29. UX Mentorship (feat. Tim Neusesser, UX Specialist at NN/g, and Travis Grawey, Director of Product Design at OfficeSpace)
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This is the Nielsen Norman Group UX Podcast. I'm Therese Fessenden. Practice. Resilience. Training. Ask any experienced professional in virtually any field what helped them grow their careers, and they'll usually give you some combination of these words. But if you ask those same professionals about times that they were stuck and needed to get unstuck, or wanted to improve the quality of their work, or wanted to improve their

You'll inevitably hear about the importance of feedback from another person, be it a peer, a more senior colleague, or even someone who just helps you see the world a little differently. In other words, you hear about a mentor. Some people create formal mentorship relationships with former supervisors or current coworkers. Others find them through professional connections that they continue to cultivate years after they've first met. Regardless how one finds a mentor,

Mentors help people see things from new perspectives, ask important questions, and overall help enable professional growth. Today we're featuring a conversation between my NNG colleague Tim Neusesser and his mentor Travis Grayway. Travis is the Director of Product Design and User Experience at OfficeSpace and has mentored people all around the world. Travis was Tim's first mentor when Tim transitioned into the field of UX.

In this episode, Tim and Travis discuss how mentorship has helped them both in their personal and professional lives and how to build meaningful and successful mentor-mentee relationships. Yeah, hello, Travis. I'm happy to actually have you on the show today.

What some people might not know is that you were one of my first UX mentors when I actually joined the field of UX. So I'm very excited to have you here today and to get to talk to you again. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about yourself and let us know what excites you about being a mentor.

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me on, Tim. And I don't know if I ever told you this, but you are one of the first folks that I talked to as a mentor. And so you were kind of dipping your feet into that world. And so was I from the other end. Oh, I didn't know. Yeah, it's kind of exciting how it's all kind of come full circle here now. Now we're chatting about mentorship.

So anyway, I live in Minnesota with my wife of 20 years. We've got six kids. I've been designing since the turn of the century. For the past couple of years, I've been in product in a SaaS leading product design and user experience. I never really set out wanting to be a mentor. I don't think it's too common for someone to start off their career journey saying that they have a goal to mentor others. I'm sure there are. But I think the typical person really starts out their career with that

internal focus. What do I want to be when I grow up? What are the things that I need to learn to increase my status and my salary? And as you progress throughout your career journey, at least for me, it was a shift in focus from internal to external. How can I help my team succeed? And as I started to lead teams, how can I help my team realize what their goals are and help them achieve their goals? So that really took me down that path of mentorship.

Yeah, totally. What was the reason for that shift from that more internal focus to now the external focus and trying to uplift more of your team members? If I look back, I think it really started to stir in me when I first became a parent. When kids are new, they don't have any experience. They don't know anything. They've never done anything. So they try a lot of things and they fail at a lot of things.

And one of the roles of a parent is to help guide kids with no experience using the vantage point that you have from the experience that you already have. So it's putting up those guardrails, creating a safe place for failure and to learn from failure. I think that that was a start of it. I didn't recognize it then. If you've ever been around young kids, it's survival mode. And so it's a lot of exhaustion. So I didn't realize it at the time what was starting to happen and occur with that external shift in focus.

But I think it really clicked when I started coaching my kids in sports. I've had the privilege of coaching my sons in flag football and baseball and in tackle football. And in that position of a coach, it's my job to look at what they're doing from a different perspective and a different vantage point. Looking at form, looking at technique, working together with my sons, with the player to make those adjustments for a more successful outcome.

So I think I realized through parenting, through coaching, through other relationships that I had, that my purpose wasn't to replicate myself. You know, this isn't how I would do it. This isn't how I would swing the bat or how I would design something, but rather to help that individual discover and unlock their potential and succeed in the way that only they can.

And so I didn't have that really growing up or throughout my career. It was a lot of self-learning, a lot of stumbling in the darkness and a lot of failure and learning from that. And so I just kind of made that decision that I want to be better than the examples that I had.

