UX STRAT Interview: Brendan McWeeney, LinkedIn

Paul: Hi Brendan, thanks for talking with me today. Can you tell us a little about yourself: job role, company, brief bio?

Brendan: I’m currently a Design Manager at LinkedIn on the Marketing Solutions team. I started on the team a few weeks ago after being the Design Manager for the Search, Infra UX, and Trust and Privacy team on our Flagship Product the previous year.

I grew up in the Northeast and spent my first 18 years in Westport, CT before heading to the University of Vermont. I then lived in Boston, MA for a few years before moving to San Francisco, CA where I have been ever since. I live in the city with my husband and our three Labradors.

In 2016, after being inspired by my mentor at the time, Beril Maples, and some brilliant colleagues, I noticed that the design landscape was evolving. I decided I needed to evolve as well. That’s when I went back to school for my Master’s of Science in Information Design and Strategy from Northwestern University. I’m wrapping up the degree in June this year and it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made for myself.

Paul: What about your recent work pertains to experience design strategy and/or innovation?

Brendan: I recently joined the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions group and my team is working on the customer experience side of our Campaign Manager tool. Our product’s mission is to empower businesses to reach, engage and convert their professional audience at scale.

We’re using big data collected from our platform, and thick, qualitative data from our customers to form insights that we can take action on. We have a unique ecosystem that is different from other ad platforms. By embracing what makes us unique, we have the opportunity to differentiate ourselves, take some leaps of faith, and explore areas to innovate.

I was recently approached by a product partner asking the team how we might want to incorporate more innovation into our product. It was a really refreshing conversation and my fellow designers and researchers responded with some great thoughts on how we might operationalize an innovation mindset into our day to day process. It’s an ongoing conversation and I’m excited to see where we net out.

Paul: How do you practice efficiency while innovating and finding the best design solutions?

Brendan: Efficiency comes through process and discipline. In an ideal world, designers are working from unique insights within their product space. Those insights collected from all available data points is what helps foster innovation. Without both the Big (quant) and Thick (qual) data, designers ability to innovate are hindered.

Beyond the data-informed insights, you need an organization that supports an innovative mindset. You need to make room for innovation and make it a part of the organizational culture and product roadmap.

I am fortunate to work for a company that supports this idea. We have InDays once a month where we’re allowed to work on personal projects and we hold hackathons regularly to work on new ideas, not on the roadmap. These events give everyone the opportunity to think about innovation from various perspectives.

Paul: What role does data play in your team's design processes?

Brendan: Data in various forms is a part of the entire team’s design process. We blend findings from big data, analytics with our thick qualitative data from interviews and customer support tracking to help inform our design process. It is used at the beginning and we continuously collect more data throughout the process to ensure that we’re moving in the right direction.

In my opinion, this approach is the future for product development. While it’s been around for some time, it’s not fully adopted by every organization. Some organizations may not be aware of the trend, but others may not have the capabilities to strategically collect, manage, and find insight in data available to them. Those organizations will get left behind, no matter how talented their product teams might be.

Paul: Is there a data scientist on your team? Or is data science a service you outsource for?

Brendan: Yes, they are part of the core product group that includes designers, product managers, engineers, marketing, biz ops, design ops, and data science. It’s a large group of talented people with specialized skills that build on each other to get the best products out the door.

Paul: Okay. Yes, part of the same team.

Brendan: Yeah, we have a team of Data Scientists dedicated to Campaign Manager that we work with.

Paul: How would you like to see your team grow their ability to do first diamond work? What do you hope/ plan for people to get more involved with?

Brendan: We have a really solid design process on this team. Having that well-defined process and partners who are aware of it helps us do our best work. Part of my job is to ensure that the designers on the team, and myself, are involved at every stage of the product development process. To be effective partners in that space we need to be effective communicators and experts at collaborating and bringing our partners along with us, and going along with them as well. Communication isn’t a one-way street. That is a philosophy I feel is baked into the culture so it’s just something we’ll continue to strengthen. It’s the soft skills that I’d like to see designers get more involved with, they are the added tools we need to be successful in data and design mature organizations today.

