Initially transcribed by https://otter.ai -- this transcript is mostly machine-generated and may contain errors. Skipper Chong Warson Hi, I'm Skipper Chong Warson, and this is the second season of the How This Works show. This is where we talk to 100 people about what they do and their journey from their first steps to where they are today. I'm talking to Jen Blatz. She's a principal UX researcher at BECU and a significant voice in the field of UX research. She hosts BlatzChatz on YouTube, spelled with two Zs, and co-founded the UX Research and Strategy Group, one of the largest UX communities in the world. Jen, thanks for your time. It's nice to see you here. Jen Blatz Thank you so much for having me here, Skipper. Skipper Chong Warson So, I sketched it out in the intro, but what did I miss in terms of your introduction? Can you set the stage for the 'this' in what we're talking about today? Jen Blatz I guess you missed troublemaker, person who rocks the boat (laughs). Former designer, former journalist. So I don't know. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Jen Blatz What should I own publicly? I guess that's the big question. Skipper Chong Warson That's always the question, isn't it? Jen Blatz Absolutely. Skipper Chong Warson We'll get into the specifics of where you started, you know what your first job looked like, things like that. But is there a surprising detail that you can share with the audience that someone may not guess, something you're comfortable sharing? Jen Blatz Something about me? Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Jen Blatz Something that -- well, I think a lot of people know that I am a big fan of wine. So... Skipper Chong Warson Red, white... Jen Blatz Well, that depends on what the temperature is, what we're eating, if we are eating with wine or not. So there's all kinds of things, but yeah, living in California for over a decade really introduced me to various wine regions, and I really got into it. And I'm no longer in California, and I miss wine tasting so much, but I really am into wine. Skipper Chong Warson Got it. Let's go ahead and get into the main part of the show. Can you tell me where you were when you first got interested in user research? Tell me how you got started. Jen Blatz Absolutely. So my first -- probably, yes, I would say my first UX job was for a company called VCA, and they own a bunch of animal hospitals across the United States and Canada. There was a UI designer, but I was the lone UX person, and I was hired as a UX designer. That's what I was back then. And I didn't really understand the field. I don't have a medical background. I am not a doctor. I had not owned anything beyond a goldfish at that point. So I didn't even really know animals, to be honest. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Jen Blatz When I was designing the software and various apps that the hospitals use, but primarily working on the software, I really needed to go into the hospitals and understand what is that environment like? Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Jen Blatz So I can recall the first time I ever did some ethnographic observation in an animal hospital. I go to the back and it was shocking to me. I go in the back and there is this dog laying there on a table, just an open table. He's got tubes hanging out of his mouth. His eyes are open, and he looks dead. And I'm like, whoa. What is going on here? Skipper Chong Warson Sure. Jen Blatz And they're like, he's under anesthesia. And I'm like, what? They said he's gotten a dental. I'm like, what's that? Like his teeth cleaned, and I'm like, what? You know, again, never had a cat or dog, had no idea what was going on. Skipper Chong Warson Sure. Jen Blatz You have to knock a dog out to clean his teeth, because you can't tell a dog, hey, open wider, because he's gonna bite you. So I was really freaked out. Like, should I have scrubs on? Should I have a mask on? You know, thinking about human health, right now sometimes you don't touch them, you're fine. Not the medical environment that I expected. So it was really fun to go and shadow doctors and to see that environment. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Jen Blatz Because there would be requests like, oh, they just need to go over to the computer and type this and that, and I'm like, no. Yeah, that doctor is using their hands to hold down that dog so it doesn't jump off the table or bite them or pee on them. And I really needed to be in that environment to understand what those working conditions were, and that is when I got really excited about knowing more about the problem we're trying to solve than actually pushing the pixels into solving those problems. Skipper Chong Warson Okay, so take me one step back. So you talked about your first job as a UX designer, and that's amazing context. As a dog owner, I think I take some of that for granted, that I've learned these things over the years. The current dog that we have is our second adult -- the current dog that we have is the second dog that I've had as an adult. So, how did you get there to be a UX designer? What did you study? How did you land that first job? Jen Blatz Sure, I come from a long history of design. I studied journalism graphics in college, which specifically was to design magazines and newspapers. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Jen Blatz So my first job out of college was a newspaper designer. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Jen Blatz And what I can attribute that first job to, what skills it gave me was understanding the importance of meeting a deadline -- Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Jen Blatz Because as a daily newspaper, I worked on the B section, which is the second section in the paper, and that's the local section, and I would design it. And then sometimes they'd be like, oh, hey, that lead story, or that photograph that you were going to use, we're pulling it out, and you need to redo your whole section. Skipper Chong Warson Reflow the section. Jen Blatz So I did not have a lot of time to rework things. The paper had to come out every single day. I had an 11 o'clock PM deadline. If I didn't redesign, there'd be a big white hole in the paper. That is not acceptable. So I learned not only the discipline of meeting tight deadlines, but also working really quickly. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, that's a great way to frame it. I didn't necessarily work on the layout side, but I also worked for my city paper as one of my first jobs, and the way that I sometimes tell that story for myself is I had to learn really quickly how to become an expert in some specific discipline by five o'clock, which is when my editorial deadline was. So I had to line up sources and do all of the writing and all of those things, and that was a fixed deadline. So in order to get a designer like yourself all of that content, all of that had to be baked and boiled in. Jen Blatz Absolutely. Now your deadline was five o'clock. My start time was five o'clock. I worked basically that second shift, so yeah, your story better be in, and if it wasn't, you were going to hear from the editors, and you might even hear from me. There was a lot of negotiation going on. A reporter would come to me and they're like, how many inches? Which is the measurement? How long can the story be in a paper? And I'd be like, you got 10 inches. And they're like, oh no, but I wrote 25. I'm like, oh no, you better get scissors out, because there's no room for that much. Skipper Chong Warson That's right, if you want me to cut that's a whole other story. Jen Blatz Yeah. Exactly. Skipper Chong Warson That's a great way to start the story of how you got working as a UX designer. And then the story working in the animal hospital system. Catch us up. And I know we're skipping steps along the way, but catch us up to where you are now, what are you working on now? Jen Blatz Sure, so I am now at a credit union which is headquartered in Washington State, and that is called BECU, which stands for Boeing Employees Credit Union. Now you don't have to be a Boeing employee to be a member, and you don't have to live in Washington necessarily, though it's a little easier that way. And this is the first time I've ever worked at a credit union. I have worked in other financial institutions, and what I'm finding in UX is when you work in finance or FinTech or financial institutions, they're all very different. Really. You think, oh, I've worked at a bank, I worked at Capital One, well, that's very different than working at a credit union. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Jen Blatz And, oh, I've worked at Rocket Mortgage. That's a financial company, yes. That's a whole different animal than Fidelity, which is investments, right? So I've worked in a lot of financial spaces, but honestly, I have to relearn that domain, or not relearn, but actually learn that domain every time I start at a new position, because it's not the same. Finance or FinTech is definitely not the same from institution to institution. Skipper Chong Warson Sure, that's a really good point, that not all financial companies are the same. I know that in the world of finance, there are similar regulations that you need to be aware of, slightly different regulations for credit unions versus banks versus other structures. But that's a really great point. You have to understand not just the specific area in which you're working, but then also that specific place, right? Because the Boeing credit union is going to be different than, let's say, an electric company credit union in El Paso or something. So there are some similarities, but at the same time, there are nuances to understand. Jen Blatz Yes, I absolutely agree. I think the biggest difference is the resources that you have and the size that you are -- a large company with 30,000 employees, they could be building their own systems, their own loan origination, or the start of the loan, right? They might have their own systems where a smaller company, similar to where I am now, they might have to rely on a lot of third party vendors, and we have to buy this product to originate our loans or originate our applications. And guess what? It's not ideal, and it's not going to look exactly like we wanted it to look, and it's not going to function the way we hoped it would, but this is what we bought, and this is what we have to work with. So that's probably been the biggest adjustment for me, because I was at larger companies and used to the company-built solution. They knew what problem they were trying to solve. They knew how they needed to solve it. They had done research to understand, okay, this is what we need to do, whereas smaller companies don't have the resources, or the time or money to invest in building their own solutions. So there's -- it feels like a little bit more technical constraints in a smaller environment, which is good or bad, but I think that's the biggest difference. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, well, constraints are constraints. So it's something that you have to deal with. You can't necessarily jump over that fence. So I wonder what does the practice of doing UX research look like at a credit union that is mostly, as you said, you can bank with it if you're outside of Washington State, but in the Washington State area, what does that look like to do UX research? Jen Blatz I'll say -- I'm in Texas. I am not in Washington, so I do not have the opportunities to go and just, hey, I'm going to go down to a branch and see what's going on. Skipper Chong Warson Sure. Jen Blatz I want to see this firsthand, like at VCA. I had numerous animal hospitals around me, the largest animal hospital in the country was right there, so I could see how problems were solved at a large hospital with a lot of resources, like water treadmills for dogs to do rehab. I mean, like crazy stuff that you wouldn't think would be available for cats and dogs. Or little one to two doctor -- I call them mom and pop shops, but little hospitals and the limited resources they have, right? So being in research remotely, I don't have the opportunity to just go, hey, I'm going to go into a branch and see how this is done. And I think that there is so much reliance on a credit union, it's very community driven and local sentiment. And people say, we love you. We're Washington. And I'm like, well, great, I'm not. So what am I supposed to do out there? Right? Skipper Chong Warson Sure. Jen Blatz So trying to communicate that sentiment of being local, being accessible into a digital experience is what's really challenging, because it's not the same, but you want it to be and you want to be able to be accessible anywhere after six o'clock, once the branches close. Things still happen, right? You can't go run to a branch on a Sunday afternoon. So that is, I think, the biggest challenge -- how do we build that community, and not a community in a sense, like a meetup group, but a community feeling like we're still here for you, even in a digital circumstance. Skipper Chong Warson Hmm, yeah, the digital touchpoint is important, even if some majority of the business happens in the physical branches. Jen Blatz Right. And I mean, I like the idea of being accessible. If you think about what the pandemic did, one positive thing is it threw everyone remote, and now people who couldn't physically work in an office could get a job. And thinking about there are loads of people who physically cannot go into a branch -- now they can have our services from the comfort of their home. And I think that we need to think about, you know, all this return to office, and what impact is that having on people who have challenges physically going into a space? Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, that's a really good thing to think about, because we live in a world -- I mean, you and I are having this conversation on a video call. So and you and I have met several times, but I think you and I have made a connection over these video calls that we've had over the last few months. And quite honestly, there's also a way to engage with content. You run a podcast, I run a podcast, and there are lots of ways in which you're showing up in people's ears, on people's screens, in a way that feels very real. And I think to kind of flip that to a user experience lens, then how might a credit union show up for one of their members when it's after hours or something that they're just thinking about that they need to -- they can't sit on the phone and wait for someone to answer them. Like they just want to send off something digitally. What does that interaction look like? Jen Blatz Yeah, it's key. It's the future. Honestly, I'll be honest, a lot of the people who are members of a credit union are of an older demographic, and maybe not digitally native, maybe not digitally comfortable doing business, banking certain things, right? But younger generations are more comfortable with selecting a bank that doesn't even have a physical branch. They're like, I don't need that. What do I need to go to a bank for? I can do everything I need on my mobile phone. And as older people die and younger people come in, we need to be thinking about, how are we going to cater to those changing times and changing needs. And so that's some of the questions that we're exploring -- how might we be more digital first, for those who want that service? There are people who physically can't go to a branch. I'm in Texas. I have a friend in the Netherlands who's a member, and he's like, how do I go to a branch over here? You don't. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, the remote paradigm, I think, is really interesting, because it unlocks many other kinds of people who can utilize a service, which I don't think is something that was thought about very deeply before the pandemic, right? Jen Blatz The pandemic forced us all to instantly change how we worked. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Jen Blatz And I think it helped with that research aspect, because I was doing a little bit of remote interviews and testing and whatnot. But after the pandemic, it was like you had no choice. Skipper Chong Warson Right. Jen Blatz So I think participants were getting more used to that interaction, and us as researchers or the designers who conduct their own research were getting more comfortable with that. And I think that -- I mean, how great was it that now I could talk to people from all over the country. When the pandemic hit, I was at a pretty national company. I now can talk to people all over. I don't have to be popping down to the local office or finding locals in my neighborhood or vicinity to talk to, and it really broadens your perspective. So many parts of the country have different values, different norms, different expectations, and I know like at Capital One, the branch that I worked at was auto loans, and they did a lot of research locally in the Dallas area. Well, buying a car in Dallas is going to be very different than buying a car in San Francisco. Skipper Chong Warson Sure. Jen Blatz Or Chicago or New York, different needs, right? So you can't base all your experiences on just one geo location. Skipper Chong Warson There's lots of different needs, and then you factor in a bunch of different kinds of people that show up in those geographies, right? Just because you're in the Greater Dallas area doesn't necessarily mean that you conform to maybe some Dallas stereotypes or class attributes, things like that. Jen Blatz True. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Jen, do you have at BECU -- do you have a team? Are you working sort of solo as a UX researcher? Can you describe what your working paradigm is? Jen Blatz Yes, that's a good question. We have a small team of about 20 UX folks. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Jen Blatz And five of us are -- is it five? Yeah, five of us are researchers, and the rest are product designers. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Jen Blatz So we have a manager of UX research, and then there are five of us under that manager, and generally it's a consultancy model. It's not embedded, but distributed for a project or an initiative. We're not -- there are two designers who are constantly embedded in a pod or a product. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Jen Blatz The rest of us are kind of farmed out, I guess you could say, for whatever initiative we're needed for, and that could be short term, like a month, or it could be six months, or it could be a year. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, so just depending on the priorities of the business, what needs to be addressed, what's at hand? Jen Blatz Yeah, and there's pros and cons to that. The good thing is, I'm learning about a lot of different aspects of the business, right? I'm currently working on onboarding, digital onboarding. What does that look like, and how does that vary from onboarding within a branch, and how do we get more people comfortable onboarding online? And I'm talking after they've been accepted, your application is in, you're all good. What are next steps? Because we're not great at that, so we're working to improve that process. And so that's one way I'm really deep into what's onboarding these days. That's top of mind, and I've been on different other initiatives. So the cons, I'd say, is you don't really drive that whole process. You do a little bit of research and do a little informing that. Skipper Chong Warson The context. Jen Blatz Yeah. And then the initiative goes on without you. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Jen Blatz And you are put on the next assignment, and so you can't be like, whoa, whoa. Wait. Where are you going with that? No, no, that is not what I said to do. Skipper Chong Warson Right. Jen Blatz Come back. So you don't get to sustain that relationship and that influence through implementation. And I think that's the flaw of a distributed model -- you don't get to see it through to the end. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, the nature of the engagement becomes very contained. And then it's not as though you're leaving the company, but if you're moving on to another focus, then not only yourself, but then whoever else is working on it, from the product side, from the technology side, when they move on, or they continue on through the process, they may not have the same access to you, to the information, to your context that informed the thing that you have stood up and said, this is what I think we need to do. I do think to your point, when you cut people off that sounds and feels very efficient, but you lose -- you still get a little bit of that brain drain, even internally, when people begin to focus on other things. Jen Blatz Oh, yes, absolutely. I think about it. As a researcher, I think about how we do a summary report, right? And that might be 20 pages. Here are the highlights, but, oh man, all the nuggets I couldn't put in here, all the things I didn't share, all the things that you will never have access to because you don't tap this little brain for like, well, what else? Because there's always so much more. Executives love the high level. What's the big stuff, but practitioners are like, wait, I need the meat and potatoes, the real stuff, right? That's how you make decisions. Skipper Chong Warson Right, right? And I think decisions that make a difference, right? Because details matter. It's not about the high level, and especially when you're dealing with the onboarding experience for something like a credit union, if you've already been accepted, and I assume that means, like all the disclosures and all of that stuff has been taken care of, but now it's a matter of making that person, that new customer, feel warm and included in that thing that you said -- in the community, whether it's a credit union community, or it's a medical facility or whatever the paradigm is, you want them to feel included, and that's hard to do on a high level summary. Jen Blatz Oh, absolutely. And really, what does that look like? Because they want -- okay, what's the number one thing that every person is joining a bank for? And I'm like, no, there is not one reason. Skipper Chong Warson Right. Jen Blatz Sorry, but if we kind of get that understanding, I'm here to put my paycheck in here, and that's it. Sure, don't sell them a car loan. Don't push the mortgage on them, right? They're not here for that. Maybe later. Check in later. Hey, are you gonna buy a car? Okay, see you later. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, be careful where you apply -- Jen Blatz I think real for-profit banks are very aggressive in selling. Get my credit card, get your loan through us, personal loan, consolidate that debt. And from the research I've done at several financial institutions, that sentiment comes off really businessy and icky, and that's why I think people are attracted to a credit union -- it's a co-op, right? You're a partial owner of that financial institution, so you get better rates on credit cards, lower rates on credit cards, and higher rates on CDs and that sort of thing. But it's not so aggressive, like, oh, we need everyone to have four credit cards. It's not that bad. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, so we've talked a little bit about your daily work at the credit union and what that looks like. Zoom out for me and talk to me a little bit about what you're seeing right now in the world of UX research at large, because I imagine that some of the things that we're talking about in the microcosm of BECU also are happening in a much wider context in other fields as well. Jen Blatz Yeah, that's a good question. Well, there's this little thing called AI, have you heard about it? Skipper Chong Warson Remind me what that stands for again? Jen Blatz Artificial intelligence. It used to be there was this idea of sprinkle UX on it. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, yeah. Jen Blatz Whatever that was right. Wait, wait, wait, we got to get UX on this. Right now, I feel like the big buzzword -- it also used to just be called technology. Now everything is AI, which is, don't get me started on how stupid everyone is latching onto AI, as if it's air, like, oh, we got an AI. I need it. So I'm seeing this everywhere. I've been doing a few experimental, silly BlatzChatz videos where I am playing around with AI and using it. I did it for desk research, secondary desk research. Instead of using Google, I used a couple of tools, Perplexity and ChatGPT to do some secondary desk research, and the pros and cons of that, and I was also using it. There's a tool called Adobe Firefly, which is to generate images. You put a prompt in and generate images, and that has some interesting results. Some work, some don't. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Jen Blatz So I think the key here, and you've probably heard this too, Skipper, is you have to know when it's shit. You have to have -- you can't just take it at face value. I was talking with Joe Natoli a couple weeks ago, and he mentioned AI, and he said, think of it as an assistant. And I like that. Think of it as like an intern. If you have an intern at your company and they're working on something, you're not going to take what they do at face value. You're going to check that before it goes to executives and whatnot, right? So I think we have to be careful of just taking it out, because it's faster, and just running with it. And so I see this getting worse as it's, oh, those four times it was perfect. And by the fifth time, you're like, no, it's all great. And then you don't check -- Skipper Chong Warson That's right. Jen Blatz You're like, hmm, like somebody posted on LinkedIn the other day. It was a photo of a bed. And did you see this? It was a photo of a bed. It was like a store, like selling a bed, but the bed itself was wood. It had blankets on it, had shelves around it, but the bed was wood. It's like, didn't you even look at this? So they probably had produced images a lot of times, oh yes, this bed looks great. It's great. We'll just use this, and then, like, by the sixth time, they're like, oh, it'll be fine. And they didn't give it a closer look. And so I think that we need to be careful of not double checking the outputs that come out of AI. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Plus one to that, a really small example. I dropped a couple of the episodes of the podcast into NotebookLM, which has been really good for summarizing video and some of the audio that I either find or that I make for the How This Works show. And I asked it just to give me, you know, on YouTube, there's that summary of here are some topics, and here are the time codes. I thought that NotebookLM should be really good at this, right? It has the video. It's been on YouTube for a couple weeks. It should be able to do it. And in a 55 minute video, it gave me time codes all the way up to 24 minutes, saying that 24 minutes is when the episode ended. And I responded back to NotebookLM, and I said, but this video is 55 minutes long. How did you end -- you know you as the machine, how did you end it at 24 minutes? And the answer was funny. The response was, well, I can stretch it out, or, you know, I can reconstruct it to stretch it out. And I'm like, but that's not the accurate time code, so I don't understand. So to your point, I think we always have to have -- as human beings, but I think we have to be really skeptical about what AI makes and produces for us, because I think if we put too much trust in it, it's like sending the intern off to make really big decisions and just implement them without anyone collaborating and working with the outputs or the process or anything like that. Jen Blatz Yeah, I agree, and I know a lot of people are using it to summarize interview transcripts and whatnot. And so I tried that a little bit in one of my videos too. I had already done the secondary desk research, pulled it from ChatGPT, pulled what was relevant, because there were some things that were not, and then I put them into Mural, the digital whiteboard that I use, and I just downloaded all the data. Now, the funny thing was, when I downloaded it, I know Mural has AI tools, but it's turned off for us, so I can't use it. But when I downloaded all the stickies content, it put it in random order. It didn't put, like, here was the header, here were the five points under that. And I was like, whoa, shit. Oh, well, I'm gonna put it in anyways. I don't have time to clean up. I think I had like 800 data points -- yeah, I don't have time to reorganize that. Skipper Chong Warson Sure. Jen Blatz And I put it in. And I said, okay, I put it into Claude, and I said, give me a summary report of the -- you know, executive summary. And I gave it the prompts of what I was doing, and it felt -- and I had a hypothesis. This is what I was going to put in a report, right? I didn't tell it that. I was like, okay, here are the three main things I'm going to put in a report. Let's see if it matches that. And it did some. It did not in some. And I was like, all right, you brought some things up that were interesting. I may not have considered that. I might consider that, and you missed a few that I'm going to have to supplement because you didn't get that. And so I think of it as almost like a collaborator, like, what are you taking from this? What are the big things? And what would I take from this? And it gets me to think again, like, okay, I hadn't considered that, but you're still wrong, but thanks for bringing that to my attention. Skipper Chong Warson Sure, I love that reframing of it, that thinking of it as a collaborator, and also saying, yeah, I don't think that's right. So I'm going to continue and explore another area, right, or pull out some other points, and like you said, some of the outputs that happen. And I don't care which large language model you're talking about, whether it's ChatGPT or Claude, which is my personal LLM of choice, or NotebookLM or Gemini, or whatever it is, you still have to look at the output. And you have to, I feel like you need to check it in order to make sure that it's pulling out the things that are also important to you. So, yeah. Jen Blatz Exactly. I could not agree more. And I think that's something that people aren't going in with a hypothesis. They're not going in with a plan, like I know what I'm going to cover. Let's see how close you are to that. Let's see if you give me more, or let's see where you're off the mark. And I'll use GPT or Claude or different tools for helping with YouTube content, right, or conference talk content. And I'm like, here's my outline, flesh this out to a 40 minute talk. Well, it doesn't do that because it doesn't give you that much, trust me on that, but it might -- I'm like, oh, okay, that's an example I hadn't really thought of. That's -- I might, I'll use that. So if there's one point and I'm going to have five things to support it, one or two might be from them. Two to three are still going to be from me, like, yeah, but they don't -- they're not in my head. They don't know what I'm really thinking about when I devised this in the first place. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. So in your own intro, you mentioned being a troublemaker, and I want to sort of switch gears a little bit, because I feel like you're right. AI, I think, is the hot buzzword right now, pro, against -- we could talk for the rest of the hour about AI, but I want to talk about something that you have a standing beef with, and this is personas. I've heard it on your podcast. I've seen you write about it in posts. I've seen it on LinkedIn. Would you break down -- and a lot of our listening audience are product and design people, but there are also people who aren't. Would you break down what you mean by personas versus, you know, other types of demographic outlines? Jen Blatz Sure. Yes, I do not love personas. My name is Jen Blatz, and I do not love personas. And I have built personas many times, for years, and I know how to build personas that, if anybody's thinking, you just don't know how to do it. Yes, I know Alan Cooper's and Kim Goodwin's method and plotting on a scheme. I know. Trust me, I know. So the problem with personas is us UX folks think of personas and they should contain goals, pain points, needs, motivations. These are great things to help inform product design. Skipper Chong Warson Sure. Jen Blatz Not age, gender, how many kids you have, what car you drive, what's your favorite candy bar. If I'm designing an app to help you fill out a loan for a credit card, I don't give a shit how many kids you have or what kind of car you drive. It has nothing to do with it, right? So when executives think of personas, they think of marketing, and they think of those demographic, stereotypical items that generally, they have been seeing in either marketing or business personas. I've made personas, and they're like, well, what age is that person? I'm like, it doesn't matter. And they're like, well, you need to put an age in there. And I'm like, not gonna happen because it does not matter. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Jen Blatz And so let me ask you, Skipper, I love this example, and be honest. When I say to you, describe a VP of a bank -- right now, what popped into your head? Tell me what you think of. Skipper Chong Warson So what popped into my head is a woman wearing a business suit, maybe carrying a laptop or tablet who is rushing from meeting to meeting and packed. Like if I looked at this person's calendar, it would just be meeting upon meeting back to back. Jen Blatz Describe what that person looks like because you have an image in your head. Skipper Chong Warson I do. So I think they have dark hair. I am biased. I'm half Korean, so I see a lot of the world through a Korean viewpoint. So I actually see that person as Asian, maybe someone who even resembles Julie Zhou. That's what I think of. Jen Blatz Okay -- so that's interesting, because you have that lens, right? And there are probably traits that you assign to someone of Asian or Korean descent, but other people don't have that lens, right? Skipper Chong Warson Sure, for sure. Jen Blatz And probably positive, maybe some negative also, like overdriven, you know, ambitious, workaholic. Somebody -- a VP at a bank might have those traits. Other people I've heard say, you know, old white dude drives a Cadillac, you know. And so think about, okay, you think about some old white dude who drives a Cadillac. What else do you think about that person? Right? The stereotypes that flood your brain when you think about those physical traits of a person. Skipper Chong Warson Sure. Jen Blatz And it doesn't matter how they use a product. But those things might slightly influence, but I know loads of older people who are very digitally savvy, way more so than younger people. So that's the problem -- one problem with personas is they are too laced with stereotypical data that is not important to a product or feature being built. Skipper Chong Warson Sure. Would you give that example -- you do it in your Scenario Alignment Canvas video where you give the demographic information for two different kinds of people, and as you go through them, it turns out that you're talking about two different people and not one kind of person. Would you walk us through the example? Jen Blatz The example I use is Donald Trump and Sylvester Stallone, and they both grew up in New York, married the same number of women, are business entrepreneurs, same number of children as well. They are the same age. They were born the same year, Donald Trump and Sylvester Stallone -- Skipper Chong Warson Reality TV stars is another... Jen Blatz Right, right? They're both -- you're right. How different, for sure. Those could be for sure. So we just focus on demographics, and those common traits, but their needs when it comes to being a person or what their goals are, completely different, completely different. Skipper Chong Warson And we'll make sure, as we're having our conversation, there'll be links in the show notes, so people will be able to access this information. I've seen similar treatments of Ozzy Osbourne and Prince Charles. That's another common one that I've seen. So for sure, demographics do not mean the person. And I think to your point, what are their goals? What are their ambitions? What are their pain points, what are their desires? What are their needs? That feels much more rich to me in terms of, how can we then work on a product or a service that might serve that person? Jen Blatz Yes, now I'm going to be the troublemaker and go a little bit further of why -- okay, so we're forgetting marketing personas. They're trash. Let's just focus on the problem with UX personas. I'm thinking about, okay, we have this general person, and we generally know what their needs and their pain points and their goals are, and I've seen this so many times with product and UX designers. They're like, but how do I translate that into my feature that I'm working on? Somebody wants to be financially savvy? Well, what the hell does that mean? I need details to help me bring this down to a feature implementation level. So I think that's another problem. Personas are kind of way up in the sky, a little bit -- their altitude is too high to actually make product decisions. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Jen Blatz So I was inspired by Indi Young's approach of focusing on a scenario, a person doing a thing. When you're really thinking about a person who's trying to do a thing, then you can solve problems. So she gives a great example of a person, two different people, who are going through an airport. It's a business person who comes to the airport every single week, travels by themselves, overnight flight, and again, very familiar with this airport, because they do it every week. And then you have a mom with three kids, and they're going to grandma's house. Now, okay, I'm focusing a little bit on the demographics here, but it's really about this person going to grandma's house doesn't come to the airport ever, like maybe this is their first time with this many kids in tow. And what is that experience like for that person who has a bunch of kids in tow in a very unfamiliar environment, stressful, littles running around, versus that business person who's like, I know exactly where I go to eat my lunch and be at the same gate. You know what? How do you design solutions for those completely different scenarios? Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Jen Blatz So that's the level, bringing it down, making it more specific. Those are the levels that you can solve problems and implement solutions at now. Granted, that's a lot more work, right? I've got to think about all the different scenarios that happen in the airport, yeah, but you'll actually solve a problem versus I need to get to my destination. Well, oh, shit, everybody does. But what are those nuances of your experience that we need to take into consideration to actually solve that problem for you? Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, what is that job? Jen Blatz Exactly. It is very similar to jobs to be done. I'm a big fan of jobs to be done, and think about that, but it's not a job to be done. It covers a lot of facets, right? When you're happy job with this is even focusing on, okay, I get the whole job, but we're focusing on this little part of it and really understanding that and really trying to solve for that. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, so how does this tie into something that you've created, which is called the Scenario Alignment Canvas (SAC) framework. How does this tie into that idea, in terms of how then to categorize the scenario that the parent with three kids rushing through the airport and the single person who's catching a flight for business purposes. Like, how do those things play out in that arena? Jen Blatz Yes, good question. Thank you. So yes, the Scenario Alignment Canvas, or I call it the SAC, is a workshop template that does a few things. It gets the team to work together, to collect the knowledge in one place. Now, I kind of think of it as a kickoff document too. It's like, all right, tell me all the things that you know, but we're focused around this one scenario. So let's say we picked one of those, the business traveler who frequently goes to the airport, and what? And it focuses on kind of three categories. So that person who travels the airport quite frequently, what are their goals and what are their motivations while they're in that airport? Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Jen Blatz You know, really fleshing out what's happening, and then what are their needs and what are their tasks when they're in that airport? Right? And then finally, what are their pain points? And so these are the same pieces that you see in a persona, or, I think this is a starting point for a proto persona, right? But what I love about this SAC is we have conversations. People fill it in. And I say, let's say somebody said this guy needs to have four beers before he goes on a flight because he has anxiety. And I'll be like, okay, what data do you have to support that? How do we know this is true? Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Jen Blatz And ask these probing questions to surface assumptions. Skipper Chong Warson I see. Jen Blatz And to say, hey, should we do some more research on that? Should we be closer to confidence on this? And it also helps me, as a researcher, or the UX person, determine where there are gaps in knowledge and confidence and what we should go research further. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, no, that's a really good point. And not to beat the persona horse, but the SAC framework is not a UX persona. It's definitely not a marketing persona, though it can inform both of those pieces, and it's also not a market segment, right? Jen Blatz Right, because market segments are to sell things to people, right? User experience personas are to solve a problem or to work on a product. We're not -- when we make UX personas, we're not trying to sell our product, we're trying to build it right. Marketing is about selling and getting customers and acquisitions and things like that. So yes, I agree. It could be a foundation, a starting point of a proto persona, because it does have the same elements, but a proto persona -- and sometimes that's all you have, right? Sometimes it's all you have. But if you get the team to work together and to think about these assumptions, and, okay, yeah, because when I say, do you have -- where's the data to back this up? Guess where it is? Nowhere, because they don't know he needs four beers to get on that flight. They don't know. So it's also good to level set on how we could do more research, because I have been in circumstances and meetings and I'm like, hey, what questions do we have? What do we need to learn? And they're like, I don't know. Skipper Chong Warson Right. Jen Blatz We feel really good about stuff, so it's kind of getting them a little bit into the weeds of, well, let's really make sure we have confidence around this. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, yeah. If I could pull one thing out bridging it from what we talked about with AI, I think that one of the themes that I'm hearing in what we're talking about is that as humans, we not only use our own internal processing common sense. Does this track? But then also leverage the people on your team to say, hey, let's talk about this together. What does this mean? Do we need to go back and talk to someone more deeply about this and figure out what the motivations are? Is this a significant thing that we see over and over? And then I think about something that Teresa Torres talks about in her work, which is just because you talk to someone and they say something is true and what they do -- and the example that she uses in her book Continuous Discovery Habits is shopping for jeans. A lot of people will say, oh, I only buy jeans based on fit. And then you dig into it a little bit more, and you ask the question, like a very specific time question, which is, tell me about the last time you bought jeans? Oh, the last time I bought jeans, they were on sale. Or, you know, it was this brand, or I like this color, having little to do with fit or less to do with fit than they said in the beginning. Jen Blatz Yeah, that's a classic phrase. Believe what they do, not what they say. Skipper Chong Warson For sure, yep. Jen Blatz I'm harsh to say people lie, and maybe that's a little extreme, but there's a lot of biases that go into conversations and research too. You know, pleasing bias and they want to look good, so they're not going to acknowledge, hey, I actually bought them when they were on sale, versus, oh, they looked really good on me. So keeping those -- that surface level protection of looking good is there, right? But that's why you -- I love the tell me about an extreme time, or tell me about the last time or a recent time, because then you're like, oh -- Skipper Chong Warson The practice. Jen Blatz That's not what they said. That's right. Skipper Chong Warson That's right. So let's look towards the future. And how do you think UX research will evolve in the future? You know, do you have any particular concerns or hopes? We've talked about AI a little bit, but, you know, are there other things that you're kind of seeing on the horizon? Jen Blatz Yeah, if I could predict the future, Skipper, I wouldn't be sitting here. Skipper Chong Warson For sure, for sure. Jen Blatz That's a very good question. I am concerned, honestly. I'm concerned with the layoffs of all UX folks and technology folks, and the reliance on AI to replace those critical thinking roles, because that is a huge mistake. So I will say, I am going to throw this prediction out that's related to UX design. I will say, I think the role of a design system designer or creator is going to go by the wayside, and tools like Figma will just be able to create a full design system for you based on a few prompts that you give it, because every website app has buttons and check boxes, and there are so many components that every design system has. So I feel like that's going to be really automated, in a sense, and the code is going to be built behind it that design system creators, I think, are going to really take a hit, because it's going to be so standardized with just a few, like I said, prompts to customize, okay? We use this color, we use this font, and with a few tweaks, it's going to just spit out a design system. If you think about a company like Figma that has access to almost everybody's design system on the planet. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Jen Blatz I feel like they're going to use that to feed some sort of system to just generate it for me. So that's one thing I see AI taking over, or whatever technology, whatever the hell you want to call it. I see that. I also see there's a trend -- a lot of people talking about, and I've also thought about this, and there's a migration of UX researchers moving over to product owner roles, and I can see that happening more. There's a lot of overlap in skill set. I mean, quite frankly, researchers are sick and tired of being ignored and just not having the influence on the product in the end, so they want to go over to the product owner side and be like, F you. I'm going to make the calls now, and I'm going to do it data informed. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Jen Blatz Not feature roadmap, meeting, you know? Skipper Chong Warson Sure. Jen Blatz So I think that there's going to be a combination of that role, and if that is the case, we will lose the number of researchers that we have. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Well, one thing, when you were talking about your team, it actually makes me really glad that on your team you have discrete researchers versus those sort of combo or hybrid roles. And while I think it's important for many people to be involved in research, I also think that you need to have that focus and direction and have one or multiple researchers on your team, because one person can't do all of the work and shouldn't do all of the work, because then you end up pouring all of that information into one person's head, and you don't have that notion of collaboration. But then number two, there's that idea of cross pollination, which I think that you're talking about, in terms of researchers also working in design or leveraging AI tools, or working in product or even technology. How different people within those three areas, and there are some adjacent areas, right? You can talk about the three legged stool, you can talk about the table. Include data into that, you know, however you want to split those hairs. But I think that there's a lot of crossover happening, and for very good reason, because while there might be an expertise and a focus, ultimately it's all about how you're building the product. Jen Blatz I absolutely agree. I struggle with what I call information radiation, or getting my findings out there across the organization or to other teams that you may not be working on the same problem, but someday you're going to need to know this, or it might help you on another project down the road. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Jen Blatz We're not really great at sharing out information as we learn it, because it's hard. I'm like, I don't want to waste your time and share all this stuff on onboarding when you are not working on that at all, right, but it might touch your project someday. So the solution has been we write a research report, we put it in a repository, and that is the graveyard where it dies. Skipper Chong Warson Sure. Jen Blatz And I really want to find better ways to get this information out because, like, a newsletter via email that takes a lot of effort and work, or, you know, road shows, or, I don't know the solution. There's a lot of options. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Jen Blatz When at a previous company, we would have all different researchers, data folks, market researchers, UX researchers, anybody who was collecting data, we would come together one Thursday a month, and people would share from different teams. And I found that effective and useful. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Jen Blatz But it's also, well, like, I don't really care that you tested the usability of this button. What's that got to do with me over here in data land? But it's also about building those relationships and having the awareness of those other people -- what those collective meetings, I found the value of like, oh, we have data folks. I didn't know that. What do they do? How can I help them? Or how can they help me? So companies are still so siloed, and they don't really cross pollinate like you were talking about. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, I'm reminded of Lenny Rachitsky had Michael Margolis on a few episodes ago, and he's over at Google Ventures, and they have this framework called Bullseye Customer. And one of the things that I thought was most interesting about their testing of what that bullseye customer might think of this prototype, or the service or this thing that's been stood up to test with them, is that everyone on the team actually observed and took notes during the interviews. So it was like a team event, but everyone was there, and everyone was taking notes, and he did indicate, you know, that while there are transcripts and things like that, AI wasn't leveraged very much in this process, because I think one of their goals is to have -- you'll remember a detail far more if you experience it, versus if you just read it in a transcript or a note or high level summary that somebody spits out to you. Jen Blatz Oh, I absolutely agree. I have struggled through the years, honestly Skipper, with the show up and throw up mentality. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, sure. Jen Blatz I go off and do the research, and come back with the findings, and they're like, okay, great. I have struggled to get them to come along with me. I still struggle with that. Hey, I'm busy. I've got my thing to do, and so I admire, and I'm kind of jealous of the teams who are embedded in the research like that, who participate and come along. It varies by team and company and whatnot, but you're right. I find that it's more successful and implemented if they participate in hearing it the first time. And now you'll hear like, oh, I remember a couple years ago when some user did blah, blah, blah. They're never going to read that in a transcript. Skipper Chong Warson That's right. Jen Blatz They're never going to read that in a report. Some little details, those meat and potatoes, is what they hang on to. And I mean, I wish everybody would be as eager to do that, but I have had some product folks that are just like, nope, I'm too busy. Just go do it and bring it back to me. It's very frustrating. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, for sure. So Jen, if someone expressed interest in being a user researcher today, what might you suggest to them? What should they do? What should they seek out? Jen Blatz You know Skipper, that's a really tough question, because harsh truth is, it's a very tough time to enter UX right now. For sure, there's a lot of students from whatever platform you learned UX or transferring from another discipline that's not UX related at all, and I would -- my blanket gut instinct is good luck, but may not happen, because there's so much fierce competition for a reduced number of positions right now. And I mean, I'm the kind of person who's been working in UX for a long time, and usually would have multiple offers when I was changing jobs. Right now, I don't feel confident that I would even have one, to be honest. That is how dark -- I don't know, I should be more positive, but, you know, this is me. I gotta be real. So it's a hard industry to get into, not impossible, but it's really tough. There's a lot of competition that I don't think newcomers understand. Just how small the pool of jobs is and how much competition is swimming in that pool to get it. So not all hope is lost. I would say networking is key, getting to expand your network of people you know, understand what it is actually to be a researcher, because it might not be what you think. If you think you're like, here are my recommendations, and everybody takes them and runs with them, and it's a happy land. That's not always the case. So be realistic about what you're entering into. But I think what employers are looking for is real world experience. A portfolio from school or boot camp is not going to cut it to get your foot in the door anymore. I think it could have maybe five years ago, but you're going to have to probably do some free work for a nonprofit or something like that, to not just redesign an app. Really, as a researcher, you need to know what the problems are. You have to talk to users, and you have to do real research. And so you're going to have to get on some, probably some free projects to get some experience. I did this years ago. I was not getting experience creating personas. I know, God, I was seeking out personas, crazy, but I was in the job I was in. I wasn't having the opportunity to exercise some of the skills that I wanted to develop as a UX person. So I joined nonprofits like Taproot or Catch a Fire. Those are some sites that you could volunteer your time to get on some real projects for nonprofit organizations and get some experience. It was free on my part, that was a choice that I made, and I had the time to do that. So I appreciate not everybody does, but think about how you can show, how you can do the work. That's what you're going to have to do. And if you think your school portfolio piece or case study is going to do that, I'm going to tell you it's not. Probably not. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, plus one. Show, don't tell I think that's really important. Right now, being really clear about what you want to do, and then also being very realistic about what you can do. So yeah, those points are spot on to me. Jen Blatz I mean, I told you I was a troublemaker. I don't like to sugarcoat stuff. I wish I was more positive, and I guess -- do it. But I'm just in too many conversations. I'm seeing too many people ask, how do I get a UX job? What's that silver bullet? And hey, if I had that silver bullet, I wouldn't be sitting here with you, Skipper. No offense, but I don't have the silver bullet on how to get into UX. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. So let's get into our closing questions that we do with all of our guests. Jen, what's a significant lesson that you've learned so far that you wish you would have learned earlier? It can be in your work life, in your home life. What's something that you wish you knew then what you know now? Jen Blatz Yes, I would say listen more and talk less. I know I'm a horrible example of that, because I'm running my mouth the whole time, but in research, stop talking in your interviews. You are not there to contribute your point of view or bias them in any way. Listen and listen with your eyes as well. Try to get stronger at reading people. This is something I am struggling with -- always have, always want to get better -- how to read the room. That's really important. So when I say listen, I do mean listen with your ears, but I also mean listen with your eyes. Interpret body language and reaction, and when you're good at that, then that's when you understand. I need to probe a little bit deeper on that. Don't glaze over those golden opportunities to understand more because you're trying to just quickly get through your discussion guide. Really take the time to listen deeply with your ears and your eyes. Skipper Chong Warson So what's something that you're reading or listening or watching right now that you would suggest to our listening or watching audience? Jen Blatz You know, I'm not watching and reading a lot of UX stuff right now. I'm kind of obsessed with defining a personal brand. And now that could be because I've got this YouTube BlatzChatz, and I'm not really sure who the audience is and what I should do with it and what content I should make, but I also am thinking about it from a lens of somebody who wants to be employed. What is their unique proposition, or what differentiates themselves from the rest of the pool? And so really, I really want to help others understand how to identify and promote and build your personal brand. So that's a lot of the things I've been reading, watching YouTube videos about, articles, that sort of thing is, what is a personal brand and how one might make that stronger? Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, I've noticed on BlatzChatz, you're not only doing the interviews that you've done with a variety of different kinds of people, but you're also doing book summaries. So it seems like, I feel like you're doing a little bit of experimentation around what resonates with your audience. Do you have a sense of who your ideal customer profile is for the person who's your audience? Jen Blatz Yeah, I don't, but -- no, I'm kidding. I'd like to reach people who -- not so much juniors. Nothing against juniors, but I think there's not a lot of content around middle to senior level practitioners, not leaders. They're good people too, but they got their own thing going on. People leading is a whole different issue. But I find that when you've been in your career a long time, and when I say long, three to 10 years, I'd say. Skipper Chong Warson Sure. Jen Blatz You have different challenges than when you were first starting out, and your world around you is very different, like new people are coming in, and they feel -- you feel like they're better than you, and you have imposter syndrome, and you're like, whoa. I'm overwhelmed. I've got a million channels to monitor and learn a million things. So trying to help people, seasoned professionals, help them feel confident in their role now, and I think, you know, thinking about your personal brand and what differentiates you, what value you bring to a team, into a project, is what I'm really thinking about. Could be because I'm struggling with this myself, or seeing my peers and my colleagues and my friends like I don't know what to do next, right? And next doesn't have to be my next company, or I want to pivot out of a role, but I think we're in a spot where I don't know what to do next, because I don't think it's healthy to just stay in the same position for a decade and not challenge yourself and not try something new. But you've got to kind of think about, like, well, what do I want to do next, and how do I get into that? So that's kind of what I've been thinking about. Skipper Chong Warson Well, it's interesting. We were talking about your SAC framework before, but I think there's some of what we talked about earlier in the conversation that can fold into this around, what is the scenario? What are those discrete pieces that -- and absolutely, there's not going to be an absolute demographic for this is the kind of person that is your ICP, but then also more so what is -- what are their motivations? What is it that they want, and whether it's to be more disciplinary in the work that they do or to, you know, progress further. Maybe it's to start their own business. But whatever it is, how do you focus and give appropriate content and information to people who are looking for those different things? Jen Blatz Oh, my God, Skipper, I need to fill out a SAC for myself. Skipper Chong Warson I didn't mean to give you homework, but you know -- Jen Blatz Great. So -- Skipper Chong Warson Jen, you've already made a little bit of a prediction, but where can people find out more about you? What you do? We've talked about BlatzChatz a couple of times, but I'd love to hear it from you. Jen Blatz Sure. Obviously, BlatzChatz, you never know what hot mess is going to come out of that channel. So let's see how that goes. I'm also very active on LinkedIn. I post my own point of views. I share a lot of content that others have written and I find valuable. So LinkedIn is probably the best place to connect with me and follow me and see what I'm putting out there in the world. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, well, Jen, thanks for your time. I really appreciate it. This has been a wide ranging conversation and also very informative. So thank you. Jen Blatz Thank you so much for having me. It's been a lot of fun. Skipper Chong Warson And that's it for this episode of the How This Works show. We appreciate your support. Subscribe so you don't miss out, and until next time, remain ever curious, and we'll talk again soon.