Innovating UX Design for a Better Tomorrow - Ben Shown, S4, Ep. 10

In this episode, we are joined by Ben Shown, Head of Design at Blink UX. With over a decade of creative leadership experience, Ben has led design teams to collaborate with top-tier brands like Amazon, eBay, Microsoft, and NASA. We dive into his journey, his expertise in human-centered design, and how he approaches creating seamless digital experiences. Discussion points:

• How has your journey been? What steps would you recommend for those who want to follow in your footsteps? 1:41
• Do you feel there is a difference in the design approach when working with heavily funded organizations compared to corporate giants like Amazon? 4:19
• As a kid, you probably dreamed of working with your nation's space agency (NASA). Do you feel that satisfaction was somewhat achieved? 6:00
• How do you define design leadership in your current studio or agency setup, and what processes do you implement to ensure your team's success? 7:12
• As a design leader, how do you juggle the diverse responsibilities that come your way? 8:38
• Rapid fire round 12:54
• Do you think there's a secret to building a sustainable team, tracking progress, and setting a North Star for leadership? 17:26
• On BlinkUX.com, there’s information about UX workshop ideas and how to conduct them. Can you tell us more about that? 19:07
• Any advice for young followers or those just starting out or looking into a studio practice? 22:46

Show notes:

• I remember very distinctly getting into the high school yearbook and getting my hands on digital publishing tools from Adobe, like PageMaker and Photoshop, and just loving that process.
• Our job was to untangle that knot—find commonalities through UX research around which stories were the most effective that NASA was telling—and ultimately consolidate those 3,000 websites into one.
• Understanding how to create great UX at the government level is a different challenge compared to working with tech clients that have had design embedded in their culture for a long time.
• If I could have next-level time management, that would be ideal. I feel like I’ve gotten better at it, but that would definitely be a superpower.
• Making sure your design activities are really set up for the end goal is crucial. You need to get people talking, have them take their guard down, and position the activities to help us read between the lines and understand the project's big ambitious goals.
• Throughout the course of a project, our clients take a journey in learning user-centered design. We often teach our clients how to run workshops and how to progress in a design project

Links: LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/benkshown/ Company’s Website: www.blinkux.com