Her background in journalism shapes how she approaches ethnographic observation, whether she's watching veterinarians work with anxious pets or understanding how credit union members navigate digital banking. Jen doesn't shy away from tough conversations about AI's role in research, the limitations of traditional UX methods, or the reality of today's competitive job market.

Currently at BECU, Jen navigates the unique challenge of conducting remote research for a Washington State credit union while being based in Texas herself, highlighting how smaller financial institutions operate differently from big banks with vendor constraints and community-focused approach.

• You can listen here or wherever you get your podcasts: https://www.howthisworks.show/035-jen-blatz
• Or watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/B-uMrQ4d4RQ

Key points:

• Ethnographic observation in unexpected places - Jen shares her early UX experience at VCA animal hospitals, including watching a dog undergo anesthesia for dental cleaning. This field work taught her the importance of understanding real working conditions rather than making assumptions about user needs.
• Financial institutions aren't all the same - Drawing from her experience across banks, credit unions, and FinTech companies, Jen explains how resource constraints and third-party vendor dependencies create unique challenges for smaller financial institutions compared to tech giants.
• The consultancy model reality - Working within Boeing Employees' Credit Union's distributed research team structure, Jen discusses the trade-offs between learning about different business aspects versus sustained project influence — and why this model might be more common than we think.
• AI as assistant, not replacement - From her experiments with ChatGPT and Adobe Firefly, Jen shares practical insights about using AI tools for desk research and image generation while emphasizing the critical need to double-check AI outputs for accuracy.
• Why personas miss the mark - Jen critiques traditional personas for focusing on irrelevant demographic information instead of actionable insights, introducing the Scenario Alignment Canvas (SAC) framework as a more effective alternative that focuses on specific scenarios, goals, and pain points.
• The changing UX job market - Predicting that design system roles may become obsolete as AI tools advance, Jen discusses the trend of UX researchers moving into product owner roles and shares honest advice about building real-world experience in a competitive market.
• Personal branding as differentiation - Currently exploring how to define and build personal brands, Jen emphasizes networking and practical experience over theoretical knowledge as keys to standing out in today's UX landscape.

Jen also touches on the challenges of remote research when you're not physically located where your users are, and how the pandemic shifted both researcher capabilities and user expectations around digital experiences.

The audio and video for this episode has been edited by Gideon Kroutil.

Special Guest: Jen Blatz.

Links:

• BlatzChatz on YouTube
• UX Research and Strategy group
• VCA Animal Hospitals
• Alan Cooper on personas — In this Medium article, Alan Cooper, whom most credit with inventing personas, recounts how he developed the concept starting in 1983 through real-world software design practice, culminating in the goal-directed persona methodology that became widely adopted after his 1998 book "The Inmates are Running the Asylum."
• Personas and Goal-Directed Design: An Interview with Kim Goodwin — In this interview from Center Centre, Kim Goodwin, director of design at Cooper, explains how personas evolved from Alan Cooper's intuitive design process into a research-based methodology that helps teams avoid elastic user problems and design based on actual user goals rather than assumptions.
• Joe Natoli on BlatzChatz
• Jobs-to-be-Done by Tony Ulwick — While Tony Ulwick formalized Jobs-to-be-Done methodology and Clayton Christensen popularized it, the concept builds on foundational thinking from Harvard's Theodore Levitt and has been further developed by practitioners like Jim Kalbach and others in the design community.
• SAC Framework – Scenario Alignment Canvas
• Indy Young's approach, a scenario-focused methodology
• Why you are asking the wrong customer interview questions, on jeans by Teresa Torres
• Michael Margolis from Google Ventures on Lenny's podcast
• The bullseye customer sprint from How This Works co
• Taproot Foundation
• Catch a Fire

Born in Malaysia to Chinese parents, Chui Chui moved to the UK over 20 years ago. Her unique background and global experience inform her approach to cultural strategy. Beginning with mechanical engineering and an unexpected transition through music technology to human-computer interaction, she eventually specialized in international research after conducting user interviews in Beijing for a hotel client.

Over time, her work evolved from pure user experience research to a more holistic approach that considers history, infrastructure, politics, and economic factors when helping businesses enter new markets.

• You can listen here or wherever you get your podcasts: https://www.howthisworks.show/034-dr-chui-chui-tan
• Or watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Q9mC2bykxuo

Key points from the conversation:

• Four-bucket methodology - Chui Chui shares her framework for organizing market knowledge into known facts, strong hypotheses, weak hypotheses, and unknowns when entering new markets. This approach helps align teams and identify critical knowledge gaps.
• Context-specific cultural adaptation - She explains how cultural manifestations differ depending on product context, using her contrasting work with Asana and Spotify in Japan to illustrate how the same users interact differently with different products based on cultural values.
• Cultural frameworks in practice - Chui Chui discusses the strengths and limitations of popular frameworks like Erin Meyer's "Culture Map" and Hofstede's cultural dimensions, emphasizing the importance of practical application over theoretical models.
• Future of AI in cultural strategy - Drawing from her experiments with ChatGPT, Baidu's Ernie, and Inception's Jais (Arabic) to analyze cultural insights, she predicts AI will complement but not replace human understanding of cultural nuances.
• Cross-cultural identity - Reflecting on her own bicultural experience, Chui Chui discusses how individuals navigate multiple cultural identities, noting she can "be more British in certain aspects of my life, and then when it comes to certain things, I'm quite Malaysian or quite Asian."
• Personal philosophy - "Care less about things that are not as important" – Chui Chui's evolving perspective on focusing energy on what truly matters, both personally and professionally.

Chui Chui also shares her fascination with understanding the origins of cultural differences, currently exploring this through reading "Sapiens" by Yuval Noah Harari among others.

You can find Chui Chui at:

• Website: beyo.global
• LinkedIn: Chui Chui Tan
• YouTube: @chuichuitan

The audio and video for this episode has been edited by Gideon Kroutil.

Special Guest: Dr. Chui Chui Tan.

Links:

• "Research for Global Growth: Strategies and Guidance for Cross-Cultural Insights" & "International User Research" by Chui Chui Tan
• Chui Chui Tan on Erin Meyer's 'Culture Map' and other culture frameworks
• The Culture Map by Erin Meyer
• Erin Meyer's tools, including the Country Mapping Tool
• Geert Hofstede's six (6) dimension model of national culture
• Trompenaars's model of national culture differences
• Chui Chui Tan on hospital waiting rooms and business strategy
• ChatGPT
• Baidu's Ernie
• Jais — Jais is an open-source large language model developed in the United Arab Emirates and launched in August 2023. It was trained on both English- and Arabic-language data. Jais is named after Jebel Jais, the highest mountain in the United Arab Emirates.
• Why Gemini, Google’s AI tool, was slammed for showing images of people of color
• DeepSeek
• Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
• Culinary Class Wars on Netflix
• Taiko drumming