Pivotal Moments with John Lam

Ep.12 Jill Jacobson: on UX Design at Microsoft, her circuitous journey to UX design from industrial design, and rediscovering joy from creative pursuits

Episode Summary

Jill shares with us her story of resilience and grit that leads to her current position as a Senior UX Designer at Microsoft. Jill turned the disappointment of being fired from her first job in industrial design into a successful career designing some of the most complex user interfaces at Microsoft.

Episode Notes

Show Chapters

Full-text transcript

• Intro (00:36)
• The mystery of the churning Jupyter notebook users (01:45)
• The importance of understanding your users (09:32)
• From an aptitude test in high school to industrial design (13:05)
• Learning industrial design at Western Washington University (15:10)
• First job out of college (17:59)
• Getting fired from her first job (20:15)
• Becoming an intern again (22:04)
• An opportunity to learn what she really wanted to do (22:48)
• A crash course in becoming a UX Designer, on the job (27:05)
• Why team is more important than technology (30:22)
• Jill is now a full-time employee! (36:03)
• On rediscovering things that bring us joy (38:16)
• How to optimize your Kindle experience (41:03)
• An outsized amount of joy: a plain air tripod (45:05)
• Conclusion (47:33)
• Outtro (48:43)

Links from the show

• Jill's Instagram
• Jill's web site
• AIMS Aptitude Testing
• Libby
• Story Graph

Music credits

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Track: Lost In Medina — Amine Maxwell [Audio Library Release]
Music provided by Audio Library Plus
Watch: https://youtu.be/qNSdpqSkRe4
Free Download / Stream: https://alplus.io/lost-medina
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