Season 2 Episode 20: Behind the Scenes: Client Wrangling & Design Doing at Fuzzy Math

What’s it really like inside a UX consultancy? In this special in-house episode of UX Leadership by Design, Mark Baldino sits down with two incredible Fuzzy Math teammates — Senior Designer Madeleine Byrne and Senior Project Manager Jaléssa Savage — to talk about what UX leadership looks like from the inside out.

They unpack how projects are structured, how cross-functional teams communicate, and how empathy, clarity, and constraints shape successful outcomes. From wrangling stakeholders to making smart design trade-offs, it’s a behind-the-scenes look at how Fuzzy Math keeps projects human, impactful, and on track — with a few hot takes and laughs along the way.

Whether you’re growing into leadership or just curious how collaborative teams actually work, this one’s packed with insights and energy.

Key Takeaways

Balancing Empathy Across Users and Clients – True design leadership means understanding not just end-users but also the internal and external stakeholders shaping the work.
Why Design Needs Guardrails – PMs aren’t just managing scope — they’re helping passionate designers stay focused and productive within real-world constraints.
Visuals Are Alignment Tools, Not Just Outputs – Design artifacts aren’t just deliverables; they’re powerful tools for clarifying thinking and aligning teams.
Stakeholder Trust Starts Early – Trust-building begins with structured project kickoffs and intentional communication — not just when the work hits Figma.
Client Assumptions Need Evidence – Teams often bring mental models of what they want; our job is to validate, challenge, and guide them with research and strategy.

Resources & Links

Chapters

00:00 – Introducing the Fuzzy Math Team
00:51 – Madeleine’s Journey from Theater to UX
03:19 – Jaléssa’s Journey from Events to Project Management
05:57 – Listening and Building Trust with Clients
12:47 – How Fuzzy Math Project Teams Work Together
25:10 – Common Design Challenges and How We Handle Them
31:31 – Working with Clients Who Have a Mental Model
43:06 – Hot Takes and Advice for Aspiring Leaders

Tags

#UXPodcast, #InsideFuzzyMath, #UXLeadership, #UXProjectManagement, #DesignCollaboration, #EmpathyInDesign, #UXConsultancy, #StakeholderManagement

Transcript

Mark Baldino (00:02.584)
Hello and welcome to UX Leadership by Design. I'm Mark Baldino, your host. I'm also a co-founder of Fuzzy Math. Fuzzy Math is the user experience design consultancy that brings consumer grade UX to business applications for B2B and enterprise tools. And today I have not one, but two special guests on the podcast. And for the first time, I'm actually bringing folks from within Fuzzy Math onto the podcast to talk about design leadership. And so I am thrilled to be joined by Madeleine and Jaléssa from my team. They are senior designer and design lead and senior project manager respectively. And we're going to talk about what design leadership looks like at Fuzzy Math. How we organize projects, how we communicate with one another, how we solve some common problems that our clients face. And so I think it's a nice peek into the world of UX and design consultancy. And I think it's a really fun and interesting conversation for anybody who wants to learn more about how we operate at Fuzzy Math and more importantly, what skills we've learned and developed over time that we apply in our client projects and working with other fellow designers that you may be able to apply to your design leadership career. So please enjoy this special episode and thanks as always for listening.

Mark Baldino (00:01.656)
Jaléssa and Madeline, welcome to the podcast.

Madeleine Byrne (00:05.497)
Thank you.

Jaléssa Savage (00:05.67)
Thank you. Excited to be here.

Mark Baldino (00:07.15)
No. Yeah. Thank you both for joining me. I mean, guess this is this is a first. This is the first time I'm speaking to Fuzzy Mathers on the podcast way too long. I've been doing it for way too long to not have brought some of you fine folks onto the podcast. And it's the first time I have two people on the podcast. So we got a bunch of firsts. I'm super excited about the conversation, but I first want to give you both the opportunity to.

introduce yourself and your background, kind how you got to your role at Fuzzy Math, and then what that role is and a little bit of what it entails so that we can help bring folks who aren't at Fuzzy Math into our little community. So maybe Madeline, if you don't mind going first.

Madeleine Byrne (00:51.661)
Yeah, for sure. My name is Madeline Byrd. I have been at Fuzzy Math for four years. I started out as an intern way back in the day. And I actually heard about Fuzzy Math from a other current Fuzzy Math, or Allie, who had done the internship the year before me. And I met her through a mentorship group, and she encouraged me to apply. So glad I did.

did the internship and then stayed on as a contractor and then full time after that. And then after the internship decided to start the master's in human computer interaction program at DePaul University. So I completed that last year while still working at Fuzzy Math, which was a great experience. It was a lot, but it was really, really like confidence building to get the theory while I was also already applying it. So I'm super glad that I did it. There's a lot of Fuzzy Math.

Mark Baldino (01:37.198)
this.

Madeleine Byrne (01:48.175)
folks that have done that DePaul program. So yeah, my background prior to UX is in costume design for theater. That's what my undergrad is in. So very different. Yeah, yeah, it's very typical. I know have a lot of other BFA's around me. But it has more overlaps, I think, than one might think just in terms of like communicating, like reading people, trying to understand what their needs are, especially like

Mark Baldino (01:57.038)
super linear path.

Jaléssa Savage (01:59.612)
Hahaha!

Madeleine Byrne (02:17.165)
you know, with actors, it's a sensitive environment, like make sure that they feel comfortable and kind of the same thing with clients with us, like to make sure that you're hearing and like listening for what their needs are. and just that like empathy piece. So yeah, that's how I got here.

Mark Baldino (02:32.814)
Can you tell us a little bit about your current role at Fuzzy Math?

Madeleine Byrne (02:36.641)
Yeah, I'm currently a design lead at Fuzzy Maths. So I started off more focused on visual design, then brought in UX kind of at the master's program, and then started leading projects. I can't remember, a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago, almost. And in the design lead role, work with the project lead team, the account lead, and project manager and myself basically managing the project at a high level, like setting the design.

sort of vision guiding the rest of the designers on the team and making sure everything's running smoothly and our clients are happy. So yeah.