So through that experience of not having that yourself when you grew up and then all of a sudden you experienced that with your own kids, how exciting that is and what a great journey it is for yourself to actually help someone grow in sports or even in their personal life through

through that actually got that experience and then it translated into your job um how did that translation look like how did that shift look like from okay i'm teaching i'm mentoring my own kids on the one hand and then deciding i want to do this in my everyday job yeah i think we naturally gravitate toward the things that bring us joy and fulfillment it was through seeing other people succeed

that really got me a lot of excitement and a lot of fulfillment. I was able to share in the success of other people. It wasn't necessarily my...

individual contribution to the work that was successful, but it was kind of the behind the scenes guidance and direction that was part of that shared success. So I really saw that with coaching. Obviously, I'm not the one on the field playing the game, but being able to support and cheer and throughout the weeks in different practices, helping to improve technique and form to help bring about that success on game day was really what

made the connection for me in business. If I'm leading a team, I'm not necessarily the one every day working on a particular feature, but I can be behind the scenes supporting, clearing the way, help guiding based on my previous experience and where I've been to help

somebody else succeed. Yeah, I can totally confirm that. I remember when we had our first mentor meetings, actually, I was at a point at a project, I worked as a freelancer at that point in time. And I was working on a project and I was so stuck. And I actually thought about stopping right there and saying, okay, I can't do this. I don't know if I can be a UX designer at all. And we met a few times and you just

gave me great advice. Sometimes it was just a second pair of eyes or just that empathy of saying, hey, I was in that position or other designers are in that position as well. And just by asking those questions, it really helped me to overcome that situation where I said, I'm so stuck here. I don't know if I want to continue working as a freelancer or maybe as a designer at all. I don't know if I can do this.

But through your help, just three or four times that we met at that time, it really helped me to overcome those challenges. So I'm still very thankful there. But, um,

We were talking about your kids earlier and how you started pretty much mentoring them. What were your first steps when that translated into the business world? What were your first steps to actually start mentoring in a business environment? I was in a position to add to my team and to hire some new folks onto the team. And so I was doing a lot of interviewing of design candidates.

And I saw some themes throughout a lot of the portfolios and resumes that I was getting applicants for the role. And I didn't like what I saw, not in terms of quality or process. It was just a lot of the same. It felt like one person was submitting 50 different times. There was no personality or no real difference, one designer to the next. What was the main reason for that?

What was the main reason that everybody appeared to be the same? Yeah, so after interviewing a lot of folks and digging a little deeper, I came to discover a lot of these applicants were coming fresh out of boot camps. They were new to the field. They were being taught very similar curriculum, being taught very similar process that didn't really...

reflect real world situations. And I'm not even talking about your school projects that you do for assignments that are a made up business or that kind of thing. I'm not even talking about that. Just the process that was being taught, the way that these boot camps were telling these students, this is what hiring managers are looking for.

was not accurate, at least for me. And I tell the mentees that I talk to, this is my biased opinion. The way that I work, the way I interact, I'm going to tell you something and you might hear something completely different from somebody else. But from me being part of that journey of looking for work and showcasing my work and talking about it, this is the success that I've seen. And as a hiring manager, this is the type of thing that I'm going to be looking for.

So I saw a lot of the same stuff that was, in my point of view, not right. They were focused on the things that were not important and not focusing on things that I think are important. So, for instance, case study is a big thing that people try to create to showcase their work. But they do it in this long form novel type of writing style.

That is very difficult to consume as a hiring manager, especially if in any given role you might have hundreds of applicants for. And as a hiring manager, it's my responsibility to give each designer due diligence, look at their work and look at their resume and assess if this is somebody that I want to bring on to the team or not.

And there's just simply no time in the day, in the week to do my normal job, plus look through all these pieces of work. So I think there was so much focus through these boot camps on process and let's document every step of the way. The art of storytelling was completely left on the sidelines. As a hiring manager, I care more about the outcome. What's the problem you're trying to solve? The solution that you came up with, what was the outcome? Or if it hadn't been developed yet, what was the expected outcome?

And those things are always buried as problem statements or as, you know, tiny metrics that are footnotes rather than spotlight. That was a little concerning to me, seeing a lot of the same pattern of submissions and showcase of work and feedback.

Not that I want to replicate a bunch of myself, but if there's a better way to do something, I think it's the responsibility of everyone who has gone before to impart that knowledge on those coming behind. Yeah, that's very interesting because I remember myself when we first met, I was pretty much fresh out of a bootcamp. I was working only for a few months and after the bootcamp, I started as a freelancer and then

you started to be my mentor and you even helped me through the hiring process here at NNG, for example. And I remember we were having some of those conversations and you said, it's important to tell a story. It's important to have the spotlight on

on not only on the process on every single step, but actually on storytelling, on what you learned, what was the outcome. So I think that was a big help in actually getting hired here at NNG. When you started mentoring, like every start is always hard, right? What were some challenges that you encountered in your first mentor-mentee relationships?

Well, I think first of all, it was new. I didn't have the experience of being a mentee. I never had a mentor. So to understand what that relationship looked like, I just had my personal expectation of what that should look like. So kind of going into the whole thing blindly and just putting yourself out there thinking, no, I don't have all the answers, but I've done some of this stuff before.

