Austin, March 18th, 2020

For any agency, either small or large, technology is a key area of their work. But for a global agency as frog, serving clients worldwide, it has become essential. frog employs today over 500 people in North America, Europe and Asia, and celebrated last year its 50th anniversary, always focused on creating digital experiences for consumers and businesses.

Jona Moore is frog’s Global Vice-President of Technology, a position she has held for almost a year after a long career at the agency. She works with designers and clients to push the boundaries, using innovative technologies to come up with creative solutions – including mobile, blockchain and e-commerce.

In this interview, Jona walked us through her award-winning career and described her current role at frog, looking at how the agency is leading in technology.

What makes Austin an attractive place to work?

It has a great artsy local feel mixed in with some seriously strong tech talent. The city is not too big but there are so many great restaurants, outdoor places, and lots of interesting events always going on. The best part is the people of Austin are very warm and welcoming.

Tell us about your personal journey. How did you find yourself leading Technology at frog?

I started my career as a developer and QA in Canada for a large bank. In 1999, I moved to Seattle and got into technology consulting. At one of my first clients, I worked as a developer on one of the first electronic court records system for King County. I saw battered women in long lines waiting to get their court case for domestic abuse cases. As we were designing and architecting the system, I realized what a huge impact technology could have on people’s lives if we made the process more efficient and easier to use. So we did, and we were able to reduce the time that people got their cases filed. To this day, I am still very proud of that work.

Since then, I’ve sought out working on projects with companies that use technology to solve real human problems and create a better customer experience. In 2007, I moved to Austin Texas and worked at Razorfish as a Technical/Solution Architect. The busy agency life really started to expose me to design and how fast you need to deliver technology for Fortune 500 clients.

As I got more exposure to the design world, I started to look for something more. Technology can be a powerful tool to solve problems, but it can’t solve human problems alone or in isolation. You have to use tech that aligns with business strategy, and you have to use tech in a way consumers will respond to. And working at a place like frog helps you see that tech is an important part of a larger story that also includes design and strategy.

frog’s breadth of work across industries has really allowed me to grow into a more strategic leader by giving me access to diverse and complex problems.

What’s the biggest misconception people have on being Global Vice President of Technology?

My job is not just about technology. My job is more about supporting people: my teams, my clients, and their customers. Every day is about getting roadblocks out of the way. Ensuring frogs are empowered and supported to deliver the best customer experience for our clients. It could be technology, IT, operations, resources, planning, design feedback or just moral support. That is how clients succeed and make an impact.

In which ways do you believe frog separates itself from such a crowded sector?

Human-Centered Design (HCD) is the key to truly disruptive digital products. But with that, we know that it has to be paired with business strategy to make a true business impact. We know this, because we’ve been helping our game-changing clients do it for the last 50 years. From our earliest days teaming up with the likes of Sony and Steve Jobs to our most recent with the new ride hailing company, Alto. We have made it our business to always keep people at the center of everything we do. We encourage our clients to build the right thing, which more often than not, is the lasting thing, the more disruptive thing, and the more profitable thing.

Based on your experience, can you provide some examples in leading technology discipline?

Leading the technology discipline means adapting our business offerings, constantly evolving the technologies we use, and growing our talent and skills to meet market needs. At frog, I’ve had to constantly work to evolve the growth of the team based on market changes.

I first came to frog to help start the solution architecture practice to help grow our technology consulting skills. After my first two years, I realized that we needed to refine our approach on how we captured business and technology requirements. We added the experience analysts’ team to the technology discipline. With an emphasis around the needs of client’s digital product needs and OKRs, we’ve adapted that to now have the Product & Experience delivery team. They are now responsible for refining our process of DesignOps, ProductOps through DevOps.

What truly impressed me when I first arrived was frog’s design technologists. They are these technologists with a passion for design who never say no to making crazy never been done user experiences. I never would’ve imaged the frog + SFMOMA Augmented Reality experience. It is an example of work that has blown my mind.

I have seen our clients change from a focus on web technologies, to native mobile, to IoT, to drones, to data science, to AR/VR, to connected environments, to edge computing…. With so many changes, our team has had to constantly stay on top of learning new technologies. Being a technology leader at frog has been a humbling, learning experience.

What is the biggest challenge when it comes to growing projects?

For many of our large clients, we have to help them pivot and change their business and technology to stay relevant and compete with fast moving startups. I created the frog solution architecture team so that we could bring client technology teams earlier into the design process. For example, for one large national bank, we initially faced pushback from the large IT organization as we were envisioning possible new customer experiences for the next 3-5 years. They didn’t believe they could change. Our frog team had to brainstorm ways we could get them to think differently.

We pulled in the CTO and his team into collaborative workshops and split them into two competing startup mixed in with frogs. We asked, “How would they bring these ideas to life? What technologies could they use?”. They had to take a venture mindset and pitch their solutions to their executives. After a few weeks, we took the work and helped them create the technology roadmap for their future. Two years later, they have delivered on several of those ideas and are considered one of the leaders in delivering customer experience in financial services.

How do you use data during the design and development of a project?

Data is an essential component to our design and product development process. As part of our design research process, we look at and analyze data to understand behaviors, analytics and usage to find patterns, trends, and opportunities. This also helps create intelligent experiences. We have an Applied Data practice where our technologists and data scientists are exploring and building experiences with Trusted AI, emerging technologies such as voice, connected environments, and blended intelligence. We are always learning and refining from data as we validate our ideas and user experiences with customers.

Can you outline the three most crucial skills any innovation specialist should possess?

Curiousity, Empathy, Determination.

What advice would you give to the next generation of female technology leaders?

Take the time to support, mentor, and grow the people around you. Take a chance on hiring people who may not have the best resume but have the best work ethic. I’ve only gotten to where I am because of the people and teams that have worked alongside of me. Many of the best people I’ve work with today are people I built strong relationships and trust with over the past few years. It’s not the projects and the work that have made my career, but the amazing people who I’ve gotten the opportunity to learn and grow from.

Can you name a fun-fact people would be surprised to learn about you?

I played on my college badminton team.

Is there a question you wish people would ask you more often?

What I really think about the Game of Thrones ending.

What do you like doing in your free time?

Family movie night on the couch.

Can you name the global issue you are most passionate about and why?

Climate change. I grew up in beautiful British Columbia, Canada playing in large old growth forests, camping and fishing. I have a six-year-old son who I take traveling with me. It saddens me that when he is my age, he and his children may never get to experience that.

Thanks Jona!

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