(00:00) so thank you so much V for giving your time today um sure and accepting my request for this interview to the audience um Wes and I know each other for about three three years we work in Advent H Vex is a ux manager there West manag a team of graphic designer ux designer researcher for Consumer application as well as our internal application one other thing that I reach out to West about is to Mentor me how he does one-on-one and team meeting so with that I will request Wes uh to share about yourself who vest
(00:40) is and what inspire you what Aspire you uh for the audience all right uh it’s been great working with you too Vinnie um I’ve learned a lot from you as well uh I think your communication style is awesome um I see what you do with the scrum Masters that you work with and also the the delivery folks and uh it’s so meaningful to the company and I appreciate everything that you do we couldn’t achieve what we achieve without the work of your team and that success is reflected on you so thank you thank
(01:15) you um yeah so where where do I come from uh I I guess if you think all the way back to like when I was in grade school primary school that kind of thing I uh I always kind of resonated with art uh I have hanging in my house a illustration cartoon drawing that was done whenever I was in kindergarten this drawing coloring that I did in kindergarten was in the mland art festival and I won an award I got recognized in that art art show and that was unique um not everyone was recognized elementary school right yeah
(01:57) in elementary school and like kindergarten right and my dad was excited and he mounted that thing on a piece of wood my father was a construction worker he worked very hard all of his life um he always encouraged us to follow something that we have passion for and so he was excited by that and he did that and I did all kinds of fun things with that piece of art that he did because I didn’t think it was meaningful at the time I’m so thankful that I saved it but because I look back at it as a moment that kind of
(02:26) inspired me to move forward um kind of fast forward to high school and I my dad insisted maybe it was Middle School my dad insisted take typing classes now this was before everyone was typing on the computer and I’m like Dad what do I need typing glasses for and he’s like I don’t want you to do what I do um although he was a Craftsman he was I think he was an artist himself the work that he did um but he didn’t it was hard on his body physically it was very demanding uh the w for that industry are
(03:02) not that great so he encouraged me and my sisters to try to achieve more and um that was great because typing we all do now and in in middle school we also had I got an introduction to the first Apple computer and it had illustration software on it and there were things that you could do there that was amazing and so that kind of introduced me to the opportunities that you can do with a computer and different things that you can do there um I continued with art throughout High School I didn’t know what I wanted to do I wasn’t sure um so
(03:43) I kind of took a gap year I worked two jobs uh I for a very long time worked in retail I helped set up one of the first retail stores here in Central Florida and um which did you set up your own details uh no I helped um set it up it was the first I first Walmart in Central Florida and so um that was kind of a a cool experience and I was due to my drive there I didn’t just look at it at and probably because of influence from my father taking his work so seriously and I worked with him over Summers and those kind of things um I uh
(04:24) took my job very seriously I didn’t just kind of show up um I did a lot of things um at Walmart uh there were moments where I saw opportunities to improve the way we were doing things and there were things that got adopted throughout the entire organization while I was in college um that was because of the the things that I learned while I was working there um I was fortunate that I had a uh a store manager that kind of gave me an opportunity to do different things uh and he showed me a leadership style of imp empowering the people
(05:00) around you and I didn’t realize at the time that that was something that I had learned so that was a potential path I could stick with retail and um while I was working two jobs between a gap year of college I didn’t even know if I was going to go to college um I I started reflecting on how difficult that was working two jobs not for a lot of income um and I thought if I had 10 million Ion at the time I 10 million is still a lot but if I had $10 million what would I do with my life okay and I reflected back on the
(05:39) things that I enjoyed and it was Art if I could make a living doing art I would love to do that and I had done a piece um that was another piece later in high school a few pieces that I had W awards at the Winter Park Art Festival I had people offer to buy my artwork um so that tra trory could have been there I think it would have been an exciting Road it would have been very difficult I think you know you hear the starving artist I think that’s a very real statement sometimes and um so I looked at what could I do that didn’t that
(06:16) would involve art but didn’t involve self sustaining Fine Art and um advertising was a field that I was very interested in so I thought okay a lot of my artwork is yeah like has subtext to it and that kind of thing so maybe if I can um if I can do that with advertising which advertising does motivate a call to action get people to do things uh spend their money donate uh volunteer whatever that is and so I thought at some point I’d love to own an ad agency um I would run that Ad Agency I just was very confident in entering into my
(06:59) career um but that was a goal that I had and so through college all of the courses I took were related to um advertising public relations uh Communications those kind of things and um I was fortunate that I had someone that was my best friend in college he was also my roommate he ended up being my best man at my wedding he did prepress artwork and so prepress is like when you’re doing print um this is pre this is like pre- interet kind of thing and so you’re doing print you have to prepare the files a certain way and I
(07:38) asked him I said hey Mike can you bring me your work home I’d love to do some of it and he’s like sure so he’d bring it home and I would mess around or to our apartment and I’d mess around with it and he’d be like that looks great it’ll never print right like you can’t print that it isn’t done right and he showed me the techniques that you needed to do that um and so I learned a lot from Mike on how to use systems properly and apply them I didn’t really know how much I was
(08:10) learning from him until I could apply it at a in a working environment and and so I um started applying for jobs near the end of college and I got an interview with Walmart’s corporate headquarters and that was to be a art director there and I directly out of school yeah and so I I was exciting I was on a team that was called special projects M and that special projects did like the jewelry brochures all the internal collateral for the company um also Pharmacy and shoes those are special departments so all the promotional material for them I
(08:49) worked on um I also did like local advertisements and stuff like that and um the first advertisement that I did was the Arkansas Razorbacks Walmart’s headquarters is in Bentonville Arkansas they had gotten into the final four and they said hey make an ad we’re going to put in the newspaper and I’m like okay cool you know so I did that the next one was they came to me and said hey we’ve got our shareholders meeting coming up the shareholders meeting has like I don’t know like 60,000 people that come
(09:19) to this thing and they’re like we need a brand for it we’d like for you to give it a shot because Mrs Walton is not Helen Walton was not um excited by any of the any of the materials that had been submitted before I had started I’m like sure so I came up with something that had people in it I knew the culture of the company I’ve been there for a long time and really made it about the people and she would it she it clicked for her she accepted that said yeah let’s do that and it was really an
(09:49) incredible like second project real project that I did people wearing t-shirts keychains they had ties um everything power giant PowerPoints at at Bud Walton Stadium which is a the basketball stadium there so that was really a cool opportunity to get my work in front of a lot of people and I think it helped me with confidence um I remember before I started the job and I was like loaded up a truck with all the stuff from my apartment and I was talking to my buddy Mike who had been doing this kind of stuff not advertising
(10:25) but really preparing stuff I’m like man I impostor syndrome I’m like I do not know what I’m doing like I’m going up here to get this like real job and and he’s like man you know how to do this stuff and it turned out that they were pivoting to technology at the time and not many people knew how to use the software systems that we were using right I did and so I started doing lunch and learns and sharing the knowledge that I had with people which really helped me get confidence in in what I
(11:01) did and I think it helped me all along the way now the work that I do I don’t often get intimidated by it I often will just uh you know uh take it on look at it for what it is and what do we need what are our goals what do we need to accomplish and um move forward from there I try to share that with my team so as I’ve grown teams and we’ve taken on different projects I try to encourage them to um understand that like yes we will stumble and trip there will be things that we won’t get right necessarily the first time but we can
(11:39) there are things we can do to help avoid that and um but we can overcome those obstacles um that that job at Walmart though this transitions into the how did I get into technology in ux is um I uh we were s sitting there there are four of us on special projects and and our manager said hey has anyone heard of this thing called the internet and everybody else on the team is like I don’t want to do that like I want to stick with print I I want to do that and and I said oh I’ll do it that’s always happened right from Radio to TV
(12:21) yeah and then TV to internet news and then in your case the print I remember the print to digital people was not sure how big this can go and print was already stabilized at that time and it was based on where you are you have certain reputation in that industry yeah and you know change is something that like it can be difficult for folks too and uncertainty I mean but you look at the.
