18. Presenting UX Work in a Compelling Way (feat. David Glazier, Senior Staff UX Designer at Illumina)
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This is the Nielsen Norman Group UX Podcast. I'm Therese Fessenden. Last month, we talked about how user research has changed over time and how for the most part, UX work is more highly valued than it's ever been, which is great. That said, there are still many pockets of the tech industry where that isn't the case. And UX professionals continuously find themselves in a predicament of having to defend their research budgets or practices.

So, this month I'm sharing an interview I had with David Glazier, Senior Staff UX Strategy Lead of Digital Experience at Illumina. He's worked with companies like Intuit, IDEO, Lead Crunch, and Razorfish, to name a few, to help transform business strategies and corporate cultures using human-centered research and design and effective storytelling techniques.

David shares some of his past compelling presentations with UX work and offers some ideas for how to meaningfully communicate the lasting and real impacts of UX work. Hi, David. Thanks for joining the show. How are you doing today? Doing great. Thanks. Good to be here. So how did you get into UX exactly? Because I know from what you've told me before, you have some experience in sound design. But yeah, I'm curious about that whole journey.

Yeah, it's an interesting one falling into that. I think it just stemmed from creative problem solving was just one of those things that my brother and I practiced since childhood. We were fortunate enough to have a father that had a well-equipped garage with every tool, every nut and bolt, pieces of wood and metal that you could imagine. So they encouraged us to just start building things, which led to, well,

He would tell us, you need to draw up your plans first. And then, so we're sketching plans and then engineering them and he's correcting us. And it just turned into, you know, documenting, prototyping, thinking about

scaling, the manufacturing. When we went to go sell clothing, we used to make jester hats back in the day and sell them at school and figured out how to make that stuff. Sounds very entrepreneurial, yes. So I think that just kind of led into...

The crafts and the skills, you know, building, designing, marketing, all of those things led into the craft skills that's required as a UXer. Yeah. I think the other piece of it was hospitality. Our grandmother taught us deep meanings of empathy on how to think about who's going to be joining your home and how to make things comfortable for them or whatever.

where to take them on a tour and think about what's really going to be meaningful and impactful for them. That was definitely one thing that, that led to it. But I think you were getting at the jump or leap. Like what, what, what was that? Yeah. Yeah. Cause it seems like, and I've listened to a couple other like great like podcasts, even about the topic of sound design and how people will like take such care, like picking just the right bloop or beep and like,

And that does play a huge role in like what ultimately people remember, recall and perceive about an experience. And it seems like there's like a very natural bridge where,

you're thinking of things in such great detail that it will ultimately, you know, create this kind of intricate picture. And to your point, like thinking of hospitality too, like where do you put people in a room where, you know, how do you provide them like what they need and help them feel the most comfortable. So it seems like that's certainly got some connection, but yeah, was there something that was just like, ah, this is it like an aha moment? There was, yeah. Yeah.

My brother had been at a company called IDEO. It's a think tank company. And he was based out of San Francisco at the time. And he called me in a panic one night and said, hey, I just got put on a project. Somebody dropped the ball and they needed this vision video created. The team's on a flight to China to present to the executives. And we've got 24 hours to make one. Can you help me? At the time, I was producing like...

So the reason he called me was because we'd worked on videos and stuff like that before. And I had a music studio.

at that time was dedicated to production. And so he just asked if I could help him and get a videographer and work together and craft this short little 60 second vision video, which is something that comes with pretty much every, it's just standard with every IDEO project. It shows the story arc of the problem.

The moment of change, the solution, and then the effect and the impact it has on the person. So all centered around the people, the person that you're affecting.

And so long story short, we cranked it out. It went over really well. They said, can you do another one? Cause it was, it was so effective and started doing more of those vision videos, but then started designing product sounds, working with manufacturers, working with UX researchers, and then going into more anthropological research with solutions for the blind. So it,

Everything from cars, medical devices, ATM machines, domestic robots, to that big project with helping the blind navigate complex and noisy environments. That was that crossfade into UX. Yeah, that sounds like something that would be really fulfilling, but also really challenging. You both have to have incredible empathy, perhaps even for a situation that you haven't been in. And also...

find a way to really deep dive into that and find some creative solutions. So it certainly sounds like it was something fulfilling. Well, I think that's probably why this makes sense for this topic we're discussing is storytelling.