Mark Baldino (03:15.79)
All right, Jalisa, you're up. Tell us about your interesting background. I know you've worked at a bunch of places previously.

Jaléssa Savage (03:19.854)
I'm love. Yeah, it's kind of funky. It's kind of funky. I think like Madeline, I started in a whole different realm. So I've been a project manager, for 10 years total, but I started in a creative space. So I was project manager and producing podcasts, very similar to what we're doing now in this space. Street festivals, different sort of conferences, concerts. I started in a very sort of event heavy space. And then from there, I sort of tweaked a little bit to marketing. So I worked at a marketing agency.

They were doing like website development. We were doing event activations, which had a very similar role to what I'd done previously. So I started to merge my worlds in a corporate sense. And then I worked as a director of operations at a hair care firm. So that's also where a lot of my operational project management background comes from. I did that for three years before joining Fuzzy Math, where I've also been at for three years. So yeah, that's kind of the longer term journey. I am in Philly. I went to Penn.

I was a communication major, so I do like to talk. I like to communicate. This very much feels in my wheelhouse. And I think it also kind of leads to that sort of bit that Madeline was speaking of, Of like that empathy building, really learning how to communicate and read people, learning how to understand their needs, learning how to activate on those needs. Like what do those things actually mean? How do you translate that into action and care? That's really what I try to bring to my project management practice. So then within Fuzzy Math, I'm a senior PM. I'm also on the management team.

I lead the project management practice. So yeah, I'm client facing, project facing, I'm internal, I'm a little bit of everything. It's just kind of fun.

Mark Baldino (04:54.636)
Awesome. Awesome. Thank you. I mean, the three of us on certain projects kind of make up what we consider a design lead or project lead team. shouldn't say design lead. Project lead team, it's account management, which Ben is the other founder at Fuzzy Math for folks that don't know. I'm one of the founders and I'll kind of do account management on projects. We'll have a PM on the project as well and then a design lead and then supported by about design.

Jaléssa Savage (05:04.904)
Really?

Mark Baldino (05:24.482)
supported by designers. But I'm kind of curious from both of your perspective, like how do we, as Madeline, you said, maybe you can go first, how do we sort of listen to our customers? How do we ensure that they're happy? How do we balance that with, you know, making sure that the team that's working on the project for Fuzzy Math is happy as well?

How do we work as a group of three people to ensure projects are going smoothly?

Madeleine Byrne (05:57.359)
Yeah, definitely. It's a big question. I think in terms of the clients, it always starts with listening. We do a lot of kind of up-to-speed activities at the beginning of a project that give us the opportunity to do that listening and kind of ask open-ended questions. Obviously, throughout the sales process, the account lead has heard some things, and so we make sure to regroup as a project lead team to understand what was the journey to get to.

speaking off the project and like, where did the need for the project come from? And that can give us like some clues into maybe what they're hoping to get out of it or what they're looking for. And then we do a kickoff, we do interviews with the main stakeholders on the project and that really helps like set kind of like the strategic foundation for the project in terms of communication, like not only what deliverables do they need and like, what is the output, like, who are the players like?

this person's specific interest, who's the ultimate decision maker on this team, who's the person that's going to be facilitating the communication on the project management end, Jaleesa deals with a lot. And just kind of getting a lay of the land at the beginning to make sure that we're kind of in tune with their communication style and like what they're looking to get out of our services. That would say kind of how we start every project.

Mark Baldino (07:21.162)
That's great. a good, trying to set a good foundation early on and get that project up and running smoothly. Jaléssa, the project management function at Fuzzy Math, and Fuzzy Math is 16 years old, the project management function is relatively new. You brought the most formality to it when you joined Team Fuzzy Math. Before, we just sort of like, it was kind of freewheel. We put a lot of pressure on senior folks on projects who were design leads.

Jaléssa Savage (07:36.988)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Baldino (07:48.954)
And a lot of stuff fell through the gaps. And I know you've done a lot of work at Fuzzy Math to operationalize PMing. Like what does that project start look like for you from a project management perspective? What are you kind of paying attention to to make sure that the project gets started on the right foot?

Jaléssa Savage (07:57.352)
Thank

Jaléssa Savage (08:03.942)
Yeah. Yeah, largely I consider myself the listening eyes and ears and I consider our client the business or subject matter expert, right? So what I'm really looking for is getting an understanding of their business use case more than anything else. How does this project feed into their bigger strategic goals? Are there KPIs, goals, things they're tracking? I listen a lot for deadlines, timelines, even budgetary concerns will sometimes sneak their way in, right? If you're concerned about how expensive dev will be or

concerned about how much a change in debt will cost or things like that. I kind of get an ear to the things that I like to say, maybe they're not saying super explicitly and get to ask some deeper questions. I also am largely listening to alignment, right? So I want to make sure we're aligned still with our scope of work. I want to make sure I'm listening to for scope creep. Happens all the time. People want a lot. They think they can get everything, but we are confined by hours, by timeline, by budgets. I'm largely listening to how does this project fit into their larger ecosystem, right?

I'm listening to how they speak of their product, how they speak of their project, how they even speak of the journey of how they got here. Sometimes we hear scars or stories of bruising of projects, right? Of things that didn't really go so well, or this is my second time around, this is my third time around. I'm also listening for, this is gonna sound kind of odd, but kind of trust issues, right? How do they feel about consultancies? Do they feel...

confident in the work we can do. And then my goal is to kind of bridge some of that gap, which is largely with communication. So it starts with really what Madeline said. We're communicating often, we're communicating very frequently. I want them to feel like we're always available. We're having tools where they can access us pretty easily. Not to the point where they're being a bother, but accessing us enough to allow us to sort of do our work. So I'm kind of listening for the soft skills, the human side and how that also aligns with the business case. And in all of that, I want to make sure that our designers are internal designers.

know sort of what their next step should be. There are no blockers or impediments in their way. I'm listening for, like I said, deadlines or quarterly meetings. I hear about that all the time. You want to be able to show something. I'm listening for conferences. So kind of listening to the bubble beyond the scope of work, right? My role is to be very much ingrained to know the scope of work pretty much like the back of my hand and then try to figure out how it best applies to the humanness and also the business side of our clients. So I was saying in the beginning, that's really what I'm most listening for, to make sure I'm speaking to that as I'm giving project status updates.

