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Luke: Today we're talking about 'How to Get an Awesome UX Job'—finding job opportunities,
crossing over from another position, portfolios and job interviews, and generally how to get started in UX.
My name is Luke Chambers. I'm one of the co-founders of UX Mastery. We're based in Melbourne, Australia,
where it's currently a cool, overcast 9am Sunday morning. I've got a little croak in
my throat so apologies in advance about that. And sitting not too far away from me with
his sketchpad and pen is my co-founder Matt Magain. How are you today, Matt?
Matt: I'm good. I've got my coffee, I've got my sketchpad. We're going to try this little
experiment. I'm going to sketch note our webinar. If I'm a bit distracted in the conversation
it's because I'm trying to do several things at once but that's okay. It's all good, we'll
see how it goes, if it's too hard we'll can it for next time, but it should be fun.
Luke: Very good. And we're also very lucky to have with us today Patrick Neeman, all
the way from Seattle. How are you Patrick?
Patrick: Pretty good. Getting over a cold and enjoying the Seattle rainy weather but
yeah, I'm fine.
Luke: Lovely. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Patrick: So my name is Patrick Neeman, I'm a Director of Product Design in a company
called Apptio. We help companies manage their IT spend - you know, companies like
American Express, Starbucks, Amazon, Microsoft - pretty big companies. A couple of companies before that
I worked at a company called Jobvite, I was Director of UX there.
Jobvite is a company that provides an applicant tracking system so we interviewed
over 100 recruiters and hiring managers during my time there, so we completely understand
the hiring process, and I got to talk to a lot of really cool UX types while I was working there.
Luke: Very good, so you have a lot of good experience of both sides! You also run the
uxdrinkinggame.com...
Patrick: That is correct, I actually run two things . I actually run something called Usability
Counts, it's a blog that has over 45,000 words of advice about being in the UX field, and
I run the UX Drinking Game, which recently was featured in Pragmatic Marketing - which
is a product management training webinar and event company.
Luke: Excellent. Alright, lets kick on into some questions now.
Just over a week ago UX Mastery launched community forums at community.uxmastery.com, and we've
been having some great conversations in there, some people asking questions they'd like answered
in today's webinar. So a big thank you to all who submitted questions - there are some
great questions in here. I've got the list in front of me and we'll go through them with Patrick.
If you've got a question about landing a UX job you'd like Patrick to help with, then
you should be able to submit it in your GoToWebinar control panel. We'll see it and get to them
after we've done these ones that have already been submitted.
So Patrick, the first one here we've got from Armen. Armen is asking:
"How can I increase my job opportunities when I live in an area where there is no study
or work opportunities for a UX specialist? I've had some success writing on medium.com
and some other sites, but what else can I do for my career?"
Patrick: Basically the first question I'll ask is where do you live? The second question
is there are a lot of areas in the US where they don't have UX specialist roles and what
I encourage designers to do, is do a lot of UX activities as part of their design process
with customers.
There's nobody telling you that you can't do personas, you can't do usability research,
you can't run focus groups, you can't do wireframes - you just go ahead and do it, and then when
you get to the next client you say 'hey, this is the work that I did for this one client'
and you actually use it as part of your portfolio.
One of the examples I use that is really relevant in my life is last weekend we participated
in an event called Start-up Weekend here in Seattle and we actually went through the process
of building a whole prototype, including an imminent, is there a place where I can type
this URL? (I'm going to go ahead and put it in the chat window)
Matt: I'll go ahead and write the URL in this window, Patrick.
Patrick: Yeah, so we went through the whole process of doing a prototype, we did a presentation,
we were competing against ten other start-ups and we won the design portion and all the
designers that I brought along to the event they're using it in their portfolio to say
'hey this the UX work that I did, that we did. We did research, we did some usability
testing—it was a lot of fun'.
Luke: I think Armen is in Armenia.
Patrick: Yeah, do side projects too. Side projects are awesome for doing stuff like this.
