Understanding User Experience: Interview with Brian Kalma
By Beth Hutchings
With over 12 years of UX experience, Brian Kalma of Blade, LLC knows people. While working at a variety of different companies over the years (Including Zappos and Gilt), he has seen the ecommerce industry explode and witnessed the rise in demand of web developers, programmers, and graphic designers. Currently, he works at Blade, a consumer technology “foundry” that offers funding and product expertise for early stage start-ups.
Never has there been a greater need for good user experience, and designers, coders, and business people alike could all learn a lot from Brian’s perspective.
Last spring, Scout was lucky enough to host Brian at “Building Brands that Matter,” where Brian talked about how implementing good user experience has helped him in his career. Beth Hutchings sat down with Brian to discuss his advice for designers, education, and Blade’s role in co-founding companies.
Beth Hutchings: How would you describe “User Experience” to someone without a design background? What is the importance of it?
Brian Kalma: It’s interesting to me that User Experience immediately gets lumped into the mental mindset of design. I understand why it does, but I think that it makes that concept intimidating to some folks. People immediately think ‘oh I need to know color theory or photoshop or layouts’. While that does certainly help, User Experience is really a process to ensure a customer has a positive experience. You don’t necessarily have to know traditional creative stuff, you need to become one with the user. It’s about putting yourself in the mindset of the customer and be empathetic to their wants and needs.
BH: So it’s more about understanding how people think or process information rather than any software?
BK: I think so. It’s unfortunate that User Experience is defined so loosely because people look for something concrete to latch on to and you’ll hear different definitions from everyone: it’s information architecture, wireframing, etc. To a certain extent that’s right. In my opinion it’s a mindset and a process of providing good experience for the user.
BH: Are there any other common misconceptions about design that you have run into in business?
BK: The biggest one I’m experiencing now is within a business setting, the work of a designer is often trivialized down to the deliverable. That by itself is a flawed perception because it doesn’t give the proper value that the designer puts into his or her work. And the reason why its problematic is because then you have business folks, lets call them founders in this case, who commoditize output. They’re valuing the hands rather than the brains that go into the work. To me that’s a problem because great design takes time.
The majority of the work and effort happens before deliverable is produced. With designers there’s a problem because if you don’t involve other people in the process, and you just send them a photoshop file or a sketch; you’re perpetuating that problem.There’s two problems: Lack of understanding on the business side and designers not knowing how to make their process visible.
BH: When a company approaches you with an idea, what’s Blade’s role in the process?
BK: Lot’s of companies apply for funding and participation, if they make it through the filtering process, our focus is primarily on getting the team a workable product out into the market that we can then build on. Secondarily, what we’re trying to do is coach and educate the founding teams so that when they leave they have a better understanding of the design process and how to think like a designer. We do execute work for our companies but we try to mentor them too, because we want them to be successful and independent when they walk out of our space.
BH: You have to be empathetic to the user.
BK: Exactly. If you were designing the interior of a Tesla car, completely touch screen, there’s no way you could do it exclusively from a remote desk. You have to drive around in it and understand the decisions being made. Anyone creating an experience for a user has to put themselves in the situation they’re trying to address; they have to immerse themselves in it. You have to remember you are not the sole end user, you have bias. learning fast is more important than moving fast.
BH: Any advice for people interested in design/UX who don’t have experience?
BK: First, always be critiquing your favorite apps or sites. Not just mentally, but physically jotting down things you would change about them. It gets you in the mindset of designing thoughtfully and developing solutions for specific problems. Second, take all the crazy ideas in your head, write them down and just start designing them. You need to start practicing taking ideas and being able to explain how to manifest.