(12:50) com boom and what happened there and look at the interesting things that just happened with the Super Bowl and cryptocurrency and all of the ads there be interesting to see what happens uh as we move forward with that but um yeah so I worked on Walmart’s first website it really was not a shopping cart we didn’t sell things we put some of the promotional stuff on there but I could do anything I wanted it was like wild wild west out there we didn’t have analytics there was what was oh man probably 96 you know okay yeah yeah yeah so 95 96
(13:27) so um but yeah I I was there for a little while I built a nice portfolio with all of the work I did and decided to come back to Central Florida um that was where my my family is my wife’s family is here in Florida um we met here at UCF go nights um and uh so that this is home Central Florida is home and um it was nice to come back here and um I I didn’t really know what I was going to do and someone that I worked with that worked in the I at the time Walmart’s had an IT group inside the stores I
(14:09) don’t know if they still do but um the person that was I I was friends with he ran a bulletin board and someone had posted to the bulletin board that they were looking for someone in uh web design and creative services and um I he reached out to me and said said hey I think this is what you said you do now and I’m like sure and so I worked for that company and they we did um designs for uh for local companies we were hosted we H host yeah so you was in Walmart mhm moved to the it uh digital part and then this position was in
(14:51) Walmart too we were still in marketing at Walmart it wasn’t it wasn’t technical yeah I mean we had an IT guy in our Marketing Group group that was doing like running the website but it wasn’t a full um like it we had a whole it Branch but they weren’t quite involved in the internet piece yet so this bulletin board was also within the no this was just something that my buddy ran it was just a thing that he he lives yeah he lives over in Christmas here and he just loved Tech and ran bulletin boards and
(15:25) had new people all over the country that like that was pre interet communication right and so there were postings that people would list jobs and stuff there but who knew to find them there at that time and so um yeah he told me about this job and it was a right I I think I’d been back for like a month maybe and started that that job and it was at a different company it was not at Walmart and um a lot of our customers were um like some of them were like medical companies like building software but there were software companies and it was
(16:06) interesting because they didn’t like you would I if you’re marketing someone’s products you want to see their products and we would go through some of their products and they were really clunky and hard to use and it was like oh like have you ever put these in front of your users like have you ever asked anyone about this and they’re like no do people do that and I’m like sure we do and so that started me on my journey of ux um I didn’t know what it was at the time it was more Consulting um but we were
(16:41) asking users to use people’s software at the time to make improvements to it and that kind of set me on that trajectory of doing software Consulting while we were building websites and um that was very exciting and fun and then somebody um that was a roommate of someone that was on my team because I grew a team there too I had some designers I had developers that reported to me and what we did is um we had a quality Department that like checked on how everything was working and all of that and um he one of the guys on my team said
(17:24) hey I have a friend that works over in um another company they’re looking for some someone that does marketing and and ux and I’m like oh okay so I applied for that job and um met these guys that like did this was a startup that had just gotten acquired as a part of that with them and um that was a lot of that was an interesting ride it was business analytics and they left that company to start another company that was um for notifications and it was before we had smartphones so you had just like very
(18:02) limited text that you could send yeah remember so many of those yeah so we were building a we built a website that would connect to your data and then if there were trends like outliers and that kind of thing you could set up rule business rules and those business rules would then burst to your phone to let you know that hey maybe there’s an outlier you hit the sales goal whatever it was this was like revolutionary really um it was probably a little bit before its time um but that was kind of an exciting um exciting
(18:36) moment um enjoyed working with them that company got Acquired and um then they left that company and they were still in business analytics and they were like hey we should like disrupt the business analytics industry and go out into the open source community and pull Open Source Products together to make a suite and okay so that was uh pentaho and through pentaho um we built a team that was very and was which year oh man this was probably uh let me see 2004 okay yeah yeah probably 2003 2004 and um so a bit of a fast forward
(19:22) right there’s a lot going on between them um but started at pentaho and did marketing and ux for them brought on another person who was um helping us with ux exclusively and then we brought on a full sales team and it was like okay what do we you know we went from no UI by the way this was like we were unzipping files and stuff like that it was it was you know to think back how far we came with that product but we did bring on uh several ux designers and uh I was was leading that team and um we just you know attacked the industry and
(20:05) Hitachi acquired um pentaho after was probably right around nine years so it was a long ride but it was really uh interesting to see what open source did to um not only the analytics industry but just Industries in general you know when you look at what red hat has done and Linux and all that kind of thing um but yeah so then uh I I’ve since then I have everywhere that I’ve worked I have um typically LED teams sometimes I’ve been individual contributor as well all right yeah so um from pentaho uh I left there and I
(20:45) joined uh the group The Technology Group at Home Depot um I was an individual contributor there working inside a squad or a Sprint team um they they really um have a mature Development Group so their product group their um Development Group also the ux team they all really are tight together and their their stakeholder group also um understands ux uh they really uh reach out to the the user experience group and the product group in general and ask how can we accomplish this goal um that’s a big step if you ever are
