The Spouse Factor: How a Dual-UX Career Couple Makes It Work

Om Tandon, Pavitra Tandon at UXDX Community: Ireland & UK. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2CKfUNhOHU

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Introductions and the UX process at Smartbox

[00:00:00] Host: Now, I'm excited for today's session, and welcome to UXDX. As Rory said, I have with me today Om and Pavitra. I met Pavitra quite a few years ago at a UX [?] event, and she's also previously worked with Rory on the team when she was based in Ryanair. And it was kind of a love relationship from my perspective, anyhow. The reason why this session came up is that it's rare to actually get people who are in the exact same industry, as a husband and wife, to give their perspectives on the industry, on both their careers and the directions that they've taken professionally, and how maybe one has influenced the other.

[00:00:53] We're going to speak to both of you today. We said that the gloves are going to be off, or maybe we'll keep them on. But we're going to speak to both of you today to talk through your perspective on your career, on UX and product teams as a whole. We'll start off by asking you, Pavitra: tell us about your processes at Smartbox Group, and what you do from a UX perspective.

[00:01:24] Pavitra: First, thanks for having us here. We appreciate it; it's a great platform to be on. At Smartbox, from a UX perspective, we follow the methodology of the Double Diamond, which is pretty much discover, define, develop and deliver [?]. But depending on the projects and the feature prioritization, I tweak it a little bit. It goes discover, define, design and dev. I try to include the tech team as early in the process as possible, which I think most design teams don't do.

[00:02:08] I think tech teams are really, really brilliant. They have a mind of their own. They have the ability to take your idea to a new level, because they know much more about how feasible it is, or how technically they can push the limits to make something much more interesting. So I try to integrate them early on, right from the brainstorming and ideation sessions. I think that's the biggest change that I've made, and that's not just at Smartbox, but also at Ryanair and in my previous companies. So this is ongoing across my career. I think across games and enterprise we followed the same, but I'll let Om talk about his field.

Human-centered design and the full-stack UX designer at Wildlife

[00:02:55] Host: Yeah, how about you?

[00:02:57] Om: Hi Catherine, thanks for having us. If it's the same question, then in terms of games, what I've seen, being in the industry, is that there is a bit of a lag time, what we call a trickle-down effect. UX came to games late, of course, compared to enterprise software, but now that it's arrived, it's booming. I can safely say that in the games industry there is more demand than supply, so UX designers are rare. It's a great time to be in games UX.

[00:03:28] In terms of process, my thought process and how I develop the strategy and tactics has evolved. One reason for that is I got a break two years back to get out of games. I joined Eaton, so I worked in a business-to-business company. In my present company, which I joined almost five months back, we have repositioned ourselves as a human-centered design department rather than user-centered design, because under human-centered design we can equally solve stakeholder pain points as we are focused towards the user. Working in a B2B company prior to Wildlife, I realized it's equally important to solve stakeholder problems, because only then can you create a sustainable product. You have to take care of both voices, hopefully not at the expense of each other.

[00:04:19] Under human-centered design, we are organizing it as UX design, user research, and design thinking. These are three things that sit under the umbrella. That's our strategy, because we use design thinking workshops for innovation. The workshops are really cool for collaboration, and given that after the pandemic, and even now, most companies are remote, my teams are distributed. We are collaborating between different centers, so Miro workshops are a great way to get everybody together.

[00:04:50] So there are these two streams, tactical and strategy. That's the strategy, and on the tactical side we are trying to create a full-stack UX designer. Under full-stack UX designer, I believe a UX designer should be able to do everything, from user research, prototyping, user testing and workshop setup. I think you should be a jack of all trades, master of some. But at the same time, we are also building a specialized team where we have dedicated user researchers and dedicated UX people.

[00:05:20] Pavitra: For us, the designers do all of it. We don't have different teams or different segments within the team, people who will take care of user research specifically, or conduct design thinking workshops. It's a designer who takes the concept or the project from the backlog right up to development, and takes it through the entire process. We don't have different streams as such.

[00:05:48] Host: Interesting. Would that be the biggest difference for you? What would be, in your opinion, the biggest differences between how you work?

[00:05:54] Pavitra: I think that would be the biggest one. While it's easier to have the autonomy to be able to do all of these steps as we think are required for the project, it would definitely be beneficial if we had the experts do the research and come back to us with the data, so we can make informed decisions, instead of taking time away from our own design to try to figure out which research method is required for that particular project or feature.

Running remote workshops

[00:06:36] Host: Yeah, really great. Om, I wanted to circle back to what you mentioned about remote workshops. Everything is remote now. From your team's perspective, how have you changed up facilitation of remote workshops?

