#GirlsWhoProduct: Sarah Garcia
Get to know one of the workshop trainers of Productized Online 2020. Sarah Garcia, curious by nature, has a huge passion for understanding human behaviour, listening to the user and always motivating her team to do it. In this interview, we won’t only talk about UX… We’ll go deeper into the real-life aspects (the balance between work and private life and how to cope with it). Join us until the end, we are sure you won’t regret it!
By Teresa Segismundo on July 9th, 2020
TS: Sarah Garcia has been working for almost 16 years @UE Group. She is the responsible for the UX Research team at UEGroup, which includes managing junior researchers, architecting and leading research studies, carrying out research and synthesizing results for their clients. This year we will also count on Sarah to participate in the Productized Conference, with a very good workshop! Hi Sarah, welcome! Do you want to talk a little bit more about yourself?
SG: Hi Teresa! Thanks. Sure. I am here in San Francisco Bay Area, in downtown, San Jose. UEGroup is a UX consulting company. We’re still working from home. So, I’m here in my office at home. From a personal perspective, I’ve been married for 22 years. I have two kids, a 19-year-old son and a 17-year-old daughter and have a great little life here in California. I am a California girl through and through. I was born in San Diego and have lived in California my whole life.
TS: What led you into UX?
SG: It was 16 years ago, which seems like a really long time ago. I just sort of said yes to a bunch of things that led me into it. To be honest, at the time, I had two little kids and I was just looking for a part-time job to get me out of my house a little bit and keep me busy. I happened upon UEGroup. I have a background in market research. And then being organized and helpful. I was just helping a little bit and one thing led to another and I started conducting research. I was taking notes and then I started helping write research plans, conducting research and leading the research team. It’s definitely been a slow gradual process from just helping a couple hours a day or a couple hours a week, to being in charge of the research department. So, my role or my path is very traditional. Now people want to get into this kind of a position. And there’s a career path for it. I feel really fortunate about that.
TS: As Director of UX Research, what exactly does a UX expert do? Starting from the junior to the more advanced professional.
SG: As a UX expert, I would say your main job is always to listen and to reflect on those though what you’ve heard. Sometimes it is a small study. Sometimes it’s just reading reviews of what people are writing about your product. Sometimes it is actually asking people questions about that product. But, at the end of the day, it’s really just about listening and about being able to synthesize what you’ve heard to be able to create change. Ultimately, that is the role of what I would say is a UX expert. Being opened to listening and then being able to reflect that in a non-biased way. And honestly, going from junior to more advanced, it’s just about being faithful in those small things that lead you to the bigger things. That’s what I’ve seen time and again with our team.
TS: Why do you think UX is important to a business / product?
SG: Ultimately, we talk a lot about stakeholders and about the kinds of people who you have to make sure that you’re giving your numbers to and showing your worth and your value. But the people who use your product are the most important stakeholders. A company that really understands that and takes action on that is, in my opinion, a successful company. Decisions can be made in closed rooms without consulting the user. But when you really think about who are the people, who are most vulnerable, who are using your product, who have to interact with that when you’re not around, are you proud of what they have to interact with? To me, that is why it’s so important that UX’s is a part of a business or a product.
TS: How is it implemented? What is the most important part of the process?
SG: I don’t want to sound like a broken record. I really do feel listening is a huge piece of that. I think that’s important because a lot of times when someone’s interested in conducting or engaging in UX, one hears about it and says, ‘we want this to be included as a part of our product’. The idea is to just research a bunch of articles that say how to conduct research or how to have good UX. And at the end of the day, though, one needs to start the conversation with one’s users and be ready to listen to what those are. Because, in some cases, one asks just like if I asked you a question, I might uncover more than I was ready to listen to. And that’s going to be the case with one’s users too. It might actually create a lot more work. But if someone’s really trusting the process, then it’s important. So, how is it implemented? I feel like it can seem really daunting, because one might, if does that research online, see one 100-person study in seven different cities. It feels overwhelming, but it really doesn’t need to be. I mean, you can really start as small as possible. I always tell people just do something. Start by doing something.
TS: As Director you will have more departments to manage, and you will therefore have a team with whom you work directly. How does a UX team work? What kind of methods do you adopt to do research? How do you involve everyone equally?
