His title is Partner & Vice President, Operations, but we like to call Tom Drugan the man with the master plan. In this Meet-a-Slider post, you’ll learn why he thinks it’s important to involve your development team early and often when designing new products and features and the very long list of things he likes on a hot dog.
Name: Tom Drugan
Title: Partner & Vice President, Operations
Start Date: August 2019
What drew you to this field?
I became fascinated by digital experiences while taking an HTML class at the University of Illinois back in 1997. I was an art major during my first year in school, so the prospect of creating something through code rather than pencil, charcoal, or Adobe Illustrator and instantly being able to share it with the world attracted me to the web. My passion solidified once I had the opportunity to create and pitch a product and marketing plan for an early online grocery delivery service called Peapod as part of my senior thesis.
When I began my career in the digital industry in 1999 as a Project Manager, I got direct exposure to digital designers and design thinking. Ever since I was a kid, I loved the process of taking an idea and turning it into a tangible product. I love to create, and I’ve been fortunate enough to apply this passion to hundreds of websites and applications over the course of my career, many of which were rooted in my own ideas.
Tom was a picture of humility after coming in second at Go Kart Racing to the Content Director Shandi Crooks. Associate UX Researcher Jamie Whelan was not far behind.
What one piece of advice would you want to give to aspiring UX designers?
Since I am not a UX designer, I will provide some advice through a product manager’s lens. Make sure to involve your development team early and often when designing new products and features.
Your designs may dictate if a new feature takes five minutes or five weeks to build, and a good engineer will be able to help you assess the feasibility of your proposed designs. Including engineers in design reviews will also lead to a more successful handoff and end product as the engineers will have a better understanding as to why certain decisions were made since they were involved along the way.
What's the biggest challenge we face as an industry?
In most organizations, there is a lack of commitment to investing in upfront user research prior to designing, building and releasing new products. Too many companies don’t understand the value of UX research. Product owners or sponsors either don’t want to spend the time or necessary budget on it, or they believe they understand their users better than users know themselves.
I have been part of too many product launches that flopped because of a lack of product/market fit. If research and usability were included before coding started, development churn could be avoided leading to successful releases.
What's new in the industry that's catching your eye?
I am fascinated by the evolution of 5G and how it will influence UX through device-agnostic experiences. With the advent of 5G, we will not only have more ability to connect with each other in new ways, but we will be infinitely more connected with the things around us.
UX designers will need to think beyond journeys and experiences on web browsers and mobile phones; they will need to incorporate the holistic journey across smart watches, smart home speakers, smart cars, smart retail stores, and whatever else the future brings us.
Working at Slide UX
What are the most challenging parts of your job?
For my role, it’s the context switching between clients and the various products we support. I may interact with as many as seven different clients on any given day. Each client has its own set of stakeholders, products, processes, vocabulary, communication preferences, etc.
Unlike most of my colleagues on the UX design side, my work is focused on breadth vs. depth. While it's more challenging to work with multiple vs. one organization as you would on the client side, it gives you the opportunity to learn about different types of companies' and how they run their organizations.
What is the biggest lesson you have learned in your job, and how did you learn it?
I learned the costly mistake of not taking an iterative, test-and-learn approach to designing and building products early in my career.
In 2002, we spent $70,000 and five-months completely redesigning a website for our largest client at an agency. Rather than testing our way into changes via incremental iterations, we blew up the entire site and started from scratch.
While the new site looked infinitely more modern, we saw our conversion rate tank by 50% after launch. Because we had changed so many things at once, we couldn’t pinpoint what the culprit could be in the drop in conversion. Within days, the client asked us to revert back to the old, outdated site. The conversion rate immediately jumped back to where it had been before.
We never went back and used the new designs. We wasted a lot of unnecessary time and budget.
The lesson learned is that it doesn't always make sense to make an entire design change to your application at one time. Redesign and test one component or page at a time so you better understand what works and what doesn’t for your customers.
What makes Slide UX different?
I have a unique perspective because I was a client of Slide UX’s for the previous six years prior to joining the team. Throughout my career as a project and product manager, I preferred to work with in-house design teams. I felt that the physical distance and limited mindshare from having to juggle multiple clients would limit the outside designer’s ability to understand my products and provide quality work.
Erin and Slide UX quickly changed that perception for me from our very first engagement. Slide UX became an indispensable part of my product team; they brought outside perspectives that I would likely not have received from a dedicated internal UX team. I often felt they knew my products as well or better than I did. I can’t say this about other agencies that I’ve worked with.
As a Slider, the remote work is part of what makes Slide UX unique. This is my first time working remotely full-time, and it has been a welcome transition. For the previous six plus years, I spent an average of two hours a day in the car. While I miss some of my podcast time, the time I get back has been life-changing for both me and my family. This has ultimately made me a happier and more productive worker.