[00:06:52] Om: That's a good question, Catherine. I'm sure a lot of the professionals watching this must be way more comfortable now doing remote workshops than physical ones. Obviously, when the pandemic started, we were all into physical workshops: hey, get your hands dirty. And you still miss that drawing piece, letting everybody be creative outside design when you get diverse stakeholders, because it brings confidence as well. But when the remote thing came, thanks to Miro, we had to make it work, so we piloted a lot of things.

[00:07:29] How I approached it, way back at Eaton, was we did a lot of what I call design fire drills. The interesting thing is we underwent design thinking training three years back, and then the team was like, "Hey, that's cool, but you know what? We don't have that many opportunities to practice it," because other people didn't know about it; stakeholders didn't know about it. I said, "Okay, let's do one thing." We dedicated time on a fortnightly basis, and we called them design thinking fire drills. We would bring in a topic on a rotation basis, because we also wanted to train each designer to be a facilitator.

[00:08:04] We created a safe space where, in a low-key, low-stakes setting, you could experiment. Even if we failed, it was fine, but we learned a lot. By the end of one and a half years, we had practiced the 45 methods in the LUMA System almost two times over. And when we did these workshops with stakeholders from across the world, China, the US, wherever, of course the team was doing better, because they had so much practice under their belt. So I think we got better, Miro as a tool got better, and people became more comfortable. A lot of practice in that safe space enabled us to drive it. It was amazing, and I'm repeating the same model at Wildlife now.

What they agree on

[00:08:45] Host: Wow, great. There are a lot of different approaches there. What do you both agree on with regards to the process of UX? What's the biggest thing there?

[00:08:58] Om: I can take that one first, Catherine. For me, and part of this also comes from my background (my father was in the army, so growing up I learned a lot about strategy and tactics), when I think of UX or human-centered design, these two components are important: strategy and tactics. Strategy is the vision; you have to create it. But the real execution happens on the ground, so tactics is the other part of it. Whenever I approach any company, the first thing is that I believe there is no one-size-fits-all approach. I see what the unique challenges are that the company has, what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are, and then the strategy has to be made, and it also has to feed into the higher vision.

[00:09:42] From enterprise UX, the biggest difference I see is... what do we agree on? I think fundamentally we agree on the basic principles: the heuristics that are required, good user research, hiring the right talent, and more importantly training the right talent. You can't just hire people. And I think we both believe the team is more important than the individual. My favorite line is "I give my team the credit" [?]; take blame, give credit. You can be a rock star in the team, but overall you have to uplift the team. I think that's something we agree on.

[00:10:19] Pavitra: Yeah.

How their teams are structured

[00:10:22] Host: That's really great. Speaking of teams, could you talk through how both of your teams are structured, for very different organizations? Papi, maybe you first.

[00:10:33] Pavitra: My team is quite small, but very, very experienced. The Smartbox product itself is across web, mobile and the app. We have a designer who is working solely on the web buyer side. Buyers are people who buy the Smartbox. Then we have a designer who is solely on the beneficiary side. Beneficiaries are people who receive the Smartbox, and they can go and actually experience the gift. It could be a hot air balloon, it could be parachute jumping, it could be bungee jumping, it could be a spa, or just a weekend getaway. So there are people who receive it. And I lead the UX for the app, both iOS and Android native, but I'm also the team lead.

[00:11:29] We are structured very small. We cater to all three platforms and all customer bases. But we are in so many varied countries, and at this moment, almost post-pandemic, we are trying really hard to approach our customers again, in order to figure out whether they would be using these Smartboxes that they already have. Because we've had such a long lag, with people receiving these Smartboxes, people not buying these Smartboxes, and not actually going and doing those experiences. So the team is small, but we're all working towards one goal at the moment, which is getting out, talking to our customers, and figuring out what we can do to help them go and live life, pretty much.

[00:12:29] Host: It's a really nice message at the moment in particular. And how about you?

[00:12:35] Om: In my case, Catherine, we are a multi-product company. We have multiple games as products, and we serve a lot of different markets and player audiences, if you may call them that. How we categorize them: casual players, for games like Candy Crush, very casual, low cognitive effort games on mobile. We are in the mobile space. Then there's midcore, people who play more like Call of Duty or other kinds of shooter games. And then there's hardcore. So there are different audience types. They have very different needs and values from each other. The same product might not appeal to both, but we do have products where two audiences might overlap, so there are very unique challenges.

