5 Questions with Reynold Kissling, MSPC UX Designer

“UX design reawakened my creativity, passion and gusto.”

Get to know Reynold Kissling, visual artist and musician turned MSPC UX designer.

When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? Why?

I didn’t really know what I wanted to be when I grew up until I was 34 years old. I toyed around with being a visual artist and a musician, but the ever-gnashing jaws of real life pulverized those careers into mush, and they have been relegated to the realm of the weekend warrior. Out of the ashes came UX design, which has rescued me from the doldrums of lousy jobs and half measures and reawakened my creativity, passion and gusto.

Breakfast or dinner? Describe your ideal meal.

Oh man, dinner for sure. Hot take: Dinner for breakfast should be more of a thing, especially if it’s leftovers. On that subject, turning leftovers into nachos is always a great decision.

What has been your favorite MSPC project and why?

It’s been really fun and rewarding working with Pentair to develop the educational and e-commerce hubs for their site, and I think as much of that comes down to our relationship with the client as the work itself (which is also really fun). They are just a joy to work with, have a really great energy and do a fantastic job of implementing our content and wireframes quickly and with a high degree of quality.

Every time we have delivered work to Pentair, they have come back wanting more, and that is the best feeling I think you can have in this business.

What skill, hobby, experience, etc., do you have that would surprise people?

I am a top-level online Sudoku player, with my high score in the top .01% of all players worldwide (sadly, this has not yet made me into a millionaire or an A-list celebrity).

Recommend two or three accounts to follow on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn or your platform of choice.

Baumgartner Restoration is a fantastic YouTube channel that lovingly details the painstaking work of fine art restoration in a way that is witty, fun, relaxing and sometimes pretty surprising.

Jon Bois is ostensibly a sports writer, but his YouTube channel (and various series on SBNation) does so much more. I recommend it to anyone. From his two-hour exploration of the disappearance of the name “Bob” from sports to his thought experiment regarding Barry Bonds playing baseball without a bat, Bois can make any subject—no matter how banal or stupid—utterly fascinating.

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