The User Experience Team of One

by Leah Buley

  They say it takes a village to raise a child, and a book is like a child. Lucky for me, a sizable village of smart UX practitioners stepped forward to help raise this book. Thanks to Andrew Maier for being the first person to offer to share his story and give me hope that others would do the same. Thanks also to Jim Ungar, Jeff White, Joe Sokohl, Jon Strande, Michael Carvin, and Louise Gruenberg who generously shared their stories and insights with me. Thank you to the 300 plus people who completed my survey and helped me learn more about common challenges for UX teams of one. Lelia Ferro, Graham Odds, Jack Holmes, James Goldsworthy, Jay Spanton, Jenny Grinblo, Mary Lojkine, Natalie Moser, Roger Attrill, Silvia Di Gianfrancesco, and Tom Randle all reviewed early drafts of the book and provided invaluable feedback that made it clearer, more informative, and just plain better. Extra special thanks to Mary Lojkine, whose thorough and thoughtful recommendations on structure rooted out unnecessary complexity and simplified the book for the better.

  Thank you to my family for always making me feel like a sparkle. Thank you to my beautiful boy Theo for providing the ultimate deadline, a due date. And finally, thank you to my husband Chris, whose integrity, conscientiousness, humor, friendship, and love make all good things in life possible—not the least of which is this book.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Leah Buley is a user experience designer who has been making digital products for over 15 years. She is interested in how complex organizations can embrace and produce good design.

  Leah started her career in the late 1990s as an opinionated Web developer. Through self-taught tinkering, she gradually made the transition to user interface design. Leah spent the early 2000s as a UX team of one in a range of financial and information service companies. In 2007, she joined Adaptive Path, a pioneering user experience design consultancy. There, she learned the secret sauce of high-performing design teams, and began to ponder how this approach could be adapted for UX teams of one in challenging organizational environments.

  She writes and speaks regularly on this topic, and is a frequent presenter at conferences such as SXSW, UX Week, UX London, Agile, the IA Summit, and Webvisions. Her workshops and presentations have a reputation for being hands-on, high energy, and a little bit quirky—kind of like her.

  Leah is currently a design strategist at Intuit, where she works on the future of business and personal finance. She has a bachelor’s degree from Barnard College and a master’s in Library and Information Science from San Jose State.

  She lives in San Francisco with her husband Chris and their son Theo. You can find Leah online at leahbuley.com.