Jaléssa Savage (10:26.412)
as I talk about potential blockers, why they're a blocker and I'm speaking to it in a language that resonates with them. Right. So it really is about, I guess, getting that understanding of the client language, the understanding of the client process and really how fuzzy math or just even I as a PM directly can help guide them along sort of the process in a way that's really human centered. I really do try to take a human centered approach to project management in general.

Mark Baldino (10:48.974)
You both mentioned kind of the human component of this and the empathetic component. I've said on the podcast before that I think designers come out of school and it's like, we need to be empathetic with the users. And I think you learn at least in a consultancy, like Fuzzy Matthew, you have to be empathetic with the clients on the other side of the Zoom or other side of the table. But it's funny that you both, not funny, I think it's interesting you both mentioned.

a lot of like softer skills and communication skills. We're not talking about more formal deliverables really. So you didn't touch on like we have to have, I mean, we have an insane notion like set up, like anybody wants to geek out about like our project set up on notion, reach out to either of these two fine folks on LinkedIn and they'll share some stories. But it wasn't like, oh, we have to have a project schedule. We need to maintain this and we have to make sure that everything's agreed upon. We'll talk about maybe some client challenges in a minute, but.

I think what you're mentioning is really like this balance of fuzzy math success and client success, team success and client success. And then it is a lot of just pure understanding of the other human beings we're working with and what's really happening at their organization. What are the real challenges that they're facing, right? Like they've made an investment into an agency. They want them to be successful. Their success relies on us and they are probably doing

this on top of 15 other things that they're at their organization. And so they're really putting some trust in us. But before we spin it back to some of the challenges that we might run into with clients and stakeholders and alignment and maybe some things that's going on with them, or maybe we're trying to, how we're trying to apply our craft in their environment, let's step back and talk about our team, team structure. Maybe, Julisha, you could just, we talked about design leadership. What other folks do we put on projects and kind of their roles and how are they?

How are they generally working together?

Jaléssa Savage (12:47.464)
Yeah. So first of all, we're remote first companies. I think that aids with a lot of how we work together. So a lot of it is digital. A lot of it's over notion over Slack, um, over digital tools and also making sure there's a really strong product and process of where I can expect updates. We also have to consider we're kind of across time zones. I'm in the East coast. These lovely two folks are in central. So given in our clients could really be anywhere. We've dealt with clients in India. So being able to really have a transparent communication style is I say the central is what's central to all of it.

However, how do we more or less break down? As I can mention, we will have our lead group, we'll do the consensus of the account lead, the design lead, the PM. Underneath them, we'll have our crew of designers, or I like to call them really, I think of you all as magicians in my mind, right? Largely because you all do the magic to bring a product from A to B, and I just get to marvel at the results and just, know, love on you all as you do it. But the joy of it is that we have our designers who are essentially responsible for their own tasks. They're responsible for their own...

updates are responsible for telling us when to look in at things. They're responsible for raising their own hand when they have impediments, right? We lead, I think, Fuzzy Math in a humanistic way. So impediments can always be like, my goodness, I have a doctor's appointment that popped up, or my pet is sick. That happens all the time. The responsibility is on designers to kind of tell us like, there are delays that may be happening or blockers. I'm waiting to hear back from the client. I haven't received this, that, and a third that I need to really get this understanding. I'm confused.

Right? Like that's sort of what we give our designers the freedom to say, because what we don't want to do, and I say this all the time, project management's role is an efficiency of the dollar, which sounds kind of a strange way to put it, but I don't want our designers to be internal, spending a lot of time trying to figure things out. Right? Because as they're internal running things over in their mind, if they're confused, if they're blockers, that essentially time wasted, imbueable time that they could actually be using to progress the project and the design. So my role is always, Hey, if there's anything that's inefficient,

anything you're confused about, anything that pops up, raise a hand. So the part that's sort of beautiful about the way that we lead projects at Fuzzy Math anyway, having a project lead team that's a level of flat means there are three resources you can go to at any given point in time, right? Any designer can raise a hand to their design lead and say, hey, I don't understand what's going on in this space. Hey, account lead, I think I heard this in the call. What's your take from a business sense? Hey, project manager, we're working on timelines. This deliverable feels like it might be tight.

Jaléssa Savage (15:05.083)
Can we maybe adjust this? Can we make different means? Can we change fidelity? We sort of have a really beautiful, flat but also stagnant, like a layered structure where we really do allow the designers to speak for themselves and really take responsibility for their work. We also allow the designers to present their work. We want them to feel invested in what they do. At the same time, we create a really, I say even, support system beneath them, right? There's always someone to say, hey, I have a concern. I'm confused about design.

I don't know what that meant. have, even from a stakeholder management perspective, I have questions for the account lead. There's a lot of, I think, balance in how we do it in a way that really allows our folks to be successful in the most efficient way. think we really are, I think, efficiency strong at Fuzzy Math, which I really like.

Mark Baldino (15:49.336)
Yeah. No, I mean, we kind of have to be by just nature of the work we do, right? We do work, we have a work product, people pay us for that work, we need to be efficient in what we're doing. And it's just the reality of like running a business is that the business has to generate enough income to pay the fine folks that work at Fuzzy Math. it's not always fun to talk about that, but it is just kind of the reality and efficiency is kind of important.

Maybe related to that point, Madeline, what do you rely on from the PMs on projects and how do they help maintain efficiency? Where do you see like, I think there's a Venn diagram of the leadership on a project, but it's like, do you see like, I kind of own this and I'm going to share this with Jaléssa as PM and Jaléssa is going to kind of handle this on her own. Like, what's that overlap look like?

