UX leader interview: Jess Brown

Jess and I have been in similar circles since around 2009, when we shared office space in San Francisco. I’ve enjoyed watching her grow from afar, as design director at Vice Media, then head of design at an LA startup, and was happy to have the chance to catch up and dig into her leadership trajectory over the intervening years.

She’s currently a Staff designer at Faire doing great things, so don’t forget to check her out.

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Leadership isn’t just people management

I hear this time and again: that leadership isn’t just about managing a team, and Jess agrees.

Leadership is independent of people management. I still consider myself a leader even though I’m back to being an individual contributor. It involves crafting a vision, identifying needs across the team, supporting them, and bringing together resources from different places. It’s about communicating what needs to be done and offering support.

I often call designers the “glue” within a product organization, helping be that connective tissue between departments that helps drive everyone toward alignment. Jess it inhabiting this in every way.

Being aware of your leadership philosophy is key

Beyond every designer I’ve talked to so far (and there have been a fair number), Jess was crystal clear on what her leadership philosophy is. This level of awareness and intentionality is so inspiring to see. For Jess, a lot of leadership requires making space for Design to do what it does best:

To me, the most important parts of the function are articulating what you and your team are doing, and advocating on behalf of both. It took me a while to learn this as a people manager, that the most important part of my role was making sure the team had time and space to do great work.

Adapting to how your org works is a critical skill

We talked about how design isn’t the same at every company, and how the culture of design should inform how you go about advocating and evangelizing Design across the org. It’s not a one-size-fits-all situation.

It’s about how organizations evaluate what’s working, what’s not, and where to go.

Designers can feel excluded if they don’t understand the organization’s language and feel there’s no forum for an experience-first point of view.

My approach is to get familiar with the organization’s decision-making framework. I’ll learn about decision drivers, which are often data driven, but also look for an opportunity to steer the conversation towards the experience to inform decisions. This can be really challenging.

Tailor the conversation to the audience

This builds a little on Jess’ point above, and really hammers home just how adaptable designers need to be in order to do good work and build a culture of design across an organization. For Jess, it’s all about meeting people where they’re at:

You learn to have different types of conversations with different stakeholders. With designers, I can get into details like rounded corners, but when talking to the executive team, I focus on connecting the dots to metrics and impact instead.

Advice for the next generation of designers: take ownership of your design journey

Jess reiterates that it’s on you to take the reins of your own career, and to try new things, expose yourself to new skillsets. I couldn’t agree more. So many organizations don’t have the infrastructure in place to support design career growth, so learning to do this yourself is a great skill to acquire in order to thrive. As Jess puts it:

Look for ways to experiment to see if you’ll enjoy something new. Find inroads to advocate for yourself and your growth. If you’re considering management, maybe manage a summer intern — it sounds cliche, but it gets you oriented to the things you’ll be responsible for. Or step up and organize a cross-functional project, both to explore your interest in leading, and to demonstrate an ability to drive a project forward.

I especially like how Jess points out that sometimes design doesn’t look like pushing pixels at all, and that flexing into other roles — like Product Management — doesn’t dilute your design skills but augments them.

Your leadership journey is personal

Jess points out that not everyone is suited to be a more traditional leader and people manager, and that’s OK. Even in her journey, she’s stayed in tune with her needs as her career evolved, switching into management and back out when the situation called for it.

We all have distinct interests and goals.

Even within myself, I’ve seen these shift, especially during the pandemic and working remotely. My energy to manage people was less present, so I focused more on design work and delving deeper into designs. I don’t believe that official leadership is the only path to grow.

Like what you read and want to add your $0.02? Let me interview you as part of my upcoming book, Leading UX: a no B.S. handbook for leaders in design.