(21:30) working in ux where they don’t come and say hey here’s the solution here’s how this needs to be solved um they start asking the questions and they’ll be involved in what that solution will be on that journey of um following the techniques that we use in ux and um yeah it’s uh that that was a a fun thing it was up in Atlanta I thought we might move to Atlanta at one point and ended up uh not not looking like we were G to move so um I happened to meet meet our director of ux here at Advent Health um
(22:09) he connected with me on LinkedIn and I said hey your background looks very similar to mine he didn’t do um startups but just some of the things that he did was very similar and so why don’t we go have a coffee and through having that coffee uh I was able to uh interview for for a position of being a ux manager here at Advent health and um really we had a small team when I started and we grew the team we’ve had various sizes of teams uh because we had brought on contractors when we’ve had like uh kind
(22:46) of to accelerate work those contractors kind of went into squads and helped um make things happen and we’ve had third party vendors that that we’ve worked with as well so it’s been kind of a fun fun exciting opportunity to work in a lot of different things but it’s also been great um seeing what we’ve done bringing in designers here in Central Florida um yeah that that and I say Central Florida Co hit um we did used to be on site and so now Advent Health we’re we’re our the digital group is uh fully remote fully
(23:27) remote yeah our floor has been turned into something else um which is which is nice it’s a good use of the space but um but yeah now we’re all remote and sometimes we get to connect like this but um often we’re seeing each other on teams and uh so it has given us an opportunity to find Talent outside of the Central Florida area before when we were hiring and trying to grow a team an experienced team it was sometimes a little bit challenging finding um local talent that had the years of experience that we
(24:01) needed to work independently inside a squad and so um by opening it up we found people in um South Carolina people um uh we people in um up in the DC Washington DC area um also uh outside of um the country sometimes they can contract with us and we’ve had that throughout the digital Group which is pretty cool um but various levels of skills we also had someone that was entering with us um when I started and he has since converted to a full yeah fulltime and he is doing amazing work too so it it’s great to see you know where we’ve
(24:47) converted contractors the fulltime some contractors have come on for short projects and moved on to something else um so it’s been it’s been uh pretty fun you know one thing I really love about our company is uh many companies are adopting to work at home now but our company adopted the need of the people if somebody has a genuine need then company allowed them to be remote 100% remote so you have somebody in your team I had somebody in my team with the justification need um we as a was able to allow them so it’s not that because
(25:32) of pandemic we are forced to do it um in some way we did but we was people oriented before as well to to fit their need so I love that about the company yeah you know we did have the one designer that was on the team when I started she was remote yeah and um I found I observed that there were challenges with her being engaged with the team in certain moments there would be walk up conversations that she would miss let’s go into a room and whiteboard something and I would see that happen and she I was trying to figure out how
(26:14) do we get people to connect with her and she was to we were working on it together and this changed that she is more connected to the team now than ever and I I find it um if you have a distri any level of a distributed team and if you have like a hybrid team where they’re on site you have to make sure that you’re considering those people that aren’t there um even if you get like a group together for like a one-off meeting thinking about how are you going to communicate with the people that need
(26:50) to dial in is just important it just as important so um you know it’s a unique challenge I think it’s not not that unique anymore but um I I had my personal experience with that yeah so I was traveling to India um and there was one week where I was working remote from there and I constantly face this um challenge that people it’s hard to find people not find people but hard to connect because they’re either in this meeting or that meeting or um uh when we was in office we was we were having this U um really good chemistry
(27:35) around that anybody can go to anybody and talk and have the conversation like you can just walk to a person and uh some our environment was in a way that uh it encouraged collaboration it encouraged you to just stand up group and in one of the meeting room and you have the conversation so we were having all that and I’m am other side of the computer and I I I cannot get engaged with all those conversation so I was feeling left out many time in that one week but now since everybody is other side the computer I I can have more
(28:16) conversation I can find more people because I feel like I just knock on my screen and then the other person is there so that was there was the learning there was my own um self-reflection on how uh this has changed yeah I I think for the better I know some people struggle with it still not being able to connect in person that’s meaningful right I um I think that’s really a useful thing I know one thing that I didn’t mention is um back in the pentaho days I was looking around for a ux community and uh I found what was at the
(28:58) time called downtown ux and you you’re big time there big invol I connected with those guys and and gals um the the group there was amazing um workshops and all of that and they had a um a business downtown that was good enough to allow us to use their space in the evenings for meetups and um it was really great I immediately resonated with those folks and so I became a co-organizer of of downtown ux and we had like ducks Day on on a Saturday once a year so we had three of those where where people um donated money to a local charity and we
(29:40) had like an all day event where we had a keynote and it was a full Expo of different things and very very um cool to be able to make those kind of things happen we have since rebranded to downtown Orlando ux um to let people know this is an Orlando ux um group although I was about to ask yeah yeah well we we had a meet up uh on Tuesday um today is Thursday and we had people from all over the nation that right so it is open for everyone then for sure yeah it’s virtual um we are like we do have something called Brew ux where in
(30:15) the mornings sometimes people will get together for a coffee or in the evenings maybe they’ll meet for a happy hour somewhere and that’s much more of a um still talking focused on ux but but um and ux uh colleagues and that kind of thing uh peers but it is a smaller group it’s not doing workshops there’s no planning besides we all show up so if anybody want to connect and join that how should they do this uh just go on to meetup.