And maybe some of my experiences, my past experiences, my past failures,

could help somebody else either avoid the same sort of failure to help navigate through a difficult situation that I may have some experience with. On top of that, I think it's difficult to measure effectiveness for being a mentor. This doesn't apply for everybody, but there are some great individuals I've met through being a mentor and having that actual mentor-mentee relationship.

where we meet on a regular basis to track progress through the things that they're trying to work through and to grow in. And there's an actual relationship that's been built and created.

But there's a lot of people that interpret mentor in different ways. Their expectations can be all over the board. I'll get one call scheduled for a portfolio review. Another one wants to do an interview prep. Somebody else wants some resources on how to develop their skills. These are all great things, but I'd say the 90% of the conversations that I have are just one-time conversations.

with no real interest in growing that relationship with mentor and mentee. And I'm not really sure how effective that can be. That's definitely one difficult piece to it. Am I actually affecting anything? Am I actually helping somebody more than just some advice or some service level feedback? A lot of interesting points that you're touching on there. In the beginning, you said one of the goals as a mentor is not to replicate yourself.

What exactly do you mean by that? This actually became front of mind for me back when I first became a parent. And realizing and understanding that people are so different

I can't be the same dad to one of my kids as I am to another because they respond in different ways and they interact in different ways. They have different thoughts and different goals and different things that they want to do. And so I have to tailor that.

how I respond and react to each one of them based on how they best interact. And the same is true with everybody, with you. I will interact with you differently than I might somebody else just because of your personality and how we communicate. You have different goals and different skills than I do and somebody else who will still call themselves a UX designer. They're

They're going to have different focus areas, different things that they're better at. And so rather than try to conform everybody to me the way that I think things should be done, I need to help you see what you're best at and help guide and focus you down that path. The way that you design something is going to be completely different than the way that I design something. And that has to be okay.

It has to be okay for me as a mentor to not need control over those things that aren't important. My goal isn't to teach you how to design in my style. It's to help you learn design. And your interpretation of that is different than mine. But it doesn't make one better designer.

or one more right. It's just a different way of looking at things. And I think that's helping people uncover and discover what their potential is. It just helps make everything more interesting.

So if I may sum that up, pretty much it comes down to finding that balance as a mentor in between. I have to guide my mentee, but I also have to give the freedom so the mentee can fully develop themselves and also can play out their own strength and find their own way so you don't try to replicate yourself as a mentor.

And another question that I had, you said, you have to see what your mentee is best at and make them better.

How do you try to find this point? How do you try to find this thing that your mentee is best at? And how do you enable them to actually get stronger at that? It's hard to do with a single conversation. To really be effective in the mentor-mentee relationship, you really need to build a relationship. And that takes time. It takes trust. It takes vulnerability.

And you can't do that in a 45 minute call. I'm going to give as much as the mentee is willing to give. Meaning if you have scheduled a portfolio review, that's what we're going to look at. We're going to do portfolio review and then good luck. I'll send you on your way.

But if you really want that development and that relationship, I'm going to put all of myself into that in terms of vulnerability and building that relationship to help grow. I mean, as a mentor, there's definitely reciprocation there. I'm growing myself as I'm helping the mentee grow.

It's a symbiotic relationship, but it's a lot of questions around what motivates you, what got you into design, what got you from where you were to where you are now. So a lot of that too is just listening. I do a lot of listening to the mentees during the conversations when they're talking about some of the work that they've done or talking about their story and

What got them into design or transition from finance into user research? You know, what was that thing that sparked that interest to get them to realize that UX was the path for them?

Maybe it was empathy. Maybe it was data and behavioral things, the science-y part of UX. Maybe it was problem solving and that type of thing. But I'm really listening for the storytelling aspect. And when that excitement pops into their story, that's a sign that, oh, let's dig deeper into this. And maybe there's some opportunity for focus or some growth in this particular area because you...

you kind of lit up during this part of your story. That's an interesting point that you touch on there. You tried to find out what made people join the UX field in the first point and what gets them excited to actually work in this field. And I think UX is very special here because

I always say there is no designer by design. There is no common or regular path into this field until now. Maybe it's there in a few years, but most of the people, like you mentioned, come from different fields, maybe finance or some other fields that are not related in the first place to your ex.

And they made a very conscious decision to then switch and then finding what made them actually switch, what got them excited. I think it's a good point to then find how to play out this strength, how to play out this excitement and actually grow as a UX designer. Something else that you mentioned is when you are mentoring, you're always also growing yourself.

