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Thursday Jun 15, 2023
Thursday Jun 15, 2023
In this episode of UX Banter, we are joined by Mr. David Landa, Partner, and Executive Design Director at Free Association. With a passion for design, he helps brands create value through innovative product design, brand strategy, and team leadership. Specializing in Innovation, Brand Strategy, Prototyping, Storytelling, and UX/UI Evolution, David is an expert in navigating complex design and innovation challenges.
Discussion points -
How did you come into this profession, and what made you what you're doing today? 1:43
Why did you name the company ‘Free Association’? 7:43
How was your experience working with Google Maps & Apple Maps? 10:00
What sort of work went into the smart city project of Toyota that you are associated with? Share with us your experience.
How do you differentiate between working for a bigger organization's prototyping, or North star vision versus any North Star development for any startup?
What importance should young entrepreneurs give to the UX for designing the North star? 18:41
Rapid Fire Questions 20:32
What role does psychology play in defining the initial product or prototype that you're working on?
Intuition versus relevance, how does that play and fit into the bigger picture? 28:29
How do you connect the entire narrative - lead designs to intuition to brand personality, and then product design? 30:49
What are your thoughts on generative AI? 33:33
What do you think about the anti-AI voices? 36:54
What advice would you give to somebody who is just starting their career? 38:58
Show notes
I learned through making stuff. And it's always really been the way of just putting myself into new environments, new challenges, and trying to figure it out.
We started to learn what it was about design that we loved, and how to follow that path. And started to move up from doing websites and advertising, moving into branding, starting to get into UX, and that's when it started trending as a real thing.
Another part that's exciting about Toyota is they think of mobility, as movement as in moving hearts and minds. So that's always been a fun part of Toyota.
The Woven City is a living laboratory that they're building on the foothills of Mount Fuji to accelerate automated technologies and technologies connected to this idea of being a mobility company, by having people live work, and play in the city, they can have these different technologies out in a very connected way.
The kind of experience that we're trying to create, and understand that technology is really in service of people or are the people in service of technology?
Picking a horizon is important, as knowing what you're shooting for and how far out. The reason you do North Star vision is to set the idea or the concept for where you're trying to go for right the moonshot.
Society has to be ready for innovations for them to take off and for people to adopt them. Culturally, it has to make sense.
I try to understand a brand and a company through an archetype. There is a discipline called archetypal branding, which is used more in marketing and branding, I tend actually to bring it over into product design.
Believe in your ideas for a little bit, just give them oxygen and let them go. Even bad ideas, good ideas, whatever. Get it out there and see where they take you.
Generative AI is great at sketching business plans and giving you a roadmap to do things and telling you where to research. But I still think humans need to make sense of it, and humans need to put spirit into it.
Do stuff that brings value to the world and know that it'll come back X fold.
Links -
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidlanda/
Company website: https://www.freeassociation.com/
Thursday Jun 08, 2023
Thursday Jun 08, 2023
We are excited to have Doug Appleton, the Chief Creative Director at Perception, and an Emmy award nominee with us. He has shown his exceptional skills as the lead animator for the opening sequences of blockbuster movies like Avengers Age of Ultron and Black Panther Wakanda Forever. Doug is an expert in motion graphics design, user experience, and visual effects with over 13 years of experience in the field.
Discussion points -
Can you guide us on your amazing journey, and where it started? And how did you get where you are right now? 1:22
What made you decide that this is the career path you wanted to take?
Let's talk about your Emmy nomination. How did that come to be? When did you learn that you were nominated in that category? How did it feel? 7:56
Which one of those dissecting websites is your favorite or which channel do you follow? 13:47
Which project do you think that you worked on, which was way too exciting that you couldn't keep calm? 13:47
Rapid Fire 20:56
Do you think that the tech that you have designed there is inside of the universe of Marvel? When you design those sorts of UIs, what kind of briefs do you guys get? 18:05
How do you utilize AI tools and incorporate augmented reality (AR) in sequence programming for Marvel's visual effects to enhance the overall visual storytelling in their cinematic universe? How are you connecting the dots? 27:39
How do you make sure that the narrative remains consistent about tech throughout the movie? 32:21
How does one think about sci-fi? 34:59
How did the time-travel visualization in Avengers come to be? Can you share that story? 36:21
Any advice that you would like to give to people who are starting out and want to make a name in this domain? 41:36
Show notes-
Originally, I wanted to make cartoons, I grew up watching 90s Nickelodeon. And that to me was the pinnacle of what I wanted to do.
