For four years I worked as a team lead supervising, coaching, and deescalating calls at a class-action lawsuit call center. My responsibility was to teach and maintain the software proficiency of over 100 representatives. Proficiency is vital because it leads to more confident sounding representatives, happier callers and fewer costly escalations (An escalation is when a caller becomes upset and asks to speak with a manager).

The database we used had a Command Line Interface (CLI), it looked outdated, it had a steep learning curve, but it was lightning fast. Our company hired a software firm to update our database to a Graphical User Interface (GUI) and to add features for project management. The results were costly. The GUI was visually beautiful but difficult to use because they didn't understand the needs of a call center employee. The most common tasks like looking up a caller or creating a new account went from a single keystroke to a half-dozen mouse clicks. They'd removed all keyboard shortcuts and you couldn't tab between fields.

The software required better hardware than we had, so it often crashed or stalled between operations. The result was call time doubled and we had to hire temps because of the bad GUI. It's natural that there should be an uncomfortable time of adoption, but these were systemic changes that didn't improve over the following months. It ended up costing the company lots of money and morale.

My other responsibility was to listen to calls for quality assurance and nervously spoken phrases like, "Yeah, we're still waiting on my computer. Sorry.", "Give me a moment while I type that in." and "Sorry, it's this program. It crashed again." filled the phone lines.

Why did this happen? Why did project management get features that would save them 15 minutes a week, while 100 phone representatives are on their third frustrating month in overtime? During the meetings with the software company, nobody from the call center was in attendance. If a designer had sat down with a representative on a call they would have found the problem instantly. That's why I became a UX designer. I am that UX designer.

-Joel Lueders, 2/22/2018

People, Oh, boy. At my last #UX interview, they asked if I knew JavaScript... 

(Awkward collar pull) I didn't.

Now, thanks to someone reaching out to me on LinkedIn I've created my first JavaScript function.

It randomly generates the mission statement of the UX Whiteboard Challenge Meetup from three sets (People, Practice, and Outcomes).

Check it out.

​Thanks, fellow boot camper Peter Wildberger for reaching out to teach me. Also thanks to the multifaceted Anna Haug for writing the mission statement(s).

I started a meetup for ​designers to practice their craft outside of work. The first event sold out in two days! https://www.meetup.com/UX-Whiteboard-Challenge/

Minnesota Interfaith Power & Light (MNIPL) is a faith-based organization that sells shares in solar gardens. Their mission is to be stewards of the Earth by promoting and expanding renewable energy. Over the last several weeks I've met with the employees and their customers with the goal of streamlining the conversion process. Today I'm posting the current Service Blueprint I created of their current model.

This week I started the Daily UI Challenge, where once a day you receive an email that tells to what to design. I'm doing this as a way to try designing thing's I wouldn't think of, improv my process, learn something new, and for fun. I themed this week after my favorite meme Cat Facts.  ​

The morning of Friday the 13th I showed up to the Twin Cities Startup Week Hackathon without a team, no idea how machine learning worked, and most importantly- I can’t code. So what was I doing there? I figured I’d find a team of developers that could use a user experience designer. To my surprise, most of the teams already had designers on them. What's a person to do?

A year ago I hadn't run a marathon, now I've finished three. Here are the business secrets I learned along the way: 

1. Make your goal big and exciting.
2. Seek mentorship.
3. Make a plan that starts very easy.
4. Very slowly increase the difficulty.
5. Sometimes you have to trick yourself to succeed. i.e. Run around a lake so you can't take a shortcut in the middle, run to and from work so you have a fixed deadline, pair running with other fun activities like your favorite podcast.

This is a quick video I made. It's about designing a keyboard based on assumptions.