe or easy to rethink something. It will only make sense to take the risk of trying something new when you start to recognize that you can’t afford to keep doing what you’ve been doing once it’s stopped working. Don’t stare down that black hole. Instead, get curious about your customers. Like, your career depends on it curious. How are people really using what you’re making? What do they really think of it? What little hacks have they come up with, what do they complain to their colleagues about?

How can you find this information in an organization that wants you to keep your head down as close to your screen as you can physically get it? Customer service is a great place to start. Ask if you can see call logs, or summaries of meetings. Ask if anyone in the department would be willing to hop on a call with you so you can pick their brain. Build relationships with actual coworkers in this space and make these calls a regular check in.

Take a deep dive into the reviews of your product on an App Store or G2. You’ll have to sift through lots of unhelpful feedback, and correct for the unfortunate tone internet communication has coalesced into, but there are kernels of real insights sitting there like free flecks of gold in a stream.

If CS or Sales does customer visits, ask if you can join. See if you can set a time to observe actual users using your product. Prioritize this. I know it’s uncomfortable, but so is getting laid off. Find a customer company that’s geographically near your own home and see if you can’t set up a visit there. See if you can’t buy them lunch. If they’re all working in-person, they will likely be thrilled to see a visitor with donuts and gladly let you watch them work in exchange.

If you secure such a visit, don’t put too much pressure on yourself to have that aha moment, especially if you haven’t done a lot of this kind of work before. Being a physical person with strangers is more uncomfortable for some people than others. Give yourself permission to be uncomfortable, but do it anyway. This is the first of many such meetings you’ll have if you do your job right.

It helps to stop worrying about yourself and start worrying about the customer: are they comfortable? Is this how and where they usually use your product? Do they mind if you take notes? Personally, I prefer not recording video in-person. People who aren’t on Zoom all day are understandably self-conscious when a camera is pointed at them. They’re doing you a favor, do what you can to put them at ease. Think of it as an exercise in being present, and just try to take in the gestalt of the thing. Aha moments will come later, on the drive home, or in a month when you’re debating button styles. Learn to shift your focus from creating a replicable process (science) to honing your skills of observation (art).

If you really cannot find a way to scare up any actual customers, dust off that resume (thinking you’re going to be able to ride things out with a company that is completely disconnected from their customer base is a bad long-term plan). But then also consider just going to any public place (a library is a great option, but even coffee shops where people brought their own device and should therefore theoretically be comfortable with it will work) to people-watch for an hour. Set your timer, don’t let yourself off the hook early. Watch people use these things we are designing out in the wild.

The designer Naoto Fukasawa said “Design dissolves in behavior.” I came across this quote in Fabricio Teixeira’s Lessons of Design post on Medium. Destruction makes space for something new, absence draws the eye to presence.

We aren’t going to change the world if we play it safe and hide behind a screen. We can’t fix something we won’t acknowledge is broken. If we keep designing for ourselves, then businesses are right to assume we have no impact on their bottom line. Maybe for a while it got comfortable to just focus on the little details of your own tasks, on turn-around time, on everything but zooming out to consider your real impact.

Maybe it’s okay to get a little uncomfortable, and to use that discomfort to refocus on empathizing with users’ discomfort. Because, truly, did you become a designer focused on the experience of users simply to make yourself more comfortable?

Further Reading

• Hypothesis-Based Approaches by Debbie Levitt in R before D
  • On starting with a problem, not a solution.
• No, AI User Research Isn’t “Better Than Nothing,” It’s A Lot Worse by Pavel Samsonov in UX Collective
  • Why cutting corners on research is a sure path to commodification, a.k.a. devaluation, of your product.
• Designers, We Have A “Figmaism” Problem by Artiom Dashinsky in Prototypr
  • Tools are great! But we need to be talking about and prioritizing strategy, leadership, making connections, and advocacy.

UX Akron is looking for more thought leaders to guest author blog posts. Interested in sharing your perspective? Reach out!