(30:48) com and then look for downtown Orlando ux and you can find us there we’re also downtown Orlando ux is also on LinkedIn so we we direct and I will add hyperlink in the show notes that’s nice yeah thank you yeah cool that’s a long journey yeah there’s been a lot um if you have to pick three defining moments of this journey or three major roles that you did which one will be those yeah so you know I I talk about the opportunity that I had even before I started into marketing before I gradu ated I think some of the opportunities
(31:29) that I had there where um that were applied throughout the organization that showed me that like as long as you try and work hard and you connect with people and share what your ideas are that can be meaningful and it was cool to be a part of something that allowed me to learn that that it wasn’t like this you know in the 80s you would see all these business movies that were like the corporate you know environment and all that and um I guess I just felt like you should just talk to the folks that you need to talk to to get the job done
(32:05) and that a lot of times can be intimidating for folks so that was one um definitely joining with uh the the startup folks like at appsource was the name of the company originally and arbisoft bought appsource and then it became Hyperion Solutions and um connecting with those guys the founders original Founders seeing how they loved what they did um just like how I looked at like what do I want to do with my life what do I enjoy hey we had our moments of debate they had their moments of debate because they’re running a business and trying to
(32:45) make it work but all throughout it was a fun activity and journey um each time that they grew a company and saw it become successful um um and how to make things successful and you know being given some of the opportunities there were was very very um exciting just uh being a part of startups is a lot of fun I I enjoy that a lot um but then uh also I think you know if I fast forward of course the startups being a part of them so it’s not exactly one moment being a part of the the founding group I wasn’t
(33:25) a Founder by the way but it’s just being a part of what some of that early adoption that they when they asked me to be a part of their groups um but then I would say going into the Home Depot group it is such a large mature ux group um and seeing how some of the micro teams worked they didn’t all work exactly the same but they were still building towards the same things still trying to uh achieve great things for their um customers and Associates I I worked on the Enterprise Group so the Enterprise Group is really
(34:06) trying to help the people at Home Dep are called aprons um and the people that work there because they all wear aprons we’re familiar with that you wear an apron to the main corporate meetings whenever you’re at the corporate headquarters and um being a part of that and seeing what they were really trying to accomplish through Tech technology to improve uh the people in the store’s day-to-day activities and optimize right of course it comes down to you know it the time you can save for folks to allow
(34:39) them to get in front of the customer that was really where um it was interesting one of the questions that someone asked like hey the work we’re doing are we putting people out of jobs because we’re like taking systems away and replacing systems it’s like no we’re we’re trying to allow allow them to spend more time and better time with the customer and that is really what ux often represent is we are the voice of the customer or the user if you will so um it it was great to see a company
(35:13) embracing that in such a dynamic way it’s very cool I think uh maybe that experience or I’m sure you have other experience as well but I one of the activity that I remember that um we had a task to review the entire application and um we had five product owner and five ux person I think five right yeah so for me Warren and Tom initially yeah it we just going to go screen by screen we review and uh we will have the results and um but I think at that point we didn’t realize what we are asking you knew what
(36:06) that mean in terms of execution so the way you executed it that you had your team go in the screens capture all the screen in figma then you you you build an understanding among all five people that uh how they will compare these screen how they will comment on this screen and then with product owner and understanding with product owner how they will go back to these screen find these comment and convert them into a jira ticket that can be then prioritized and worked upon and finally going back and confirming that this work is done so
(36:53) from the point when we was thinking yes the screen may not not be looking exactly how they should be there has been a 6mon onee development so let’s review but you articulated that you made you you have it executed in a way that we got the most out of that exercise so I guess I’m just complimenting you for that and I’m also acknowledging that uh you probably have earned that experience from all these jobs your own uh you added your own yeah I mean that was a unique challenge um just to give everyone that might be listening the
(37:36) background we we are integrating a um another EMR into our syst epic system yeah and um part of that integration uh we did use a third party development team to do that work um so we were not our internal um design team our internal development team wasn’t uh Along on that Journey we were kind of on the side helping um direct oh let’s put things here let’s do things here um but that group didn’t necessarily Embrace agile the same way so um because what you just described it was a challenge that we had to overcome and we
(38:21) knew there was coming right um if you’re doing agile you would find these things so much faster um instead it was more like a waterfall that we build and then it was time yeah I I just didn’t want anyone to be listening oh why do they have this massive review right like so let let’s spend waterfall let’s spend U maybe another minute on what we do actually so we work in Advent Health our job responsibility include many application but for last a year we are we are very focused on one project which
(39:01) is adding epic system into Advent Health apps so we be responsible for building this Advent Health app which which shows data from um uh AIC Athena and cner system to Patient so patient can log in and see their health record in this app and then also schedule appointment and different other things so that’s what we do and uh for last one year we are very focused on uh incorporating Epic into this application and that project is going live on March 6 so there has been so many activities going on and um so going back um two months ago we
(39:54) wanted to have a thorough review of each screen that it’s aligned to the ux that team has developed and we talking about that so that was the project and we had a contractor company a a agency who was helping uh building that so even though we had some kind of a scrum there but ultimately they build all these different section and then we was reviewing and we find that this is the time to review and adjusted yeah yeah and um you know coming up with a solution on how to do that the the main thing was how do we all work the same
(40:37) right um and I I think how do we all work the same goes into how we have successes in our group in general um if you look at how our teams have all of the agile um exercises that we do all the rituals where we have grooming and planning and all of all of those things standups every day um our teams work in a way that we’re familiar with now those teams are in self-organized so they might have some nuances but we all use a tracking tool we don’t use our own tracking tools we’re all in the same system we all try
(41:20) to write stories they all bubble up into an epic um all of that is important if you look at like this project that you’ve described for us all to work the same made it effective so that we could execute on that as quickly as we could and um you could very quickly see where the challenges were where they weren’t um what had been checked what hadn’t been checked yet um if we had tried to create stories for the whole thing it we created some very high level but we did not like go down in the depths because
