At the helm with Jessica Ross

Jessica Ross, the Director of User Experience and Design at Octopus, discusses her role in enhancing the company's user experience by embedding designers within marketing and R&D teams to align with their missions. Her team focuses on understanding customer pain points and delivering solutions that meet their needs through research, co-designing, and testing. As part of their 2022 goals, they aim to identify key metrics for measuring success in user experience, focusing on reducing user decision-making and task time to boost activation rates. Exciting projects include improving the onboarding experience, holistic user experience, and design system, as well as defining the user experience for scalability. Ross envisions Octopus as an intuitive deployment tool that supports complex scenarios, emphasizing the importance of investing in design to ensure the success of features and improvements. She advises potential designers to be comfortable with ambiguity and to collaborate effectively in cross-functional teams. Ross enjoys her role, particularly in establishing team rituals and processes, and highlights memorable collaborations during quarterly design weeks.