What exactly do you mean by that? How are you growing through your role as a mentor? So the human connection of being a mentor is so important for the process itself of being an effective mentor and helping somebody that comes seeking help. But it also helps in so many other ways in daily work. We're working with cross-functional teams and

trying to understand other people's point of view and perspective, the types of skills that are required for being a mentor, I don't think it's anything special. If you have a relationship with anyone, with another human, you have the capacity of being a mentor. It's being able to understand or recognize when somebody needs an answer or if they just need an ear.

It's having that compassion and empathy, being able to share past experiences, being able to recognize when something's maybe off track and help get it back on track. There's nothing magical about being a mentor. If you have experience in something, you have the capacity to share that knowledge with somebody else and affect their path. And I think that's

maybe pulling the curtain back a little bit to, you know, kind of,

say it's not that hard. I think everybody should be mentoring somebody. It will help those behind you and it helps you to continue to grow and develop. And when you get in some kind of a leadership space or you're over a team of people, it helps with that as well. So it helps you in maintaining good and healthy relationships and actually

also enabling the people that you work with to grow on a daily basis. And you said everybody should be a mentor. What do you think is the one advice that you would give someone who just starts out as a mentor? I think some of the barriers that some might have to step into that role of being a mentor is the feeling that they might not have something to offer or something to give.

And when you look at the landscape of now different platforms that offer this mentor-mentee relationship, you can see all the stuff on LinkedIn about, you know, call me up for office hours and schedule some time with me. I'll help with whatever you need. There's a lot of noise.

and you feel like I do, you might not feel like you have anything additional to offer. Everything that has already been said has been said, and you don't have anything new or fresh or insightful. I would counter that just based on my own experience stepping into mentorship and being in that role. You definitely have something to offer. Your experience is different than everybody else's. Nobody shares your experiences. Nobody shares your failures and your unique perspective on

how you got to where you are today. And so that I think is something that I'd say to somebody stepping into mentorship for the first time is that your story is valuable. Your experience is valuable. And if you can help somebody navigate through something or avoid some kind of pitfall, you should look at that as success.

The role of a mentor isn't to necessarily change the world or to be some divine inspiration, so to speak, on somebody's journey. But if you are available for what is needed...

If that's an answer, if it's an ear, if it's a shoulder to cry on, I can't tell you how many conversations I've had just with folks frustrated with the market and thinking that something is wrong with them because they're not able to get unstuck. Just me being there to listen to somebody's struggle without necessarily having an answer, that being present is extremely valuable.

I mentioned that earlier and that was actually one of the biggest benefits for me was that empathy point. Just saying, hey, I was in this position. Other designers were in this position. That's a normal part of the process.

That gives you an incredible feeling of, I'm not the failure. It's something normal. It's something regular. And I, as many people before me, as many designers for me, will probably overcome those problems as well. And I just have to face them and continue working. So I definitely agree there that just having an ear and saying, I understand you. I've been there. That can be incredibly helpful.

Yeah, just getting somebody else's perspective and point of view, I think is very, very valuable. Yeah, totally. You were touching on that a little bit before you said building an effective mentor-mentee relationship needs a lot of trust and needs a lot of time. So do you think it's actually possible to effectively mentor in the remote world that we find ourselves in? I think it depends on the individual. It all depends on how you connect with people.

If you're extroverted and you get a lot of energy when you're in the room and in proximity with people, it might not be as effective as if that drains you. So I think anything can work if you work at it. It might take a little extra work for those that need to put a little more time into it. But I think the remote nature of work allows for so much more opportunity that didn't exist before.

I never would have met you, Tim, if we weren't remote. So the nature of remote gives a lot more opportunity to a lot more

of the population. - So pretty much with mentorship, it's very similar to our work. We just have to adjust to the new environment and find the benefits and the strength of this new environment. And then mentorship can be even more effective because you can reach out to more people. You can find mentors that might be a better fit and can find mentors pretty much all around the world.

And as with anything, you're going to get out of it what you put into it. If you come into the mentor-mentee relationship thinking it's going to solve all of your problems, that's not necessarily going to happen, or at least not immediately. It requires work. One thing I try to do is give mentees homework for the ones that have a consistent conversation with me. Next time we talk, this is what we should talk about or go through or discuss.

The work that you put into it is what you're going to get out of it. Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned earlier that you started having a mentor yourself. How did having a mentor change you being a mentor yourself? Did it improve your mentorship skills? It's too early to tell.

But I have high hopes that it's going to. A lot of the reason behind me getting a mentor was to focus on my own personal growth and development. For so long, I'd been externally focused to the point where I was ignoring myself and where I was going. What are my career goals and what do I want to be when I grow up?