[00:13:18] My team is also small right now. Including me, it's four people strong, but we are growing. We're already hiring more people in user research; we're building a UR department on the side. But because we are small and we have so many products, we are working right now as a service team. What that means is, if we have live products with requirements, they come to us, and based on bandwidth we might assign somebody to work on a feature for two weeks, three weeks. Then there are the products which are near launch, where we dedicate a resource which might be working on it for six to nine months.

[00:13:49] It's very metric driven. We soft launch products in a few selected countries, and we test how the metrics are performing, and that's fed back directly by product and user research into UX. If we hit the metrics, we launch globally. If we don't hit them, we kill them. So at any given point of time, there are a lot of new ideas and prototypes we are working on. As a UX team, we have to serve these small prototypes, which might be killed after just two or three months, these near-launch games, which are longer commitments of up to six to nine months, and then live games, which are already out there. It's a very different angle. But that's also interesting, because imagine: you have to build a strategy of how you give the best value and prove the ROI of UX for prototypes, games which are about to launch, and live games.

[00:14:40] Pavitra: I love how he articulates his answers. Inspiring, isn't it?

[00:14:46] Host: Yes. For those out there listening, it was interesting from my perspective, when we first started talking about this topic, to hear how two different people approach things. Om, you said straight away that you're very methodical, and that you think, and Papi, that you are spontaneous and it's instant, the opposing views. I think it shows even in the way that you're working. Each approach style is equally great, but very different, which is great.

Management styles and giving feedback

[00:15:18] Host: Talking about management styles, then, and teams: would you say you manage your teams quite differently? And how do you deal with things like friction? Maybe you could take that one.

[00:15:35] Pavitra: Sure. I think the one thing that we both agree upon is we don't like micromanagement. We believe in team members learning and growing at all times, whatever their interest, and in being able to encourage and facilitate that. We don't like going into the nitty-gritty: do this, do that, this has to be this way, this has to be that way. Give them the freedom to go ahead, explore, and come up with the best concepts or approaches for the problem.

[00:16:12] Specific to me, from a team management perspective, we do have design crits. In the weekly design crits, each person showcases their work, or one person showcases their work if it's going to take the entire hour, and we provide feedback. This session is very clearly: please do not take anything personally. It's just feedback. Don't take it like, "Oh, this person is really criticizing me." We don't do that. And the feedback is constructive. It's not "I hate this," and that's it. It's put nicely. Not as a sandwich, compliment, what's wrong, compliment, but real, honest feedback on what doesn't work, why it doesn't work, and how you could potentially explore options to improve it. Those are very constructive sessions.

[00:17:16] Basically, supporting the team is the biggest one. At this point, I think one of my biggest challenges is that pre-pandemic we were in full flow getting the entire company to understand what UX is all about, what it is that we do, because people didn't know. They'd confuse us with the graphic design team or the web production team. I started to have sessions, and we had our town halls where we presented our work, but with the pandemic everything got stopped. So how do we bring the focus back onto UX again, and make people understand the kind of work that we can do, and the goals that we have, and what we can achieve for the company?

[00:18:08] This is my goal, but my team and I are working on it together, to be able to drive this together as a team. I don't say, "I am the team lead, so this is my thing." No, it's taking your team with you, driving along, and enjoying the journey as you go. There will be speed bumps. That's fine. We just get over them and we proceed on.

[00:18:34] Host: It's interesting how you give consistent feedback across the board. For us, there's no right or wrong, but we try to accommodate different personalities. We've got the impression over the years that some people take feedback very critically and other people want more, and we do sometimes do the hamburger method, because sometimes people feel that they need that. So it's an interesting and brave approach to go flat out with "this is the structure that we give you for feedback," and it's consistent across the board.

[00:19:12] Pavitra: I mean, some people do go the hamburger sandwich way. But at the same time, I think it is important to be honest. Previously I have mentored designers from different teams who came in interested in UX, and some developers who were interested in UX and wanted to learn the craft, so mentorship is always an ongoing thing. If I have to keep complimenting them, telling them what the problem is, then complimenting them again, it's way too tedious. Instead, it's better to politely (not like I'm throwing a dagger at you) tell them what the problem is, tell them why you think it's a problem and the potential approaches to find the solution, and let them go and explore it. Give them the stepping stone to roll onto, and then they can take it in whichever direction they want. I think that is more constructive than just trying to massage somebody's ego because they'd be uncomfortable with it.

