Q&A series: a day in the life of a Principal UX Consultant

It’s no secret that a lot of interesting, inspiring work takes place here at Nomensa, and we love looping you in on our projects via our blogs and case studies. However, we want to take this a step further and zoom in on some of the great individuals that make this possible.

For the latest instalment of our Q&A series, we chatted to Principal UX Consultant Max Mazonowicz. Read on to learn about Max’s career journey, his typical working day and the importance of collaboration in the UX Team.

What does a Principal UX Consultant do all day?

That is a tough question to start! It’s such a varied role at Nomensa that it could be any number of things. It’s likely to be project-related, and that’s split into two things; the practitioner side of thing (aka actually doing UX work) and the PD (Project Director) side of things (aka being the strategic project lead).

The latter of the two includes things like QA-ing things (e.g. reviewing the quality of a report) or talking with a client (or multiple clients) about the project. I might be adjusting the methodology on a project or working with the practioner(s) to conduct interviews or out together a tree test.

I also have some line management responsibility so you’ll find me working with my team to set objectives and just generally support their development.

What’s your background?

The long answer is unwieldy, so here’s the tl;dr version…

Sales (hated it), customer services (didn’t mind it), product management (loved it), digital marketing (loved it), UX (really loved it).

Each of those things have added to my skills and knowledge, yes, even sales.

The other thing to say is that I’ve been client-side before moving to Nomensa, so this is my first taste of agency life.

Why did you decide to pursue this career?

My first taste of what we would now call UX was a few years ago (before UX was a popular term) when I was in product management. I looked after a cloud email service and worked with a graphic designer to redo the interface while working with users to iterate it. That’s usability testing.

Then I worked with an agency a few years ago to build a customer journey map and really bought into the user centred design approach to, well, to everything. I mean, why wouldn’t you want to know what your users/customers/people want???

What attracted you to Nomensa?

Nomensa’s got a great reputation in the UX space, and have a growing list of public sector and commercial customers which is a really interesting mix. We also care passionately about accessibility which is another thing really close to my heart. So all that together meant Nomensa had everything I was looking for.

Was there a lightbulb moment when you saw the value of UX?

I think everyone has this actually, we all really get it at some point. For me it was watching some usability testing of a website I was responsible for. Seeing real people not be able to do basic thing was excruciating and gave me a real passion to fix them. From there it became a focus across everything I did.

What does your average working day look like?

Varied. Client meetings, reviewing documents, user sessions, planning methodology for sales opps.

There’s generally a project stand-up in the morning, but that’s about the only thing that’s “average” I’d say.

What are the specific challenges of a Principal UX Consultant?

I guess the same as most people, time… just not enough time in the day generally. Changing landscape on projects is also a challenge, but that’s one I enjoy, you have to be pretty nimble on most projects I’ve found. Also clients. In good and bad ways. Some clients don’t really trust us, but I understand that as I’ve been in their position. Using an agency for the first time, and sometimes on projects where there isn’t much tangible output until the end, does require a huge amount of trust. It’s my job to make sure they know what we’re doing and how it’s contributing to their success. Hopefully over time we build that trust.

What tools or resources do you use?

Standard fare… Miro is my home. But also Teams for project communications, and these days for running most user related sessions. I’ve also used Figma for wireframing – but a long time ago now. And also other whiteboard tools like Lucid, Mural, etc. Oh, and Optimal Sort for tree testing for IA (Information Architecture) projects.

Could you describe your role in five words?

Varied.

Challenging.

Fulfilling.

User-centred.

Quality-driven.

How does collaboration sit within your role?

Oh it’s 100% core to my role. I’m all about collaboration, both within the Nomensa project team, and with the client as much as their time allows. To paraphrase a very old movie, I love the smell of collaboration in the morning.