Madeleine Byrne (16:46.593)
Yeah, totally. I think that Jaleesa is like client whisperer. Like she's so good. Emails, like chit chat at the beginning of calls. This is like a skill set that Jaleesa super duper has that makes everyone feel comfortable. And I think like, what did they say? Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Like, and if people feel comfortable and they are going smoothly, then we're going to be efficient as well because they have more trust in us. There's less like going back and forth with the client on like miscommunication. So I think having that

relationship is definitely something I personally lean on Jaleesa for because she's so good at it. I think the other thing with like, kind of what we've been talking about with the leadership roles is that we all have kind of a different perspective on the project, the team, the client. And so when there is kind of like a healthy, I won't say attention, like healthy sort of like, sort of overlapping perspectives on things, I may be like, you know,

pulling from my designer roots and wanting to be, not designer roots, I still am designing actively, but I may wanna push something further, because I just want it to be great. we have these three other ideas we'd love to try out. And so I really lean on Jaléssa and our project managers to be that voice of, do we have the hours to do that? Is this the most efficient way to...

handle this challenge for the client, is it going to deliver that value? So I think that's kind of where the different like perspectives overlap and that Jaleesa has more of that kind of like keeping an eye on the logistics side of things and making sure that like, when we are pushing, like, is there a good reason to push? And I'm doing that same thing for the designers on the team when they have an idea they want to push forward or they're spinning their wheels getting stuck on something.

you know, on some deliverables, like, this is not the most valuable for the client. So we're going to try and keep the scope on this pretty tight, move on to the next thing that's really going to deliver them value. versus like, you know what, it's worth pulling some hours from another deliverable because this is kind of the most important thing on the project. And if a designer is having a harder time with it, we just need to kind of give them that space and time to work it out.

Mark Baldino (19:01.41)
Yeah, fair enough. Jaléssa, what's your take? mean, you've kind of clarified, I think, where you see your role in terms of efficiency and keeping folks on track.

Jaléssa Savage (19:05.082)
Yeah.

Mark Baldino (19:16.024)
gift of making people feel comfortable, even during stressful times. And I will say, I benefited from this personally, not even on project, just like, hey, how are you doing, take check-in, which is really fantastic. How do you view Madeline's role on projects and what the design lead can bring in combination with the PM role?

Jaléssa Savage (19:29.414)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jaléssa Savage (19:37.224)
Yeah. So I would say like, okay, there's obviously the humanistic center side. I feel like we talk a lot about that on the PM side, but then there's the very much the tactical, the practical, right? I'm defining the scope. I'm keeping the deadlines together. I'm managing change management. There's a level of quality control. I am dealing with like client confidence and client communication. think that's very critical and central to the role, but it's also kind of an accountability measure. I get to be bad guy, right? And I have to be comfortable in that role. And part of why

Part of my impetus of making folks comfortable is that you're not just comfortable with me when it's good, but you also have to be comfortable with me when it's bad, right? And be comfortable in the fact that I'm never judging. never in a space of, it really is like an accepting space, but I do have to hold folks accountable both internally and externally, right? Like I have to hold our clients accountable to our deadlines, our timelines, our needs, our feedback, our approvals, right? So there is that sort of more tactical, technical side of my role.

that I think in some senses I share with the design lead, right? So our design lead is doing that really internally. So they're the accountability partner for our design. Is it at the fidelity that we want or we expect? Is it client ready? Quality control, that's what our design leads are really centered around, right? And I really let them, or my role is to let the design lead shine in that because what I'm not is the design expert, right? Do I have a little eye for design? Yes, I've been working at ThuggyMath and I've been taking courses. So I'm learning more about the user experience.

Madeleine Byrne (20:57.654)
Thank

Jaléssa Savage (20:59.912)
As I've been getting along, but truly like I lean on Madeline, Alfreda, our design leads, you Mark as an account lead to really have and be the subject matter expert when it comes to the design. So when it comes to making sure we are truly making sure that user need is met, we are truly making sure that client need is met. My role is to able to speak to it generally, right? I should be an advocate for design. My role is to be able to advocate for why our designers maybe went this way versus another. My role is to be able to advocate.

for the client in ways too, right? Sometimes I'll get presentations internally and I'm like, I don't know if my stakeholder is gonna love that. That doesn't really speak to what they mentioned or even just, I love what you're saying linguistically, but let's speak it in their language, right? So I think PM holds this really interesting role because we kind of get to sit a little bit above it. I'm not the subject matter expert from the clients and I don't know their business, right? I'm learning it as we all are together as Fuzzy Math. I'm also not the subject matter expert of design, right?

Madeleine Byrne (21:35.759)
Thank

Jaléssa Savage (21:56.956)
But I am kind of the subject matter expert of the practical, the tactical and getting it across the line. I know how design should talk to clients. I know how clients should talk back to design. I'm more or less how design needs to talk to dev. Cause there's also a development component to what we do. So I don't have to be the subject matter expert, but I have to know the flow. have to be the subject matter expert in that scope of work. I have to be the subject matter expert in that timeline. So I think part of the magic of what makes it work is that

The design leads and the PMs respect each other's specialties, if that makes sense. Like if Madeline is having an issue with a client and we get a comms across, she'll come to me and go, hey, this is my issue. Can you bring it up in a way that makes sense or that's logical or that we'll get the point across or hey, least I still haven't heard. These comments are still empty. Can you push the client a little bit? And so that's where the initial trust, I think also comes into play too, right? So when I am sending those emails to say, hey, this is the third time, our deadline is Friday and if we miss it, now it pushes this to what, right?

I get to kind of be the bad cop in a way that my design leads now don't have to. They don't have to be client facing in that way. It kind of protects them in a way I get to protect my designers. I do consider my relationship to be like a level of protective and I mean protecting them holistically. So I'm protecting this you, how are you, how are you feeling? Is there anything I can do? You need to vent, but I'm also protecting you from client expectations from emails that are just coming directly to your inbox, right? I kind of serve as like a filtering system as well. So I would say it's a

Mark Baldino (23:20.43)
Yeah.

