#43 UX Bites: Becoming a UX Leader with David Wenk
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Hello friends and welcome back to the Future of UX podcast. I'm your host Patricia Reines and I am thrilled to introduce you a brand new segment or a brand new format we are launching here at the Future of UX which is called UX Bytes.

And in this exciting new format, we will dive deep into a very specific UX challenge. And we are bringing on an industry expert to share actionable tips and insights on how to solve these problems, UX problems.

And for today's episode, we are focusing on a topic that many of you have been curious about: how to transition from being just a designer to stepping up as a UX leader. To help us unravel this, I'm super happy to introduce our guest David Wank. David is a former UX leader and currently occupies an intriguing role as the intersection of UX and sales at Google.

With a background in architecture, David's journey to UX has been anything but linear and he's here to share his personal quick tips on how to position yourself more effectively as a UX leader. So the aim of UX Bytes is to provide you with a mini guide, actionable tips that you can share and implement right away.

I hope you find this new format both insightful but also practical. And before we jump in, a super quick shout out. If you're hungry for more content on UX, future tech and industry insights, don't forget to sign up for my free newsletter. You can find the link in the episode description. But now, without further ado, let's get started and enjoy this insightful conversation with David Weck.

So today we have David in the podcast. David, welcome. So nice to have you. Hello, Patricia. Nice to be here. Of course. So the topic of today's episode is how to present yourself as a UX leader in your company or your organization.

And David is going to share his insights and tangible tips on how to do so. So, David, please share your tips on how to present yourself, if you are a UX designer, more as a UX leader. Yeah, thanks, Patricia. There's, I think,

two, actually three most important things that helped me in my career to position myself as a design leader. The first thing is, I think a lot of especially young designers do this mistake, is that they position themselves

more like a blockers and like an enabler but they come from a very positive intention because you want to as a designer of course always have the best methodologies and do like user research and everything but being very dogmatic being seen as very dogmatic can be seen as a as a blocker

And yeah, that would be like a first thing. Like another thing is what helped me in my job where I got promoted also from individual contributor to a design leader.

was that I was expanding and evangelizing design beyond the product design team that we have through various initiatives, for example, like a UX Guild. And as a last thing, what I can always say is,

I learned a lot about design leadership and about leadership in general, not by watching Figma tutorials or learning about the latest design trends, about shades or something. Those are important things like you have to know this. Don't get me wrong.

but i was personally always more interested in like the product management aspects of it or like how businesses work in general for example like podcasts like from um

from like incubators, like the Y Combinator or something. That's something that helped me a lot to understand the bigger picture. And then like really to think about, okay, how can design now solve a problem like in this high level business space? And that really was like a great thought exercise for me.

Love that. I mean, that makes total sense. And I would like to go through each of the three topics you just mentioned. So let's get started with the first one. So you mentioned that designers sometimes get seen as a

a blocker and I know exactly what you mean. You are in a meeting and then your manager says, oh, we need this feature until next week. And the designer jumps in and says, no, we need to do user research and we need to do an analysis and all these kind of things. And we as designers think we are amazing.

But the problem is that the rest of the team thinks we are a blocker, right? So what is your tip on how to deal with these kind of situations as a designer? What do you do? Yeah, Patricia, so I can tell you how I went by and what was successful, helpful for me.

So when I started at ThinkProject, like in my second role actually as a UX designer, I got promoted there also in a design leadership role.

My UX maturity was very low. Managers were thinking, yeah, UX designers making a UI, actually, and maybe a wireframe. That was the highest thing. Then they had a very new, shiny project. They came to me and said, hey, David, we need some UX. Can you make us a nice prototype? Can you make us something?

And here, of course, I saw, oh, they don't understand UX. I should talk to some customers before. I should do something before. But I knew that was not what they care about at this moment. And instead of going in endless teaching debates, and I prepare a deck and tell them, this is what UX design is,

I sat down and created like very quickly, like focused on execution very quickly and created a prototype, like a click dummy, like a web, just like a web app click dummy in Figma. And I could present it to them and to all our stakeholders. And I could show them, look, this is how it could look like. Of course, nothing was validated.

