The Interview

21st century brought us incredibly fast development on technologies, markets development and strong competition. It is not enough to have a good product, good price or quality. Companies are working hard on effective selling methods trying to beat the competitors. 24 hours, 7 days a week. Today we are asking Lukasz Lukasik, business analysist and researcher, UX designer about his ways and solutions for businesses in regards to customer oriented UX designing process.

As an introduction, can you tell a little about yourself?

I am a 50 year old man living in Drøbak near Oslo, enjoying a fresh air and beautiful nature which surrounds you when you live in Norway. It is very important for me because I value peace and quiet and in my free time I really like to go out to the forest or to the mountains, so yes, living in Norway is a great thing really. On the other hand I am missing the atmosphere of southern European countries like Spain, Italy or Greece where you can go out with friends and meet at local restaurants and spend the nights out in a great company. This is why I really like traveling and I would say this is one of my main hobbies as well as spending a lot of time on reading books and cooking in my free time.

What is your educational background?

I think that I need to go back as far as to my secondary school where I studied mostly maths and physics. I know it had a strong influence on my career. After that I had a break and moved to London, later, after a couple of years I decided to continue studying and Public Relations was my choice where I graduated with a bachelor’s degree. Next step were postgraduate studies in IT which actually set my career path. Recently I have decided to have a closer look at latest trends in UX that’s why I am studying at Caledonian University and also IT at Harvard. These days you need to regularly update your knowledge to stay on the track.

What about your work experience?

It all begun in 2003 where I started to work as a financial advisor and my main responsibilities were to prepare business plans, marketing strategies and case studies. I specialised in market research and analysis as well as strategic planning. That was the time I started to concentrate on marketing aspects and in 2013 I had my hands on graphic design. At first I used the skills to enrich the business documents I was preparing but later it developed into international freelancing. Since that moment I knew visual marketing was my direction. Of course I was aware of the fact you cannot have effective marketing offer without web developing and UX skills. So, as you can see one led to another.

Do you remember any episodes from your life that influenced your career?

Well yes, it was in the beginning of 1990s when I worked in London restaurant at Harvey Nichols, Knightsbridge (5th Floor Restaurant, one of the most expensive places in the city) next to Harrods.

Now I understand why cooking is your hobby.

Yes, my relationship with cooking started at that time. I remember I was working with a friend, Toby and we both were doing the kitchen staff – washing dishes and pans, the basic duties. One day he invited me for a pint of beer after work to his house which was very short walking distance from Harvey Nichols.

You mean in Belgravia?

That’s right, in Belgravia, probably the most expensive part of London, so I was really shocked he lived there. I asked him how was it possible for him to work as a kitchen porter when he lived in such a beautiful and expensive house? It turned out to be his father’s house who was one of the major stake owners and member of the board at Harvey Nichols. My friend, Toby was also going to be the manager of the company in the future but before that, he needed to learn every or almost every aspect of the company starting with the lowest steps of the structure. Later in my career I understood how smart it was to have complete knowledge about the company you work for. By the way it is also very popular in Japanese corporate culture – I no naka no kawazu wa taikai o shirazu (The frog in the well knows not the great sea).

What did you learn from that?

That, it is very important to know and understand how the company operate, from very bottom to the top of it. And to respect every member of the team, just as they say in books “a good company is like a good Swiss watch, a set of parts, parts that work together, there are no better or worse, higher or lower, all bear the same importance”.

Well said, thank you for the introduction. Let’s move to our main subject today, can you explain what do you mean by crossroads?

Before we get there, we need to understand the complexity of every business. Every single company consists of teams who are responsible for different activities. We have book keepers, HR, sales and marketing, production and so on. And every single one is important. So when it comes to directing the company forward we will have totally different visions, targets and approaches. Accountants will focus on numbers, profitability and financial effectiveness. Sales and marketing are focusing on results such as volume sold, number of customers, company image. Stake holders will always ask about ROI and targets achieved. So as you can see every department tries to pull into its direction. So sooner or later the company ends up at the crossroad with the question – which direction is the best? And this crossroad, the answer to above question is usually one of the most important moments in every company life.

So, how do you start your working process?

I do agree all departments are right and they can easily prove it, there is no point to disagree. This is the moment I enter the game, to accept all their reasons but also or moreover to show and prove one, common direction is possible. In order to do so I use complex business research and analysis as well as UX skills to prepare The Opening Balance Case, the complete analysis showing the stake owners full and deep insight into the situation together with ideas to start with. Both sides ie. me and board members need to know where we are at the beginning of the road. This is the executive document I always start with.

I understand, in The Opening Balance Case you use your financial and business skills but tell us what is UX design role in it?