A lot of times it takes way too much time or effort to say, do something in CGI. Whereas in a movie, if it goes dark and you just hear a sound, it'll paint the picture in your mind. So we would use the same approach for a lot of these vision videos or these products and understanding that how much is too much, how little is too little and just getting it right is going to, uh, essentially allow your mind to sew everything together and make it more real. Um,

Because that is another sense that if you can connect the eyes and the ears, the more senses you connect, it exponentially

convinces you that something is good or real. Yeah, it's funny you mentioned actually the topic of like sound in a dark room. I think some of the like the scariest horror movies I've ever watched have been ones where you don't necessarily see what's happening, but you hear a lot of very unusual noises and it's enough for you to really transport yourself there, even if you don't want to. But yeah, so yeah, on the topic of storytelling,

When showcasing things like user research, it certainly sounds like with this IDEO project, it was, "Hey, here are all of the things we've learned in these various different scenarios." What is the best way to showcase the user research you've done? Is it really going to be a film most of the time or are there other ways of telling a story that you think are really compelling?

That's a good question. I think it really depends on your audience. And I think that, I think it's funny that we're talking about how to, how to storytell when it's really just using all of our UX best practices and skills to craft that story is, is number one, we got to know who our demographic is. So like the difference between an executive or a fellow UXer are going to be interested in very different things, at least in fidelity. Yeah.

If it's an investor or someone who just doesn't have creativity and you need to convince them and bring them into the experience so they can empathize, then you got to think about what it is that you're presenting. And I don't want to talk too ambiguously. So let me give you an example. That project that we did for the blind, we had to convince sightseeing executives that this was going to work. So how in the world do you do that?

So what we did was we crafted a script to show what it was like to be blind using that solution. And then the script became an audio story, like a movie, but only audio. And it was in three-dimensional sound.

So what I did was I built microphones that went in my ears, followed the script and captured all the environments, and then added in the sounds for the doors, the walking, the sightseeing stick. And with the voice talent, like the doctor or the person, you are hearing...

the person go, "Hmm, let me try this." You're hearing the doctor talk to them and say, "Let me put this on your head and let me do this." But you're hearing it in three-dimensional sound.

Because we crafted the way of sourcing it through a binaural microphone. Some of the harder stuff to get, I used a head, built a dummy head with microphones in it for harder to get to places. But most of it was microphones that went right inside of my ear. The story was crafted so that when you put those headphones on and you close your eyes, you can't tell the difference. It sounds like you're there. That's really cool. So that was the story. It was...

Let's go present to them the change and the impact that this project is going to have so that they can really feel through the user's ears, if you will. Yeah. So they all got blindfolds. They all got headphones. And we hit play. And it was emotional. People were really moved by it. Or the executives were.

And it was just, it was overwhelming for everybody. And so it was a really touching moment for them to feel that deeply emotionally connected to who we're impacting positively. It was a success for sure, because we thought about how we might just bring them into the experience.

Hmm. Yeah, that sounds like it was something that was super impactful. And I'm also like, when I'm side note, I'm just wondering when you say microphones in your ears, like, how big were these microphones? And like, were they? I'm sorry. I like this is what happens when you're not a sound designer. Like, are they small microphones? Are they big microphones? Like, how did you go about doing this, this process of recording what it's like?

So some of that experience I had with working for industrial designers and manufacturing on some of those earlier projects gave me some tools to know what is possible. And so when we were trying to figure out how to do this, I thought, man, the only way to really do this is I got to figure out a way to capture it from my point of view. So it's real. It's on a real head. It's capturing the binaural process.

head-related transfer function, which is basically our mind is trained to know where something is coming from directionally because of the shape of our head and our ears has tuned and trained every 360 degrees of the sphere of our head to know where something's coming from. So if you can just put the mics in your ears, then it's pretty real.

