Anoop Jayakumar
Experience & Research Leader
A driven UX and Product Strategy leader with extensive senior-level experience in shaping teams and strategies across various industries. Proficient in managing large-scale design transformations, aligning product design with customer experience excellence, and implementing innovative systems and methodologies. Recognized for securing substantial budgets and pioneering groundbreaking redesigns tailored to diverse market demands. Eager to contribute strategic vision and elevate design standards in my next role.
Educational Background:
Work Associations:
Quotes:
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Value needs to be created before it can be captured
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To a person with a hammer, everything looks like a nail
In the next page, you can find a couple of personal stories that shaped my life for which I am incredibly thankful for!
Story 1 - How I got into UX
As someone who got into the mechanical engineering program with close to the top of the class rank, I would have expected smooth sailing. During the engineering entrance my only objective was to get to the best college in my home town and I was going to make any discipline work. That wasn’t the case, as I quickly figured I wasn’t a natural fit for that type of engineering, nor was I very keen to learn and excel in the field. Back in that time in India, its not very common to switch fields, and there is tremendous social pressure if you are seen as someone who doesn’t excel in what you do. I was however interested in the design aspect. I scraped through, but I knew that it wasn’t going to cut as a career.
It was at this point that I found out about the discipline Human Factors. It was engineering enough, yet not. It was all about designing for the human machine systems which I was closely drawn to. That decision to go to Clemson to do graduate degree Human Factors was the single most defining thing of my career. I was acquiring many skills, while not knowing at the time, that it can prepare me for any eventuality - intrapreneurial or entrepreneurial.
What are those skills?
1. The single most defining factor whether a product succeeds or fails may be 'product to market fit'. But what is product to market fit without empathizing with your users?
2. Businesses that start up needs to spend less money, and get higher value, pivoting fast. The discipline gives you an array of tools that will help you do just that successfully, and with conviction
3. User Experience affords both system thinking and minute details, and gives an intuitive understanding of customer psychology. This helps one take a 30000 feet view of the world and yet zoom in on the pixel.
Ever so thankful to have practiced this for the most part of my career. Take away from this? I feel investing fully in something you do (whatever it may be), may prepare you to excel in something completely different, in your own unique way.
Story 2- Stanford LEAD - New skills, & fresh perspective
Then I stumbled on some posts by someone on LinkedIn about how great this Stanford program was, and there were few other posts I saw as well. I looked it up, and knew this is what I wanted to do. I joined the program in March 2020 and rest is personal history. While being able to balance my life, I added many new skills that again would help me build on my already strong core. The new skills helped me confidently articulate my plans for building and scaling a practice in clear terms business leaders understood, helping me land my current job as the leader of the research practice at my employer. It continues to help me do my job well, and improve every day.I have no doubt in my mind that it will help me prepare for many more work challenges in the future, the way it prepared me for my current challenge. Hence I plan to continue this path as long and far as it takes me. Take away from this? Education is the biggest form of wealth one could accrue.
I knew I needed to do something to reinvigorate my career. I knew that there isn’t another field I wanted to practice. I also knew that I was not nearly learning as much at the current role though the work was extremely varied and challenging. I knew I had to think creatively. My younger one was 2 years of age, so I knew I had to balance anything I do with the time I spend at home. This automatically eliminated a flight on every weekend plus spending the entire weekend away. This was a major factor for me as I was considering the McCombs program at UT Austin.
Contact
If you'd like to get in touch with me for speaking engagements or otherwise, I feel linked-in is the best way. Please feel free to drop a note or a connection request with the note in your message body. Alternately you can fill out the contact form.