Luke: Excellent, second question is from Carrie:
"I am currently working as the only developer on a web project. I'm finding the experience
terribly lonely, isolating and becoming increasingly depressed especially as I do not have anyone
to bounce ideas off and lack of understanding from fellow colleagues leads to the assumption
that my work is easy or they could do better."
[Laughing]
Patrick: Our work is so easy...
Luke: Have you had a similar experience and how important do you think it is to be able
to share ideas?
Patrick: Yeah it's really, really important to share ideas, there's this wonderful thing
called Twitter where you can go ahead and follow a whole bunch of designers and they're
all over the world, and I actually do this a lot and they reach out to me for Skype calls
and we share the work that we're doing and we get feedback it's like we're using the
usability test and it's very, very powerful.
Most designers are very introverted because of the emotional nature of our jobs and that
is one outlet they can do to kind of do that, another thing that you can do is once you
get on Twitter, once you get a start point of meetups you can actually invite designers
out for coffee. I actually lived right above a coffee place and so we're there all the
time probably like once a week or once every couple of weeks. At the moment, I'm meeting with a designer, we're talking
about our work and really exploring the kind of design work that we're doing.
Luke: Very good. Another question, this one from Cassandra:
"I've been attempting to break into a UX designer position for a few years now (I have a few
years of web design and front-end dev). Available positions are for mid-level or senior UX designers.
If I can't afford UX schooling and have limited UX experience,
what's the best course to breaking into this career?"
Patrick: That's a really, really tough one. I just recently hired a junior designer at Apptio
and he had a really-really good mind for UX and his vision on stuff was great, and we're
actually training him. He was lucky because he found an opportunity where he can get on
to a bigger team and actually learn from some other people. That would be the first thing
that I would say - look for companies that might have junior people or junior positions
open. I know that's kind of hard.
Another way that you could do it, you can reach out to other designers that are more
senior than you, do side projects or do other work and then show them your work and it's
almost as good as working with them directly. And another thing is like, another way that
you can do that is if you have web development, I was looking at the CF web design experience,
what you can do is go somewhere and use those skills, go somewhere they already have a senior
designer working, and say 'hey, these are the skill sets that I have. I want to work
with this designer, I'll do this web development and design stuff for a while but I really
want to pick up the interactions design', that's the way that most junior designers
did and broke into the field.
Matt: So Patrick, kind of off the back of that, if you don't have a visual design background
is that a hurdle for people, do you think?
Patrick: I actually don't. One of the prototypers I have at work, he has a background in infomatics
which is basically the, and I'm doing some quotes here, "product management" degree at
the University of Washington and so he's a programmer and he has an interaction design
background and so he's been real instrumental in helping us create a prototype for the company.
And I actually value that skill set a lot because he thinks of a lot of things that
we don't think of, because we're designers and we don't totally get involved in all the technology.
Luke: That's a good point.
Luke: I've got a question here from Pietschy—he says:
"I started life in a BA role, and later moved into development. Recently I did a solo job
designing and building an in-house system for a small business where I particularly
enjoyed getting back into requirements analysis, wireframing etc. I'd like to do more of this
kind of work, do you know if there's much of a market in the UXD world for back-office
business systems? Or does the money tend to go to customer facing products?"
Patrick: Oh this is great, this is an awesome question!
Where I work at is heavy-heavy enterprise, it's IT spend, it's B2B, if you find the right
companies it's a huge market from two perspectives.
The first perspective is they're always looking for people that understand this is the business
system because they're a lot more complex than developing say an iPhone app.
And the second thing is—and this is the story that I tell people just me being an
enterprise—it's literally 20 years of job security. As technology improves and as the
products improve, the younger generation is actually expecting more products that work
like an iPhone or iPad and so having a great user experience designer on staff is very,
very important.
Does that make sense? Basically like the upper management I work with they are basically
saying we know that you have to have the backup thing, but they also realize that a great
user experience also sells the product.
Luke: Yeah...
Patrick: And that's going to increase the demand for people like us, which is great.
The pay is awesome.
