Russ Unger
Russ Unger
Chief Experience Officer @ Agile Defense
Russ Unger is an experience design leader who has built teams across enterprise, government, and private organizations. He is also a coauthor of the book Liftoff! Practical Design Leadership to Elevate Your Team, Your Organization, and You for Rosenfeld Media and A Project Guide to UX Design, Designing the Conversation, and Speaker Camp for New Riders (Voices That Matter).
Russ Unger is an accomplished author and speaker in the field of User Experience (UX) design, with a focus on empowering design leaders, providing guidance on UX design methodologies, and emphasizing the importance of facilitation and collaboration.
It Took 6 Months to Build an iOS App in 6 Days
Every "I built this in a day with a magic prompt" story has a backstory people leave out. The hype cycle rewards the hustle and glosses over the hard work it takes to build something with care.
I had six months of experimentation: RSS feeds, dashboards that collected cobwebs, email newsletters that went unread. Then, while tinkering with text-to-speech, a podcast happened. That's when inspiration snuck up and socked me right in the face.
I pulled together the pieces of every failure, and 6 days later, an iOS app was live. The lede is buried on purpose: the magic wasn't in the six days. It was in the six months.
Designers who feel behind in this moment will share the experience of someone who has felt behind the entire time, still does, and found out none of us are alone in that feeling.