And so having a mentor forced me to pause a little bit and say, I'm still important. I'm still part of this story. So what are the things that I need to look at and focus on personally to help me continue to grow? In the six weeks that I've been meeting with my mentor, I can already see the improved focus and growth on a personal level. Yeah, that's great to hear. And

Earlier, you were touching a little bit on what you expect from your mentees to create a successful mentor-mentee relationship. What are some other things? You were touching on trust and time. What is something you expect from a mentee in your mentor-mentee relationship? You need to have a willingness to hear the hard stuff. When you seek out a mentor to help you navigate your journey,

there's potential for some light to be shed on the things that need to be called out. You know, if you're going down a wrong path, if you're doing it wrong, you should be prepared to be told you're doing this wrong and not to take it personally. And that's something that actually I think will be really beneficial for younger people

younger folks coming into the industry to have exposure to that type of feedback in this context. There's that opportunity to separate yourself from the work and not be so identified with your output.

And in the context of a mentor relationship where there's trust that's built and you know that your mentor has your best interest in mind and they're not calling things out personally or trying to make you feel bad or that comment wasn't about you personally. It was about this process or the way that you're approaching this particular thing. It's a safe space to be told things.

that you're doing it wrong. And so I think that there's a lot of lessons that can be learned earlier on in the career. - Yeah, I totally remember those feelings as well, being attached to some of your designs or some of your products and projects that you're working on. How would you help a mentee to be not overly attached to what they're working on? - Good question. It's tough to just tell somebody

hey, this feedback doesn't reflect you. It reflects the work. But you, as the designer said, well, I did the work. So it is a reflection on me. So it's kind of hard to just explain that to somebody. And there's a lot of time and experience that comes with understanding that or having that realization that feedback is on the work and not you as an individual.

It might be something that comes with time. Other than that, when I'm giving feedback, I focus on not so much what's on screen because we can talk about design tweaks and we'll talk about fonts and colors and visual hierarchy and all that kind of stuff. I'm more focused on the rationale behind the decisions. If we can identify why you did something, what the expected outcome is, what is the user going to be able to do

by placing that search box where you put it. You know, talking through those types of design decisions, I think helps more separate the what from the why. And if we can get a better why, there will be a better what. I remember you doing that with me when you became my mentor and we went over the website that I was designing at that point.

And you just ask questions. You just ask me, why did you design it this way? Why did you design something that way? And just by asking that question, I started thinking about it more deeply. And I started questioning my own decisions and being like, why do I think this is correct? What is that decision based on? And I think that was a great step to actually get detached from your design decisions and maybe make some changes yourself.

instead of having your mentor saying, hey, this is not correct, I would design it in a different way. And I think that ties back what you said earlier, that you don't try to replicate yourself as a mentor, but that you try to ask the right questions, try to give the right input to push your mentee to actually figure out how to solve those obstacles themselves. Yep. Yeah, exactly. If we focus on what's the problem that we're trying to solve,

I don't have to say much. You'll come to that realization on your own that, "Oh, maybe that wasn't the greatest decision." Yeah. And you're mentoring for some time now already. Is there something where you would say that could be a reason for you to stop mentoring?

I don't think I ever could stop because, like I said earlier, I think it's the responsibility of everyone who's gone before to help those that are coming behind. - Thanks, Travis, for all those insights, for all those great stories. Actually, where can people find you or other mentors? If someone says, "I'm looking for a mentor, I'm seeking mentorship," where can someone find a mentor?

Yeah, so there's platforms popping up all the time. LinkedIn is a great resource. I personally, I run all my sessions through ADP List. I'm in no way affiliated with them. I don't get any kickback if I mention their name. But yeah, I'm on ADP List and there's a lot of really great people on that platform as well. Yeah, thanks a lot, Travis. Like always, it was a pleasure talking to you and thanks again for all your insights.

Yes. Thank you, Tim. It was a pleasure speaking to you again. Thanks for having me on. That was Tim Noyesesser and Travis Grayway.

While we're on the topic of mentorship, we've got a number of articles and videos on the topic, and we also have a free report on UX careers. So if you're interested in learning more about this field or about UX in general, check out our website, www.nngroup.com. And if you enjoy this show in particular, please follow or subscribe on the podcast platform of your choice.

This show was executive produced by me, Therese Fessenden, and this episode was hosted and produced by Tim Neuesser. Great work on this one, Tim. All editing and post-production is by Jonas Zellner. Music is by Tiny Music and Dresden the Flamingo. That's it for today's show. Until next time, remember, keep it simple.