About PrimoPollo and Matt Snyder

PrimoPollo is a website that contributes thoughtfully to the online discourse of user-experience design. As it's creator, I'm passionate about all things design, especially those topics surrounding user-experience. Knowing there exists both quantitative as well as qualitative perspectives within this field, I find merit in championing theoretical and philosophical values that help practitioners understand how to account for users in their design process. I'm eager to share with my peers these insights, anecdotes, and design experiences as a method of contributing to the growing corpus of HCI knowledge; the result of which has helped me begin to understand that which lies at the heart of all design disciplines – the human experience.

The future of UX design

Like a lot of UX leaders in the industry, my career began in an HCI-related field. My first employment opportunity after my undergraduate studies was a job working for a consumer products manufacturer as a graphic designer. Since then, I've chosen professional and educational opportunities that have given me a broad understanding of design. This experience has helped me become very sensitive to organizational culture, design environment, and production processes. This awareness is valuable because I believe that future technology/experiences will be found inside of large systems: systems of devices, information, and interactions. This growth will expand the current paradigm beyond single tools, one-up web apps, and individual devices. This increased complexity will require organizations to have UX leadership in place that is sensitive to change and opportunity, providing UX parity and value within these systems.

Design team philosophy

My current leadership role has taught me how important it is to step back from daily deliverables and provide strategic influence that thoughtfully improves the contribution of each team member. I believe this mentoring, inspiring, and curation of a design team has to be intentionally designed. This culture-creation starts with building a multi-disciplinary design team that understands and values a comprehensive UX landscape, from colors and buttons to user research and design theory. Building a team with this perspective is important because the life-cycle of innovation continues to compress and shrink. It isn't enough to just deliver technology – these days innovation is scrutinized and evaluated through increasing social fluency of convenience, experience, and design. Design teams must be poised to account for increased upstream contribution, with leadership in place to coach, anticipate, and coarse-correct. I believe that continued growth and impact is then thoughtfully explored and aligned with organization needs – ensuring sustained cultural development and value.