(41:54) it would have just taken too long for us to get it all done but um yeah it it was uh when you look back at it it was really a quite an accomplishment um that like I think you can you can be proud that we were able to um understand some of the challenges that we had uh before we got to the point that we’re at right now we’re about to R this thing out so yeah trying to reduce the surprises if you will yeah yeah so um around that we we talk a lot about ux and some of the terminology I wanted to ask you uh what
(42:39) is the difference between ux graphic designer researcher and if there is any other term so for the audience what are are they same are they different what it is no no they’re quite different um it’s kind of interesting too um and I think this has changed a lot over the past like five years uh a web designer you didn’t say web designer but a web designer is not a ux designer they are different um and you’ve heard there are different terms ux designer product designer graphic designer graphic designer is different
(43:23) though so I’m really sticking into the the bubble of you user experience because there’s UI and ux and sometimes there’s a designer well user experience is another key term that some people understand some don’t understand yeah so um the differences between a graphic designer is typically they’re developing uh a layout that is like a document of some sort um or a visual element that’s going to be used inside either a a printed document or a UI element right it could be web it could be software um but typically
(44:09) they’re not thinking they might be thinking about a call to action like if they’re laying out like an advertisement or um even possibly a book like you look at the way that book needs to flow and that kind of thing um you’re getting into a little bit of information architecture but when you get into the the ux field you’re looking at the interactions how is someone going to go through this and I often describe it as it’s ux is chess so you’re not just looking at the next move if you’re a good chess player
(44:46) you’re looking five or six moves ahead you’re thinking what could this person do what might they decide to do if they do this how do we allow them to do that thing that they want to do so you’re you really have to think ahead look at not just the screen in front of you um that’s the challenge when like a PO comes to you and says a product owner comes to you and says hey we need a button right here mhm what’s the button do why does someone want to interact with that button what should we do
(45:20) should it even be a button do they expect it to be a button so it’s more what is the problem where trying to solve so when someone comes to you and says let’s put a button or a you know call to action on the screen right here it’s like well what are we trying to accomplish because maybe we don’t even need them to take an action we can we can be proactive with that user and make their experience better by not requiring them to even do anything right and um we can just let them know that it’s
(45:49) something that can happen and uh you go into like a a Gra graphic designer and you know hey I haven’t I don’t want to represent the graphic design Community fully so um but often they’re developing assets that will be included in something or it will be a all-encompassing um piece of material or content um so a a a ux designer um is thinking about how a user in will interact with this said this design that he’s making so two part of the question I guess where do they get this knowledge how do they know what user will
(46:39) do um well we ask them I we don’t ask them what the answer is to be clear I um you asked also about a researcher so that that was my second part of the question so some some ux folks do research as well um some teams have a additional person that is doing research with the team to help facilitate pull it all together it’s challenging to do research that you’re not leading or bias and that kind of thing um so if you’re doing research you’re asking the user how is this now how did you get to a
(47:24) solution there are techniques Tech ux techniques if you look up Double Diamond where you’re going through and you’re like ideating through a process you’re doing Discovery and then you’re converging on that discovery that you’ve done and then you come up with a solution that will work but then you do the research to find out hey is this really going to do what the user needs um so there there are processes that you can learn through um HCI courses or um you can also take boot camps there are
(47:57) boot camps out there now that um people can do there’s tons of information on the internet too um Google offers a course um so you can get a so some knowledge and some experience and then some user research yeah yeah so we have people on our team that um like we have people on our team that were graphic artists um the intern that converted into a ux designer he was a graphic artist um as he interned with us he was doing a uh ux internship with us so he learned about the activities as he went and kind of the Advent Health way of
(48:39) approaching things um each team’s going to do ux slightly different um but we have someone else on our team that was uh went to a boot camp um she transitioned careers from being a retail manager to uh ux uh someone else focused their career on ux throughout and um so you’ll find diversity within our groups and um throughout the ux community one of the one of the things that you’ll find though with uxers is that they’re often very open to share what their Journey has been and you know um what
(49:20) they do dayto day and that kind of stuff which is really awesome it’s um it’s it’s sometimes hard in certain industries to even understand how you can break into it or that kind of thing I think as with any job the probably one of the biggest challenges right now is just that like that entry level role is hard to find if you’re trying to you know get your foot you know I was about to come to that part as we we talk about this right what’s the difference between these I wanted to ask you if somebody
(49:56) want to start thinking about a career in this field as a ux designer or as a ux um ux researcher or like somebody in your team how does that look like is it a course that they should do is it a internship it is how should somebody start and that could be somebody who is in college right now or it could be somebody who is in a different type of role today but want to um transition into this role yeah um find out if you like it right like is this really what you want to do i’ I’ve talked to a few folks that
(50:41) like hey I want to do ux right and then it’s like oh what is it that you like about this mhm it seems fun like this is work this is real work it’s got its ups and downs I love it I love what I do I love what our team does I love what our industry does I really do um but it’s it can be fun any job can be fun if it’s something that you love um so there’s work to be done and I think the first step is like how connect I always ask people why do you want to do this and find out like what have they
(51:19) done to learn about it um do they get out there in the community and start like downtown Orlando ux there are other ux meetups out there across the nation that that’s a great way to start like talking to people in the industry and asking them what is their day today like like I said a minute ago what do they look like for them yeah you know like I said though people in our space like to share what they do if we have time um but really it starts with like how much does this mean to you um and then where do you want to educate yourself um I’ve
(51:59) had someone that I spoke to that they recently graduated from college and kind of had a good idea in Communications what they wanted to do but really narrowed in in that kind of nearing the end of their college career on ux but they didn’t take any like very specific courses and now that person is taking like a a a Google certification to try to go through that and learning more about the techniques of ux and how to apply them and ux and ux research as well so um those are ways you boot camps can be expensive you know so I would
(52:39) definitely like ask people on groups there’s mentors out there that can tell you oh this one might be effective for you maybe you can get with someone you can even go out and just do some ux right just do it you know download some figma is an amazing tool it’s free so you can try it out and do some design watch videos on how to do that um that’s a design aspect of ux um some people really like to do the research piece of it and going out and doing user interviews with people and looking at what a script looks like and
