Editor’s Note: This interview is a transcript of the conversation Stéphanie and John had over Zoom at the end of March 2025. It’s lightly edited for clarity and to remove all the stupid things John said.
Job Title:
Haha! It’s a good question. So my job title is officially UX Researcher and I’m doing a lot of UX research. I still do a little bit of UI work, because we’re basically like 2 people on the project at the moment. And we still need to do a little bit of UI, but most of the UI that we are doing is using an existing, let’s say, framework or tool to make it simpler.
So yeah, and the main focus is still UX research with a little bit of UX strategy, but also involving people into the product strategy decisions, what do we do with the feedback that we get? We get tons of feedback. Which means, then, at some point, we do a roadmap prioritization, meaning, okay, we have only so much capacity for development. What do we do first, how do we prioritize that? So that’s more my role on this kind of UX strategy or product strategy side as well
Place of Work:
So I work for a consulting company called Maltem consulting, and I have, one main client, which is the European Investment Bank. I work basically full time for them, just via a consulting company, because this is how it works for a lot of big European institutions in Luxembourg. They do not hire freelancers directly. You need to go through agencies. So a lot of us are basically consultants for different companies working for that client.
Industry or specialization:
I’m specialized in enterprise UX, meaning products used by people on a daily basis. I’ve worked before for a retail bank. I worked in finance. I worked in automotive industry. I worked with crane monitoring system. I worked with so many different things in B2B area enterprise products. Things that people use on a daily basis. So my specialty is not that much finance or banking, but more like building designing tools that people use for daily jobs.
What got you into UX?
I did a masters degree in localization of websites with a little bit of design. And then I did an internship in Germany, where I was supposed to design and develop a WordPress website. And I finished early. And they were like, Oh, by the way, we have this new thing called iOS, and we are building native apps for that. So they have this documentation, and it was called, maybe, human interaction guidelines, something like that, I think, from Apple, and the guidelines were very, very human centric. So we had some usability class in my master degree. We were kind of taught a little bit. What is the user testing sessions and gathering feedback? But we didn’t dig into that. We had like 2 hours. And that was it. So I kind of discovered this whole user centricity with the Apple guidelines.
And then I was like, Oh, this is actually interesting. Yeah, of course, we design for users, we need to talk to them. We need to understand them. We need to. I was already working in B2B at that time. So our clients were also enterprises using our product on a daily basis. So I was like, yeah, we need to talk to those peoples. If I have to design a monitoring system for someone who is dangling 10 meters above the ground because they’re doing reporting on a bridge. I need to understand. Okay, how does this person use that? You know? So, I kind of imagined. Okay, it’s kind of a little bit tricky and all of that. So we need to talk to those users. So yeah, basically, I entered into UX via guidelines that I found interesting. And then I was kind of self-taught at some points. But I like a lot of books, a lot of conferences podcasts, but also trainings. And then I worked for a while at the University of Luxembourg in a human computer interaction team.
And there I was with actual researchers. So scientific researchers. And then I was like, Oh, that’s nice also, I think, kind of more scientific side, and more strict constraints on the research. That was also very interesting.
What does a typical day or week look like for you? What sort of things do you do?
At the moment, it’s chaotic, because we have a deadline in June, and all the stories for the June deadline need to be finished this week. So this week is not a typical week.
Usually I start the week by talking to my colleagues: Okay, what are we working on this week? What do you need from me? Do we have emergencies? Things like that. If we need to clarify a story by the end of the week. I’m like, okay, I need to know upfront. I’m not going to do a design two days before clarification. Obviously. So on the UI side. We do a lot of that.
And then usually, I organize my week around the user research session that we are doing. So, depending on the moment of the year, we are running different sessions. We interview up front before we start doing something. If we are into this kind of discovery phase, or maybe a little bit further down in the project. We are more into this kind of evaluation phase, and then it will be more usability testing with the user, or showing mock-ups, talking to them, gathering feedback. So it really depends in what phase we are, what sprint on the project. Are we more focused on understanding what they do or do, we already have a solution? And then we want to evaluate this solution with them.