[00:20:21] Host: I agree. Benjamin, you have a question; I'll ask it in one second. But Pavitra, you mentioned micromanagement, and I feel that's easier for you because you have, as you said, a very senior, experienced team. Om, what's your team like? Is that the same case, and would you agree with the micromanagement piece? Is it sometimes necessary, or how do you give autonomy to your teams?

[00:20:51] Om: That's a good question, Catherine. A lot of what's already been shared I agree with. I do not believe in micromanagement; I do believe in autonomy. My team is slightly younger. I have a senior, experienced designer, thankfully, from my previous company, so we worked together before. But then there are two other designers who've never worked in games. So there's one senior, one director (me) and two mid-level, and they've worked in UX, but not in games, so there is a difference.

[00:21:19] I think it's very important, as one thing you mentioned, to understand the person holistically. Each person is different: their strengths, and not weaknesses, but development areas. I divide them into soft skills and hard skills. When I'm talking to a person, I try to assess what their strong hard skills are, the technical skills. What are you good at? It might be prototyping. Or user research, which you're not that familiar with or exposed to, and you want to learn more. But then soft skills: how good are you as a communicator? How is your collaboration? How good are you at problem solving? Because often I've seen people rock star it, and they never get this soft skill feedback. It's like a plant. The leaves and the shoots are your technical skills, which the world sees, but if you're struggling with soft skills, which are your roots, you're not going to go that far, or you will struggle.

[00:22:09] I do believe in leading by example, so I always maintain a degree of hands-on versus strategic management approach. It could be 20 to 80, 30 to 70, but the idea is you show them. If I'm willing to get my hands dirty, my team believes me even more: "Okay, Omi's not just giving me advice. It's totally clear that if needed, he'll jump in and take the reins." Long term, I always tell my team, "Hey, there's autonomy." The whole purpose of my design thinking workshops is that even the strategy we come up with, we all collaborate together to refine. But if there comes a moment in time where a decision has to be made, if we're in analysis paralysis, I say, "Okay, I'm totally comfortable being autocratic and making that choice for you, based on what data I have."

[00:22:57] I do empower my leads to mentor the juniors. We have a lot of touch points on a weekly basis, a mentorship program, and we peer review work a lot. That way we're making sure that we are distributing that knowledge.

[00:23:14] Host: I really like that. It also empowers those people who want to step up to a management level to do it quicker, which is really great.

Career moments the other influenced

[00:23:19] Host: We are short on time, so I want to move on to career choices, because this is really interesting from you both. Talk us through some of the big moments in your careers that the other person has influenced. I think Pavitra has been a big influence on you in one instance. This should be fun.

[00:23:41] Om: Yeah. I actually got into UX because of her. I started out on the art side. My bachelor's was in economics, behavioral economics. I loved economics and psychology a lot. But my master's was in advertising and graphics, so I got into games, then I got into UI eventually, and she was in UX before me, and she said, "Get into it," at some point.

[00:24:02] Pavitra: I didn't just say get into it. I gave him a whole case study as to why.

[00:24:07] Om: I was lucky, because I could see her working in UX, and there was nothing like games UX. We're talking 10 years back. Nobody knew about it, there was hardly any material, but we saw potential. So she got me into it, and of course that's a big influence.

[00:24:22] But in terms of stepping up as a person, I think one of my biggest learnings was from my first job. It was a very high pressure environment. To give you context, I joined as a trainee, and after three and a half years I was an assistant art director, so I rose very fast. The reason for that was I was willing to put in the work. I was working almost 13 to 14 hours, just because I wanted to. I loved making games. Then I stepped up to assistant art director, and the management put on me the responsibility of delivering one whole product. I said, "Okay, nobody else is there, so I'll take it." I took it, since they were giving me that much responsibility. But then they gave me a very tight deadline, six months, to deliver a very high quality product on the Nintendo Wii.

[00:25:06] We delivered it, but it was not up to the quality expected, and the team burned out. I actually quit at that point. I said, "It's my fault. I was in charge of that." They told me, "No, it was not your fault." I said, "No, I was the one pushing the team. I accepted that, and as a leader I need to step down." The biggest lesson I learned is: learn to say no, show your vulnerability. You don't have to be a hero; you can't be a hero all the time. It's not about you. You have to take everything into account. That lesson has stayed with me. If I see an impossible deadline, I'm very candid. I don't mind annoying the CEO and telling them, "No, this will not work. What you are doing is wrong." There are very interesting incidents, but I would say this was one of the most powerful things that happened.

[00:25:52] Pavitra: This is something that I have learned from him, and I'm applying it in my space as well.

