Jen Blatz, principal UX researcher at Boeing Employees' Credit Union (BECU), takes us on a journey from journalism to UX design, sharing practical insights from the trenches of financial institutions and animal hospitals. With experience spanning VCA animal hospitals to Capital One to Rocket Mortgage, Jen brings a refreshingly honest perspective on the evolving UX landscape—including what's broken with personas and why the future might look different than we think.

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

Connection, Loneliness, and the Generation Inheriting Our Workplaces with Dr. Anne Gutshall