So the nomination was for our title sequence for Wanda Vision. And I think that category is an outstanding main title design. This was a personal one for me, because Wanda Vision was kind of our first project that we had done during the pandemic, beginning to end pitched, finalized, and worked on everything remotely at home.
Every project has to just be the next project, right? Every project can't be the biggest thing we've ever done in the world, or else that pressure is just going to crush you.
Spider-man is my favorite superhero in the world. He's the greatest no questions asked. We had the opportunity in Captain America Civil War to design a Spider-Man spider signal at the end of the movie. It's like a five-second shot. In the grand scheme of this like two and a half hour movie, it's like a nothing shot. But to me, that was one of the most exciting things in the world.
The reason why, these studios come to us is that we have that real-world experience building, and designing this technology that works and means something.
I think AR definitely has the potential to change the way we interact with the world. It could go positive, it could go negative, I think it depends on how people utilize it.
It's a really cool feeling to know that some of the stuff that we're doing can make its way into the real world.
In filmmaking, it's about getting the story across as quickly as possible to the audience.
We are always trying to see how the technology that we design is not just a pretty thing to look at but influences the story and helps forward the narrative in some way.
What you see in the final movie, we had done really rough tests and diagrams, essentially napkin sketches of this stuff. And that gets handed off to digital domain guys who put it into the beautiful look you see in the film.
The people that we look for, bring that extra layer to their designs.
Only show the work that you want to be doing. If you don't want to do something, then, it might hurt to put all that experience to the side. But focus on building a portfolio of work that you want to be doing and show that work.
Links -
Dough’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dougappleton/
Dough’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/Dougasaurus
Company website: https://www.experienceperception.com/
#uxbanter #designpodcast #marvelanimationmagic
Wednesday Nov 09, 2022
Wednesday Nov 09, 2022
S2 Ep. 7 - Andy Markov - Creating Future of Product Design
Introduction
Andy Markov is the CEO of Within Inc. and a veteran UX executive leader with nearly 30 years of professional experience. Nurturing brands like Ferrari, Citibank, Sony, and L'oreal, Andy is an expert in information architecture and web business. A successful business strategist and angel investor, his heart lies in design thinking, and a lot of brands including NETGEAR and Mastercard have leveraged his insights on how to make their product more accessible, and more user-friendly.
Discussion Points
Do you think that brands do impact one's career trajectory or where they're headed? 02:29
One of the biggest products that Andy has worked on and you might have seen, is the PlayStation. So Andy, tell us more about it, It's such a popular product, what was the journey from a design point of view? 03:55
How much the bigger companies have played a role in pushing for a good UX? 07:48
Rapid fire. 11:08
If anybody is just starting out in their career, what your advice would be for them to watch out for? 15:33
What your advice would be about the design leadership side of things? 17:13
Show Notes
UX comes in naturally as product building organization. So that's the pitch we give to our customers, we help customers go to market faster. 06:45
The largest challenge of a design leader is to show the organization the ROI on design. 08:53
The trend I see is his innovative businesses and innovative startups are starting to compete on design, right and design spoke broadly not just to say software design, hardware design, or industrial design, but a lot of level of thinking, coming up with ideas. 09:42
Look out for great products, study those great products, see what you like about them and understand how the features are being built. 15:43
Designers, in specific, need to understand what developers have to consider work very closely with developers create those partnerships with engineers, and leverage also the engineers or technology pieces because a lot of that innovation does come in from the engineering side. 15:54
What is a phenomenal team, right? It's people you trust, people that have talents and people that understand the business, and people that understand the discipline. 17:30
And products themselves tend to provide that opportunity, especially in great products when you're building something you're passionate about and want to keep on building. But I think in turn it becomes our job as leaders to get people excited about those products. 18:39
The excitement is actually understanding your customer right and understanding what they need. 19:09
Contact
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andymarkov/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/andymark
Company website: https://within-inc.com/
#productdesign #ux #businessleadership #softwaredeveloper #webdevelopment #teammanagement
Wednesday Nov 02, 2022
Wednesday Nov 02, 2022
S2 Episode. 6 - Designing Solutions That Make a Difference - Steve Cleff
Introduction
Steve Cleff is a gifted artist eager to develop innovative solutions for end users. From financial futures and workplace connections to breast cancer, he manages cross-functional teams to create elegant and innovative digital solutions that raise the bar. The Senior Director of UX at Comfy, Steve is an accomplished designer and artist whose works have appeared as the posters for several films including Neil Gaiman's Dream Dangerously.
