Ryan: Welcome to 10-Minute Tech Comm. I’m Ryan Weber at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and I’m very excited to welcome this episode’s guest.
Jen Blatz: My name is Jen Blatz and I am a user experience researcher currently at a credit union known as BECU, which stands for Boeing Employee Credit Union, and as a researcher I try to understand our users pain points, their motivations, their needs, their goals, and hopefully that informs design and strategy.
I’m also a community builder in a sense. I’m one of the co-founders of UX Research and Strategy, though not involved in that group much anymore. I was one of the initial builders of that group and I love to speak at conferences and travel and go wine tasting and when I’m trying to stay out of trouble, which is almost never, I am a dog mom of two little doggos named Ricky and Sadie.
Ryan: I invited Ms. Blatz on the podcast to talk about her new project, the BlatzChatz weekly newsletter. I was excited to hear what she feels the trends are in UX, where the field is going, and how everyone can stay informed when things are changing so quickly. I hope you enjoy the conversation.
BEGIN INTERVIEW
Ryan: Well Jen, we’re really excited to have you on the podcast and one of the reasons that I invited you on is because you have started a new UX Weekly Newsletter. So can you tell us a little bit about the newsletter, kind of the goals, the content, what inspired you to start it?
Jen: Certainly. The title of the newsletter is BlatzChatz and that kind of ladders over to my YouTube channel of the same name, which is BlatzChatz, and that name came from a friend of mine. He was like, “You should start your own YouTube thing called BlatzChatz!” And I was like, “Dude, you’re crazy. I would never do anything like that.” And then years later, here I am doing something just exactly like that.
Ryan: It’s a good name. You don’t want to squander that name.
Jen: Right. It’s kind of catchy. So I decided to start a YouTube channel to talk about user experience and technology and research methods and UX design because I do have a design background. And I keep hearing, “You should have a newsletter list.” And I’m like, why? Well, you might lose your position on a platform. I’m very active on LinkedIn and YouTube, and those could be taken away from you at any time. And when that happens, your community that you’re building, your relationships with those folks is lost.
I have been kind of shadowed or I don’t know what the word is like LinkedIn has been like, whoa, we’re kicking you out. And I’m like, wait, what? Luckily, I’ve been reinstated. But I have had some mini scares around getting booted off a platform.
So I decided to start a newsletter. At first, I was going to do it to promote my videos on YouTube. And then I’m like, okay, that gets boring. Who cares about those? You either want to watch them, or you don’t. So I decided to come up with a bit of a theme. And my theme, you know, the phrase, the good, the bad and the ugly. I have a little bit of a spin on that. And I have the good, the trends and the ugly. And I feature some of them are my videos or some articles. I feature articles from other places, conferences that I’m interested in attending or speaking at and just trying to make the community aware and have a little fun in the process.
I’m a little snarky. I’m a little bit of a troublemaker. I like to stir the pot a little bit as they say. And so I don’t know if I would call it hot takes because sometimes that’s a little bit overused.
But it’s my perspective on what I think of what’s happening in the UX, the tech and the product industry.
Ryan: I want to hear a little more about the hot takes element. I know that may not be a term that you are a fan of. I know it is overused a lot. But what about UX kind of inspires hot takes for you in turn, you know, because a lot of people wouldn’t necessarily be like, “Man, what’s a UX hot take?” but it sounds like you have strong opinions and sometimes snarky opinions about things that are going on. What kind of inspires that for you?
Jen: Ryan, do I have opinions! Well, I think how it started a little bit was like I mentioned, I started, kind of co-founded a community group called UX research and strategy. And the motivation behind that was to give people a little nugget of knowledge that they can take back to their job. And as time went on, it kind of skewed more toward juniors entering the field or people transitioning into the field.
And with all the layoffs that happened since, what, 2022 or whatnot, I honestly just didn’t feel like UX was a field, I won’t say worthy to get into, but easy to get into. I don’t have a silver bullet on how to get into UX. If I did, I probably wouldn’t be talking here. I’d be rolling in my millions of dollars if I had a direct way to get into UX. Right. I just find it’s more and more difficult. And I find less inspiration on, well, here’s how you can do it. Here are your options. Here was how I got into UX. I feel like those are dwindling.
And so I guess my hot take, and it’s funny, I just posted something on LinkedIn this week, a poll asking, “Is UX dead?” And I don’t have an answer to that. Sure. It’s a little spicy. Is it dead? Ooh, I don’t know. What do you mean? What does that mean? But is it a contracting profession? Is it dying a slow death? Is it changing? What does UX look like? I don’t have an answer of where UX is going to land.