Luke: Yes can be very good. And we've got a few more questions coming in now, we've
got one from Tim, who says:
"I'm just starting out with UX conducting focus groups, doing usability testing and
now creating personas, do you have any examples of a good portfolio design?"
Patrick: There's actually... I'm going to type it into the window
and you guys can move it across...
Matt: I can put it on the sketch here.
Patrick: Yeah, so there's this one portfolio that I point people to. Laurie, she's an assistant
designer that I mentored, now working for Amazon Lab 126. One of her portfolio pieces
tells this great story about how they went through all the research and she talked about
personas, and she did all the stuff and it was a three-day project, and it tells an amazing story.
Luke: There's a lot of information about UX portfolios online. UX Mastery has just published
an eBook about Getting Started in UX, and part of the bundled bonus extras with the
eBook is a portfolio template and a resume template. That resume template is actually
Patrick's one. Go head and tell us a little bit more about what went into that, Patrick.
Patrick: As for the resume template, that was something that I actually developed when
I was working at Jobvite, about 6 years ago. We went through some layoffs and I realized
that my resume was horribly out of date and so I had a copywriter re-write it, and so
when I got to Jobvite - which is an applicant tracking system - I actually tested my template
through Jobvite over and over and over again until I got to a format that I knew that worked
perfectly in most applicant tracking systems. I also did, quote, usability testing, quote,
on showing it to recruiters and everything and the template basically states 'hey this
what I did at a job and then these were the goals that I achieved'. For example, if you
worked at a job like an e-commerce site and then you can talk about how you increased
the shopping cart conversion by 5%, that's the kind of stuff that recruiters are looking for.
Luke: Excellent, excellent. We've got a few more questions rolling in from the forums.
'UXer' asks:
"Why all of a sudden does everyone want to be in UX, is it because they want to be in
technology, but don't want to learn code? Did it somehow become trendy?"
[laughing]
Patrick: Should we describe what UX is, to start the discussion?
Luke: Sure, let's go!
Patrick: So the way that I interpret UX myself is it's an overarching discipline that includes
design, content strategy, visual design, front-end development and then the research. There's
a couple of others in there, like information architecture, so it covers a lot of ground
so when you have a UX team and you look at the people in the room like at Apptio, 'right,
how did these people ever get into the same team?' I have the most it's not like a whole
bunch of product managers sitting around, it's like literally 'wow, they all have very
different skill sets', it's like 'how do you manage that?'
I think the main reason why people got into it is because of Apple. The iPhone is a wonderful
product, and people think: "Oh, I want to develop iPhone apps for that." What they don't
realize when they get into UX, you don't start off and get the creative product. You have
to collaborate with a whole bunch of different groups of people and the right product managers
and developers and they don't realize and they think they're going to be able to design
a product on their own, what it really comes down to is you don't actually design the product,
you facilitate the design. Does that make sense?
Luke: I think that is exactly what this person is asking - they can make the connection between
the business strategy and the design team to provide value to the customer. And hence
the expression of "facilitation", as you say.
Patrick: Yeah! On that note what I like is—a lot of the products I worked on in front of
millions of people. Like, I was doing some work at Microsoft with the potential to affect
half billion people, and that was a huge driver for why I like being in this field.
Matt: Jeff Gothelf, who wrote the Lean UX book, talks about that exact point too. He
talks about how one thing we need to learn as designers is that we are design facilitators
and that everybody has valid input to influence the design, and we need to be prepared to
create and instill a process where that collaboration and that input is synthesized and you end
up with the 'synergy' of the team you're willing to use, to use a buzz word, yeah, to end up
with a great result.
Patrick: Yeah it's really hard to create a design culture. Creating the right environment
where that collaboration actually respects our roles is really, really hard and what's
really hard about that is that a lot of other people think that, they think that everybody
can be a designer and they don't understand that a lot of us have spent years and years
of beating our heads against the wall to really understand what UX is.
