

The technology industry today has job titles that you don’t really find anywhere else. User experience, or “UX”, is one of them. It seems like every tech company is hiring in “UX design” and “UX research”, but it’s hard for outsiders to know what exactly it is that they do.

For today’s episode of Inside Jobs I sat down with Sarah Harrison, who has built her career in UX at a number of key tech companies including TaskRabbit, Tokbox, and Daptiv. Today, she is the head of UX at e-commerce startup True&Co. Harrison provided us with a very human look inside what her work life is like — the path that brought her here, the tools she uses everyday, and how she tackles the big and small problems that arise.

UX design sounds like an incredibly tech-oriented and modern field, which it is. But Harrison says that at its core, her job is about understanding people and how they think. She told me:

“Somebody said, ‘Anybody who approaches a project with the intent of understanding what the user is going to do is a designer.’ I really like that… Even when I went to college, I actually majored in psychology at first. Which is really interesting now that I know what I do now. Because there is absolutely a psychological element to it.”

You can get an inside look at Sarah Harrison’s job by watching the video embedded above.

Inside Jobs is a 12 episode miniseries from TechCrunch TV airing weekly on Mondays from March 24 through June 9 that gives an in-depth look at people in the job roles that really make the tech industry tick. Last week’s episode of Inside Jobs profiled Medium’s product scientist Pete Davies.

All shooting, editing, sound, and lighting for Inside Jobs is done by John Murillo. Production coordination and creative direction is done by Felicia Williams. Original logo design by Bryce Durbin. Motion graphics and graphic design by Eden Soto.