Interview with Wojtek Chojnacki

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Table of contents

  1. How did your journey in the UX universe begin? What sparked your interest?
  2. How did you get involved in UXalliance? What benefits do you get from an international alliance?
  3. Why do you think it is relevant for a person to become UX-PM certified?
  4. What is the first thing you tell new colleagues? What advice would you give to someone who is interested in this certification?
  5. How do you see the future of UX in the business world?

UXalliance is an international network of leading User Experience (UX) companies. We help global organizations create better international products and services by providing them with local research, knowledge and design.

Our alliance is made up of professionals from different countries, industries and specialties. In this opportunity we introduce Wojtek Chojnacki, Strategy Director at Symetria UX, Poland.

For 16 years, Wojtek has been working as Researcher, Experience Designer and Experience Strategy Consultant for brands such as Orange, Santander Bank, LexisNexis and many others. As co-creator of UX-PM Certification and UXalliance Design Maturity Model, his strongest focus is on empowering organizations to boost their design maturity.

In this interview we ask Wojtek to tell us about his academic journey, his specific experiences and his immersion in the UX universe.

How did your journey in the UX universe begin? What sparked your interest?

During my university degree almost 20 years ago, I was looking for a way to act between business and IT in a meaningful way. I started my internship at Symetria and dived into the works of Jakob Nielsen and Steve Krug. So it all started with Web Usability for me.

How did you get involved in UXalliance? What benefits do you get from an international alliance?

As Symetria, we joined in 2009 looking for interesting projects and international credibility. We received much more. I think what’s unique in UXalliance is the combination of international knowledge, business collaboration and friendship. We have common business goals, yet we are all separate companies, free to learn, develop and share their own way. We operate on many different markets and yet UXalliance is our platform to achieve the best quality and know-how. We work on complex projects for the biggest brands and yet we are all geeks who love UX as a concept. On top of that, we’re just friends who trust each other and have a lot of fun together.

Why do you think it is relevant for a person to become UX-PM certified?

UX field has many possible expert roles you can pursue, but any expert can only do as much without having the right impact on business.

The goal of the UX-PM program is to maximize that impact by building design maturity and design culture in your organization. UX-PM alumni are more confident how to create customer value and business value at the same time.

What is the first thing you tell new colleagues? What advice would you give to someone who is interested in this certification?

There is no point in building walls between departments and roles and taking the “us vs them” stance. The job of UX/design leaders is to grow design maturity in every team. If your organization gets closer to users, everyone wins (and your career benefits, too).

How do you see the future of UX in the business world?

I believe that design disciplines such as UX, CX, Service Design, Design Thinking and User-Centered Design can act together in the same direction and be a strong driving force for many organizations.

Digital transformation is the big buzzword today, but in many cases it is missing the human element and business value is lost because of that. I think a “design transformation” movement is coming to fix this. This is why I believe initiatives like our UXalliance Design Maturity Model and UX-PM Certification are so important.

Wojciech Chojnacki

Strategy Director, Symetria UX

Wojtek is co-managing Symetria UX, the most experienced UX agency in Poland. He worked as researcher, experience designer and experience strategy consultant for brands such as Orange, Santander Bank, LexisNexis and many others.
He has 10+ years of experience in UX training, including short courses, e-learning and postgraduate academic programs.
Focused on empowering organizations to boost their design maturity, Wojtek is the co-creator of UX-PM Certification and UXalliance Design Maturity Model.

Check the training

UX-PM Level 1

Adopting UX

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