but they already uh were amazed by it they were amazed still by this that you could

um build something like this uh in uh like it was a click dummy and they could well you put something into the room and you create a discussion right that's like the beauty um of it and after that then i basically i gained their trust i gained their trust and they was like david gets shit done they would get shit done quickly

let's let's listen to him what he has to say and i was saying you know what why not like invite a couple of customers and let them like we have some interviews in a design sprint with them and we can test it also i was like yeah that's uh that's that's cool let's let's uh do this right that's was um that was definitely helpful so they could see okay i'm a doer i'm i'm doing something

and i'm not a talker i think that's so important for like a designer like because or we have like there's so much theoretical knowledge in our field which is beautiful but there's so much uh things we can have theories about it but in the end of the day you get hired to get some stuff done

right and get it quick done and if you can show that you have this capability uh then your boss gets a compliment from from their boss and then they come to you and you're like can do more free makes so much sense yeah i mean that's interesting like giving them the feeling of being together

in this boat, sitting on the same boat and solving it together, you can still have your doubts about the prototype that you created and still mention like, yeah, we need to do testing and stuff. But I think that's a great way and a really good tip, I think, for the listeners, because it's very easy to say, no, we need to do the research and this is not the way how we learn it. It's not great. We can't do it. So I really love that.

Let's move to the second term. So you said that you want to extend your X beyond your product team. Right. How is that working? And what do you mean by that? Yeah, it sounds a little lofty because you also read a lot of it. Evangelize beyond design, beyond your team. So again, like an example that really worked for me

uh what I did and what was really successful so when I was at a theme project I founded a UX guild like it's like the guild uh you know it's like from the Spotify a guild model it's like a famous model how they organize their teams like a guild is like you have people like a

chapter of interest like a group of interest where you have people from other teams but who are like like-minded people and you bring them like together to foster like exchange and knowledge exchange so basically what i did um i got like eight people together in our company who are like really design advocates who really love design and i said you know what

everybody gets like a UX Guild mug and you know get some swag and we have like our channel together and we have like basically our internal design team

but we are like we're like a design team here and created like basically in the beginning i was uh was important for me that we don't just our group that meet every two weeks and drink coffee together and have like a chat i wanted something valuable for my stakeholders for the leaders for all the teams and the product teams so what i did is basically

I had this these like seven, eight people and I trained them like basic was basic knowledge in like design sprint facilitation. Like I bought them like the sprint book from Jake Knapp, some videos, some online YouTube videos about it. And we had some dry runs after that in Miro was a template. And then I went out and basically sold

and marketed our UX Guild as a facilitation team for design sprints for other product teams. So I was asking them, hey,

What are you currently working on show me your roadmap oh yeah you are you want to redesign like this dashboard here and this new function, so this would be something we could help you with. How about like getting designs for free and getting this like within one week you get like a high fidelity prototype for that for your engineers and you don't have to think about this anymore.

and they're like hey cool uh let's uh let's do this and then we had like i was enabling basically my team members who are like non-designers they were like test engineers and product owners in like facilitation and design thinking and they basically facilitated the workshops then was a success

they got visibility they said hey look what we have oh wow you have like how did you get this cool new user journey this cool prototype uh who made this for you i was like yeah it was uh the ux guild and then like right they wrote about it and then it was a success yeah that was a big win

That's a cool story. I also really love how proactively you started that because it's very easy to get trapped in the hole of frustration where you feel like nothing is working and it's so frustrating.

But the only way out is to really be proactive and start something new. And then the idea of like creating this UX team of like, you know, UX group, UX fighters who are in this together and then train them and enabling other teams with these skills. I think that's

such an amazing idea I really really love that and I think also probably really helpful for some of the listeners who might want to do something similar but don't know where to start so I think that's really cool yeah no I mean uh if every company is different so right you have different stakeholders you have different Champions also but I think the general idea is like you organize

you start organizing somehow something and even if you just post in your slack channel every week a two-minute video about design thinking myth innovation something right and you post something it's like you know brand building right how important and it's the same also for internal for

positioning yourself there right as a leader really smart right like because Slack can be a very boring place besides all the funny gifs or so so if you put something in that actually has value that helps people to understand also what UX is many stakeholders they don't get it they have their own problems so I think that's

super cool to do that in a tiktok format right it's fun that's engaging it's not that difficult but that can really make a difference and there you actually stand out because a lot of people are not going to do that yeah an amazing idea definitely i love that thank you super cool

So let's move to your tip number three, which is focusing on the right aspects of design. And there I would really like to dive a little bit deeper in because this is also something a lot of people are wondering at the moment. What are the skills that you actually should focus on? YouTube is full of Figma tutorials of like how to create this kind of component and how to choose colors and everything.