Matt: And so on that point, 'cause that is something that I've really struggled a lot
with in big enterprise clients and that's the idea of championing and justifying and
selling user experience as a valid focus.
What has been your experience with that problem and how did you overcome it?
Patrick: It really depends I mean having a design-influenced culture is really top down
and what you do is you have to start pounding their head more with data. Like, where I work
now we're starting to get into data-driven design. We're collecting immense amounts of data on
how our customers use the product but yet nobody had bothered to analyze it and so one
of the things we've been working over the past two weeks hey we have all this amazing
data once they saw it like the light bulb totally turned on, where you illustrate a light
bulb and now they realize it, instead of just doing a lot of guessing. Asking the customers
what they want now, we know what they're using, and that totally transforms the conversation.
Many companies never get to a design influence culture and then it hurts their bottom line.
Matt: Sorry to hijack the question thread, it's a little selfish of me, but I'm really
interested in this stuff because I've had those jobs. So for your career is it best
if you're in that situation where you're in an organization and you see they don't get
it and you're not, you know, an organisational change consultant—you're an UXer. Should
you acknowledge there is only so much you can do and cut your losses and find a work
environment where you can thrive and learn? Part of the stubborn consultant in me wants
to say "no, I can change this place, I can really make a difference here".
Patrick: That's actually a really good point. I've been in places, I've been presented with
situations fairly recently where we've had consultants in there and literally change
doesn't happen overnight, like they're being a UX consultant but they're like two different
approaches. Being a UX consultant you're there to say "hey, there are obviously things that
are going wrong, there are some areas you can fix" (I'm moving my hands around) but
when you're in-house that change comes much slower because you have to put all these pieces
in place. Yes for example many companies, I think it was Scott Berkun that had a book
about this. You know: "A Year without Wearing Pants" or something like that. It talked about
how change has to be slow and you have to do it one piece at a time and you have to
involve a lot of people. A lot of people do understand what design-led means, but they
don't know how it changes their job and so you have to gradually educate them across
the organization about hey this is what it really means. And it's a very difficult conversation
because it actually involves them sharing a piece of their ... of where they find pride.
A lot of people want to be involved in the wireframing but they don't understand what
the wireframing means and how it's an expression of design thinking, for example.
Luke: Cool, it's often said that 'the best way to learn UX is to do it', but what aspects
of UX can't be taught Patrick?
Patrick: System design and acknowledging patterns, syncing patterns and information. I don't
think that can be taught. Like, one of the reasons why I've really enjoyed this job and
I feel I'm successful at it, is that I'm able to distill systems into objects and patterns.
I see patterns in everything I don't think that's something that can necessarily be taught
at a very high level. Some of the soft skills are a little bit challenging for us because
it involves a lot of times you have to disagree and commit. Where you disagree with the concept,
but you still have to follow the business needs, and that's actually a really hard skill
to teach. The visual design step is really, really tough like, visual design is under
UX and either you have it or you don't. Does that make sense? Like spatial design, like
information design. For example, there are a lot of illustrators out there that do visual
design but they don't understand the structure of a page for example.
Luke: You were talking before about how UX as a field had a very broad range of skillsets,
but if people didn't necessarily have the visual skills what sort of things could they head towards?
Patrick: Content strategy, UX research, information design because they can still sketch that
out on a page. Information architecture is an art form in itself and it's one that a
lot of teams are missing a component of which is taxonomy, which is understanding how information
is structured (there you go) and what's another one... prototyping. If you have a programmer
background and you want interaction design that's huge.
Luke: Jen asks:
"I find it difficult to overcome the hurdle of not having five plus years of experience in UX.
How does one get their foot in the door without years of UX experience coming
from a visual background having several uses in that field?"