Discussion Points
How was your journey? What led you to this moment when you become the Senior Director of Design? 01:49
I was intrigued to learn that you have a condition called Synesthesia, how does it impact your life as a designer? 07:57
So talking about colleagues, the communication between colleagues, I think this is one of the core topics that you are quite interested in, you spoke at the conferences about it. So would you like to elaborate on that topic? 14:46
Rapid Fire 23:34
Communication overload is becoming a critical challenge for office productivity. How do you think your new app, Workplace Connect, resolves this issue and improves on the existing technology? 27:44
You have worked with Breastcancer.org and have received acclaim for the experience that was designed. What should a designer keep in mind while designing such purposeful solutions? 31:42
Being a designer, what is the advice that you would want to give to someone who’s just starting out in the field of UX & UI design? 37:32
Show Notes
User experience is something I can do forever, people will always need to interact with software. 05:21
I just hired the best in the world, so that I can apprentice with them. 06:18
I'll tell people when I'm training them when they're new to the industry, that you'll spend five minutes figuring out the answer to 55 and convincing everybody that you're right. 18:56
If you're thinking about the goals from a production perspective or a development perspective, you're thinking about the goals from the product’s KPI perspective, it will make the process go faster. 21:14
They said, if I'd had this site, I think I would have gotten different treatment than I got. And that's, in many ways, what it's all about just trying to improve someone's life. And, you know, the people who did have that website, after that, hopefully, had a higher level of comfort and confidence of what they needed to do. 34:33
If you organize some things, it doesn't need to be complex or expensive. To try and help people, you just need to guide them a little bit. And it will make a huge impact. 35:53
There's nothing more humbling than the first time you put something that you've designed. Especially even if you're completely well-versed in user experience heuristics, you put that design in front of someone. Within a couple of minutes, you are humbled and you are enlightened, and you are improved as a designer. 44:13
It's sometimes hard for people to win when they go to a company that's not regularly doing usability testing, it's hard for them to get buy-in until you get that first test. Once you do, you can demonstrate this is actually a faster process. 45:58
Contact
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevecleff/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cleff
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fluidbeauty/
Company: https://comfyapp.com/
Email: artByCleff@gmail.com
Portfolio: https://stevecleff.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fluidbeauty
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/fluidbeauty
#design #experience #productdesign #collaboration #workplace #humancentereddesign #uxpodcast
Wednesday Oct 19, 2022
Wednesday Oct 19, 2022
S2 Episode 5 - Shannon Kelly - Embracing the Unicorn Style for Better Product Designs
Introduction
Shannon Kelly is a famous UX Designer known to marry business needs, marketing targets, and user-focused goals together. Drawing inspiration from a number of data-driven approaches like analytics and conversion rate optimization, she has helped brands like Fathom, New way and UMC see new horizons of success. A committed volunteer for UXPA Cleveland Board and a consultant for Usborne Books and More, Shannon Kelly is the UX Digital Strategist at Overdrive.