Right. Oh, so it's essentially recording things the way your ears would be listening to things. Yeah, that was the trick. Because you asked how big they were, they needed to go inside my ear. Wow. So finding the right microphone that could pick up that fidelity, but could also be powered so that it's a really good one. And then having a portable rig that's high quality enough to grab that movie level of a recording, that was the

the first problem was building that and hand soldering the wires to make everything work. And, and it did. Wow. Yeah. And this actually is making me reflect on all of the times I've presented UX work and it's like,

Wow. There's a lot of opportunity that potentially has been missed. Because I feel like a lot of the time when researchers will be presenting what they've learned, certainly usability testing clips or interview clips are compelling because you literally see and hear exactly what somebody is going through. But often it's in the context of

a lengthy 10 or 20, maybe even like 50 plus page research report. And I feel like it may get lost sometimes. So what do you think about, you know, taking something like the research you've compiled? Like what steps did you go through in your head where you're like, okay, here's what we learned from our research. Here's how that's going to be conveyed. Like, do you have a process for, for strategizing that storytelling? Yeah.

Yeah, the first is alignment with the stakeholder and then milestones along the way to make sure that they're taken for the ride, but not necessarily doing the work just so they see it and then they have an expectation and then it's met. So it's like, hey, we want to accomplish this. We think it's a problem. We're going to go and discover and then report back. Sounds good. Thumbs up. Budget go.

This is how we're going to do it. We need to do global testing, regional testing, or just Americas. We're all aligned on what the risks, rewards are for how deep we go. And then we come back with results. Now, the results, in my experience, if you can balance between some type of measurement, because what gets measured gets made, and that's really easy to say, but I know from UX...

What's worked for me is blending qualitative and quantitative inside of the interviews so that when we do get done, we have at least some kind of like, if it's time to task or if it makes sure that you do overall satisfaction and feeling of completeness or something that you can tie emotion to numbers. And then if you are in observational research, videotape the responses and

So that you can make a video vignette and show them the main problem or the solve that had density. And so you can make it easier to see the emotional reactions, whether it's pain or delight. It's a clean way to bring the stakeholder along for the ride because they see that 30 second vignette or that 60 seconds. They feel like they just did the two weeks of research with you.

And then when they see the user's emotion, they're connecting with them. And there's no lying here. There's no biases. They tell everybody what they want. And then at that point, it's kind of like a no-brainer. I mean, that's how we got more budget where I'm at, was doing just that. And once they saw it, they said, we need to do more of this.

What should we do? And I said, well, let's do this. Let's hire more people. And it just builds from there. That's awesome. Yeah, I guess let's talk about buy-in a bit because I feel like that's such an evergreen topic, to put it nicely, but also to kind of be sad about it at the same time. Where I go, that's kind of the age-old question is, how do I get buy-in? And how do I ensure that I'm communicating that what I'm doing has value? And especially sounding like...

It seems like when you're doing a study like that one or collecting your findings with contraptions, like I remember you did a one-hour seminar with us on VR previously, which was awesome. I feel like it can sometimes...

feel like we're asking too much, especially when we're in an organization that's a bit resistant, perhaps, to user research. So, you know, how might you make a case for these types of studies before you've done it, I guess, is my answer. Because it seems like once you have done it, once you have those clips, for example, like whether that's an audio recording, a video recording, then you've really gotten your foot in the door because that can really help to, like you said, make people feel like they were there before

and really connect with the customers. But when we haven't done it, we often don't have that ability. So do you have any advice for that? Do you have advice for world hunger while you're at it? Well, I can tell you that that VR thing at the time, I mean, gosh, that was six, almost seven years ago. That was bleeding edge. There wasn't very many people doing it other than like the military and

And some other pretty big shops. But the way I convinced them to do it was just presenting the benefits, the pros and the cons. And then just said at the end, if all of this isn't enough and you don't find any value in this when we just do this one test, give me two weeks. And if at the end of that, you still don't think it's valuable, I'll pay for everything. Because I knew it was going to work.

This was at a time when I was focused on industrial design and IoT. And so connecting your digital prototypes into, let's say, a machine that hasn't been built yet. Let's say it's an ATM machine or something. So we did stuff for the subway and security. And it was enormous. They were really big. They would be super heavy, too hard to ship anywhere.

You wouldn't be able to mock up foam core mock-ups over and over again if you keep changing little things. So we basically just took the skin of the industrial design, threw it into VR, made it into components, like pieces, so we could move stuff around. And then I synced up the prototypes together.

to VR so that you could touch the prototype inside of VR and actually change the buttons, change the machine. It worked out awesome. We were able to work even with clients and they would say, "This seems a little too high." Right at the spot would move it. He's like, "I like the screen on the other one," and I just swap it out. Within minutes, we were done with something that could have taken weeks of going back and forth.