Patrick: Yeah I'll use the example of like one recruiter that I talked to, I actually
wrote an article about it on my blog "How to get into UX" and it was Mary Guillen, I
think her last name is, she gave me a call and we outlined what we thought the steps
were to break into this field as a non-designer. She followed them step by step and now she
is a web producer that does user experience where she directs a team at an interactive
agency. And I didn't actually write the article until after the call with her, but when I
looked back it totally made sense. A lot of times what you can do is work at a company,
and a web producer says, "Hey, I'm a project manager," and as you work there you get more
and more involved in the interactive process. A prototyper is another, account manager at
an agency is a huge one, product managers—sometimes they can make the shift. If you're a programmer
and you can make the shift, it's actually pretty easy.
Luke: Here's a related question... Sorry, Matt?
Matt: I was just going to add to that and talk about my own experience that I came from...
I did work as a programmer for a while and then as a visual designer and moved across
and I think a lot of people get hung up on this idea, that I'm going to find a UX job,
I'm going to be a UX specialist and that's going to be the job that I get and I'll do
everything right and I'll get that job ... and I just think you need to work towards this
stuff and you need to be working in a role that may not have UX in the job title but lets you
dip your toes in, and do bits and pieces along the way where you're working on web
projects. You're involved with the team, and you can put your hand up for stuff as it appears
and like Patrick was saying make your way and shift sideways. We talk about this a little
bit in the book, right? There are a bunch of ways you can get exposure and experience
working on a web project. You can volunteer, do some guerrilla usability testing, and, you know,
put your hand up to have a crack at wireframes and move across that way. I see a lot of people
really hung up on getting that perfect UX job right out of the gate and I think you
need to look at the long-term.
Patrick: Yeah this happens. Can I add to this too?
Matt: Please.
Patrick: So I'll give you an example. The way that I broke into the field was I was
a print designer. I actually volunteered to work for a political campaign doing all the
direct mail and all their branding. At the time I didn't know it but it turned into the
most expensive U.S. congressional campaign in 1994. The guy that was the campaign manager
went out and started an internet company and said, "Why don't you join?" That was '95.
I did a lot of side projects to learn more about the web and look where I am today. When I
interviewed interns for Apptio, I'm frankly sick of seeing just school projects. Because
I have not gotten anywhere easy, I need to see people that make the extra effort to do
projects outside of school. We recently hired an intern, he not only did school projects
but he also had illustration capabilities, kind of along the lines of what you're doing
right now Matt. He used to be an architect, and he went out and did a whole bunch of side
projects being paid very little and illustrated his thinking and talked about personas, talked
about how he dealt with clients, and he was by far the best candidate that we interviewed—because
of the side work. There's no easy way, you can't just expect anybody to say, "hey why
don't you come work here, we're going to train you". That's not the way this field works.
Matt: Totally agree.
Luke: What about internships? What if you offer yourself to a company as an intern?
Patrick: What I tell people to do is follow companies on Twitter, follow people on Twitter,
and ask them "Hey, is there an internship?" The U.S. is a little bit tricky right now
because there are a lot of legal issues about that. But there are a lot of smaller start--ups
that are willing to ignore them and say, "Hey, will you intern for free?" You just got to have your
spidey sense about if that's useful or not. If you try that, or if you do the Startup Weekend stuff ... there are
a lot of opportunities to learn more about the field. And a lot of it is kind of following
the templates to show, "this is how UX is done."
Luke: Makes sense! We've got quite a few other questions coming in here, thanks every one
for having questions. We'll see if we can rip through a few.
Suma asks:
"I'm a service designer looking to work in UX who understands design process but I don't
have any portfolio which showcases my UX skills apart from my academic projects."
Patrick: Is she working full time as a service designer?
Luke: I don't know. Maybe Suma if you can clarify?
Patrick: Like the process and the personas and all the research ... you could actually
use that as your portfolio because there's a lot of, I really like the field of service
design and I think there's a lot of value in showing your thought and how it applies
to companies doing web projects.
Luke: Michael also asks a related question:
"I'm currently working in a full time role not directly in a UX area. How can I get the
correct qualifications in order to land my next UX job?"
Patrick: What's the full time job title?
Luke: Michael, what's your full time job title? [long pause]
Luke: Yeah It really depends on the job title, how you would go about that.