(53:18) that kind of thing and find out like is this for me um you can get it can almost be saddening knowing that people like spent a lot of money and then that’s not the thing they want to do often our skills translate to other other aspects of um of technology or even just anything but at the end of the day like making sure that this is the kind of thing that you want to do and then um finding some resources which I have some links for resources that I can share with you too that um I really like uh ADP list they have like
(54:00) mentorship program that you can sign up for and choose that kind of thing it’s focused on user experience what’s ADP list it’s a adlist adpl list.com and it is um a mentor mentorship program it’s it’s more of like a website just to connect you with people okay is it paid no it’s free free yeah so people are volunteering their time to be mentor oh ni um and then also you can select from the mentor pool that you get kind of lined up with okay so it’s it’s pretty neat I didn’t know that yeah
(54:38) meetups you can always talk to people there it’s a little bit harder in a virtual space because often the meetups aren’t structured in a way for you to just have a conversation with someone so you have to when someone puts their LinkedIn up there grab it connect with them on LinkedIn talk to them look I I met our director of ux and you got a job a job out of it yeah um so and that was totally unintentional but it just was something that happened and um it a a LinkedIn connection you never know what it could mean those are some ways you oh
(55:14) this is the great list so I don’t want to tell somebody to go get an HCI degree right at it have found in last one month that Twitter is an amazing tool to connect with people real people you can DM them so you can join a space there are a space for different topic I’m sure there are a space for ux I found a lot of space around writers writing and uh I never had these many connection that I have now with other writers who are doing the same type of thing I I have found like slack boards are amazing yeah there are more onetoone
(55:53) conversation there right yeah and there small community yeah yeah it’s a small community it’s uh you signed up for an a space you’re asking I don’t know I just don’t see people um being quite so negative and they’re moderated there’s Discord and um and slack groups those are often moderated by experts in a field and they will they will contact someone that is like not being you know uh it’s okay to give constructive criticism right that’s all right but like when you you know have to bash
(56:31) people publicly I just don’t I don’t I reach out to West to help me with uh my one-on-one and uh team meeting because uh um Wes is so good and organized with that um his director timer my good friend has mentioned couple of time that since West has joined his team he doesn’t have much to do because uh Wes take care of everything um and uh just to add Wes is leaving us to go back to Home Depot uh from where he came so tomorrow his last day so um I got an opportunity before he leave us um for this interview and I by the way I would have
(57:19) been happy to have done this after yes I am I am leaving Advent Health um tomorrow’s my last day uh it’s been a great group we’ve done amazing things I’m going to miss the team the digital group The broader team um we’ve really branched out and been able to work closely with folks in marketing and um I I have enjoyed that a lot and other people other Executives in the company um but I will also miss the direct team the ux team that we have built together and with Tim and um um our our team has
(57:57) been really uh really something and special how do you find your dreams what you probably have decided 5 years ago and you achieved and what you maybe deciding now how do you kind of even figure out what you want to do yeah so I I talked a little bit about it at the beginning um and it wasn’t about money I you know when I said oh if you have1 million what would you do it wasn’t cool I’m gonna do something to make1 million and then I’ll stop it was um it was like what would make me happy what will I enjoy so I try to find
(58:42) things if I find things like we talked about Twitter or I if I find things that don’t bring me joy I try to move away from that um I that doesn’t mean that I give up or quit on something that’s a challenge that I need to do it just means that I really want you know this life you only have so many moments and look at Co what it has taught if it’s taught us anything it should be you know be thankful that you can get out and do things and interact with people and experience life in different ways even
(59:17) if it’s virtually um I think we should be thankful for technology that we’ve had that so to me I look for things that like will bring me joy or happiness um something that I can be proud of um those those are ways that I kind of look at that and you know I was interesting right before covid one of the goals that I had and you’re helping with this in a way um one of the goals that I had was I really wanted um Central Florida communities or businesses not communities but to better understand leaders in business to better
(59:55) understand what this field is of ux yeah I will cut that as a clip and I will uh post it separately just that what is this yeah so I think that like there are such opportunities for businesses to optimize what they’re doing and it’s not just about like Logistics and that kind of stuff user experience can help businesses be more profitable connect more with their consumers or customers uh it can do so much that um I don’t know if that is clear to a lot of businesses that they aren’t like you talked you asked me how do you break
(1:00:38) into this field I love what’s happened with ux it’s really grown a lot I think there’s a lot more opportunity and um there are there are businesses that can benefit from what we do and I’d love to share that and that’s part of me doing ux yeah I like the group that we have there I like attending other meetups where that sense of community is there and being a part of something that is um you know bigger than myself is really cool and that that can happen like Advent Health we talked about Community there you look
(1:01:16) at Home Depot and Home Depot has a community of you know talented folks that you can surround yourself with those those are all ways that I kind of help make decisions now I when I do that I procon things out and weigh how much time is it going to take if you can look up like what’s a 2 by two and you can put you know what the effort and uh value will be 2 by two a 2 by two yeah so um basically draw a plus and then you put all of your items it’s a way of prioritizing and deciding what you should work on so um put all of your
(1:01:56) items kind of in the middle of the circle and stack them and you first you stack them um you can do it a couple different ways but you can stack them up by um the value for um that you’re going to bring or you could stack them by the difficulty how hard is this this is going to be easy and you go down down down to hard and then you start moving them left and right on the value and if it’s not very valuable and it’s really hard so it’s at the top of that plus you probably shouldn’t do it right like this
(1:02:28) is this is going to take us a lot of time to do it’s going to cost us a lot or it’s not going to add a lot of value so why we do it so when you put it on the other side and it adds a lot of value and it’s going to be really easy those are like the quick wins that you should pick um and then you start having the challenge of like as you get closer to the center which of these things should we do next because um they’re gonna they’re they’re going to help our customer they’re going to help us and
(1:03:00) you can do that personally too right you can use that as a method of saying okay I’ve got all these chores to do which ones can I do quick you know what you can do it with chores you can do it with anything anything yeah you said um um joy in fulfillment right you try to identify what will give you Joy in fulfillment and um I’m going to ask a followup question on that how do you find what gives you Joy and fulfillment uh I mean how do you recognize it yeah I mean sometimes it’s a journey right like you don’t know immediately