Finally, Slide UX brings together a fun, unique and talented group. Everyone seems truly happy, and much of this is attributed to the balance and support that the Slide UX culture provides its employees. I have worked at multiple agencies and start-ups that overload their design team with work and unrealistic turnaround times; this creates a lot of churn. Slide UX guards firmly against becoming that type of organization.
Tom and teammates Shandi, Andrew, and Jamie, agree that the ideal client requires a trip to Universal Studios in wintertime.
Describe the ideal client or project.
The ideal client views an outside agency as part of the team, and doesn’t treat them as a disposable vendor. They understand and value what good UX brings to the table in terms of business value and happy customers. They are highly collaborative, provide clear and concise feedback, and are consistent and decisive in their thinking.
The ideal client would be properly resourced with capable product owners and developers who can take the designs, and execute them to specification.
An ideal client reports back to their design and engineering teams on how their products and features are performing by providing both qualitative and quantitative feedback. This feedback loop helps teams feel that their hard work is paying off, or gives them the opportunity to learn from unsuccessful releases.
The icing on the cake would be to work on a project that is either bringing something completely new to the market or is bringing some sort of good to the world.
What's the most powerful part of our design process?
I believe it’s the ability for our designers to quickly grasp the business nuances of our clients, as well as understand their customers, across a myriad of industries. This ability comes from dedicating the necessary time upfront to ask the right questions, talking to stakeholders and users, and taking a deep dive to further understand existing products and materials. Many design agencies put the bare amount of effort into learning about client’s businesses.
What's your typical day look like?
For my role, every day is different, which is perfect for my working style and professional background. I wear different hats and dabble in many things depending on the client or project. I’ve been a generalist most of my career, so I get to use a lot of the tools in my Swiss Army knife here at Slide UX.
Most mornings start with getting organized and providing our internal team with my daily Scrum updates. I run internal status meetings, sit in on weekly client status calls, and take notes during creative reviews. Each day I spend some time collaborating with our internal and client teams to either create or update project plans and UX Roadmaps.
For some clients who may not have adequate internal resourcing or experience with Agile or Product Management, I am presented with an opportunity to share my Agile expertise and best practices or act as a ScrumMaster. This involves running their internal stand-ups, backlog grooming sessions, organizing their Scrum boards, etc.
For new clients who may be in the early stages of their projects, I will facilitate working sessions to help them define what features, functionality, and screens they will need. This helps both the client and Slide UX understand what the north star is for the project, and it helps us arrive at more accurate estimates and project plans.
I also get to assist with various internal operations tasks across marketing, HR, project management, etc.
What tools do you use for your job that you could not live without?
Slack, Jira, Asana, Google Docs, and Powerpoint.
How do you stay inspired and creative?
I have always been an entrepreneur at heart and I had the opportunity to be one for about a decade in my career. It's inspiring to watch other entrepreneurs like Erin and Brant build Slide UX from a two-person company to a team of 19 over the past six years. It’s invigorating to watch their passion and dedication to Slide UX and the clients we support.
The exposure to the inner-workings of our clients and their products keeps my creative juices flowing. Every client has unique challenges and is trying to solve different customer problems. There are learnings we can take from one client, and apply them to others. This keeps my brain elastic.
Lightning Round
• Hidden talents: I can fold my tongue in half, and speak with three voices at the same time.
• Cat or dog? I grew up with both, but unfortunately I am highly allergic to cats. I like cats because they are low maintenance, but I have to go with dogs.
• BBQ: sauce or no sauce? It totally depends on the meat. I would never use BBQ sauce on a good steak, but it is my condiment of choice for chicken or pork.
• Hot dog toppings: I’m from Chicago, so there is only one way to eat a hot dog. Yellow mustard, bright green sweet pickle relish, a dill pickle spear, tomato slices or wedges, pickled sport peppers and a dash of celery salt on a poppy seed bun. Usually, there are onions, but I skip those. Absolutely no ketchup. Ever.
• Favorite coffee shop: I prefer coffee shops without pretentious baristas, plenty of electrical outlets, available seats, breakfast tacos, and parking. Genuine Joe's checks most of my boxes.
• How do you like your coffee? Black and moderately warm. I usually put a few ice cubes in it before I drink it.
• Who on the team would you want to be stuck on an island with and why? Darvinder. The guy just radiates positivity, which would be critical for survival if I was stuck on an island. My second choice would be Jeff Battson, as long as he brings his Spikeball set with him. I like sports, and we will have plenty of time to kill on the beach perfecting this strange game.