But the idea is the industry is not what it was 10 years ago. It’s saturated with people who had gone to boot camp or university or trying to get in entry level. And then you also have a large pool of senior-level folks in UX, who are struggling to get a job too. So it’s a very tough market. And that’s why I’m not really loving the idea of encouraging people to try to break in.
Ryan: So that’s one of your hot takes is think carefully about entering the field.
Jen: Correct.
Ryan: Yeah.
Jen: It is. And it’s not like it’s a not a great field and a fulfilling profession. But there’s also some harsh truths that I don’t and I also did a video on this that I don’t think people realize when they get into UX, the idea is, “oh, we’re going to be the advocate for the user, we’re going to be a partner with product, we’re going to define strategy, we’re going to be influential, we’re going to make an impact.”
And most of the times, no, that shit doesn’t pan out like we hoped and dreamed it would. So there’s that other half of it is, it’s not as, for some, I can’t speak for everybody, maybe it’s not as fulfilling and rewarding as we thought it was going to be.
Ryan: Interesting. So no, this is great. I mean, those are hot takes. I asked for hot takes. How do you decide and this is kind of one of the reasons I wanted to have you on is, you know, there’s all this discourse about UX, what is the state of the field? And it seems overwhelming to even kind of get your arms around that question. And so you’re kind of curating content, I think that kind of sort of helps people understand that question. Where do you go? Like, how do you curate this content for your newsletter?
Jen: Great, great question. LinkedIn is my number one source for information and resources. People are posting articles, videos, hot takes, perceptions, perspectives on LinkedIn. So I would say that’s probably my number one go to place to hear what is going on in conversations, what are people talking about? I also think it’s really important to have a network, have a community of folks that you can talk to. And just, “Hey, how’s it going for you? How are you actually using an AI instead of everyone just saying, learn AI? How are you using it? And how’s it successful? And how’s it falling apart for you?”
And having real conversations, generally, offline, you know, might be a zoom call, or it might be a smaller chat group. And just getting real with people, because I feel like there’s a lot of like, “Oh, get into AI, this is the future.” And I’m like, “Okay, how?” I need a practical approach to really know that it is successful, because I have plenty of examples where AI has totally fallen apart for me.
Ryan: Yeah, so you’re, you’re looking at trends, but you’re also trying to kind of get past buzz and hype of sort of because I’ve seen this too, like AI, AI, AI, well, like, what does that mean? What do you do? You know, so what are the trends that you think are worth paying attention to?
Jen: Right. I mean, you can’t escape AI. Now, what does that mean for your role, specifically, right? And how do you explore more deeply how it can be beneficial to you? For example, tools like chat, GPT, and perplexity, and Claude, they’re great for writing. They’re great for brainstorming that. And that is a portion of my workload. But I also don’t really have difficulty writing an email. I have been doing that for decades. That just comes naturally, right.
So figuring out, and really understanding what can I try AI to do to help me with my workflow, and testing it, that is what’s critical is, I hear so many people like, “Oh, I just had it summarize all my transcripts,” or “I had it come up with themes.” And I’m like, “Did you check it? Did you really think about what that data meant to you? And then compare what the output of AI was, and see if it’s up to par?”
Because this is my suspicion. Another hot take: those people who are saying they’re using AI for synthesis and summaries and quick conclusions with their data, they didn’t look at the data in the first place to see if AI is doing a good job.
Ryan: They didn’t compare. Yeah, I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna have AI do it. I’m gonna see which one is better. Are they equal?
Jen: Right. And I will say I’ve done this. And I have AI surface some things that I thought, “Oh, I wouldn’t have selected that. But okay, I’ll take that into consideration.” And so that I used, and some of it I was like, “No, that is not the narrative that I want to project from this research.” But you have to really know the data in the first place in order to make that call. And use critical thinking to know, “What does my stakeholder or whoever needs to see this in the end? What’s really going to bring value to them?”
Ryan: As opposed to just “Here’s some stuff or here’s some synthesized data.
Jen: Correct. Yeah, exactly.
Ryan: You have referenced several times the idea of community in UX. And this is actually something that I’ve thought about a lot, because you know, UX, it’s so interdisciplinary. There’s kind of sort of professional societies, but it seems like it’s kind of hard to identify those places of community in UX. What do you recommend for people that are looking for UX community?