The advantage of working in the same craft

[00:26:01] Host: I love that, really great. I have to move on, because we're very short on time. I have one more question, and then I have a question from the audience. What was the most important advantage of working in the same craft? I feel that's the most important question to ask you right now.

[00:26:20] Pavitra: For both of us, our passion and our careers have collided, and it just happens that we're together. So a lot of our talk is either around UX or around food. I think the best part about being in the same craft is being able to understand each other better. Sometimes things get lost in translation because your mind works in a little different way, but we connect on that most times. I won't say all.

[00:27:00] We utilize our design thinking techniques outside of work as well. We do our financial planning through a workshop type of approach. Initially we even had our own kanban board for things that used to get irritating between us that we needed to improve. It was backlog, to do, in progress, done. If it wasn't done, there'd be a retrospective, and if it was done, the other person would take them out for dinner or something like that. We utilized these techniques, and I think that has improved our relationship quite a bit as well. We speak the same language. It never gets boring, for some reason.

[00:27:52] And the challenge and the knowledge that I gain from him (I don't think he'd say the same) is quite immense. I have support for any small or big thing that comes up, or problem-solving. He's really good. As you've heard from his answers, he's very articulate. So there's a lot of goodness in this for me.

Q&A

[00:28:17] Host: That's really great, and I think that's some good advice for any couple out there, whether you're in the same field or not. I love that: almost psychology through a Trello board, and true UX thinking. Couples counseling. Just quickly, Benjamin in the audience has asked: he's new as a UX designer, he's trying to break into the industry, and he's always looking for top tips. What do you both look for when hiring UX designers? What would be the biggest standout for either of you in hiring?

[00:28:48] Om: Catherine, it depends on what stage you are hiring at. Just assuming, Benjamin (nice to meet you), let's say you are at the start of your career, so maybe you are being hired for a junior role or a mid-tier position. First, of course, I look at the experience of the person. But if it's a new role, I will of course look for things like what your education level has been and what your interests are. But more importantly, I'm looking for that hunger. I'm looking for that curiosity. I'm looking for traits like how much empathy you have.

[00:29:25] I'll be honest with you. People will always give you a test, and sometimes you're blown away by the craft, you're blown away by the soft skills. And then when you interview them: "How did you come to make this decision?" "Well, I think it looks cool. It's just what is trending. Look at this one, it looks crap compared to this." I'm like, that's not the reasoning I want from you. What I'm really looking for is: are your fundamentals clear? You should not just be able to put up something which impresses others as an intelligent, usable solution. Why did you get there? Maybe even before bringing the solution, how did you get to that point?

[00:30:01] So I'm looking for that curiosity, that reasoning, and empathy most of all. As a UX designer you need to be very objective. You cannot be subjective. There are times you'll need to get into that space, but that objectivity, clarity, curiosity and hunger for work, along with decent technical craft, that's what I'm looking for.

[00:30:20] Host: I like that. And almost also saying that if you don't know something, it's okay not to know everything when you're just starting out.

[00:30:29] Om: Yeah, it's the potential. You don't need to be 100% perfect, because it's also the job of whoever is hiring you to hone you into that person. But show me that raw, uncut potential. That's what I'm thinking.

[00:30:41] Pavitra: I love it. For me, of course, everything that Om said, plus: one of the biggest things for me is, would the person actually take a second to think before they respond? I think it's very important as UX designers, and this is my own fault, early in my career and I think recently as well: I just react. So I'm working very consciously on not doing that. When I interview, one of my best and favorite questions, one that really throws people off (so, people listening to this, if I interview you, you know this question is coming), is: if you had to UX any part of your life, what would it be, and how would you do it?

[00:31:31] From this question, I'm not actually looking for a real concrete answer. I'm not looking for the process that you'll follow to change it. What I'm looking for is whether you will take that one or two seconds to think, articulate it in your head, and then present it. The reason for this is that no matter whether you're in a consultancy, a gaming company, a Fortune 500 company or a startup, it doesn't matter: there are so many stakeholders, so many opinions, so many voices, that it gets overwhelming. And if we start responding to each and every one of them, if we start reacting, it just goes southwards, and people will stop taking you seriously. It's always better to take a few seconds, articulate, and either respond or tell them, "You know what, let me think about it. I'll get back to you."

[00:32:28] That's the only thing. A lot of people go completely red; they become tomatoes, the cheeks go red and everything. But that's also a learning. I won't hold it against them if they haven't had that experience; they're still learning. But I think it's important, as UX designers honing in on the craft, to take a few steps back and not react right away.

[00:32:54] Host: Yeah, that's really great. We're actually way over time, so I can't even...