Layne Foit
MLIS alum
Q: Where do you work?
A: Recreational Equipment Inc. (REI)
Q: What鈥檚 your job title and what do you do?
A: Principal User Experience Designer. I help lead the awesome UX Design and Research practice at REI.
Q: What鈥檚 your favorite thing about the field you鈥檝e chosen?
A: I love working at the confluence of people and technology. Working closely with users of a piece of software or system, learning about their needs, goals, and challenges, sharing those stories with the business and using them as the basis to create solutions. Never gets old!
Q: What鈥檚 the biggest challenge you overcame to get to where you are today?
A: My predisposition to introversion! Getting up and speaking in front of groups of people, especially peers, still gives me the jitters. I'm grateful that the work I do has required me to continually present myself and my ideas over the years and face down my fears. Fake it 'til you make it!
Q: When you were at the iSchool, what helped you build community?
A: Putting myself out there. Having the courage to sit next to someone I didn't know and start up a conversation. Saying "yes" to happy hour or getting coffee. Being a fan of loud, off-kilter music, I found my tribe pretty quickly by identifying people wearing cool band t-shirts. :-) I'm friends with some of these folks to this day!
Q: How did your experience at the iSchool prepare you to solve information challenges in your job?
A: The theoretical foundation serves me well to this day. I recently referenced the principle of precision-versus-recall in a conversation about how to ensure we were offering our customers the most relevant search results while still giving them a variety to choose from. I know some students worry about the percentage of theory-versus-practical application in the curriculum, but I believe the theory is a critical component that separates you from the pack and gives you a competitive edge.
Q: What鈥檚 the most important non-technical skill you use at work and why is it needed?
A: Empathy for your customers AND your stakeholders. You can't successfully advocate for your customers without having walked in their shoes. And you can't effectively build trust and advise your business partners without understanding their challenges and how they define success.
Q: How do you see your field changing over the next five years?
A: I see UX going "full stack", so to speak. New UX designers continue to enter the field with more coding and visual design chops, knowledge of motion design and animation, and digital design systems. There's a lot more to it than when I got started with site maps and boxes and arrows. It's exciting (and intimidating!). That said, I don't see many new practitioners with a solid grasp of information architecture, taxonomy/ontology, or navigation and way finding. I'll throw a lack of basic research chops in here too. These are areas where the iSchool goes deep in terms of teaching skills around these concepts.
Q: What advice do you have for students interested in a career like yours?
A: A successful career in UX demands that you work well and collaboratively with people from all walks of life (your customers) and all levels within your organization from your teammates to your CEO (your partners and stakeholders). You can be the best designer in the city, but if you can't accept feedback, explain how your designs solve your customers' problems, or understand that good UX ultimately balances the needs of your customers with the needs of your business, you may struggle to find success or satisfaction. Best of luck!