Discussion Points
How is the journey that you've been on as a professional web designer to being a digital strategist? 01:07
What is your experience like engaging with the conference from the inside? 03:48
How has that inspired your work? Or change your career as a UX professional, while knowing that there is a lot of suffering in the world? 08:38
Rapid Fire. 13:04
You have won quite a few awards in your lifetime, how much inspiration that you get out of these recognitions? 32:02
What advice would you give to somebody just starting out in the journey of UX, and what should they do to stand out from the crowd and be hired? 34:43
Show Notes
Hey, do you want to learn about conversion rate optimization? And I was like, sure, like, what's this? And they're like, oh, yeah, you can use data to justify your design decisions, and also, how you learn to make recommendations and stuff like that. 02:18
The one thing that kind of helped me as a catalyst, from a designer to a UX professional is that gap where I learn how to use this data to not only help my clients but also make better recommendations for their users. 03:15
People say you shouldn't be a unicorn, but I'm a fan of being a unicorn because you get to know how things work throughout the whole process. 21:38
If we're at the table in the forefront, if we're planning, strategizing, and organizing things, we can make the process easier for everybody in the company. 24:07
It could be a really great thing if more companies had better, more mature UX practices in their companies. 23:47
The most important skill that you can have, as a UX person, in this industry is critical thinking. Don't take anything at face value, really think things through and be methodical, and always ask why why why why, whether it's why is this project coming to us? 35:23
Being a great team player on a good UX team, means you recognize how other people work and their styles and how they take feedback and how they receive feedback, and how they're giving it to you. 38:02
You just need to have patience and resilience. I think that's the hardest thing. I think a lot of people quit because they just can't handle the fact that people still don't get what UX is. 38:51
Contact
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannonmkelly
Company website: https://shannonkellyux.com/
Portfolio/ website: https://shannonkellyux.com/about/
Email: me@shannonkellyux.com
#designjob #datadrivendesign #designmentor #uxworkflow #userexperience #uxdesign #uxresearch #webdesignonline #userexperiencejourney
Wednesday Oct 12, 2022
Wednesday Oct 12, 2022
S2 Episode 4 - Kevin Tuskey - Prioritizing the User in UX
Introduction
Kevin Tuskey is an award-winning product designer with over 15 years of experience in creating clean and elegant user interfaces. Strategic thinking and problem-solving come naturally to him, making him one of the most promising design leaders in the world. Meet Kevin Tuskey, the Director of Design at SingleStone.
Discussion Points
What were those decisions to come into design? And how was your journey? 03:08
I see that there are a lot of changes that are happening, but how much do you think that energy goes into explaining to people what it is? 08:31
Rapid fire questions 17:31
How would you describe your leadership style? 27:02
Design, management, and problem-solving are interconnected. How do you employ the best-suited methods for solving the problem and navigating the challenges that come with it? 29:38
What is your advice to people who are just starting out? 44:17
Show Notes
The world defines UX differently based on who you're talking to. 07:11
If you think about what UX is, it is the letter U and the letter X. The letter X is not the first letter of the word experience. 09:22
As the leader of the design team, I'd like to have them kind of grow as fast as possible and expose them to opportunities and not pigeonhole them. 28:51
Creativity has two parts. It's like throwing a spear into the woods. The first step is to get you started with the spear into the woods. And the second step is to go find the sphere. 37:55
Some people think that's most of the work, most of the rare work by the way, but there's a whole lot of other work to deliver the vision that someone has explained. I think sometimes the people who emphasize one over the other are overlooking the importance of the other part. 38:16
So many of these foundational UI elements are really hard, by the way, very hard to make both beautiful and accessible and simple to build. Many of the frameworks that are household names, at least if you're a developer, are not terrifically accessible, there's a lot of blue. 41:23
We just call Sugar . And you can if you want to try it out, and we just listen to the origin story of how it actually works. 41:50
And we're looking for contributors because there are so many UI components that you kind of need in a sophisticated design system. We would love to have collaborators help us build those components. 43:14
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. 46:24
Contact
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevintuskey/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevintuskey
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kctuskey/
Company website: https://www.singlestoneconsulting.com/blog/author/ktuskey
Email : hello@kevintuskey.com
Portfolio/ website: https://www.kevintuskey.com/
#uiux #creativity #userexperience #uxdesign #uxresearch #userexperiencejourney #podcastfordevelopers #teammanagement #leadership #uxbseason2
Wednesday Oct 05, 2022
Wednesday Oct 05, 2022
S2 Episode 3 - Jessica Robison - Research is the Recipe for a Good Design
Introduction
Jessica Robison is the Product Design Leader at Tamr and is a pro at providing digital design solutions for data-driven enterprises. Her work in the retail and lifestyle sector nurtures her in-depth understanding of user preferences, thus making her a deft designer who is always ready for challenges. An advocate of civil rights and animal welfare, Jessica has raised the benchmark for domains like client management and data science.