Jaléssa Savage (23:22.066)
cool symbiotic relationship where I will definitely lean on design, particularly in things like project planning. I know we didn't talk a lot about project planning yet, but project planning is a big thing we do at Fuzzy Math. And I am definitely not the subject matter expert when it comes to the UCD process, right? So I lean on my designers a lot to help me understand, does this amount of hours make sense to the level of fidelity based on our scope? Does it make sense to the design team that we have?

Right? Do we need more or less hours because our team is more junior or more senior? Sometimes our teams can just fly because they've done this before. So it is this really symbiotic, respectful, very needed, relationship. Same thing with, would say the account lead on the other end too, right? The account lead and I sort of sit very client facing, maybe a little more so in the sense of the dynamics than the design lead. I think that's where the design lead kind of gets some protection. and I'm often going to my account lead to go.

I heard something funky kind of in this call. Does this align with how you're sort of understanding their business aspects to be? Is this a concern? Should we raise it outside of the project? Right. So there's a lot of cross responsibility, but I will say there's a level of filtering and also kind of protection, I think, from the design lead and PM as well.

Mark Baldino (24:34.168)
Yeah, great. Great. Thank you. I think we've talked a lot about how we make things smooth, but despite our best intentions, things are bumpy on projects. And so I want to cover it internally first. Jaléssa, I'm going to stick with you because you talked about being somebody who's studying design in the background. You're learning more about the user-centered design process, but it's not your role at Fuzzy Math and it's not your technical background. What are common challenges you see the design team

or designers sort of struggle with on project and how do we mitigate those?

Jaléssa Savage (25:10.184)
Yeah, think often, believe it or not, the challenges I see most often come from confidence, believe it or not. I think our designers are more equipped and more prepared than they often think they are. I think they are more ready than they think they are. think they've also, they're more thorough than they think they are. So I find that my challenge is often kind of keeping people's heads actually in place and not going too far over the end or not.

overthinking or thinking too deeply or really thinking beyond what the scope of the project is, which sounds like an odd challenge, but it pops up in ways of our burn, for instance, right? Like sometimes I'll catch that designers have spent a little bit of time on something that we may have expected to go that deeply. Then I'll kind of peek in the file and I see that it's the most brilliant ecosystem map I've ever seen, or it's the most brilliant site map I've ever seen. And I'm going, wow, that might not have been the level of fidelity or how do we kind of roll, right? So sometimes...

It's almost protecting the designers from themselves, which is maybe not the answer you would almost expect, but I think that's a challenge we face often at Fuzzy Math just because we're group of very passionate people. very passionate about design. We're very passionate about making things correct. And sometimes in that passion, we don't always accept the limitations that there are, right? There are risks and limitations to everything we do. Part of the big part of project management, honestly, risk management. And I mentioned it without directly mentioning it, but

There's a level of being able to design, to be able to produce within those confines, whether it be capacity, timeline, know, whatever that may be. I find that that's the hardest challenge just because designers love to design. And so you kind of want to just wheel it in a way that's both client appropriate, but then also allows people to kind of explore and kind of grow too, right? So it's like striking that balance because I think we get interested and learn a lot. I think it's a good thing. It's also just trying to find the balance of

what's exploratory, what's necessary for the project. And maybe, I don't know if you talked about this much in your podcast yet, but what can also be continuing education, right? We do have a lot, and we take pride in us still being learners, right? I love that Fuzzy Math is a true team of learners. So sometimes it's saving designers from themselves, but I'm curious if Madeline has, maybe a different perspective as a design lead, actually, what do you feel like is maybe like the biggest impediment to designers?

Madeleine Byrne (27:32.587)
Yeah, I mean, I think that as designers get more experience within the consultancy environment at Fuzzy Math, like you kind of grow and learn and adapt to what exactly Jaléssa is mentioning that there's always going to be constraints. like Mark, what you mentioned earlier, designer coming out of school, like you always want to go through the process full double diamond, right? Like you want to go through absolutely every step and do it totally right. Do it by the book.

especially the DePaul program I went through is very academic. Like I was writing research papers about user experience. Like it's a very kind of like rude awakening sometimes to get to real projects where there are real constraints. And I think as a design lean, a big part of like managing the team is helping kind of acclimate them to those constraints and focus on value. like focus on what's the most impactful for the client. And I think that's kind of a lens that works well.

Mark Baldino (28:09.4)
You

Madeleine Byrne (28:28.727)
on both sides, right? Like it works well for the clients to get what they really need. Sometimes it's not what they think they need, but what we think that they need and like why they're like here with us is because they think that we have a valuable perspective to give them. So a lot of times they do listen to our suggestion. Same thing on the like designer side and in terms of like framing it in terms of value, it's for its user value, its client value, it's making sure that we're not like doing steps.

to the level of depth that is like more checking boxes than like making an impact, if that makes sense. Because there's reasons for every deliverable in the process. And like, if we all had it our way, I think every designer would want to go through like all the valuable deliverables on every single project. But working within real constraints and limitations is a part of every project, it's a part of every organization. And so making impact is really just more about like, where can we strategically deliver the most value than like,

making sure that we check every box along the way.

Mark Baldino (29:31.5)
Yeah, fair enough. feel like you mentioned this balance of like a value of intent. Everybody at Fuzzy Math wants to do an amazing job and wants to follow the process from start to finish. think I do. I haven't mentioned the point you made, Jaléssa, which is like sometimes we take hours off of client projects and put them in continuing education because the person is learning as they're going or maybe it's taking a little bit more time, but we want to still do the work.

And that's kind of normal, right? I think we have a bucket for continuing education in general, people can put their time towards, but sometimes you do it on project because we want to spend a little bit of extra time. But we're kind of doing it on fuzzy maths, you know, on our side versus passing on to the client. But it is that kind of balance. I think that like we underutilize a tool that we have as designers, which is we can create visuals and...