It takes a lot of time to first prepare the sessions with the users, then run them with the users, and then analyze the data. When you have, an excel sheet with two hundred lines of user data, it takes quite a lot of time to analyze all of that.
So a mix, yeah? And then, of course, prioritization. So once we’ve analyzed or figured out the main issues that we have that we could solve, that we cannot do anything because we are blocked by the framework or something. This we could maybe, if we force a little bit if we have some time, and then we try to prioritize this. What is the solution going to be? And when do we want to bring that to the users?
What is your favorite thing about your job?
Hmm. being actually able to talk to the users directly, because they’re technically my colleagues at the moment. So the bank is split between the business people who do the daily business. So we have risk managers, lawyers, people who do projects, finance people, communication people. So they run the bank. They do the banking activity of the bank, and we are on that side, building the tools for them.
So technically, my users are my colleagues, even though we do not work on a daily basis together, of course, but yeah. So it’s very easy to talk to them. Or even if I need a user for something specific, I can always reach out to someone and ask, Oh, I need someone fitting this profile. Do you know, someone? So it’s actually quite nice to be able to have such close proximity to the end users. To be able to really work with them and interact with them.
What do you wish you could change about your job?
Hmm! Not about my job today, but about the design job. I wish people would trust designers more. So I’m a consultant. So I’ve been working for multiple clients over the years, and every time I come to a new client. It’s again the same thing. I need to prove that I can be trusted. I was like: Dude, I can literally explain to you every single pixel on this mock up, if you want me to. We can do a two hour meeting, and I can justify the presence of every single pixel in there, or you can trust me. You can trust that. I’m a good designer. I know information architecture. I have user research to back that up.
So it’s kind of, I think, very exhausting. Luxembourg is very low maturity, and often the team I work for hasn’t worked with a designer before, so you kind of have to earn their trust, and I think that is discouraging over time with the job.
So I wish people would trust designers a bit more.
Where do you see UX going?
That’s complicated, like, every two weeks we have: UX is dead, and UX is over, come on! UX died so many times at this point. It’s not even a zombie anymore, you know, it’s like ten times a zombie. So I think there will be challenges because we have a lot of things around AI, and it will be even more complicated to explain to people that: No, you cannot replace the users by AI, even if some products promise you that especially in enterprise. We were joking with some friends about the fact that they want to replace designers and developers with AI. It means that project people need to be able to express a need properly. They can’t. So we’ll be fine.
So for sure, our job is going to change. There’s interesting things like the ability, for instance, to use AI to automate a lot of stuff if you need templates. If you need email templates, things like that can be done super fast. There’s also some things around helping using AI to help analyze data. If you have those two hundred lines of excel sheet, maybe you want to do a quick word analysis.
AI can help with that issue. Then you need to be careful with ethics. Where is the model? How is the model trained? Where is the data or seed? All of that. So you cannot just give ChatGPT any information so that might be a little bit tricky. So I think it’s going to be a big change for the UX industry.
And yeah, we will still be there. Honestly, it’s like every week. Every week I cringe when I use a website. Everyone is like, Yeah, you know, UX is common sense. Come on, every time I use an e-commerce website, the form is so poorly designed. It’s a giant mess. You hover the stuff you start typing, and then you unhover it, but I wanted to go and check something from my password manager. And now I’ve lost all the data. How is that common sense, you know? You can put any AI you want. You can replace all the designers by AI. But this needs to be fixed. So at some point as long as we have human beings making poor decisions, we will need designers.
So we should be fine because UX is not common sense. So either UX is not common sense or half of the population lacks common sense. I don’t know you choose, but every week I’m just cringing at some poor design. So, no. We’ll still have a job.
What technology and/or skill do you wish you learned before you entered the industry?