Discussion Points
Which domain do you really think actually gave you the most satisfaction creativity-wise? 07:56
Rapid fire questions 13:59
So what sort of extra learnings were required? What the challenges have been so far for you? And how did you overcome those? 20:45
You are a mother of two beautiful children, and then how does it go that you balance your career with perfection, and then you have to make sure that everybody is in place and they're very young, right? 28:51
But then how does that actually is to use you as a professional? Do you think that you look at things differently now than before? 31:28
Any advice that you would like to give to a new person who is starting out in the field of design? 37:11
Show notes
Because if you can anticipate where they're coming from, what they need, and what kind of visual cues they might need. That's really kind of where the sweet spot of UX is, right? Like, that's what makes a good UX designer. 07:18
If you are really smart and scrappy about how you figure out what your tasks are, you know what people need. 9:45
You have to know your user, but you also have to know that maybe the way the user is doing something isn't because that was what was given to them. And that's not necessarily the best way for them to do that. 22:01
I think that sometimes the challenge is that we capture too much, or not that we capture too much data, but we show too much data. 24:07
I want the initial way someone interacts with data to be pretty basic, and then allow them to dive deeper if they want, rather than showing everything all at once. 25:05
Making sure I connect with people is really important. Because, you know, I again, like I don't get to go to every happy hour. 32:47
I understand that like, early in the morning, I'm better at administrative tasks, and later in the day, I'm better at creative tasks and just kind of understanding that and then making sure that my work follows suit my work day. 34:44
The thought that you can just do a Bootcamp class and then get a senior designer role is pure advertising. 38:57
Contact
LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/jessica-robison-5622368/ Instagram instagram.com/jrdesign.co/ Company website: jrdesignstudio.co Email jbrcreative@gmail.com Portfolio/ website: jessblitzrobison.com/about
#design #peoplemanagement #uxdesigner #uxproduct #designpodcast #uxbanter #userexperiencejourney
Wednesday Sep 28, 2022
Wednesday Sep 28, 2022
S2 Episode 2 - Florentin Hortopan - Design tells the story of the future
Introduction
Florentin Hortopan is not a conventional design leader. Converting diverse skills to achieve success in digital design, he has redefined design strategies for cross-brand platforms, including Airbnb, GoPro, and Apple. Developing the human experience from component design to CMS design, Florentin is the Assistant Director of UX at Critical Mass. And to our surprise, he is an equally competent rhinoceros master and teacher.