SG: We have a unique group. Is a company that does really big work, but that is a relatively small company. We have about 12 to 15 people who work for us or work with us. My research team is one half. We’ve got also a team of people who are more design and development focused. I’m ultimately in charge of the research team. The way that we work now is very different because of COVID. Working remotely, we’re on teams and channels come, chatting all day long. In some ways, that’s been the same of what we’ve done before because we work together, we help each other. We are always looking for ways to collaborate and see whether a better way is there to do this, if we can think of a better way to engage with this type of study that we’re doing. I mean, ultimately, as a team, we’re constantly looking for what’s the best way to solve this problem. So, a client comes to us and says, ‘We want to find out why we have low engagement with this particular feature’. It’s easy to just sort of to turn out what we’ve done all the other times. We always get together and think about ‘is there something more creative that we do?’, ‘is there something that would be more effective?’ I would say, that’s how our team works. It’s just working together and trying to figure out what’s the best way to do that. Then we sat-for what people are interested in, in terms of involving everyone. If someone’s really interested in a medical project that we have going on, I want to make sure they work on that, because I want them to really be focused on what their passions are. That work is exciting.
TS: You’re known for always asking the question “how can we make this better?” and most recently you’ve been working on building tools for researchers, including discovering ways to capture user emotions and make recruiting for studies less laborious. Do you want to give us some practical examples of how you apply this in your day-to-day work? How does UX help us predict and modify user behaviors?
SG: For our clients, we’re always thinking like, ‘Okay, how can we help make our product better?’ But even for our team, and our processes, we’re constantly asking the question like, ‘is there a way to make this better, not just faster, or more efficient, but just better?’ I guess it’s really tempting to do things the same way, because that’s how we’ve always done it, or it’s what I’m most comfortable with, or whatever. I found whenever we have to hire someone new, like a new intern or something, they’ll ask a question like, ‘why do you guys do it this way?’ It’s really tempting for me to get a little critical or to feel like they’re being critical. Like, ‘why are they asking?’ This is a great way of doing it. So, I’ve had to learn to embrace those questions because it’s in asking that question of like, ‘how can this be better?’, ‘how can this be, streamlined or simpler or easier?’, that will help us to change. I think it’s important to have that spirit. I mean, I’ve been there for a long time, a lot has changed in 16 years — technology changes, people change. So, some of those tools that we’ve created have been in response to kind of that idea there has to be a better way to do this. Like, this process is too laborious, I hate the way we’re doing this or there’s got to be a better way. And so, we’ve sort of put that kind of UX researcher thinking cap on, and along with the designers and our team at UEGroup, have put together some tools for conducting moderated unmoderated research, recruiting. And then, like you said, capturing emotions as well. Being able to use what we know in a way that’s not just going to help us but help other researchers and product managers as well.
TS: You like ethnography, to understand the different types of users and personalities. Recently you’ve re-discovered “My strengths finders” results, and newly discovered your enneagram. Do you want to explain this?
SG: I had done the Strengths Finder a while ago, probably 10 years ago. That one is a really great one, a lot of businesses use that. A lot of times we focus on our weaknesses. This one really focuses on your strengths. So, here’s what you bring to the table. I am definitely the kind of person who kind of sees positive things, but for myself I see all the negative things. And so, when I did the Strengths Finder, I started to see that I was approaching things from a different perspective. For me, my highest strength is responsibility, which is, if I said I was going to do something, I’m starting it and I’m going to do it. My head is going to remind me all the time that if I said to someone that I was going to do it, and I didn’t do it, is a real burden that I carry. It was really freeing for me when I found out that not everyone feels that way. But like, people are really forgiving and it’s actually okay. And so, the enneagram was just sort of another piece on my journey. And that one really focuses on what’s your core motivation. And that one, the Strengths Finder, has a lot of, I think, help for me in business. The enneagram really did a deeper work within me personally and a lot of similar themes. For me, I come out as being an enneagram 1, which is the perfectionist, which is no surprise to anyone that live with me. But it really helped me to let go of some of those feelings of inadequacy and feeling like I had to get everything perfect and seeing things from an interactive process. I don’t expect my clients to get the design right on the first time, and I don’t have to expect myself to get things right on the first time. The enneagram has been a really freeing thing for me and it’s caused really great conversations with people on my team that I interact with and so I highly recommend it. I could talk a whole podcast on that.
TS: This year you will be one of Productized Conference workshop trainers with the workshop “Go Where Users Are: In Field Research Methods for Flexible Budgets and Timelines”. This workshop will be online. Why should people sign up for this workshop? What will they learn?
