How a Deep, Wise Voice Changed Our Approach to Meetings and UX Design Forever

It was probably a Tuesday morning in early March, about eight years ago.

For the past few months, I had been working on getting a deal rolling with a large organization based in Chicago. At the time, I was juggling multiple roles at an agency in Uruguay. My LinkedIn profile was stacked with titles like Project Manager, Head of Vendor Management, and Head of UX. Did I really know enough to be the "Head" of anything? Probably not. But nobody else did either, and the company thought it was doing us all a favor by inflating our titles.

By March 2016, we had moved from studying the project that we started to learn of around January, to defining the hours for the SOW, negotiating terms, and finally getting approval. A few weeks later, the deal was confirmed. We were about to embark on a confidential project for this large organization, but we had no team ready to tackle the challenge. At least, not at the scale or experience level we needed. But we always think we can count on friends and colleagues, so we assembled the usual suspects team. I had carte blanche to put together the team necessary for the task.

Our mission was to redesign an extremely complex system. It was powerful in its capabilities but so far from user-centric that none of the consultants who needed to use it could make sense of it. It simply didn’t align with their mental models.

At the time, we didn’t realize this. We hadn’t yet delved into the system, and we were completely ignorant of terms and definitions such as mental models or user centricity. We had good intuition, lots of experience observing different systems, a huge hunger, and a few tricks up our sleeves from basic UX training. The core three members of this team had taken this training together.

We didn’t have the presence, the vocabulary, a fully trained skill set, or any idea how a large corporation operated. Although initially scared, we took a deep breath, bought a $50 online course with an Irish trainer we could barely understand, and doubled down on our commitment. We promised ourselves we would excel and be recognized for our work. We arrived early at the office, worked late hours, went home, studied, took online exams, went to bed late, barely slept, got up early, and repeated the cycle.

After a quick introductory meeting and a few email exchanges, we prepared for the first big day. We had a script with numerous questions for the customer and our counterparts on their side. It wasn’t a workshop, it wasn’t collaborative, there was no Miro or FigJam to be used, and we didn’t use a whiteboard or sticky notes. It was a long list of categorized questions, and we went through them one by one.

Before booking the meeting, I identified the attendees, made sure they were all invited, double-checked their emails, and added a professional yet friendly and descriptive text to the invite to set expectations. Minutes before the meeting, we ensured a good connection, used a wired setup instead of Wi-Fi, checked acoustics, microphone settings, and the right volume for the projector speakers. Everything was working perfectly.

When the time came, six well-suited, perfectly tied executives with expensive cologne joined the call. We could almost smell them. Meanwhile, three grunge-style designers greeted them and tried to run the meeting.

One of our biggest surprises was that they knew more about the UX process, the terminology, and the problems they were facing than we did. That’s why they needed help.

The other surprise was the voice of who seemed to be the boss. A deep, strong, powerful voice. The voice of someone with character, authority, and leadership. He even had a special mic, very professional for those days, and he sounded as if he was right next to you. Something we’re more used to today, but not eight years ago.

We had booked the meeting for two hours. We smoothly ran through our questions and, an hour in, reached the end of our list.

As we prepared to wrap up, I started summarizing the answers, findings, and next steps when suddenly, that rich, deep voice interrupted.

"Andrés, do you notice what is happening here?"

Shyly, I answered that we had reached the end and were wrapping up until our next meeting.

"I don’t think you’ve realized that there are six people here with six-figure salaries, of which you’ve booked two hours of their day and you’re only using one. What will you do with the remaining hour? That’s a lot of money," he said.

I was probably shaking, and I had no idea what to do other than learn and commit. So, we did. We learned to optimize our time, maximize our opportunities, rehearse interviews and meetings, review our questions, consider possible scenarios and their outcomes. It wasn’t easy but never again did we make the same mistake.

It took us eight months to wrap up that project, and all we heard was that the executive team was more than happy with the results. I really hope it was that way.

We learned many lessons, but this one stuck with us and we won’t forget it.

• Has anything like this happened to you?
• What have you learned from experiences like these?
• Do you share them?

?? Thank you

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Andrés Richero has over 20 years of experience at the crossroads of Design and Software. He heads a global team of Design and Research professionals for an enterprise software platform. For the past decade, Andrés has focused on Design Leadership, Community Building, and Practice Development. Proudly, he's Uruguay’s top mentor on ADPList.