Nothing really, honestly, because I learned the things I needed when I needed them. You know. It was interesting, because then I actually was able to practice it directly, instead of having, high level theory about a lot of UX methods and all of that, that you might never use.
So for me, it’s more soft skills. The ability to work with office politics, stuff like that. The daily things of why do people react like that? And I’m super interested in cognitive biases. I’ve basically created this set of cards around cognitive biases. And I have a workshop. And then I expand in the workshop on how we can mitigate some of those biases. And once you’re interested in biases, you understand that a lot of office politics can be attributed to basic human behavior. And then you understand the behavior behind it. They reacted like that because of this, this and this. I can do that, that and that to help them.
I hate the word soft skills, because there’s nothing soft about that. It’s very complicated. But yeah, office politics, learning how to deal with people is something that is highly underrated for designers.
What are you looking to learn or what skill are you looking to build next?
I did a workshop on lino cutting. That has nothing to do with UX. But it’s also really nice, because I’m basically designing complex flows and tables on a daily basis which is not very creative. So what I do during the weekend, I do a lot of art and craft.
So yeah, I love learning new skills. It’s just at the moment I think I’m in a little bit of AI fatigue. I’m tired of articles and everything all being about AI. So I don’t know. Maybe I read too much. So, yeah, I’m going to focus on fun stuff like making stickers. And the linear cutting workshops was very, very fun. So I might develop that skill.
What question should I have asked that I didn’t?
What’s your favorite pizza? A lot of restaurants have vegetarian pizza that have artichoke on it. I’ll say I want the vegetarian, but put some ham on top of it, and then the waiter is just like, “What?”
“I want all the vegetables and ham, please.”
“Huh?”
“Come on, I will pay extra. Don’t worry. Just give me ham.”
So yeah, vegetarian pizza with ham.
What would you tell someone to do who’s looking to get into the industry? How should they best prepare themselves?
So don’t be depressed by all the articles saying, UX is dead.
It’s coming back and forth, you know, I would say, because I was recruiting someone a couple of months ago, and for me, what’s important is not, do you know a tool, you know? If you’ve learned one design tool, whether it’s Sketch, Penpot, Figma, or even Adobe Photoshop is like, it’s fine, you know, most of the design tools, they all work the same.
Do not focus too much on the tools, just because you see that the job advertisement says one tool, and you do not master it. I think you can always learn. Don’t focus too much on the tools, because tools, even technical tools, like CSS and JavaScript frameworks. They come and they go. I would say, focus on the higher stuff.
Understanding design principles, understanding how to do research, understanding good information architecture. Because this is skills that will be basically reused during your whole career. I learned Premiere. I hated that tool. I’m sorry I was like, Yeah, I don’t care. I’m not using it anymore. So don’t stress too much about the tool. Stress about like high level, applicable skills that you can reuse.
Anything else you’d like to tell future designers, developers and web people?
Developers. Designers are nice, and sometimes they forget things. So if your designer forgot something on the mockup like, just talk to them like a hover effect or a focus. If they forgot to explain to you how the drop down is working. you can go and ask them. We don’t bite. Everyone’s like, Yeah, my designer forgot about it. So now I have to do it. It’s like, have you tried talking to them?
Is there a way people can get in contact with you to ask questions etc?
stephaniewalter.design. I have everything in there.
Last Question: If you had to be a zombie and you had to eat someone’s brains, whose would it be and why?
Hmm, so I would like to eat Agatha Harkness’s brain, because she’s amazing. And I want the superpowers of the witch. And just like, yeah, she’s so cool, you know, like the whole. She has this very long cloak where she’s just like doing stuff with the cloak during the whole TV show. So she’s from Agatha All Along for those who don’t know. It’s like Disney+. And yeah, she’s a witch. She’s a really cool witch.
I want her powers. I don’t want her backstory because it sounds pretty rough. Just the powers.