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The Iowa Idea: Jessi Shakarian
“Tell people what you’re excited about.”
In this episode Iowa Idea Podcast, I’m joined by Jessi Shakarian. Jessi is a developer turned UX designer at DIA Design Guild in Los Angeles, California. She is a UX industry writer and public speaker on usability, design, and chess. Her work has been featured in Prototypr and UX Collective. She also writes for chess publications like Chess Tech News and Chessable. Jessi has built the bridge to the chess industry, where she is a consultant and is working on making chess engines more usable. Jessi is currently writing a book about what chess can teach us about building digital spaces.
Jessi shares her journey from writer and coder, to training to become a med tech assistant to UX designer. Through her interests in information architecture led her to better understand Chess. Jessi’s skills, experience and interests converged as she explores chess and working to make digital chess engines more usable and accessible.
We dig into how working on chess and chess engines and how chess can help us better understand exformation, information architecture, usability, and accessibility. Jessi was so kind to bear with me as I nerded out on what we can learn when we start to explore other systems and how that can help us with better understanding our current system. We also explore the importance of understanding, or at least appreciating context, when it comes to design. Jessi’s experience from chess shows us the importance of reflexive learning and how we might improve our craft. It was an honor and absolute pleasure having Jessi join me on the show. I hope you enjoy the episode.
About Jessi
Jessi Shakarian is a developer turned UX designer at DIA Design Guild in Los Angeles, California. She is a UX industry writer and public speaker on usability, design, and chess. Her work has been featured in Prototypr and UX Collective. She also writes for chess publications like Chess Tech News and Chessable. Jessi has built the bridge to the chess industry, where she is a consultant and is working on making chess engines more usable. Jessi is currently writing a book about what chess can teach us about building digital spaces.
Links
Site: https://www.jessishakarian.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jessishakarian/
Blog: https://jshakarian.medium.com/
Credits
Episode produced by Spark Consulting Group (www.inspiredbyspark.com) in Iowa City, with support from Executive Podcast Solutions (https://www.executivepodcastsolutions.com/).
The Iowa Idea Podcast theme music written and performed by Paisley Bible (https://paisleybible.bandcamp.com/).