Yeah, that real-time feedback and really being able to tangibly experience whatever it is that's being prototyped, whether that's a physical object or a digital object. It certainly seems like having the ability to put somebody through it is such a valuable experience.

task to do for whenever you're trying to communicate the value of UX work. For certain things, right? Because you were asking me, when is it appropriate? Yeah, yeah. And VR is not appropriate for everything. It really comes in handy when it's like we talked about, does it make sense to just put a backpack computer and a headset on instead of foam core shipping stuff all over the country?

Or if it's hazardous or noisy environments, you need to AB, like a noisy city versus subway versus in the middle of the Antarctic. So we did that. We were able to switch them on the fly and change the locations with environmental change. Yeah, so it seems like the big consideration there or the way that maybe you might pitch it to somebody who is skeptical is, hey, we can do it the other way.

But here's the risk and here's the subsequent cost of that. And like, if we do it this way, like sure, maybe there's an initial investment might not, that might not seem the most comfortable, but it can lead to XYZ cost savings because now we're not shipping parts all over the country. We're not running into, oh, we got to do a whole bunch of rework because the client is unhappy with something we've designed. And we now have to like,

finesse the solution and that's going to take another, you know, push our deadline by another few weeks or whatever it might be. So it seems like that's one great way to help people realize like, ah, okay, there is certainly a value to doing some of this prep work now. Yeah, and I think contraptions are ideal for two things. I think if it's an, it's obvious if it's a natural part of the user's life or experience, we need to use it. So if it's on a phone, test on the phone. Don't have them test on a screen that looks like a phone. Yeah.

It seems, I know it's funny to laugh. I laugh at it too, but it's, it's something I see all the time. And especially when you're like in a time crunch, like sometimes it's tempting. And I, I know that it's tempting because you're just like, well, we have a computer here. It's like, no, you, it is going to take longer, but it's worth, it's worth doing the installation, you know, on somebody's actual phone, if possible, even.

Yeah, thumbs are different than trackpads for sure. Yeah. But I think the contraptions can help depending on your audience. If they're skeptical, sometimes you can use some of the heat, maybe heat map stuff, you know, with goggles. Like heat map goggles could come in handy if somebody just really doesn't understand the fundamentals. But I'm of the school of most contraptions are completely worthless sometimes.

In comparison to good empathetic eyes and listening and seeing body language on how someone goes through an experience, I think is far superior to any contraption. And the contraptions are distracting. So if you can get by without using them, I would recommend use them as little as possible. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I agree. And sometimes I think we may even overcomplicate things with some of them, depending on how much value you really get out of it. But yeah, I guess to the point of having...

stakeholders see the value by watching people? Yeah, I think that's the big question is, you know, why are we inviting these stakeholders or non UXers? Is it to get them to see that how long it takes to do a usability session? And then they can actually envision, oh, okay, so this is work that needs time for one. Or is it because they currently don't believe in some of the research findings, in which case, maybe it's more about

highlighting some representative users or customers and letting them see what those reactions are really like. So I think that does kind of shift whether you might invite someone to the in real time session versus perhaps showing a recording after the fact. Okay. So I guess on the topic of crafting these presentations, since we do have to plan in advance, probably have a couple of clips selected. What do you think

people should think about when they're considering their audience for these presentations. Like if you're presenting to a fellow UXer, like what is going to be different? I know you mentioned that we might be interested in some details more than, you know, say other stakeholders would be interested in other details. Like what have you found tends to resonate with different groups? I think we touched on this a little bit earlier. An executive summary is very different than like a fellow UXer, but yeah,

they all still need to see the same thing. It's just a different fidelities, at least in my opinion. What I find helpful is even if I'm just flashing through images of the research, let's say I've got an Excel sheet with all those data points for every question.

let's say there's 40 questions and hours worth and it's represented in 12 different languages in 32 countries, right? It's going to be massive. And you're not going to be able to see or interpret any of it, but you're going to be able to see that there's a ton of data on the page. For an executive, that's enough for them to go, wow, okay, what's next? So what does it mean? Right? And that's all they needed. Where like,

maybe you and I or a fellow UXer is like, let me see the raw data. I want to comb through it. I want to do a keyword research. I want to do a keyword search on it and see if the density that you got aligns with maybe some of my needs or change some of the filters to see if it can help another team. And that's what the appendix is for, is linked out. If you want to go deep, go for it. But to your point, for some people, that stuff is privileged information because they might go digging

