10- Jonathan Courtney @AJ&Smart: UX has become a commodity

Jonathan Courtney is a co-founder of AJ&Smart, a design sprint agency based in Berlin, which has worked with companies like Lufthansa, Slack, Google, Lyft, Bose etc. 

He is a host of The Product Breakfast Club podcast with Jake Knapp, author of Design Sprint. In one of the podcasts, Jonathan explained why he thinks the golden age of UX is over and what designers should do to stay relevant. Answer: learn business, of course. 

In this episode we spoke about:

• three business skills that designers have to learn to design better (and get ahead in career)
• why Jonathan loves panic learning, 
• how AJ&Smart launched online course on design sprint and generated €60k in pre-orders. 

Show notes:

• 2:15 How did Jonathan get into design? 
• 7:20 Jonathan's panic learning
• 9:55 How AJ&Smart started? 
• 14:00 The golden age of UX is over
• 18:50 Three business skills important for designers to master (product strategy, growth, marketing)
• 27:00 How can fluency in "growth" help designers on projects?
• 32:50 How do designers do good for business and users? 
• 38:20 How does Jonathan learn about client's business? 
• 40:30 AJ&Smart's online course on design sprints and how it generated €60.000 in pre-orders