Matt: He said 'designer'.
Patrick: Web designer?
Matt: Graphic designer, yeah
Patrick: Graphic designer. Print?
Luke: Yes.
Patrick: So does he work at a place that's doing web stuff?
Matt: Should we try unmuting Michael so he can join, actually come into the conversation
if that's okay to?
Luke: Are you with us now Michael?
Patrick: So if there's another designer working on the web stuff, actually do some research
and figure out the persona, what are the scenarios for the website that you guys are
doing and actually use that to develop your portfolio.
Luke: Are you with us now, Michael?
Michael: Yes, hi.
Matt: Does that answer your question or do you need to go deeper there?
Michael: Yeah, I've been working in the public sector, information design and information architecture.
Patrick: Oh my, yeah so you shouldn't have any problem then, because if you can show
some of the taxonomy stuff and the side architecture stuff that you're doing in your portfolio piece—
that's pretty powerful.
Matt: What about Michael's qualifications?
Michael: Thank you.
Matt: So we recently published an article on UX Mastery listing a bunch of degrees,
and ways that people can get some kind of formal accreditation. What are your thoughts on academic
qualifications in UX, Patrick?
Patrick: Being the college dropout three times, there are very few schools I look to like
Carnegie Mellon where I think the value is absolutely there, like the University of Washington here.
They're actually trying to orient themselves, the problem I'm running into is that the education is good,
but they don't have the right profile for the kind of stuff I need. And so I actually
look to the side work to see if they can develop the skills to be an interaction designer.
Matt: So Michael, have you had any experience where you've been asked for your qualifications
and told it was a roadblock?
Michael: No not really, but for my future career path I've been looking towards a communication
design post graduate.
Patrick: You know what you can do, you can email me on the side and contact me off my
blog and I can probably answer you a little bit more directly.
Matt: I'm pretty sure that Luke and I can help you out there, too, because we actually
know Jeremy who runs the communication design program at RMIT which is, I assume, the degree
that you're looking at. I'm sure Jeremy would be more than happy to take a few minutes
and have a coffee with you and chat about the course and see if it is a good fit for you or not.
Michael: Ok thank you.
Matt: No worries.
Luke: No worries, Michael.
Jeffrey asks:
"How did you manage your UX process in an agile environment for example." [loud laughter]
Patrick: I get this asked a lot, I like Agile okay ... so a little back story. I use to
work for a magazine company as a print designer we had magazines going out, four magazines
to five magazines a week. My whole life runs on weekly sprints, cause I worked in a lot
of publishing places. I just view Agile as a series of checkpoints, and always building
to those checkpoints. So it's okay to spread research out over four weeks, but the two
week sprints, it says this is what it looks like now it just allows you to course-correct.
I don't get as fearful about Agile as most other designers because I don't know what the problem
is. I was doing Agile in 2001, actually I was doing it in 1999 before we knew it was
Agile, so I don't see the big deal.
Luke: Yeah, and can you make a quick comment on how Lean UX relates to that?
Patrick: So I've actually done a few projects in Lean UX philosophies. I was doing Lean
UX in 2001, basically you do a very minimal idea—you start showing in front of users and
you keep moving forward. There was a particular case study out of the Eric Ries book about
Lean Startup where they're actually doing the product process for the customer, totally
non-tech. It was around, let me think about this, they were helping consumers select menus
to cook for their family, and they would actually go out to the home and ask the customer a
whole bunch of questions and then go out shopping for them, and they learned a lot about the
process and the pain points and it helped develop their product. It was totally by hand.
Luke: Very good. Rachel asks:
"What are the most important qualities you look for in a UX candidate?"
Patrick: There's the soft skills, I'm actually looking for quieter designers. I've had the
experience of hiring more extroverted designers and I actually find it's actually detrimental to
the process because they don't listen enough. I look for people that listen, I look for
people that have soft skills. They'll stand their ground on certain ideas but when they know
they have to shift, they'll back off of it. There's this matrix of hard skills around
seven different areas of UX, and actually if I get three of them, then I'm pretty happy.