And I think that the purpose of those visuals, yes, it is to maybe build a digital application, some developers are going to take it and code it. But it's also like alignment. It is taking people from step A to Z or how many steps in the process. And when you start to be able to introduce visuals and you use visuals instead of bullets on a slide, that's really powerful. It creates a visceral response from our clients. First time they see a visual as much as we prepped them for it, that's kind of what they're waiting for.

excited and then they have like so many reactions to it. And we might have done two months of research and discovery work and road mapping and information architecture and site maps. We have this amazing foundation. The second you put color on a digital piece of paper, they have sort of that response. And maybe this is, I don't want to lead the question, but what is like a very common challenge that some of our clients have with like the design process and how do we as like a, as design, as.

project leads as we call it, but people lead design projects. How do we mitigate some of those challenges of maybe it's either just design in general or maybe working with a consultancy. You guys could take it either way. don't know if one of you wants to go first.

Jaléssa Savage (31:31.714)
Hmm, actually, maybe I'll start because maybe it'll feel sort of simplistic, but I think it's kind of a big concept. I think what happens often, folks bring us into the room and they kind of have a mental image or an idea of what they want already. Often they've worked on it internally. Maybe they've talked to Dev. Maybe they have a UX design team. Maybe they don't. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't, but they've seen sketches. They have an idea or some mental model of where they want to go.

that's not maybe necessarily supported by UX itself, right? Maybe it's supported by personal preferences. Maybe it's supported by their Google Drive because they like the way Google is laid out, right? We sometimes get folks who kind of come into the room with preconceptions of what they want. And I think they sometimes have a hard time, I think, breaking from that, especially when we then bring in design that's actually informed by users and in design that's actually infam'd by research or informed by testing. Like sometimes,

It can take a little while to kind of convince them that this may be an alternative. Maybe it's better. It's not, you I think that can also be subjective, right? There's a level of also subjectivity to what we do. What looks good to one person on visual may not look good to another, right? So there's a level of breaking the subjective with the concrete. And I think that transition can sometimes be hard for folks because these products are often like they're babies, right? Sometimes we have...

Product owners who have worked on this one product and have literally like shepherded this project for 10 years, right? Sometimes we have folks who came in 10 months ago. So maybe they're even newer to the project and the ecosystem. So it's sometimes I think anyway, at least objectively from where I sit. And again, I'm not the subject expert at the level where the design is. So Madeline may have a completely different answer, but I often find sometimes we're fighting and have to kind of work our way through using.

our research, our expertise, using their own users even, using their own business cases, using their competitors even, to kind of show them that maybe a different way is possible. And I love where we always land. I think we always land the plane, but that it's always a moment that gets sometimes a little contentious, a little, this doesn't look like. Right, right, but Gmail, Gmail doesn't do this, right? Or that's not what Microsoft Office does, right? So there's a little bit of that.

Mark Baldino (33:42.22)
I don't know what you're talking about. never, I never see any difficulties.

Madeleine Byrne (33:44.185)
Thank you.

Jaléssa Savage (33:51.88)
And sometimes we have to kind of come in and break that. then sometimes, sometimes we go, if that's what you want, we've presented our alternatives. We're also happy to take that into the right. So it's having that balance. And I think sometimes fighting some of the mental models people come in with and it, but also recognizing that this is, think where the piece, the humanist part comes in, right? Folks aren't coming in from a place of stubbornness. They're often coming in from a place of passion. They love this product. They work on this product for a really long time. They, some of them have even built it.

The product has been around for 15 years. I was the dev who made the button square. So how dare you tell me they need rounded edges now, right? Like sometimes you are dealing with a level of sentimentality too. And I think speaking to the humanisticness to our clients even to say, this may bring better value. Hey, let's test this. Let's validate this. Like I think it becomes a more transparent conversation at that point, but I think that's a hurdle when you have a mental image in your mind of what you want this product to be. And maybe our designs show you something a little different, right?

But that's from where I sit anyway. I'm curious about Madeline's perspective.

Mark Baldino (34:51.758)
Yeah, please.

Madeleine Byrne (34:53.431)
Yeah, client challenges. think the point that you brought up, Mark, is great that it is always like, get to first comps. And there's a million questions about things that we've already talked about for two months. And I think that's just like not in a way to like, like make fun of like, people don't get it. But like, there is something like really valuable about having something that you can visually respond to. And then once those questions do come in, that kind of almost

shows the value of the deliverables that led into that because we do a process for a reason. And so like Jalitha was saying, like having the data, whether it's from user research, competitive analysis, heuristic analysis, like it doesn't always have to be user research, although that's like our gold standard speaking to kind of like values and constraints and like what's the most impactful, sometimes it's not possible. So what are those other ways that we can kind of like lay the foundation before we get to that visual point? And then when we have those questions,

and maybe disagreements or points of tension come in, we are like, back up the decisions that we made more than just with like, we thought it looks nice, because that's not what we do. We make decisions based on the data that we have and best practices and kind of our expertise. So I think like, that's typically where we encounter the most friction and the more that we can kind of refer back to those previous deliverables.

I think even if there's a little bit of a gap where clients are not necessarily as invested in the first few slide decks that they're getting, by the time we get to design, kind of like process proves itself a little bit and you can see how everything flowed into the rest of it.

Mark Baldino (36:29.326)
I think it's great advice to go back. We perform the process for a reason. We're advocating for it. Sometimes it's the first time our clients have talked to their users or their customers. And then they're kind of a little nervous about what they're going to hear. And then, oh, OK, FuzzyMask is doing your presentation, or this site map, or ecosystem map. And it's all kind of like, OK, OK, when do we get to design? But this advice for designers and people leading design projects is to go back and connect your future work.