(1:03:43) mhm um a lot of times it can be something that you had a moment in your life right like um but uh sometimes you you have to try it and see yeah right like some people they hear me talk about running and think oh my goodness I would never do that right like and I was not a runner until I needed to lose some weight and then I got on a elliptical because running was too hard I just thought running was free let’s try it it was really hard um got on elliptical and could do a lot and then went out for a run one evening and
(1:04:20) it was a full moon and I think I went like six miles it was like incredible I was like wow this was amazing and I wanted to go more right and that was a moment of like wow this was really great um you know it’s kind of like having a puppy you know the excitement that you see in the puppy yeah that that can bring to you and that goes back to like um leadership in some ways where you see the successes of the team around you you and the excitement that they have around those successes can be really uh really rewarding and I
(1:05:03) mean how do you recognize that moment um you know maybe you you have to write them down I suppose but I don’t I just I just kind of take it in and go yeah this is this is good times you know that was a great moment when you just you were describing that Moonlight and yeah yeah that that’s that’s what I like to capture yeah cool thank you for sharing that yeah man so once you identify a goal how what is your goal setting and execution method uh so yeah once once I know what the goal is then depending on you know
(1:05:46) if it’s work related or something personal right then um I kind of work out what it takes I probably learned this from my dad right my dad trying to get me to mow the lawn like hey son what tools would it take mhm to mow the lawn right he was basically telling me to go M the lawn but um you know oh I guess we need the edger and we need the mower we need to get some gas all need a trash bag so we can go around and clean up the yard for any debris before we started all of those things you start just kind of compiling either a mental
(1:06:23) list or writing it down like when we talk about running that doesn’t just happen right like exercise you have a plan if you don’t if you if you want to put Fitness into place to be meaningful in your life you come up with a plan I’m going to work out on these days um you can deviate from it a little bit but as soon as you start like not doing it it’s a lot harder to get back to it running if you’re going to train for a 5k there are apps out there for a couch to 5K that’s because you can’t just go do a 5k right
(1:07:00) out of the I’ve used that and you can but you’re probably going to hurt you’re not going to enjoy it and you might even hurt yourself no I used that couch 25k yeah yeah and it’s the same thing for a half marathon there are half marathon plans out there that like you can choose and I always I don’t just have it printed and look at it I enter it into the the app right like Garmin has like a training app and I’ll add it into there and I’ll use it as my reminder and accountability is really important right like and I
(1:07:36) mean I love the analytics around some of that stuff too so it’s fun to see how you progress throughout your training plan because you’re like I remember um you know naen I started running with her she was going to a local run club and um we went on a run and she’s like I don’t know how you guys are doing these like five miles like 5K was her limit you know and she was just getting into it she used to do she still does rock climbing she got me into biking oh yeah okay so yeah she’s very Fitness oriented but running was
(1:08:10) not her thing this like two weeks ago oown Blazers had a trail an like their oneye anniversary and she she went on that like it was a seven mile run they’ve done 11 Mile runs and she’s doing that she’s like yeah you get out on the trails these folks push you but that didn’t happen like she was saying how can you even get to five miles and then I talked to her I don’t know a couple weeks ago and she was like she’s like oh yeah you should come out we’re going to Black Bear and we’re going to do a seven mile
(1:08:42) Loop and I’m like look at you seven miles and she’s like she’s black bear loop I yeah and it’s uh it’s not um plain it’s um up and down yeah it’s very technical there’s routs yeah it’s right along the riverfront so you don’t want to fall me and my wife and there is a family we go at least once a month on that for walk not to run well I mean you know whatever it’s it’s seven miles that’s what the loop is and you can see wild boar out there and maybe an alligator or a snake or something it’s
(1:09:18) kind of Co yeah we’ve seen wild Bo we’ve seen some other animal but fortunately not Birds a lot of cool Birds but yeah it’s uh it that just that’s how you do it you you figure out how you get there you it and it isn’t you know like even you talk about how do we find a job you start looking at places that list jobs like I talk about slack they’re all many slack channels have or teams have a um jobs Channel so many jobs are posted out there find one that’s related to the career how do
(1:09:58) you find these select Channel ask uh also I socialize them I I will cross poost um job postings sometimes to multiple there’s four that I regular go to one of them is on Research one of them is in South Florida on South Florida ux and design or Orlando has one design Orlando slack is there um and also isda Atlanta so isda is like a national it’s even a Global Group yeah this person is more on the data analytics side so I’m just checking yeah yeah some there’s no directory there right it’s you you go
(1:10:39) through the people because that way anybody will join exactly yeah um I would say Twitter could probably be your friend if you find a community there and then um Google just Google yeah like if you look up through Google Google and just say Orlando designer slack you’ll find us so Wes how do you manage your time you have a lot of responsibilities you have a team plus your own initiative and I’m sure you have your personal related items so how do you manage your day well um one of the things that and I
(1:11:18) know because I’m going to be changing jobs this is not going to be the way it is but in the prior job that I had in the current job here at Avent Health um in other jobs everything is unique it’s one of the exciting things about doing ux or technology in general I’m sure your day is is has unique challenges to it that like the unexpected comes up and you have to respond to that and um being prepared for that is important but then also like I think of my week has all all of these moments of um unplanned work that you can’t
(1:11:59) necessarily plan for but you do so I know exactly what my week is going to be every week um my calendar is set up I have discipline around my calendar um when we have one-on ones they’re important um I do not skip the one-on ones that I have with the team members if I do we move it we’re going to have it it’s important um it’s important for them um for the folks on the team it’s important for me to connect and understand where they’re at and how they’re feeling and how the work’s
(1:12:32) going um so those are all moments if we have a a recurring meeting it’s it’s there on the calendar and I know to expect it I don’t know necessarily it’s going to happen in that meeting um we have an agenda Loosely cover it but questions are going to come up and we’ll talk about that in Focus um a lot lot of times it’ll be a self-organized discovery too okay let’s kind of talk about these things which one do you guys want to drill into today because we can’t cover all of this like there’s
(1:13:05) just too much let’s drill into certain areas that the team can benefit from um so to me like I I do think the meeting discipline is important um having I don’t block my calendar for like personal time and maybe maybe just have it in a way that like I create those moments with people that like I don’t have to block off an entire day or segments of my day in order to have time for me to accomplish the things I need to do um mainly because I I do think that I create that that opportunity to meet with the folks that are important