SG: I’m really excited. I love teaching this course. I’ve done this course several different times in person usually. And so, this is going to be a good challenge to do it online. But technology has come such a long way. Even in the last couple months of giving people you know, breakout rooms and the ability to do different things. I’m really excited. I guess you could look at it like the idea of contextual inquiry or ethnography or infield research could seem it’s not a useful thing right now in this sort of COVID ‘era’. I’m really excited to inflect some ideas. If we can’t go to where people actually are, how can we get as close as possible? Talking about some of those pseudo methods like diary studies… I mean, you’re here talking to me, and you can see my room, there’s cameras. Already, just from that, you could ask me a bunch of questions that would lead to more conversations about personal interests or things that kind of draw your attention. So, it may not be perfect — and again, here we go, it doesn’t need to be perfect. But it’s still going to get us part of the way there. So, I’m really excited to give people like practical advice for what to do, but also really homing in on the skills that I think are most important, which is being a good listener, being a good observer, and then also just really being a good interviewer. That is something that I’m going to be focusing on there. You could argue that whether you were doing that in field research, or over the phone, or however, those are important skills to learn. So, it should be a fun workshop. We do a lot of activities and I can do most of them remote. So, I’m looking forward to it.
TS: Do you consider yourself a UX researcher in your own home? What else do you find yourself thinking by accident?
SG: Yeah, 100%. We have a 132-year-old house, which is very old for California. I know, not for Portugal, but it’s very old for California. In fact, our house was built by some of the original members of the Donner Party, which is a little fun fact. They’re the ones that cannibalized each other on the way over across the Sierra Nevada. So, it’s a fascinating story. But our old house, we’ve been working on it for the last 12 years and I realized I didn’t I never really saw the connection between being a UX researcher and kind of all this work we’ve done. But every time we start a new project, I think like, ‘how do I want to use this space?’ ‘What’s going to be the best?’ Like, I don’t just want to take what I saw on Pinterest and apply it here because that might not be right for me. A good example of that is our bathroom. We redid it and we were working. We’ve done a lot of stuff ourselves, but the bathroom we had a contractor do. I said, ‘I really want to have a four-gang outlet in the inside the vanity’, like, I wanted to open the door to the vanity, and I wanted an outlet inside there. And he really fought me on it. He was like, ‘why nobody wants to do that, why would you want to have four outlets.’ And I said because I wanted to plug in my electric toothbrush and my hairdryer, to have the things that I normally have plugged in, plugged in and then tucked away. And I don’t want to always be unplugging it. And he kind of fought me a bit on it and is the best decision that we made. I love it. And so, I definitely think that I take that kind of an idea of thinking, ‘how do we optimize this?’ ‘How do we make this better?’ But at the same time, when you’re pulling apart an old house, you see all this beautiful old wood and the way that things have been put together, the lath and plaster. Even though we always want to make things better, I think we have to learn from the past too. Like, the way they did things, the way houses were built was still intentional, innovative and really thoughtful. I really draw a lot of inspiration from that as well.
TS: You’ve had the opportunity to work for over 50 companies, help build two usability labs, conduct over 1000 research sessions and 100 ethnographic interviews. You’ve had the privilege to work with companies such as Disney Interactive Labs, Dell Computer, Panasonic, Nokia, Samsung, Stryker and Intel. You’ve been with UEGroup for over 15 years now. How do you see the evolution in terms of the importance of UX inside companies?
SG: I definitely have seen a change. 15 years ago, when I would tell people what I did for work, I’d start by saying what it was, that I’m a UX researcher. And they’d say, ‘what the heck is a UX researcher?’, even in Silicon Valley. And then I’d have to say, ‘well, you know, it’s this, this and this’. Then eventually, I would just kind of end with like, I do focus groups. In fact, that was how people in my family would say, like, ‘oh, Sarah, she does focus groups.’ And it would irritate me because it’s so much more than just a focus group. Nothing wrong with focus groups, they’re great. But now, when I say I’m a UX researcher, I have conversations more with people about what their interpretation of UXs. People say, ‘oh, yeah, you know, we do UX/UI.’ And then we have a conversation about UX definition. And they’ll say, ‘oh, it’s, um, it’s just assigning how I think users would feel about this design and creating it.’ And I’d be like, ‘okay, well, we have a different opinion, because I think it’s actually asking users about their opinion’, and it has a good conversation. So, how is it changed? I mean, now there’s full on departments within companies that are just UX departments. Designers and product teams are seeing the value of doing UX research. So, it’s exciting. It’s an exciting time to be a part of this because the nomenclature is there. The excitement is there. And I think it’s really fun to be a part of that.
TS: Outside the UX world, you have two kids and you help your husband with a local art magazine in Silicon Valley. Do you feel that your analyst’s vision of thinking things through also comes into this project? Why? Are you a designer for the magazine, too? What’s your role?
