Vail Systems’s UX Manager, Josh, partnered with Uxcel to empower his team to hone their UX skills through engagement tracking and team collaboration. Learn how leadership involvement and active participation fostered a culture of continuous learning and growth within an engineering-focused organization.

Meet Josh, UX Manager at Vail Systems

Josh brings a unique blend of collaboration and innovation to his role as UX Manager at Vail Systems. With a career that has navigated through Fortune 500 enterprises, Josh has honed his expertise in making technology accessible and intuitive.  His journey is distinguished by leadership roles that focused on building a design-driven culture and a design-centric process, strategically positioning design teams as a driving force behind the success of technology companies. 

Beyond his direct contributions, Josh's collaborative engagements with industry giants like Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Oculus, and Apple have enriched his understanding of what makes teams and companies thrive. This broad spectrum of experiences inspires his deep appreciation for diverse perspectives and the power of collective effort in driving technological advancement. 

At the core of Josh's philosophy is a commitment to fostering an environment where innovative thinking and outcomes flourish. His leadership at Vail Systems encourages every team member to explore, learn, and contribute to the ever-evolving field of user experience. 

For over thirty years, Fortune 500 companies in financial services, retail and hospitality, software, and wireless communications industries have relied on Vail System's highly scalable, fault-tolerant telephony software services to deliver innovative customer care solutions. These services deliver secure, cloud-based communication solutions that empower businesses to enhance customer interactions and streamline operations. Their expertise includes intelligent network routing, advanced call control, authentication, voice-driven AI assistance, risk scoring, and real-time analytics. This suite of tools helps businesses reduce customer wait times, increase first-call resolution rates, protect sensitive data, and gain valuable insights into customer behavior. Customers can leverage these services directly through Vail Professional Services or build custom solutions. Vail’s unique combination of enterprise-grade security, platform reliability, and wide range of services sets them apart in the industry. 

VailSys Design Team

What were you trying to solve?

Vail Systems has a strong engineering focus, and my goal is to mature the UX practice within a company where engineering is at the forefront. Our organizational structure is distributed, meaning that we have embedded designers and other disciplines like UX Writing that are a part of teams with specific service offerings.

Our team leverages a diverse range of expertise, including UX Design, Product Design, UX Writing, and UI Design. We are working to broaden our capabilities further in research and data insights for increased user behavior understanding. 

To better understand where designers stand at the moment, usually you’re going with an unstructured way of assessing and implementing learning through a variety of platforms like Coursera, Treehouse, Google, and more, and how can I contextualize that to our environment?

I was initially looking into building our own skill map based on the results from the courses and assessments from multiple platforms, and I realized it was biased and too subjective. I wanted to bring a structured and unbiased approach to this, and it led me to Uxcel.

What are the superpowers you have unlocked with Uxcel?

  1. Structured Learning Paths: Uxcel provided a curated curriculum covering a wide array of UX topics, allowing team members to systematically enhance their skills. This enabled the team to obtain 19 UX certificates in under 2 months.
  2. Engagement Tracking: Through Uxcel's engagement tracking features, I can monitor team members' progress, identify areas of improvement, and tailor support accordingly.
  3. Team Camaraderie: Uxcel facilitated a sense of community and collaboration, enabling team members to share their learning achievements and celebrate each other's growth.
  4. Leadership Involvement: I want to lead by example. I actively participated in the learning journey alongside team members to champion the platform's adoption and to show them how digestible the content on Uxcel is and how well it plays with our busy schedules.
  5. Recognition: Achievements and milestones reached through Uxcel were more publicly acknowledged and celebrated, reinforcing a culture of continuous learning, not only within the team, but also within the entire org through leadership meetings and other channels.

See how Vail System’s Design Team Skill Graph improved in 2 months:

Two tips you’d like to share with fellow design managers?

1. Be a Champion, Not just a Manager: Your role extends beyond managing tasks. Actively mentor your team, hold them accountable for their growth, provide them with top-notch resources to excel, and recognize their achievements. 

2. Invest & Engage: Simply providing a tool isn't enough. Learn the platform alongside your team, demonstrating its value. Guide them in applying their new skills to real-world projects and actively create those opportunities for growth. 

Conclusion

Vail Systems successfully implemented Uxcel, enhancing UX maturity within its engineering-focused organization through structured learning paths, engagement tracking, and community collaboration. Leadership involvement and active participation in the learning journey underscored the platform's value, fostering a culture of continuous learning and skill development.