About
PROBLEM SOLVING
Problems don't usually start off as "well-defined." And often there are administrative challenges to overcome before one can even get to the problem they were hired to solve.
I've learned to bounce each day between being an administrative pest who handles things like access and budget allocations to being a diplomat who can sense when two opposing parties are ready to talk. The best days are when I can use visualization skills to enable teams to get to a common vision.
Whether as an individual contributor or as a lead, helping a team move from the stage in which problems are not well-defined to the stage where problems are well-defined is the best part of the job.
EXECUTION & DELIVERY
So you've figured out what it is you want to build. Congratulations! Now what?
What happens next depends on a thousand things, but the biggest predictor of success I've found is adaptability: the ability of the designer to understand and work with development partners and meet them where they are. Are they a big team or a small one? Agile or Waterfall? Local or remote? Existing team or newly hired? Have they ever worked with a design team before? And what are the internal pathways of communication?
Knowing how to adapt to existing norms of collaboration and when to forge new ones is critical.
MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP
Delivering work and maintaining team morale through a pandemic. Working across international time zones. Being mindful of cultural sensitivities and everyday language to foster an inclusive space. Dealing with difficult product partners. I view these as management tasks.
But over time I've come to recognize broader questions that need to be asked in order to understand one's chances for success. For example: Who has been supporting your UX needs thus far, and do they sit under Marketing or Tech? Is this firm practicing actual Product Management (complete with a leader, a vision, OKRs, and a quad model) or is it looking to maintain and improve existing systems (or both)? What percentage of your firm's data is on premises vs in the cloud? How does your firm approach "build vs. buy" decisions, which in turn, effect the type of UX support that you will need? How is the firm embracing artificial intelligence and large-language models? Does your firm view User Experience as a partner in your product process, or as an on-demand service? What is the receptivity of your current team to allowing a new voice at the table?