SG: I’m definitely not a designer. That is not my role. I’m definitely the Yin to my husband’s Yang for sure. I mean, he’s an artist and he thinks big and bold. He is the photographer and the graphic designer. He’s good at all that stuff. I’m steady, I’m methodical. I’m practical. So, we are a really good team. We also can argue, but we’re a really good team. When he first had the idea to start the magazine, truly because we love the city that we live in, we love San Jose and we saw a lot of really great people who were moving away to other places, and they had a lot of great talents, we wanted to showcase those talents. And so, the idea that we’ve always had in place for that is ‘behind everything is a person’. So, the spirit of the magazine is, you may go to a restaurant or something, a coffee shop that you love; but it’s not just the restaurant and the coffee shop. It’s the fact that there’s a person who had a vision for what that was going to be and who they are and what their story is. And that’s really what the magazine is all about. And finding the people behind all of these movements and things going on. It’s so much like UX. The idea that there’s a story behind people’s opinions, there’s a story behind all of that. You’re constantly coming up with, ‘why are people going to use this product?’, ‘why aren’t they going to use it?’, ‘what’s the need that they have?’, ‘what am I trying to uncover that potentially there’s a story that we could help write for what people’s needs are?’. So, my title at UEGroup is sleuth, and I think I bring that to work. I think I bring it to the magazine and to my life as well. It’s a good mix for sure.
TS: What do you consider to be the greatest passions in your work?
SG: Well, I really do love making things better. Sometimes not all projects are equal. Sometimes you work on a project that feels small. I mean, I don’t want you say that when you’re trying to help a company decide where a button should go on an app that’s not a small problem. That is making things better. That’s super important, because it is saving people from being frustrated while using it. It’s saving people from making a bunch of designs that aren’t going to be in the right direction. But for me, personally, the projects that have had the most impact on me have been ones where I’ve got to work with medical devices. And so specifically, I was able to work on a project for a company that was doing a spinal cord, as a spinal cord stimulator and deep brain stimulator. But it was basically electromagnets or electrodes that go into your spine or into your brain. And it can help deal with tremors or help deal with pain. It was a humbling experience to talk to patients who are suffering from something that I will not ever understand, or I may never understand, and having them bring you into their experience. I mean, I walked away many of those days crying because it was just a really remarkable experience and a huge blessing. And so, to be able to come away from that and make suggestions to a company for small changes that could have a really big impact. By far, that’s the greatest passion of the work that I do. But I try to bring that same kind of excitement and passion and urgency to even like the smaller projects because like I said, those are still important. That’s someone’s livelihood. That’s someone that’s important to my client and I want to definitely bring that.
TS: What advice do you have for anyone starting a career in this area or that want to start from the beginning?
SG: I would say yes to the opportunities that come your way. And always stay humble. Don’t think that you know, everything. You could have gone to school for 20 years and learned all of the things. But every day is a learning experience. And every company that you work with is going to have a different way of doing things. When you start small and show that you can be trusted, things will go your way. Being able to ask those questions in a respectful way, ‘how can I help?’, ‘how can I make a difference here?’. Helping out wherever you can, is huge. And also, just showing initiative. I mean, if there’s a company that you really see that you want to work at and be a part of, taking an initiative and saying, ‘is there something that I can do for you to kind of show that I want to help?’ And when they say, ‘yeah, you can help, you’re going to be the note taker for this long project’, to look at that as a gift and say, ‘I’m so thankful for this opportunity’, because it’s going to give you the chance to grow and learn and not to turn away from that because you think you should be doing something else. You’ll get there eventually. And I’ll tell you what, having the time to do sort of those smaller things is going to give you a lot more empathy for the people that are helping you later in life in your career as well. So, say yes to those opportunities, but stay humble.
T: Thank you Sarah!
C: Thank you.
Listen to the interview with the Q&A at the end:
Get connected with Sarah by email at sarah@uegroup.com, drop her a message on LinkedIn.
Sarah recommends must 📚 on product and leadership:
📗 The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition
📗 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (Voices That Matter)
📗 Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-lived, Joyful Life
📗 Designing Your Work Life: How to Thrive and Change and Find Happiness at Work
📗 The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You
📗 The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery
This project was made possible thanks to our partnership with Zalando Tech. #GirlsWhoProduct is a series of interviews with women that have been able to beat the ‘product’ ceiling and get into the profession. Our mission is to inspire, connect and empower more people to get into product roles and help them consider ‘product’ as a venue of personal and professional growth.
About Productized
Productized organizes different activities with the intention to boost the product community around the world. It was created by professionals from the engineering and design space, with a history of co-founding several pioneering projects in Portugal such as TEDx, Beta-i, Startup Weekend and Silicon Valley comes to Lisbon.
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