Chelsea Reyes

I just read Longing for Less: Living with Minimalism by Kyle Chayka, and it got me thinking about the power of minimalism—not just in art and architecture that you hear so much about, but in how we experience the world. Chayka's core message is that minimalism isn't just about reducing clutter—it's about creating space for clarity, intentionality, and deeper meaning... principles that really resonate with me and the UX design discipline. Here are some thoughts looking at Minimalism through the lens of user experience design: https://lnkd.in/gnmJGfyM

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Research is a function of strategy.  "According to CB Insights, over 90% of all products fail, most commonly due to no market need." Leave yourself time to ask big questions about whether any actually needs your product or service before you decide to launch it. #UXstrategy #UXresearch #Marketresearch

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❓ I have a question for product designers ❓ How do you understand that you’ve reached a certain grade or level in your career, such as transitioning to a senior role? Do you rely solely on performance reviews, or are there other ways you evaluate your growth? And what if there’s no formal performance review process? I’m asking because I often get questions about assessing one’s grade or level. So, I’m curious — do you have a similar need or interest in this topic? Let me know your thoughts!

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There’s a subtle difference between “educating” stakeholders and making the impact of your work visible. One of these can help you win promotions, autonomy, and co-conspirators. The other can distract you from your craft at best… or devalue your work at worst. Thought-provoking article from Sara Wachter-Boettcher on how designers can reframe “advocating for design” in a way that avoids burnout and sidesteps the gaslighting.

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I’ve expanded on my earlier post with examples and deeper insights in a new Medium article. 🚀 In this extended version, I dive deeper into balancing autonomy with strategic alignment, guiding teams like a fleet of ships, and setting the stage for cross-functional success. If these leadership themes resonate with you, I’d love for you to explore the full article here : https://lnkd.in/g_q2Yxfk Let me know your thoughts!

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If you’re solely relying on your UX team to solve all your product usability problems, you’re in trouble.   Don’t get me wrong, a kick-ass UX team is mandatory, not a luxury, but if you expect to hire a couple of designers, pat them on the back while saying, “Go get ’em,” and expect that to make your product a delight for your customers, you’re in trouble. I’m not trying to minimize the importance of good designers, and I assure you that this isn’t another “UX needs a seat at the table” screed. Rather, I’m telling you that building functional, usable products your customers love is a team effort.   If your Product Managers can’t (or *gasp* won’t) find space in product releases to prioritize design quality and improvements alongside new feature requests, technical debt mitigations, never-ending backlog excavations, etc., etc., you’re in trouble.   If your Development Teams can’t (or *horror* won’t) school themselves on the tenets of solid UI development practices and seek guidance on usability questions when they don’t have the answer instead of just winging it, you’re in trouble.   But it doesn’t stop there!   If your Technical Writers aren’t flagging 20-step documentation guides as usability issues that need to be fixed in the product and not with pages of text descriptions and countless screenshots, you’re in trouble.   If your QA Testers don’t tag in, or better yet, assign the UX team as owners of usability defects instead of engineering, you’re in trouble.   If your Account Teams don’t know when or why to bring designers into customer conversations to hear feedback firsthand, ask questions, and trust them to build their own relationships with said customers, you’re in trouble.   If your Salespeople can’t sell usability upgrades as equally beneficial to customers as new features, you’re in trouble.   If your Technical Support doesn’t know when a problem needs UX participation to help address it or how to bucket related usability issues common across customers for UX follow-up, you’re in trouble.   This isn’t about spreading around the problem, nor the responsibility!, of poor usability; it’s about realizing that delivering good UX is a team effort accelerated by shared responsibility and process redundancies to catch even minor issues before they wind up in the customer’s hands. And if you don’t understand that, you’re in trouble.

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“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou This truth is especially powerful in product and UX/UI design. While creating a beautiful, user-friendly application might seem straightforward—I've had the privilege of doing it for nearly two decades—the real impact lies in the emotions we evoke. It’s those feelings that turn one-time users into loyal advocates. If you’re curious about how emotions shape user experiences or want to know more about neurodesign, check out this article and others written by @jashsak https://lnkd.in/gtj5JpD6

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If your org can't muster the empathy just yet for accessibility work, maybe they'll listen to dollars. Here's a cost-benefit analysis from Deque Systems, Inc of baking accessibility work into the beginning of the project, known as shifting left, instead of saving all of the accessibility work for QA or even later.