Shannon Kelly is a senior UX strategist at OverDrive in Cleveland, OH.

As a user experience professional, you have many skills, methodologies, and tools at your disposal. With so many methods available, learning them all can be overwhelming (like those listed in Universal Methods of Design: 100 Ways to Research Complex Problems, Develop Innovative Ideas, and Design Effective Solutions by Bella Martin and Bruce Hanington.) 

But when standing out amongst your peers in an ever-fluctuating job market, sometimes you need to know more than traditional UX methodologies to put you ahead. You may need (and have attained) extra experience or skills to differentiate yourself from competitors for specific industries or positions. Let me preface this by saying you should NOT be a jack-of-all-trades and apply for jobs with multiple roles rolled into one. Instead, gaining some basic understanding of a different skill set makes you more marketable to hiring managers because it shows you can communicate effectively and work collaboratively. 

Here are three skills recommendations I believe can make you more marketable as a UX professional: 

1. Analytics

Traditional UX methods (User interviews and usability testing) are revered as providing qualitative data findings. As a researcher, you synthesize the information from these studies and make recommendations based on results. These methods are the holy grail of discovery and the primary methods for finding the “why” behind user behaviors. Due to testing budget and time constraints, limited sample sizes may not always provide a sense of urgency among stakeholders, and as the saying goes, “There is a big difference between ‘what people do’ versus ‘what people say.’” 

Analytics data can help support (not replace) traditional research and provide (often massive amounts of) quantitative usage data. Having a skillset like Google Analytics (GA) in your toolbelt is one of the most undervalued skills a researcher can have. GA lets you quickly gather historical user behavior on a website or application and find out what areas your users are interested in, what they’re trying to do, and what areas are problematic. 

Some key areas of analytics to learn:

• Segmenting Traffic Channels and User flows
• Tracking user retention and falloff (bounce and exit rates)
• Event and conversion goal tracking

By pairing qualitative and quantitative data, you can effectively convey a greater sense of urgency to decision-makers.

2. Conversion Rate Optimization

One of the skills I’ve learned over the years that helped prime my career in UX was Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). CRO is increasing the likelihood that website or application visitors will accomplish a desired action. A conversion can be anything actionable & measurable and is tied to a business goal. Some examples of conversions include adding an item to a cart, making a purchase, or filling out a form to download a PDF. The conversion rate is calculated by taking the number of conversions and dividing that by the number of sessions. For example, if you had 25 conversions from 100 sessions, your conversion rate would be 25%, or 25 ÷ 100 x 100 = 25%.

Often, the goal isn’t just to increase conversions but to increase the rate at which people convert. If marketing sends enormous amounts of traffic to a website, but users aren’t converting, the answer isn’t more traffic. The goal is to make incremental and measurable changes that help improve how users use the site and get them toward a conversion goal. 

From personal experience, becoming a CRO specialist allowed me to learn Google Analytics, heat-mapping, and A/B testing platforms and become more familiar with digital marketing practices. It also taught me to tie design updates to quantifiable improvement metrics, sell ideas to stakeholders, and set goals for project work. When I had measurable project improvements, it helped me sell myself come annual review time and eventually changed the trajectory of my professional career in design. 

3. Previous Transferable Skills

Is there anything you did in a previous job (anything at all) that you gained experience in and qualifies you for the position you’re going for? Did you work in restaurants or another customer-facing service job? What about customer support? Perhaps you’re a graphic designer who wants a change. Maybe you’re a writer, a psych major, a former medical professional, or military personnel. Either way, whatever experience you have, some skills you attained are likely transferable to the UX field. 

For example, a former restaurant cook who decided to make a career change into development. While learning to code in school, he worked as a software consultant (or, dare I say, researcher?) and talked to restaurants to help improve their point-of-sale (POS) systems for order fulfillment. Thanks to his restaurant experience, he could communicate effectively with his restaurant employees, understood their needs and feedback, and conveyed that information to the developers to enhance the POS platform.