To answer this question you need to understand UX is way wider than Figma and wireframing, way wider than competitive benchmarking, customer journeys or UI. These are only tools to be used afterwards, important but useless without research and analysis done beforehand. UX is responsible for solid foundations you build your business successful activity on. You need to have complete perspective to apply UX tools. UX is not only improving customers reactions with the product or service, UX explains those reactions but also defines the customers and tells what to do next. Proper UX is focused on both, customer and company needs at the same time, it needs to work both ways, otherwise it is not UX. It is just responsible for excellent customer experience and rising company profitability, it needs to meet the company needs and targets.

So, in that case, which skills are essential for a UX designer?

As you can see above, to be the right person you need to understand the company business operations. Before you start UX designing process you need to analyse every aspect of the company. The basic skill is to know how to create a business plan, since this document covers everything from finance planning, personnel skills and responsibilities, product advantages and weaknesses, competitors, target customers, SWOT or NOISE analysis and much more. So when you have the fundamental data in business plan, research analysis to start with, psychology comes next. You need it to define the behaviours and characteristics of the target customers, to understand and explain their decisions while interacting with the company product. And to keep analysing them along the way, not only during UX designing process. So yes, empathy is very important. Another very fundamental skill is communication, and by communication I mean understanding the professional language of accountants, marketers, developers and salesmen. You will work closely with them along UX designing process so there needs to be full understanding and collaboration. Ability for team work is essential because you cannot perform the UX process on your own, being separated from others.

OK, but I always thought, the skills you need are prototyping or wireframing?

Of course! But you need to understand they are hard skills we use according to technology environment we have and you need those skills together with information architecture and visual communication as well. They are essential to test and to represent the findings from the surveys and analysis. Those skills are very important in final steps of preliminary UX design where you built the prototype to be tested.

And what do you mean by preliminary design?

When the prototype has been designed, it is the time to test it on a live tissue. This is really important stage of UX since you will be receiving feedback on your prototype and again psychology takes the lead. Observe, analyse, research and redesign. When your test has produced convincing conclusions you may move to the next stage, which is the main design. But remember, the main one is not the final one. Since everything changes, the customer changes too, so our design needs to be researched and improved again. UX is a process that goes along the development of your product and also the environment.

In other words being a UX designer, a good one, is a combination of not one but many professions?

Yes, that’s correct. As I said before, without skills to understand the company finance, marketing, production etc. it is impossible to perform any UX design and without psychology you will not be able to understand and read customer behaviour. UX design is a very complex process that requires multiple skills.

So what made you choose a career in UX design?

I have been researching and analysing businesses since 2003, start-ups, small and large ones, providing solutions for their development, financial effectiveness and profitability. Later I found there is something called UX which actually is based on the skills I used every day. At the same time I decided to try design and web development, first for fun but soon I realised it works for me. So, combining all my previous experiences and skills could lead in only one direction i.e. UX design, research and analysis. I also think my communication and social skills play very important role here. PR studies helps me a lot. Besides the knowledge I have, the ability to cooperate with others, to learn from them and understand their point of view is very important when working for a company. It has helped me many times.

What are the main responsibilities of a UX professional?

To deliver excellent customer experience, that is the common definition you can easily find in text books, studies or blogs but if you ask the same question to a statistical CEO the most often answer would be – make my new and existing customers satisfied so they stay for a long time, keep spending money and happily return again and again with higher purchases.

Well, let me ask the same question in a little different way. What are the main UX designer responsibilities, in your opinion?

As I mentioned before, UX should benefit both parts (company and customer at the same time), so every UX professional should design effective customer’s approach journey but also analyse his characteristics. It is very important since one of the main duties of UX is to deliver data to be used by other parts of the company eg. marketing, sales, product developers and so on. In other words professional UX designer must have many hats on his head.

Let’s go to your UX work experience, can you tell me about a time a project that was more complicated than it first seemed?

Yes, of course. I performed a project for a family owned middle size company (father and two sons) located in the south of Europe. Everything worked really well until I had a meeting with them to share and represent my findings i.e. weaknesses and areas for improvement. That moment everything started, I was told, the business had been existing on the market for many years and I need to rethink again my findings since there is nothing wrong with it. Moreover, I was not allowed to tell them how to run the business. I had such conversation for the first time in my life. Well, a lot of shouting and hand gestures was not a problem for me because I know Italian and Greek way of communicating but the fact I got stuck and couldn’t continue with my work.

And if you ask me, what’s the most significant success in my career as a UX designer, I can tell you without any hesitation, is the fact I finally convinced them.

Wow, great experience! Unfortunately I need to ask last question today, which skills do you need to refine as a UX designer?

These days most of the business activity goes online. Websites, applications, SaaS etc. and in order to stay on the track I need to extend my IT knowledge. That’s why I decided to study IT at Harvard University. I just need to understand better developers language, their point of view, their needs and requirements, since within UX designing process I spend a lot of time with them.

Thank you very much for the interview, the answers and I know they will explain a lot about your point of view on UX and your person as a designer.

Thank you, it was a pleasure to talk to you.

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