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If we're not talking about design maturity, agile process, or craft, then us designers are probably talking about ✨quality.✨ I certainly see my interviewer's eyes light up when I mention this magical word. "Design is the one that has to hold the quality bar," I tell them. But what if that didn't have to be true? For a truly high-quality product, I don't think it should be design holding the line. It has to be something baked into the organization - everyone holds the quality bar. Even though "quality" is a slippery thing to define, if we can define it and hold ourselves to it, we can reduce the tension in the org and start to think less about the mere baseline quality for the product and more about raising that bar - delighting the user. I very much enjoyed Luke Anthony Firth's take on how they folded quality into their product building process. Have a read! https://lnkd.in/g4SenmYZ #designleadership #productprocess #productdesign #productquality #designquality #opentowork

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Most designers are trained to present work to our peers, but as your career matures, your audience expands to include many other departments who don’t speak “design”. This article resonated with me and offers some sage advice about the use of storytelling and a “business lens” to craft more compelling presentations. #ProductDesign #Storytelling #UserResearch #BusinessObjectives

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Companies are finally seeing the value of super-senior ICs! But career ladders and expectations for staff+ designers are often unclear, leaving lots of people who reach this level feeling unsupported. To help, I took my own 14+ years of experience as an individual contributor in high-impact roles at tech companies of varying sizes and made a highly interactive course. Join us starting Feb 3: https://lnkd.in/eqg4e2vx We’ll cover: 💡 Common expectations of the staff+ designer role 💡 Effective communication with senior leaders and executives 💡 How to set and uphold boundaries to focus on high-impact work 💡 Techniques to manage up and show impact Over the span of three weeks, you'll build a network of super-senior peers and acquire tactics from me: a designer who's been through these exact challenges. Grab your spot now! P.S. Thanks, Adekunle Oduye, for the kind words!

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UX leaders: Better understand what motivates designers and how you can help them thrive by taking 3 minutes to read this excerpt from Scott Berkun’s new book “Why Design Is Hard”: https://lnkd.in/ev6XyMss

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In today's "more is more" world, how do UX champions prioritize quality (not just quantity) in product experiences? Forget endless features – it's all about protecting quality and creating a user experience that truly shines. 🌟 Read more: https://lnkd.in/ekkVzxjF #productdesign #intranet #intranetdesign #ux #ui

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I’m hiring a Mid-level Product Designer! 🎉 Here are some of the details: 👇 💼 Company: nCino, Inc. 📍 Location: Lehi, Utah 🏢 Office requirement: Onsite, Monday – Thursday. 👥 Design Team: Nearly 30 designers, mostly in Utah 🤝 Product Team: The PM and tech lead for this role are on site in Lehi, UT, and several engineers are remote 🏭 Industry: Banking, Analytics, B2B, SaaS ⚒️ Tools: Figma, User Interviews, Dovetail, Slack, Jira, etc… 💬 Manager: You'll report to me ➡️ Start date: We’re ready to go when you are! Here's what we'll offer you: ✨ 100% paid premiums for medical, dental and vision, as well as disability insurance and life insurance. ✨ 39 paid days off each year (including volunteer days and holidays). ✨ Company-funded HSA account and 401K with employee match. ✨ Employee stock purchase plan with 15% discount and look back period. ✨ 4-12 weeks of childbirth parental leave. ✨ Career growth opportunities, frequent design team trainings, design critiques, collaboration sessions, team summits, etc... ✨ A manager and team who really care about you as a person. The product space and what you’ll do: 👉 nCino is broken into several business units, including the Portfolio Analytics business unit. The Portfolio Analytics product hasn’t had a dedicated designer before, so you will work with me to lead a transformation in this product space. 👉 This transformation will include auditing a product with a legacy interface, understanding who the users are, helping redefine the information architecture and product vision, and moving it towards our “One nCino” vision, design system, and UX team best practices. 👉 Since this is an analytics product, you’ll be designing several dashboards, charts, reports, tables, navigation menus, and dense data interfaces. Here is who is not a match: ❌ Lives outside the U.S. Unfortunately, this role is only setup to hire within the U.S at this time. ❌ Unable to live or relocate near one of our headquarters in Lehi, UT ❌ Unable to come onsite Monday – Thursday. This is our company’s most recent policy. ❌ Someone who passively waits to be told what to do or needs micromanaging. ❌ Agencies, freelancers, consultants, or recruiters. Now is not the time. ⚠️ Disclaimer: Because of the overwhelming response I typically get for our open roles, I won’t have the capacity to respond to every direct message. But if you apply, I will make sure our hiring team reviews every application! If this role sounds right for you or someone you know, then tag them below or apply! Application link is in the comments 👀 #ux #design #productdesign #userexperience #hiring

