Company
Date Published
Author
Sian Townsend
Word count
1070
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

I've joined Intercom as Director of Research after a 7.5-year international adventure with Google, where user research is deeply ingrained into the company's DNA, and everyone's a researcher. This approach focuses on designing for jobs that users want to do, rather than features we're not sure if people need or want, which I found appealing. Enterprise apps are an exciting frontier for UX designers and researchers, offering opportunities to transform lives with little attention paid to user experience historically. As a researcher, I'm excited to be in uncharted territory evolving rapidly, researching the future, and figuring out what users really want and need from products. However, leaving a design job at a tech company can lead to an existential crisis, as all work is left behind on servers that can no longer be accessed, making it difficult to pinpoint insights about human behavior with longevity.