Madeleine Byrne (36:40.079)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Baldino (36:59.502)
the UI with the things you've done in the past. And we ask this question a lot more actually interviewing designers, which is like, what did you learn in the design process that kind of changed your approach that you got there? Or we ask our design team when they're presenting their work, as Jaléssa said, which is, I think, unique specifically for larger agencies. We're smaller and everyone presents their own work all the time. And you have to be able to kind of defend it and describe why you made those design decisions. And I think that can offer lot of clarity to our clients.

move through some bumpy spots. So, okay, I wanna change gears just a little bit for the last few minutes. And we're gonna, I haven't done this on the podcast, so bear with me. We're gonna do some hot takes. The first hot take, and we're gonna go to Madeline, is what is a product or service, can be digital or otherwise, that you've used that you think is in the most need of better UX?

Jaléssa Savage (37:35.27)
Ta-da!

Madeleine Byrne (37:36.815)
Thank

Madeleine Byrne (37:52.541)
my gosh, why'd you make me go first, Mark?

Mark Baldino (37:55.384)
Do want me to switch and go to Jaléssa?

Madeleine Byrne (37:58.827)
Um, oh, I don't know. I didn't think about this one at a time, so I'll to Jaleesa.

Mark Baldino (38:04.174)
All right, Jaleesa, I'm going to do a slightly different take on it. You could cover you. could you can do UX if you want. But I was going to say, like, what do you use? What's a service or a process that you think is in dire need of better?

Jaléssa Savage (38:04.616)
Okay.

Okay.

Jaléssa Savage (38:16.072)
Okay, okay, okay. So the UX UI, I will answer this one only because I think I posted this in Slack maybe a couple months ago. And it's going to sound really innocuous because it is. It was the form that I used to fill out my contact info at my dentist. Okay. I know this sounds odd. It was a form that was asking for demographic information. However, I had to access it on mobile because I'm filling it out in the actual dentist's office.

The way the alignment translated on mobile, the address lines didn't make any sense. I couldn't tell if anything was saved. It was the most horrible user experience. And now as someone who's like attuned into that more, it like sticks out like a sore thumb. Like now I like hate that user experience whenever I, I, I, that was just really terrible form design. And I'm not, you know, shout out to my dentist. Thank you for keeping my teeth clean, but you need a different vendor for your form. that, that's okay. want to, I want it to just, that wasn't a sign. Okay. What part of project management?

Madeleine Byrne (39:01.58)
Hahaha.

Hahaha.

Jaléssa Savage (39:09.37)
Need to rehaul. I could answer this in maybe two different parts, because I think it's on two different ends. I think the beginning part of project process, and by that I mean, it's not just scope definition, right? It's your project charter. How are we working together? Who are the people in the room? Who's, I use racy all the time, who's responsible, who's accountable, who's consulted, who's informed, right?

I think establishing that part in the beginning, understanding a project charter, a working agreement, there are different ways that, you know, people sort of say all these things, but it's more or less saying the same thing. What is our working agreement? How do we want, how do we care to communicate to each other? What are the expectations that are set in the beginning? I think when you set that in the beginning of a project, you are setting your project up for so much success. And I find that often that's the place where project management lacks. And that's where folks tell me, I don't like project management because I've had crazy project managers or

I've had like really crappy project managers and my project was over budget or it never got done. I'm still working on this project for 10 years ago. This product has just been looming over my shoulder. I think it's typically because that first beginning stages of why are we here? What are our goals? What are our KPIs? What are our metrics? Who will be involving in what? What's our resourcing? I think that foundational part of a product is so critical to get everyone aligned.

because then when pivots do need to happen or changes do need to happen, you kind of know where it's happening from. Like where were we and where do we get to, right? And how do we get there and why and at what time, right? So that documentation piece in the beginning, I think it's really critical. And I will say to sort of echo that, I think retrospecting at the end, I don't think enough, I think the retrospectives are really, really critical to a project to really get an idea of what more or less happened. What was the experience of everyone on the team?

The way we retrospect at Fuzzy Math is we kind of have everyone together. have a mirror board, everyone's involved, people kind of anonymously add stickies. We talk about it kind of as a group. the idea is to come up with maybe action items or things of practice to move into future projects, right? So the goal is to become yet more efficient. The goal is to bring up pickups and things that maybe didn't go well or, I mean, even bring up communication styles that we liked or didn't like, right? All the way down. What about the project work?

Jaléssa Savage (41:23.24)
What about the project didn't work? What felt crunchy for people? What are different ways of communication that could have happened? And that to me is so critical, especially in a consultancy standpoint, right? Where projects more or less keep flowing. Sometimes clients come back, sometimes they don't. But what are the lessons that we can learn from this project to apply it to be yet more efficient? So I would almost say the bookends of the project are so critical. And I don't think project management is always best represented there.

Mark Baldino (41:46.594)
need to be there.

Jaléssa Savage (41:51.538)
I will say along the middle, I've seen as a project manager who works with project managers, I've also seen project managers be kind of inattentive and not hold people accountable on their side. So there's definitely some meat in the middle, but I think that beginning and that end are so critical, I think, to true to the practice of project management itself outside of a project by project basis. Like how do we actually improve our PMO? How do we make our project management office strong? How do we make it responsive?

It has to focus on those bookends in my mind. So that would probably be how I answer both your questions.

Mark Baldino (42:22.286)
Perfect. All right, I appreciate that. And Madeline, we given you, have you given enough time to come up with a product or service that needs better UX? What product do you usually just don't like?

Madeleine Byrne (42:32.444)
my gosh.

Mark Baldino (42:37.422)
but you have to use it.

Madeleine Byrne (42:37.987)
I will not put my gym on blast, but I do have a class sign up app for the gym that I go to and I just think it could work so much better. I know it's just like, labeled to their gym, it's non-personal, but I think the whole class sign up process, there's so much unnecessary functionality in there too. think that if I'm thinking about my own day to day, the thing that frustrates me that I use the most is probably that.

Mark Baldino (43:06.414)
All right, I have three more hot takes. They're all yes, agree or disagree. Are we ready? All right. All right. Here we go. Both of you to answer this. User research is often skipped because people don't really want to hear the truth. Agree or disagree? User research is often skipped because people don't.