But you mentioned that the product management part or the strategy behind this is much more important if you want to present yourself as a leader. Why do you think so? And how do you actually get those skills? You mentioned already the podcast, but how did you get the skills? Yeah, it's...

I think it's important, yes, to have the interest. You first have to have the interest to say, to believe design is more than rectangles and drop shadows. That's like the first thing. So whenever I see like, it's also was not so much fun to me to just like

designed this but some people are like different there's like wonderful ui designers out there who do uh lots of cool uh stuff that i could never never do but i was always more interested in the question is this what i design how do we know that this is what what what we are building here on that what i'm where i'm spending my time now is really having an impact on the business um

right and this was always like the question like that came naturally to me when i was uh like in meetings stakeholder meetings and i was and say like yeah we have we need now a dashboard we need this and distances and then you ask like how do we know that this uh will be now uh a driving factor for our customers and for the business and it's like yeah we heard someone in sales uh say that and that was like

always like for me like the drive to go a little bit high level and to want to learn more about product management for example yeah because then i learned hey product management has really trying to tackle this challenge like um for example the book uh what i can recommend uh from melissa perry escaping the build trap is is like a like a like a big uh thing like a lot of things get built

where nobody puts like thought into it why they should build it and then you learn hey as UX designer I can actually play a part in this strategic way of developing the requirements and engineering the requirements from a customer and business perspective that's what's like a thing that where I really felt driven to and another thing

you read it these days a lot on social media designers should know numbers right there's like like like some threats uh about it that i discovered here um that's yes analytic skills are good but for me what was always helpful was like learning about

startups, like how do startups work? How do business, how does business work? How does a business make money? Right. And that's why podcasts, for example, from Y Combinator or Anderson Horowitz, for example, these are like investors, incubators. I listen to that because they talk about startups and talk about what makes them successful. What makes startups successful? Why do startups fail?

And then you use this knowledge in your design thinking and you can connect things in a different way. And you're not just in your design bubble together there. And that, I think, helped me in conversations with stakeholders.

like to sound just smarter and be more like i know what i'm talking about and i'm not like yeah we could have like here a nice design i was like no but how does it help our product market fit and uh how is this with our annual recurring revenue you know how does it improve our conversion rate and you use these terms in the right context and it's like okay there's someone who can help us nice

Amazing tip. I think it makes also subconsciously a really big difference if you feel that people are speaking your language, right? They're using the right terms that gives you the feeling of they get you, you know, they understand what this is all about.

And if you don't speak the language, it's very difficult to have a proper conversation. So I really liked your tip of diving into the business world and that especially startups, because with startups, it's super important that they are becoming successful. And all these things of like market fit, et cetera, are super important. I will link all the podcasts in the description box so people can check it out. Yes. Amazing tips.

Thank you for sharing that. And to close the episode, I would like to give you a little bit of time to share some amazing resources that you are consuming yourself or that were helpful to you throughout your careers or that you can just recommend to the listeners.

yeah patricia i was already mentioning but uh like some like one for every designer who wants to get um like a first step into product management i think because it can be very overwhelming right is escaping the build trap by melissa perry

just gives you like a really good overview of the struggles of product management like what they struggle and how product management works and then it helps you thinking hey how how can i help my product manager right this is like such a big thing because for a ux designer product designer a product manager is in a product company the most important stakeholder so understand this person

and their pain points, right? So this is like super important. Yeah, I mentioned the podcast, the incubator from Y Combinator, Andrew Horowitz also, or Lenny's podcast is also very famous. He does a very hands-on tangible product leadership podcast. And in terms of management,

it's a little cheesy but the book my manager when I got promoted recommended me was the one minute manager the book from Kenneth H Blanchard it's a very interesting book I think what what's cool for designers is because it's

very short in a written in a story it's very story based it's a story about like an employee who is wondering why his boss is so loved right and uh it's like asking that he's interviewing like all these uh like people in the in his company and they give him like examples uh why he's why he's a cool so it makes it very memorable and intangible also yeah

Nice. Perfect. Thank you for sharing all the resources. I will link all of the resources in the description box. So if you're listening and want to check it out, you can do so. And David, where can people find you? Yahoo.

Where can they reach you? What is the best place? The best place is on Twitter. It's called XNow. Yeah, sure. I still can't quite understand the brand. But you can find me there at TheDavidBank or also on LinkedIn. Feel free to drop a message.

Perfect. Okay, David, thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed our conversation and all the insights that you shared. So thank you so much. Thank you. Bye. Bye.

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