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Well that’s a wrap on Config! It was so great to see so many folks that I’ve worked with, admired, hired, managed, led, followed and best of all loved to work and be around in one place. Last year was epic but this year was sublime. And what a delight it was to see Figma’s new design magazine and little ole’ me playing a small part in this community publication! I’m talking about my favorite topic - data. With the pomp and circumstance of LLMs and “look what I can do,” brag of GenAI people are falling silent on the most important part of all this new technology - the data that fuels it. We’re forgetting the labor that goes into collecting, labeling and making data machine ready and the class of people who aren’t getting fairly compensated for this work. We’re forgetting that entire business models are being celebrated right now that use the stealing and appropriating of other’s creative content as their foundation. First there is awarness. Then anger. Now it’s time for advocacy. Here’s a question how can we make AI development for equitable overall all by fairly compensating those unseen data producers who make the AI tree grow? Check it out! I’m Proud to be part of The Prompt, a print and digital zine from @Figma’s Story & Brand Studios exploring the intersection of AI, design, and code, which launched at #Config2024. My Q&A on the power of input in AL and ML is here:

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Diversity in design isn't just a buzzword—it's a business imperative. 🌈 As a hiring manager, I've seen firsthand how diverse teams boost creativity, product quality, and profitability. I believe in building teams that reflect our users and bring fresh perspectives to every project. How do you ensure fairness during the hiring process when you have to look at portfolios? Here is my perspective on the challenges of inclusive hiring. #DiversityInDesign #InclusiveHiring #TeamBuilding

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The #1 lesson I've learned from a decade of user research in various flavors of enterprise UX is that we should all make a point of telling our coworkers when they did something well. Please tell someone that you appreciate them today.

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"Any tips for presenting design case studies in an interview?" a friend recently asked. Most certainly. ✦ Don't bury the outcome with a big reveal. Many times I've watched patiently as designers wait until the end to share the final outcome of their labors, first sharing their process (which is typically the same as every other candidate), sketches, post-its, and so forth. INSTEAD: Lead with a few screens that best represent the outcome. You can do this in 10 seconds. And then avoid the next mistake... ✦ Don't jump straight into your process. See note above. Your process is probably identical to every other candidate. This does little to set you apart. INSTEAD: State the problem clearly you were trying to solve. Clarity about the problem is a designer after my own heart. It shows clear intention to solve user/business needs. ✦ Don't show me personas. Some will disagree with this advice. But as a seasoned design leader, few things leave me more concerned about the inputs to your design work than fictitious avatars, names, and bios. INSTEAD: State the target audience you were designing for. If necessary describe the inputs to identifying this audience. Then follow up with how your work met or exceeded the needs of this audience. (Even better, stop using personas altogether and use archetypes or JTBDs instead.) BONUS TIPS ✨ ✦ If multiple designers worked on the same screen, be upfront about this and clarify what your role was. Personally I find it to be a bit of a letdown when something looks/functions great, only to find out later in our discussion that another designer did part of the work. ✦ Proactively share what you would have done differently if given the chance to do this work all over again. No work is ever perfect. But if you *could* get one step closer to perfection, what would it be. This shows me you're capable of critiquing yourself, which honestly not all designers are adept at. ✦ Provide me with a link to what you're presenting (slide deck, figma). I may want to jump around while you're presenting to find areas that are most likely to help me — and therefore you — discuss the right things relevant to this role. I realize this may be problematic to grant me access, so make a copy and then delete the copy after our interview. Hope this helps.

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