(1:13:47) to the work that we’re trying to get done throughout the week um and that just comes down I I think it comes comes down to meeting discipline and also like we talked a little bit about prioritization but setting like agendas and expectations for what those are um early on when um folks on the team would like have a meeting about say our design system or something we would show up and maybe nothing would be ready to be talked about it’s like okay so let’s reel this in if we’re going to have this
(1:14:23) meeting we should have it for a reason especially if it’s on the calendar every week I don’t want people to just sit there and go what they’ll do is they’ll stop coming right you won’t come to a meeting that’s not needed let’s get rid of it let’s not have it on our time but if it is something like a rounded design system that’s really important let’s make those times meaningful to the people that are coming and let them know that it’s going hey this week we’re
(1:14:47) going to talk about this MH and um that helps people kind of have that expectation helps them go I I want to come to that right that’s something that I think I need to come to or maybe I don’t maybe I don’t need to go to this one and that’s okay right like right yeah so in the time management that um I think we cover prioritization yeah do you make a list of things that you will be doing today uh other than the calendar do you have your own personal list I do I use Trello yeah yeah I I I use Trello it’s
(1:15:28) funny I met with um Sher who you know she’s someone that we work for she’s a PO on our team and um she taught she had a Trello board and I met with her I said hey like what is your Trail board like and I showed her mine MH and I said I’m really trying to figure out how to do this she’s like she’s like oh yeah I used to do it that way right and she goes well if I’m being on it you know you know we kind of talked about like how do we keep our keep and maintain our list sometimes I use one note like we have like um
(1:16:00) recurring meetings a lot of times we’ll use one note and go through and check off thank you for sharing that yeah yeah so we do that um but we also I personally use Trello for different things but I’ll create a new board that’s like specific to like one of them is about staff and one on ones right and so each person I can keep like notes on those discussions that we have I don’t do it in one note I do it in a trell out board oh yeah um I don’t know why I find that more like it just feels better to
(1:16:36) me and I can move it into a done column and you know um yeah that to me Trello has been good for that but you could use one note um I just found myself not maintaining the one note the same way that I do the job yeah uh for my case in um I used to use one node and then I moved to work flow it’s a tool but I use it as the log of my day uh not more like a planning but log of my day and then for p personal project like YouTube writing and all I’m using Asana okay not J yeah yeah uh I found that Asana is more user
(1:17:22) friendly especially as I have somebody who is assisting me with this work so between the two it work out well yeah there so many tools yeah I use too I’ve encouraged my my kids to use Trello too said hey you know as you’re keeping track of things try to use that you can move things into a done and get rid of it and it’s gone you know and um yeah I I I I like the the the nature of the way that workflow works the swim lanes are really effective and if you use agile you’re used to the swim lanes that kind of
(1:18:02) thing so to me it helps translate better than just a list that you check off the list you know you got to look for a little check mark but instead it’s a fill up done colum right process and done in progress and done yeah it’s like um when we were creating our design system you might have seen it in a couple of meetings that uh how did we communicate how far we’ve come on each platform and I had glasses that were filling up with water right like and each item that we had to get done that would become a fill line that
(1:18:40) you could fill up and like filling the bucket and filling up the thing just it creates a visual uh experience for people that is different than just this long list of stuff so yeah so is that a question that I did not ask but you want to answer uh yeah I guess um what the team Dynamic is that we have with our team here at atent Health um it’s fun uh I like I I know I talked a little bit about the group and how talented they are and that kind of thing and how we all work together but it’s also we don’t take each other too
(1:19:18) seriously um when the moments of seriousness are there it’s time to get the work done we’re in it but we have this like wonderful moment that I hope I can carry over into future jobs is Mondays like we talked a little bit about schedule Mondays is how was your weekend um we have a Time block set aside to just pull up pictures from our phone or put them on our computer and share them with each other um especially in this like remote world where we aren’t getting the water cooler talk and that kind of thing this is a time to
(1:19:57) know what kind of things are going on in someone’s life and you get to see their family or their pets or the trip they made to Disney World or whatever and um so that that’s fun but also like man I love throwing like a funny background on a team’s call and or a you know I think you’ve seen the your amazing one that I have it’s like looks like The Incredibles but it’s um you’re amazing and um using the technology in a way that allows us to still enjoy the things we do I think there was one time like
(1:20:33) you started a a water cooler chat yeah when when pandemic just started and we all started working at home you started a a meeting uh that’s every day I believe and 10 minutes U water cooler that was named water a 10 or 15 minute and you could join it or not and you could see cuz if you have these things scheduled you could see who’s in them yeah so you could be oh you know I want to jump in there cuz that person’s there and talk about movies and we had different topics so that you could jump into the water cooler that you wanted to
(1:21:06) talk about like maybe it was what you’re reading um video games I think was one of one of the ones so um yeah but using that as a way to like just really connect with folks but also just having fun right like one of my backgrounds I think I took a screenshot of my office and then I put like a ghost and I put it up so it looked like it was my office but there was a little ghost standing behind me right like what is that behind you and you know um those kind of things I uh I would to change temper to background he’s using the
(1:21:45) exact same background for all more than a year yeah he’s using the office yeah I I hate it he does that I mean you change I like change yeah it’s all right I um it’s it his office like I was on a call with him yesterday and his at home office he does have a wonderful picture of his family and his diploma and his art suppli so you do get a little bit of like connection to things that he likes and um I I love that too you know yeah so you like about the chemistry and team a syy yeah yeah just uh you know
(1:22:27) don’t take it too seriously but there are moments of seriousness for sure yeah is that an in question for me uh yeah I mean I guess the thing that like what were you hoping to get from this conversation what I try to grab or extract from all the interview uh is is to your career journey and uh it can help the people who are starting are already in the middle of there and they trying to see what five and 10 years look like so the most important thing that I try to find is how you found what’s the next thing for you right and that’s the
(1:23:20) part that I was facing challenge with that U uh I knew certain path that uh I have to achieve but after that I wasn’t sure where I want to go for example last 3 years I’ve been thinking about what I want to do next because should I commit myself for next 10 years to be the director or similar type positions right I one of my dream was to join a a startup and take a leadership role there and and help them with my um experience so all those require some next 10e commitment and uh what I figure that for
(1:24:04) me is U uh something like this where I’m part-time in a company or part-time in in that startup and but I’m also doing couple of other part-time thing so I I decided I will not be a full-time person in next few years so you’ll get to be on it nice I take off space right now might have to edit two videos together