Discussion Points
How has the journey been, as you're not from the US originally? 01:38
How difficult was it to maintain the inspiration during all that? How your creative juices are maintained while you are going through the hoops and loops of the bureaucracy, If I have to call it that? 07:14
Rapid fire round questions 13:57
There's something that was written by you and I quote, “conforming to rules, and being polite is a bad idea. For a designer, you need to be wrong and weird.” Can you please elaborate on this? 20:39How difficult is it to ensure that the innovation keeps happening, without alienating the existing brand of users you possess? 24:54
What is the one piece of advice that you think you missed at the beginning of your career that you would like to give to anybody who's starting out now? 31:33
Show Notes
In specific contexts, in specific companies and design studios around Silicon Valley, you find agency folks are being really embedded into high-level processes and design and design tasks. 06:24
It's not about being hired necessarily by a company, it's how much value you can give to the work that you're doing to the company, to the people. It's a different take on your individual contribution to society at large. 10:42
The main value that design can give to any product, any community, or any society is when it changes your perspective on things, it gives you a different perception of reality, and it improves your life somehow. 21:27
In the definition, at least the old definition of design, that is this idea that you project things, you do something that is in the future, you essentially tell the story of the future. 22:57
The main strategy here is to provide solutions that are really relevant to the user in terms of UX, you obviously try to be systemic, you try to be strategic. So UX and design need to evolve into strategy and more like a, you know, kind of a global service design practice. 25:12
I think we sometimes don't feel like we need to innovate because we are protective of our ideas. 29:00
The first thing to do is to immerse yourself into different challenging situations beforehand and then decide what it is. And obviously, another thing is to not consider your design practice as your career path in the future as one. You have to be open about changing every time needed and try different things on your skin. 34:11
There is a very simple path for a lot of designers to get into school, you know, you get graduated from whatever interest in college, you get a job in design, you stay in that job for a very long time, or at least you think you're very good at it. But I think that will always, you know, prevent you from experiencing the best. 33:47
Contact
LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/florentinhortopan/Twitter - twitter.com/panopanoCompany website - criticalmass.com/Portfolio/ website - florentin.usMedium - medium.com/@panopano#airbnb #siliconvalley #userexperience #uxbanter #userexperiencejourney #designpodcast
Monday Sep 19, 2022
Monday Sep 19, 2022
S2 Episode 1 - UX for All – Making Design a Public Utility - April Starr
April Starr, the Director of Experience Research at Motorola Solutions, is creating an impact on public safety with her insight-driven designs. A faculty at the Illinois Institute of Technology's Institute of Design, April has developed cancerworksheets.com to help cancer patients deal with their medical conditions. An altruist at heart, April is a problem-solver who loves to take complex challenges to come up with exciting and efficient design solutions.
Discussion Points
How did you become a designer, and what were the choices that you made? 01:25
What does the role of a day-to-day researcher look like? 04:45
Rapid fire questions 12:54
About the website that you created about the cancer care cards: how do those worksheets come to be? And what was the thought behind creating that website? 18:04
Do you want to give any suggestions to those starting off in the UX industry or something that you wish you knew before you started your journey as a UX professional? 23:56
So you also said that you are still looking for people to hire? 26:07
Show Notes
I didn't really realize that I loved problem-solving until I got into design. 02:05
In the beginning, I just loved really hard problems. And then I think that's sort of evolved over time to systemic problems that really impact society in some way. 02:49
We work on great problems trying to utilize AI to help support our users, we always believe in keeping humans in the loop. 07:06
We always want to assist people so that we can help them make the best decisions in those really critical moments in these really tough incidents that they work in. And help them with mental health as well. 07:22
I had time to reflect on our experience, um, I was just really angry and frustrated with the healthcare system, for many reasons. As I reflected on our experience, you know, I looked back and I was like, what a messed up experience. It occurred to me that we didn't get the right information at the beginning of the experience. 19:19
I thought, Hey, you don't know how you're gonna get there. But you know what, you want to go, you want to get rid of cancer. And you know, generally kind of the steps that you're going to need to get there, you're, there's a treatment plan, there's going to be some milestones of diagnostic tests. 20:35
Find a place where the people are supportive, and they're people that are going to inspire you, you know, find a place where the content itself is going to be something that is exciting for you. 25:03
We have a number of people, and a number of positions open on both the research team and the UX design team. On the UX design side, we're looking for UX designers and UI visual design. And so, you know, we have positions open globally. 26:10
Contact
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprilstarr/
Portfolio: https://about.me/aprilstarr
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aprilstarr/
#userexperience #uxdesign #uxresearch #userexperiencejourney #uxbseason2 #uxbanter #uiux
Thursday Jun 16, 2022
Thursday Jun 16, 2022
Season 1 - Ep. 8 - Growth Design: A holistic approach to Product Design - Fonz Morris.