Paul: I would consider design a “right brain” activity because it includes visual design, color palettes, image selection, etc., whereas “left brain” activities are more analytical and data-centric. These definitions seem like it would be a challenge to find people skilled at both. Do you agree?

Brendan: I think traditionally I would agree with that statement, but design is evolving, and designers are going to have to have to evolve to keep a seat at the table. This evolution is what motivated me to go back to school and learn that “left-brain” type of things.

Designers aren’t just the ones dealing with colors and typography anymore. We have to know the business, we have to know how things work, and figure out why things are happening. So, I think it’s our responsibility to have that skill set. I have been noticing a lot of the designers that are coming out of school, are coming out more well rounded and equipped to deal with design as it relates to both the user and the business. It’s amazing how smart they are and the skills that they have. It’s nice to see.

Paul: It seems to me that LinkedIn leads the evolution of product design, service design and experience design. Other companies haven’t begun the design evolution yet. What would you tell designers to help prepare them for their future evolution?

Brendan: Start learning about data and all of the things organizations are doing with it today. The capabilities are endless, and it opens up new avenues of thinking as a designer. Just like I believe designers should be familiar with code, designers should now also be familiar with data and concepts like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. You don’t have to be an engineer, but you should understand the landscape of how products work or can work today. If you’re aware of the capabilities and what can be done, then you can think in different ways to design experiences that are more advanced, more modern, vs. something that’s a little more static or flat and that doesn’t rely on data.

There are a lot of free courses out there online, as well as a breadth of great content on LinkedIn Learning (shameless plug). Designing with data is a skill set designers are going to need in the future and it is not going away, so they should start learning all they can about it. Even if their current organizations aren’t data mature, the next one might be, so start preparing now.

Paul: What would you say to the people who argue that data-guided design, a pillar and focus of UX STRAT, removes human value from design?

Brendan: I think they’re misinterpreting what data-guided design is. Sometimes you hear data-driven design, and that could ruffle some feathers. It certainly ruffles mine. I like to think of it as more of a data-guided--like you said--or data-informed. In that sense, it doesn’t necessarily mean just big data. We also need to fold in the qualitative data, where we’re talking to users. That’s the thicker data that when combined with the big data, helps you get the full picture of what’s happening and helps inform design decisions. So, I don’t think working with data is making us any less human or sterile. The combination of quantitative and qualitative data is making us better at what we do.

Paul: Have you had any opportunities to use emerging technologies in your work? Such as AI, AR, VR or Voice?

Brendan: AI is so intertwined into everything I have been involved with designing over the recent past that it’s hard to imagine a design world or process without it.

Everything I’ve helped build these days has an AI/ML component to it. We’re in the business of creating personalized experiences, and the most efficient way of doing that is through testing and training algorithms and relevance models. In my career, the products I’ve worked on have used AI to suggest relevant products in commerce platforms, when to reach out to a customer, to suggest relevant content or people to connect with, and even how to best optimize a marketing campaign. AI is everywhere.

I haven’t launched anything with Voice but have built some prototypes before and put it in front of users. It’s amazing how the interaction model changes the experience so drastically. The opportunities for delight, as well as defeat, are amplified in my opinion. I think we’ve only touched the surface with Voice UX and can’t wait to see how it evolves in the future.

Paul: Where do you see strategic design going next?

For me, strategic design is a necessary skill set for designers to have these days. We have an opportunity to get a seat at the table and influence the entire product lifecycle. The days of “just make it pretty” is over. It’s a design evolution of sorts and the businesses that embrace the full capabilities of designers are the ones who are seeing a measurable impact on their business goals, revenue, and valuation.

Strategic design is many things, but it most definitely is about thinking systematically and finding the signals in the noise. It is aligning with business goals and leveraging the vast amounts of data around us to find those nuggets of insight to help inform the decisions we make in our products.

Paul: Is there anything else you would like to tell our readers?

Brendan: It’s my belief that designers need to keep learning and they must continue to evolve to succeed in this fast-moving industry. Picking up the skills that you share in your workshops are essential for those looking to bring more value to their users, product partners, and the organizations. Because of this evolution, design now has a seat at the table. It is our responsibility to stay at that table with our user-centered lens while we pay it forward by sharing our knowledge with other designers around us.