About Nir Yuz
Nir leads a team of more than 200 product designers across 40 product groups. He’s in charge of the functional, visual and behavioral quality of all Wix’s products. Before joining Wix in 2011, Nir was the leading interactive designer in Amdocs’s experience design center. He also served for many years as the Vice Chairman of the Israeli Graphic Design Association. You can connect with Nir on LinkedIn.
Rob Goodman:
Hi, everyone. And welcome to Ready for Takeoff, the new micro podcast series from Wix, all about hyper growth. I'm your host, Rob Goodman, Executive Producer for Content at Wix. In each episode, we go deep on one single topic in under 15 minutes, sharing insights and lessons learned from the leaders that built Wix, as we talk about everything it takes to build a world class global organization.
Rob Goodman:
Today, we have Vice President of User Experience at Wix, Nir Yuz. Nir leads a team of more than 200 product designers in 40 different product groups around the world. Nir shares with us more about the matrix structure at Wix and the benefit it has in blending teams together to create better products. And you'll hear Nir describe guilds, which are the shared service organizations within Wix, like design, writing and UX, and companies, which are how we describe our individual product units like Editor X, Velo and eCommerce. Now, let's hear from Nir.
Rob Goodman:
And so, what is the secret sauce in terms of keeping the work very high level, keeping the systems aligned for the UX Guild, while folks are embedded across the companies? How do you straddle that they're really aligned and they're really honed in on the product and the companies they're working on, but they still are connected, and they're still driven in this centralized guild?
Nir Yuz:
The secret thing is to find the fine line of the ultimate balance between the company and the guild because we are a company first. People are always part of a company. They also have these disciplines that they relate to. And I think, first and before all, as always, is to bring the best people around and the top professionals that can do it and feel part of these two worlds. But the first two minutes when we discussed this model, I was really frightened and worried, to tell you the truth, because I thought, "How can I enforce quality and consistency?" But when you have strong people that really act, not as a service provider, but as actual partners in the companies, we have many things to gain from because then, as your UX designers, by the way, as many other disciplines, you know more about this specific domain, and you can specialize also in your discipline, but also in this specific domain.
Rob Goodman:
The surprising benefit that came out of this new structure: Nir found that his designers became more like partners on the products they worked on and less like service providers.
Nir Yuz:
I think the two main benefits that we get, back to the guilds, from the companies, are first and before all, the ability to learn from other disciplines as well. When UX sits next to a front end developer, so he knows more about the velocity, knows more about dev costs. And when UX sits next to a PM, he knows more about the business, same as front end developers and product managers that sits next to the UX, care more about pixels, know about user pains and care more about the quality.
Nir Yuz:
So again, the company structure allows us to create those connections, which is super important also on the professional level, but maybe even more on the personal side, because, UX and product and developers and other disciplines work together since day one, they have one goal altogether, they sit together and they are going to drink together, they are going to parties together, and I think it's super important. So, if the UX and the developer will work together since day one, as it happened in Wix, so for sure they will care more about the pixel and for sure the UX will be more technical and understand better the cost and optimize together the velocity and bring first value to our users.
Rob Goodman:
It was so great to hear from Nir about how blending teams and disciplines can lead to better relationships, better collaboration and ultimately better products for users, too. Now is a great time to think about how you are going to bring down those walls within your organization to build something better.
Rob Goodman:
Ready for Takeoff is brought to you by Wix. Now, if you don't know about Wix, we're the all-in-one platform for running your business online, trusted by over 210 million people around the world. With Wix, you get incredible security, reliability, performance and SEO, no matter the kind of business you run or the size. With Wix, anything is possible. So visit wix.com to start building and growing your business today.
Rob Goodman:
Thanks so much for listening. You can find more episodes and information on our website at wix.com/readyfortakeoff. Ready for Takeoff is hosted and produced by me, Rob Goodman, at Wix. With production by Lindsay Jean Thomson at Wix. Audio engineering and editing is by Brian Pake at Pacific Audio. Music is composed and performed by Kimo Muraki. Our Executive Producers from Wix are Susan Kaplow and me, Rob Goodman. We'll see you next time.