Fonz Morris, the Lead Product Designer at Netflix, is enthusiastic about designing engaging, inspiring, and attractive experiences for people. He has worked with some of the most well-known companies in the world, including Coursera, Comcast, ESPN, and High 5 Games. He is a mentor, a DEI Advocate, a speaker, an advisor, an entrepreneur, and a self-taught designer.
Discussion Points:
Being a self-taught designer, what inspires you about designing? And, any tips for the people who are learning to design on their own? 1:09
Netflix is one of the most popular entertainment platforms in the world, how to create such products with immersive and inclusive user experiences? 1:52
As a Lead product designer at Netflix, and even having worked with the world’s leading brands. What have been your key learnings as a designer there? 3:36
How was your journey? How did you get into this industry in the first place? 7:37
What is Growth Design? Why is it important and what are the skills needed to be successful in Growth Design. 27:00
What is some advice that you’d like to give someone who’s just starting out in the industry? 33:13
Show notes:
It all comes down to solving user problems and developing effective-efficient solutions at the end of the day. 1:45
When you have so many consumers like at Netflix, it's not a good idea to just flip the switch and roll everything out at once. What if there are some problems? What if you want to tweak something or do something else, and you'd rather do it in phases, which I believe keeps everything safe. 3:19
Every company moves a little differently. However, they follow the same product design principles and aim at conversions. You have to think about how mature are those design agencies, their design team, how big that design team and all these little things matter to help you really well to craft each individual team. 5:54
Every time someone works for a different brand or organization, they have to absorb not only the new user base but also the culture of the company or organization that you're working for and what kind of steps they're bringing in. - Dushyant 6:17
Before you take the job, make sure that you have done some research on their culture and that there is some synergy between your values and principles and the company’s. Make sure you want to work in that industry and you've done as much research as you can to discover what it's like to work there. 7:00
Entrepreneurial advice: You really have to have a better understanding of what your investing looks like. Because it may take time for your idea to actually take off. So if you don't have enough runway, then you won't be able to stay afloat long enough to maybe have the industry understand your idea and support your idea. 10:37
For anybody who is looking to work with bigger companies and organizations, it's a stepwise process, if you can't just crack it with your placement directly, I think the best way would be to just get the relevant experience and make sure that you keep making connections, you keep meeting people, and go to these events.12:30
Learn from people's successes. But don't judge yourself based on their successes. Maybe that’s not the path for you, so find an alternative path. Keep getting experience, keep pushing and one day you’ll be where you want to be.12:58
Growth design is essentially the intersection of business and design. A lot of the work I do at Netflix is focused on the design, but also heavily focused on the business impact. Only being focused on one aspect of the design, be it UX or UI is not enough, we should think about the success of this feature overall, business metrics, and what's the business impact of that. That happens when you are data-driven and as a growth designer, I am using the data, I know where the business wants to go plus design, along with user research and user experience which is a more holistic approach. 27:09
Career advice from Fonz: Be patient with yourself and have fun. Invest in yourself. Invest in yourself, like you're the product. All the time that you put into bringing all the pieces together in your portfolio and what you think you're going to do when you get this amazing job at Meta. Make sure you put that same time into yourself so that you are on the right path. Make sure you take time to do self-assessments, make sure you take time to really think about what you're passionate about, and what success looks like for you. And try to build a little plan for yourself. It may change that's fine. It's not about following the plan. Exactly. It's about just having some form of structure and being able to build on things and over time you'll get to wherever you want to go. 33:24
Remember that you are a designer and you will get better as time goes by. But you have to take that first step. 34:30
Take your time if you fall. Get back up, get up, and keep pushing. If you fall again, just get back up and keep getting back up, no matter what happens, because it's so worth it. 35:16
Links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fonzmorris/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fonzmoney/?hl=enTwitter: https://twitter.com/youngfonz?lang=en
A fun and conversational podcast where the design industry experts share their story, learnings, and the processes they follow to create successful digital products and user experiences.