Jen: I love that question. Because you’re right, there’s a lot of professional organizations or international organizations, or orgs that have local pockets like Ladies that UX or something like that. I prefer in person communities and organizations and whatnot. However, it is a bit of a pain in the ass to get in the car and make sure your shoes match and go to these things sometimes. So it might not be for everyone.
But I find that LinkedIn is a good place to kind of find your people and see people who speak to you, resonate with you, are on your same wavelength. And maybe not just LinkedIn, but other social media platforms like that as well. And you can make good connections that way.
Let me give you an example. Back in the day, I was on Twitter. Now X. I’m not really on that anymore. Not a big fan. It’s changed too much for me. It’s not where I want to be. But oh, there were so many designers and UX folks that were on that and tweeting and, you know, and I met Andy Vitale, or we followed each other, who is a well-known design leader in the space. And we never met. We just followed each other on Twitter. And I was organizing a conference in the Dallas area. And he asked if he could come down. And I said, “Yeah, but I it’s a free event. I don’t have any money. So I can’t fly you down.” He was like, “Okay, I’ll pass this time.” Totally legit. I understand.
But because we followed each other’s for years. I liked what he said. He liked what I said. Again, we never met. When he went to a company to head design there. He reached out to me and said, “I want you on my team. I want you to be part of this team.” Only through social media interaction. And I did go. And I did finally meet him after working at the same company. Find your people, you don’t have to know them in person. You do connect kind of, you build rapport a lot faster when you meet in person.
But just, you know, kind of I don’t want to say troll because that sounds like a creepy word. But just kind of watch LinkedIn and comment on people who get you and you appreciate what they did. You agree. And you actually can build relationships that way.
Ryan: Engage with people who seem interesting, who seem to have you know, perspectives that are interesting to you or compatible with yours.
Jen: 100%.
Ryan: So you have said, you know, you’re not necessarily going to rah, rah, encourage someone to get into UX. And I actually, from an academia standpoint, I actually understand this. If someone came to me and said, “Should I get into academia?” I would have a list of caveats about maybe why they would want to think twice about it.
But if someone was insistent, if someone was like, “Nope, UX 100% full steam ahead,” what advice do you have for them for someone who wants to get into kind of a uncertain, difficult UX world right now?
Jen: Yeah, it is a challenge to enter. And it’s a challenge to be in. I mean, we’re not gonna, Ryan, we’re not gonna sugarcoat it, right? It can be a challenge. I would say for those who are trying to break in, what you really need to show a hiring manager is that you can do the work. Show them that you know how to do the work, have the case studies, the portfolio, the chops, the articulated answers to show that you can do the work and that you can pivot if you have to, because though rigid and like, Oh, I did it this way. And when I have, you know, been on the hiring committee and interviewing people, and I say, “Okay, of that project, what would you change? What would you do differently?” And if they say “Nothing,” to me, that’s a red flag.
Ryan: Sure.
Jen: I always could have done something better, worse, like, there’s always something that could have been different. And if you can’t think of just one example of something that you would have changed, I’m a little concerned about that, because nothing’s ever perfect.
Ryan: Right, right. And it doesn’t show kind of a growth mindset.
Jen: So and to your point, Ryan, I love a growth mindset. And I love that vulnerability. I can’t tell you how many people I’m with that they’re always like, I’m, you know, showing off how smart they are and arguing with me. And I’m like, “You know what, I don’t know, I want to figure it out.”
And being vulnerable and admitting, I don’t want to play an ageist card here or say, or generalize, because it’s not super fair. But in my experience, is generally younger people who are overconfident, and not willing to say they don’t know. I mean, one of my favorite UX answers, and it’s always a joke is “It depends,” right? And if you have gone, how long have we gone in this conversation? If you’ve gone this long, and you haven’t said “It depends,” It’s not a UX conversation.
Ryan: Well, Jen, it has been great talking with you. Where can we find the newsletter?
Jen: You can find the newsletter, you can go follow me on LinkedIn, one of the top links is to subscribe to my newsletter. It’s BlatzChatz. If you search YouTube and see BlatzChatz, that’s one way to find the newsletter and my content as well. If you’re ready for some spicy takes. It’s not for everybody. I’ll warn you. Yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best place to start to find me and to build a relationship. Awesome.
Ryan: Well, thank you, Jen. I had a lot of fun talking with you. Keep up the hot takes. And I’ll look forward to reading the newsletter.
Jen: Thank you so much, Ryan. It was so much fun.
Ryan: Thank you.