Especially if you’re transferring to a UX career, think about all the things at your former position(s) that you’ve learned, gained skills in, or even the processes you thought could be improved. Maybe you were a nurse and found the internal patient portals frustrating – what would you have fixed? Perhaps you traveled the world through the military and studied different cultures – sounds a little like ethnographic research. Whatever you’ve done, something can be transferable. 

It is essential to be transparent about your unique experiences and how they distinguish you from other applicants in the industry. Highlight these relevant skills in your resume, portfolio, cover letters, and interviews. Promote yourself and your expertise – it’s not just about your UX knowledge but also your ability to apply past experiences effectively.

Our guest authors are carefully selected to spotlight thought leaders in Ohio’s UX community. Interested in sharing some insights? Or would like to hear from a local UX superstar? Reach out to uxakronteam@gmail.com to pitch us post ideas and author suggestions.

Pearl Greene, Senior UX Designer at Sherwin Williams

Tell us a little about yourself! What do you enjoy outside of work?

 I’m Pearl Greene, a senior user experience designer at Sherwin Williams, originally from Ghana, and now proud to call Akron, Ohio my home.

Beyond the office, I cherish moments spent with my husband, friends, and in-laws, while also staying closely connected with my family in Ghana through frequent FaceTime sessions. I’m enthusiastically diving into disc golf, enjoying the company of my beloved cats, Alfie and Moose, nurturing my garden, and rekindling my passion for reading novels. 

Exploring the globe with my husband and savoring new culinary experiences ranks high on my list of favorite pastimes.

Tell us about your path to becoming an UX Designer. How did you end up in this role?

My journey began when Ashesi University introduced robotics to my high school, diverting me from a medical career into the world of computers. Pursuing a computer science degree at Ghana’s sole liberal arts institution expanded my horizons, nurturing my interest in entrepreneurship and design. I developed a passion for problem-solving, mentoring numerous high school students in design thinking.

In my final year, I naturally gravitated towards human-computer interaction, realizing my forte in software engineering was identifying problems, redesigning, and documenting solutions. Following graduation, I worked as a user experience designer in Accra, bridging the tech gap for small-scale entrepreneurs.

Over four years, I wore various hats, including UI development and product management, culminating in my role as Head of Product before relocating to the United States. A UX Akron meet and greet facilitated my introduction to the American job market, where I worked as a user experience designer for Landi Industries.  

Subsequently, I joined Sherwin Williams in the Store Operations group, focused on modernizing their systems and facilitating the transition from outdated technology to user-friendly solutions.

What’s your favorite part of your workday or week?

The highlight of my workday is the exhilarating collaboration with my exceptional team, where we embark on crafting revolutionary user experiences. At Sherwin Williams, I’ve had the privilege of working alongside a team I genuinely adore. They’ve not only fostered my professional growth but also accelerated it, propelling me to new heights in record time.

Tell us about Ghana! What do you miss most?

What I miss most about Ghana? Well, it boils down to the three Fs: Family, Food, and Friends. Particularly, I yearn for my mother’s cooking and her doting care. While Asian and Mexican cuisine have helped fill that void to some extent, I’ve even stumbled upon Ghanaian-inspired dishes in unexpected places!

Improving my own cooking skills has provided quick fixes when nostalgia strikes. Through this journey, I’ve come to realize that, despite our diverse cultures, we all share a common human experience. It’s a reminder that we’re more alike than different, transcending accents and appearances to appreciate our shared humanity.

Do you use anything in your work now that you learned in school or in previous roles that surprises you, that you thought you’d never use now?

Surprisingly, my education, both in college and from previous roles, continues to astound me with its relevance in my day-to-day work. From entrepreneurial insights to social theory, human-computer interaction, and programming skills, I find myself drawing upon a rich reservoir of knowledge.

In Ghana, I crafted inventory and point-of-sale systems tailored for the local market, and it’s intriguing how these experiences still resonate here. Dealing with challenges like low internet access, prioritizing accessibility, and navigating the unpredictable timelines of product development, even with large teams, has given me a unique perspective that fosters empathy with leadership and their requests.