And making interpretations that are not sound or scientifically sound. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess with the knowledge comes the responsibility of how that knowledge gets distributed and perhaps how it's presented in some ways. Like both, yes, presenting the highlights of

But I also appreciate what you said too about those highlights versus what's presented to UXer. It's not different information. It's just a difference in fidelity, right? It's a difference in the level of detail. And I think that's important too, because I have seen cases where we're like, oh, well, we're going to tell this to the executives because it'll freak them out a little bit less than what's really happening. And then we're going to tell the UXers this so that we can actually work on fixing the problems. And so I

I feel like that ends up eroding trust in many ways, you know, with what it is we do. So I do think there is a responsibility to keeping people honest, but also empowering those who do have the ability to make positive impacts. So, yeah. You touched on something really good there. Having the hard conversation is probably, I know that some might disagree, but

If you have the integrity to, and you can always find a nice way of presenting it, to let someone know where we're failing and how we could do better.

The executives appreciate that. They trust you. They know you're not glossing over and cherry picking your data. And they know that you're always going to find something good and something bad. So if you can present both and be upfront and honest about it, it's just going to build your respect and your brand for just things going so much more smoothly in the future.

Yeah. And I appreciate what you said, too, about something good and something bad, because I feel like as UXers, we often tend to just, we're like magnets toward all of the usability issues. And often we're just like, oh, yeah, that did work, but that's standard. And it's like, no, we have to also acknowledge what works so that A, we don't change it.

But B, we're seen as someone who is objective and who isn't just always trying to exert their UX hammer on everything to suddenly make everything perfect or kind of the grim reaper of UX, I think is what Paige Laubheimer, one of my colleagues has called it. But yeah, you want to make sure you're measured, you're objective and having that balanced view. So yeah, I totally agree. That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I guess to kind of close, because it's hard to believe, but we're already like at that time. Do you have any parting words of advice for somebody who is looking to, you know, maybe prepare for a presentation or even to prepare for upcoming research? Like, do you have any words of wisdom? Yeah, sure. So if you're preparing for research, I would recommend aligning with business goals and find out what they're after so that you can always compare your user experience

goals and insights to those things. I think that's one of the most powerful slides in a presentation for executives is when they see business needs and user needs side by side and showing line item one on each side harmonious with each other or dissonant to where it's easy to understand where you're winning or where you need to focus. And I think that's a good starting point. As far as presenting

To prepare, I think we touched on know who your audience is. I always recommend starting with just an outline, an agenda of what the chapters are going to be in your story. If you can organize everything into the why, how, and the what, then your story will naturally follow into why are we doing this, how did we go about it, and what is the outcome? That way, you know you've touched on all three,

It keeps things really concise and it's a natural flow of how we all think. Yeah.

And I know my colleague, Rachel, has this course about storytelling in UX. So shameless plug for that course. But I do appreciate a couple of things that she covers, which is, you know, like the structure of storytelling. There's so many nuances to how you can structure a story. But I think, you know, what it really boils down to is what you said, those three things, the why, the how and the what. And

if you start off with the call to adventure, like why are we even doing this? Then that's going to bring people in and give people a sense of meaning for when they are looking or listening, whether that's something visual or not. So yeah, I think that's great advice. But yeah, thank you, David. This has been a lot of fun. If people want to learn more about your work, what it is you're up to next, where could you point people to?

For now, the best place would be on LinkedIn. My handle is LinkedIn. It's David Glazier, the way it's spelled. And there's no extra little things on there. It's just my name. Nice. And then from there, I've been working on figuring out what to share. As you know, a lot of my

my past experience was proprietary and I couldn't really share a lot of it. So as is the nature of a lot of UX work is what I'm learning over the years. But it's okay to talk about and we can talk more about those things if anybody wants to inquire about it. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you, David. I hope you have a great rest of your day. Thanks. It's been a lot of fun. Look forward to talking to you again soon. Definitely.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Energy UX podcast. If you want to learn more about user research or how to present UX work,

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