026: Mastering UX Design Projects With Mary Shaw

Why do some projects seem so freakin' messy!?  Your client has signed the contract. Your scope is clearly laid out before you, and the bright shiny vision of a new project is glistening in the distance. You drive off into the sunset. Cut to half a second later when you've crashed this metaphorical car into the ocean of "to-do" and are desperately trying not to drown.  Maybe you should have had a better map — or a better project process (spoiler alert, I'll always find a way to loop it on back to processes).  In this episode, Mary Shaw dives into the importance of having effective processes when tackling larger projects with more fingers in the pie, how she strategically prioritizes her "to-do", and how to balance family time with consuming projects. Mary Shaw is a UX design consultant with over 20 years of experience in digital design. She's worked on hundreds of web projects for some of the world's largest companies and brands — we're talkin' Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and Conair. She started consulting in 2006 after a career that produced over $5 million in agency and corporate websites, including a website for Dove that receives over 3 million visits during the Super Bowl halftime show. Now, while continuing to be a rockstar consultant, she helps other UXers level up their own business game. You see, Mary Shaw believes content strategy and user experience design (UX) are two sides of the same coin. So, I'm sitting down with Mary to chat about UX design, prioritizing tasks for complex and large projects, and how she organically built her coaching services. Tune in to learn how to: Not crash your metaphorical car into the ocean — by nailing your project processes. Un-messy your projects — by learning how to prioritize your "to-do".  Get closer to that ever elusive "work-life-balance" we keep hearing so much about.  Connect with Mary at maryshaw.net/contact. To sign-up for her online UX career coaching program, click here.  Mary has also shared with us Right Message, an awesome tool for analysing your website visitors so you can curate clear and targeted content for all your digital marketing.