Moreover, my entrepreneurship classes have ingrained the significance of harmonizing user needs with business objectives to ensure efficiency and profitability. I must extend a heartfelt shoutout to my college for equipping me with these invaluable tools for navigating the professional world.

If you could give yourself 10 years ago advice from yourself today, what would it be?

It’s all gonna work out. Breathe! You don’t need to be first in class to make it in life 

Do you know a stellar UX, UI, Product, or Software Designer or Researcher who has joined the field in the last five years that we should feature? Let us know!

Zoë Wrisley, UXer and Community Advocate

Tell us a little about yourself! What do you enjoy outside of work?

I’m Zoë Wrisley, I love animals, music, and creativity; and I like to travel and see new places. I most recently visited Toronto for the first time to see a Beyonce concert with my friends. It was a dream of a lifetime experience for me, and the city is huge! This summer I’m growing a garden of fruits and vegetables, my first time trying to grow corn, okra, and watermelon- wish us luck!  

Tell us about your path to becoming a User Experience Designer (or whatever title or label you’re comfortable with.) How did you end up in this field? 

While pursuing my undergraduate degree with a focus on political science, I had an internship that introduced me to the tech side of a government relations software company.  Following the internship, I joined the IT department as a permanent employee and graduated from Kent State.  

Having graduated in May of 2020, I felt swept into the uncertainty of the 2020 pandemic. I liked the work I was doing and enjoyed learning more about Information Tech and how to support web applications. Upon hearing about Kent State’s User Experience Design program, it seemed like a perfect fit considering my career path, and to be able to learn in a 100% online setting.  

I call myself a UXer (I sort of made it up) because I have applied my UX knowledge, research strategy, and the design process in many different settings. After graduating from the program, I wanted to become a UX researcher, that being my strongest interest (but titles are not as important as vision and strategy within the work.) I worked on projects in a corporate setting with Fortune 500 clients to improve online services, and conducted research for designing technology and advocating for the needs of public schools and their supporting orgs. I recently took an entrepreneurial route with the goal of launching a desirable-to-user, problem-solving application. 

What’s your favorite part of your workday, week, or the work you’re doing?  

My favorite part about doing the work I do is having the power to be able to advocate for others and make a real difference in their lives; specifically, to be able to make their experiences easier.  

Easier can mean many different things depending on the values of the user; such as clearer, faster, safer, or simply more pleasant. The world we live and operate in is becoming more and more reliant on digital processes that can be enhanced through the focus of UX practices. Everyone deserves to be heard and accommodated so they can achieve the same outcomes as other users. In UX this can be shown by encompassing user values, providing accessibility features, and incorporating guidance for success within the design of websites and applications. 

I am currently working on a project to support our public schools’ work with organizations that seek to improve local education. There are many voices to hear from and accommodate when designing a digital process like this one. I must listen to all user parties to collect their concerns and pain points, then work to design a system and journey that is feasible and can support their tasks in an agreeable way- so the user will want to use it. Even though this field pertains to digital experiences, the ideas and strategies can overlap with other practices of design and advocacy. 

What was getting an MS in User Experience like? What areas do you wish you had learned more about?  

I had a great time during the MS program at Kent State University. The online aspect not only made it more convenient to complete my projects and classes, but it concurrently reminded me of the importance of seamless digital experiences and inspired me to think of supportive designs. We had the opportunity to work in groups as a team, and even simulate work environments with assignments where we had to communicate with and present to ‘stakeholders,’ (our professor.) This program prepared me for vast opportunities, or to be what we call a UX unicorn & do it all! 

I like that the staff and faculty encouraged us to pursue areas of UX that we felt most passionate about. The variety of classes offered us the chance to go deeper into different routes, for instance design, research, accessibility, and more. The culminating requirement could have been a project or portfolio, really putting everything we learned and worked on into practice before graduating. The one thing I wish we could have learned is popularly used UX software and practicing with it. I feel that could give us more experience essential for landing a User Experience role post-grad. 