Madeleine Byrne (43:06.767)
could be better.

Jaléssa Savage (43:11.644)
I'm ready. I'm ready.

Madeleine Byrne (43:11.693)
Okay, ready.

Jaléssa Savage (43:31.112)
I think I'm gonna have to kind of agree. I think I agree a little bit. It's either that or they don't have access to their users. That's the other blocker I often hear. It's like, don't even know who these people are. But yeah, I don't think people like to hear the ugly sometimes. Yeah.

Mark Baldino (43:38.894)
You

Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Baldino (43:47.117)
Madeline?

Madeleine Byrne (43:49.367)
I'm going say disagree. think there's definitely, I've roughly had clients where they're definitely not wanting to hear the feedback from users. Like that's super real. That does happen. But I think more often it's just like not truly understanding the value that that perspective has and then therefore not allocating kind of the resources for it. So more often I think it happens because of a resource history and it gets deprioritized, but it's not because of like a fear. It's just a misunderstanding of the value. That's my hot take.

Mark Baldino (44:18.99)
We're gonna get into some tools. Another hot take. Slack threads are just meetings with worse.

Madeleine Byrne (44:27.995)
my god.

Jaléssa Savage (44:31.016)
Okay, Slack threads are just meeting with...

Mark Baldino (44:36.494)
etiquette. You can disagree.

Madeleine Byrne (44:36.61)
you

Madeleine Byrne (44:41.071)
I'm going to agree. I'm pro meetings. I know we're not always pro meetings, but I like to talk in person.

Jaléssa Savage (44:48.616)
I kind of disagree because I Slack threads can be really good to get quick information across and I'm not as meeting-centric as maybe my co-host over there. I'm a little more like meeting adverse to be honest because I think like if I'm bringing people together, better have a good reason to do so. So I think Slack threads are like really great for getting quick things across. But at the same time, the etiquette part is why I struggled, right? Because threads, you have to like tag people properly.

Madeleine Byrne (44:59.113)
Yeah.

Madeleine Byrne (45:14.383)
Mm.

Jaléssa Savage (45:17.234)
Sometimes a thread should really bounce out to the whole channel. Sometimes, so I struggle with the etiquette part because I do think the etiquette is hard, I'm gonna holistically, I'll disagree if I only get one option.

Mark Baldino (45:30.028)
All right, here's the final hot take. Notion is overrated.

Madeleine Byrne (45:38.093)
I would disagree.

Jaléssa Savage (45:38.243)
Mark Baldino (45:41.122)
I knew you were gonna fall on that. Okay, Jaleesa, Jaleesa.

Jaléssa Savage (45:42.632)
Definitely hard, definitely hard disagree. Hard, hard, disagree. I think notion is actually underrated. I think there's so many ways you can use that tool. But I get that it's getting like a rep because it's becoming like the...

Mark Baldino (45:56.184)
I could have picked either one. I could have said under or over. I picked over. Maybe it was personal bias. I was, the other hot take I was going to ask was favorite founder, but I didn't want to put you all on that. I didn't want you to have to put that on blast. Okay. I just want to say thank you to you both for your time today. It's been lovely to have you on the podcast, to bring people into the world of fuzzy math, to introduce you folks to my listeners. mean, people, clients meet you and you know all the other team members, but you're both

Madeleine Byrne (45:59.924)
Yeah.

Jaléssa Savage (46:00.026)
Yeah, yeah, think it's, think it's, yeah.

Madeleine Byrne (46:07.307)
Hahaha

you

Mark Baldino (46:26.222)
amazing folks to work with and amazing at your job. So it's just great to have you on the podcast and enjoy this conversation. My last question is just, I mean, the purpose of this podcast is for design leadership and we're all in design leadership. Like what's a quick piece of advice for maybe a designer or project manager who's maybe an individual contributor looking to be a lead or maybe just advice in general for people who are in leadership positions.

Either you can go first.

Jaléssa Savage (46:58.01)
Yeah, I would say if I were a PM looking to get into a more leadership role, think where PMs shine is in communication and alignment. So I would center those two things. I think an aligned project is a successful one, right? Even though, even if it has delays, if we're all aligned on those delays, that's success. If it has risks, then we're all aware of those risks and it's all in mind. Like that's success, right? So I think

Alignment and communication are really two hard principles that I try to bring to a project management practice. Because even if we're all aware that something is burning, at least we're all aware. And we know what risks we need to do, and we know how we need to mitigate, and we know what our contingency plans may need to be, right? So alignment and communication are probably, think, really strong pillars of any project management practice. And I would say, and I would maybe add to that a little bit of brevity. PMs need to be short, quick, and to the point.

I think the better you can get at communicating with less words but with more efficiency, I think is another way to kind of stand out in a project management practice for sure.

Mark Baldino (48:01.848)
Thank you for the feedback. Brevity breeds clarity. Okay, Madeline.

Madeleine Byrne (48:07.053)
Yeah, I would say kind of from the angle of a designer looking to move into more of a leadership role is like start where you are, start leading yourself as it were in terms of like, what can I do to get ahead on this next thing? Like, where can I be proactive on this project? Like if there's a particular area of a project that's of interest, like, Hey, I have an idea for this. Do you mind if I try this out? Or I see that this isn't working and I have a couple of ideas of how it could work better. I feel like those

of like proactive problem solving and like thinking like a leader, even if you don't have the responsibilities of managing other people demonstrates that you're already doing it and then kind of makes you more ready for that role.

Mark Baldino (48:48.974)
Fantastic. OK. Thank you all for your time and energy today. It's much appreciated by me and the audience. I people are going to love this little peek into the world of fuzzy math and design leadership. just thanks again. Much appreciated for your

Jaléssa Savage (49:03.42)
Thanks for having us, this was fun!

Madeleine Byrne (49:03.951)
Thanks for having us. Thanks Mark.