Jared Spool on What Makes a Great UX Leader

“When you start to look at UX work as empowering everyone else in the organization to achieve their goals, you now see it through a fundamentally different lens than ‘I am here to make the thing pretty.’”   Jared Spool is a UX design thought leader with more than 30 years’ experience. As Co-founder, Co-CEO, and Maker of Awesomeness at Center Centre-UIE, he and Leslie Jensen-Inman provide UX expertise with the mission of eliminating bad design.   On Design Chats, Jared tells host Rebecca Kalogeris about his passion for systems design and designing the very first personal computers for business. He delves into the difference between leaders and managers and how designers can “lead in the moment” to champion their vision for a better user experience.   The two also discuss:

• A business case in user retention: Netflix’s two-pronged strategy for improving retention and revenue
• The format for a UX outcome statement he teaches all UX leaders
• Actionable tips for informing and facilitating the best UX decisions across the organization
• How the sous vide is like a design system
• Why it’s important to create a culture of continuous learning

Related Resources:

• Read Lead Ujda’s guide, “2 Tools to Leverage UX Metrics for Internal Buy-in and Product Success”
• Learn how to lead through influence and sell a design-driven vision to cross-functional teams in Pragmatic Institute’s Influence Through Storytelling course.