Do you use anything you learned for your undergraduate degrees in International Relations,  Political Science, and French that surprises you?  

Surprisingly, there are similarities and crossovers in ideas and problem-solving techniques found throughout my studies. While the approaches to learning in each program were very different, I find that for me, user research and advocacy is comparable to the idea of diplomacy, a role found in the field of International Relations. UX is sort of like the middleman between users and developers, such as a diplomat would be the communicator/advocate between foreign parties.  

Another subject that piqued my interest in undergrad was foreign language and translation studies. The use of language is very prominent in UX and ultimately is what guides users to have a successful journey within a digital process or product. We must ensure that any user can use the platform successfully, so research should be conducted to support many languages and ensure that translations are accurate, intuitive, and equal when guiding users through a platform.  

In the UX design and research process, it is vital that research participants are diverse to sufficiently discover the needs and preferences of all potential users and not overlook groups. In my future studies, I would like to look more into how we can incorporate practices of equity and inclusion to promote social justice when designing technologies and organization developments. 

If you could give yourself 10 years ago advice from yourself today, what would it be? 

People tend to think that they are not successful until they reach their goal, or get their dream job, etc. I’ve learned that you can still be very successful while working towards your goal. Even though it may not be accomplished yet, or you have not seen your dream come to fruition, every day is an opportunity to take one step closer to that dream, and in that alone there is success. I have realized that I will consistently be working towards a new goal, so success has become a redefined term to me. As long as I can stay true to myself, take advantage of good opportunities, and be focused on what matters, I will be able to keep climbing to redefined heights of success.  

I am currently pursuing a Doctorate degree in the field of Interprofessional Leadership with a concentration in Educational Technology while simultaneously working on my own UX projects. Although I do not currently have a UX title, the MS program and professional work I have done is supporting my continuing education, and providing crucial components for my research and understanding, as well as the opportunity for real world application in my experiences careerwise. 

I would like to tell my past self to not lose hope due to not achieving the ‘role’ that I set out to become. I understand that everything I am learning will be useful for my journey, even if I don’t get to practice it right away or in the anticipated capacity. I am and have been accumulating skills and knowledge that will support my future roles. I have faith that as I start to step into new forms of leadership and more opportunities for growth come my way, everything I have practiced and learned will come out to support my goal of improving lives and add to my own personal growth. 

Do you know a stellar UX, UI, Product, or Software Designer or Researcher who has joined the field in the last five years that we should feature? Let us know!

Podcasts:

24 Minutes of UX

This is the companion podcast from the organizers of 24 Hours of UX. (UX Akron recently participated in the 2023 24 Hours of UX on May 3rd.) While recorded videos are still in the works for the event, have a listen to the podcast series.

https://24minutesofux.buzzsprout.com/1344814

The YouX Podcast

Hosts Chris and Mustafa share their unique global insights on UX design.

https://sites.libsyn.com/467499

The Interface

A monthly group chat for everything happening in content design and UX writing.

https://uxcontent.com/the-interface-podcast/

  Blog Post:

This love letter to design from a mid-career product designer is full of great thoughts and woven through with quotes from additional designers who inspired Fabricio.

Lessons of Design by Fabricio Teixeria, UX Collective

https://uxdesign.cc/lessons-of-design-75cc0731534

Case Studies:

Dan and Louis-Xavier’s Case Studies are masterclasses in presenting UX ideas. Their recent two-part study of Bing’s integration of ChatGPT is spot-on.

Growth.design Case Studies – 2 Part Bing AI Audit

https://growth.design/case-studies/new-bing-ai-ep1

https://growth.design/case-studies/new-bing-ai-ep2

Comedy Special:

John Early’s Now More Than Ever comedy special (streaming on HBO) features a joke about how the tone of the text on app permissions buttons hints strongly at what your phone wants you to do. The joke starts at 30:10 and ends at 34:45.

Have you read, watched, or listened to something really great and UX-y lately? We’d love to share it!