And I look for system design—a lot of process. I want them to be able to adequately break down
an idea into smaller pieces but can put that idea back together and show a larger concept.
Luke: Cassandra is asking a related question:
"Thinking about presenting that in a portfolio before a resume, how do we wow a recruiter
or a hiring manager for a UX position?"
Patrick: It's back to that one rule ... basically I'm looking for step-by-step thinking, having
nice formatted wireframes helps, but what I'm looking for is a very methodical process
of the way that they designed it, and I'm also looking for research. Like Mia tweeted
this last night: "If you don't understand the user goals, how can you design?"
Luke: So you're putting those two together to tell the story of a project, wireframes,
and showing some process.
Patrick: Yep, and a lot of it is a way to tell stories. One project that I did I use
it as an example—a friend of mine that runs a chiropractor practice out in Long Beach,
California. I show the home page, I share the wireframes
Matt: This is Bob, right?
Patrick: Bob the chiropractor. Everybody is going to go to him. I set the home page, I
talked about the persona, talked about some of the research that we did. I did it all for beers
and reduced rent on a condo he was renting to me and we put together the website and
we were getting 8% conversion rate. We made one single change, or a couple of changes,
and it went to 12% overnight. All I do was show the home page and the Google Analytics Conversion
tracking page and it's an incredible story.
Luke: So that would be very interesting to see put together in a portfolio! It's something
I haven't done in the past, but this last month or two as I have been concentrating on all
this stuff for UX Mastery, I've been getting my head around a whole bunch of that stuff, thinking about
portfolios and the different ways people prove certain things, it's fascinating!
Patrick: Yeah, it's really fascinating.
Matt: I think that was the point that I felt I could justifiably promote to the world that
my role was "UX designer" and not just "web designer" and that's when I felt like I refined
my process to something that I could rely on. So if you don't have a process, then start
thinking about it and start learning from other people's process and start working on
what you can rely on to be methodical in terms of getting a good result.
Patrick: Yeah a lot of the UX work I do, quite honestly, like you guys can see it behind
me in my apartment like everything is at a 45° angle, like I have this certain UX process
that I've done over and over again because I know it works, and it's by getting data,
getting validation, talking to users, understanding the different groups of users and designing
against it and I just keep doing it and it works. And I change it every once in a while
but once you have that process and pattern down it actually makes it a lot easier to
sign and commit on "this is what we need to do."
Luke: We've got about 15 minutes to go—a few more questions and then we might have
to continue the conversation on the forums. Britney asks:
"My background is user acquisitions, marketing and research I have a Master's in sociology
and I'm planning on getting a Master's in human computer interaction starting this summer.
Do you think that it's necessary because of my background? I don't want to take on debt
if I don't have to."
Patrick: Where does she live?
Luke: Britney do you want to chip in?
'Chicago'
Patrick: You could probably get a job right now with your background doing user research and
some of that stuff. The HCD background might help you learn how to do wireframing and understand
information architecture that might be the one area you're missing.
Matt: Worth mentioning a bit about establishing a network too, we talked a little about Twitter,
going along to a bunch of meetups and meeting other UXers in the industry, networking is
going to be just as valuable or more valuable than trolling job sites. So you want to open up
as many job opportunities as possible and starting down this path of making sure you have
that degree and then applying to stuff is one way to go about it. But if you're connected
and you've got your finger on the pulse about what's happening in your area and you know
who's who, that's where the gold opportunities come from.
Patrick: I'm going to pump up my Twitter feed. If you go to my Twitter page @usabilitycounts
on Twitter, I have a whole bunch of designers characterized in metropolitan areas and regions
of the world that you can go follow, and I actually find that meetups are okay but I
actually have built better relationships with people off of Twitter. I've gotten a lot more
information and then when I am local to them, I would say "Hey, let's have a coffee". There's
actually a community that I'm involved with, I'm involved in it with Matt, I've met a lot
of people out of the group and it's awesome because you get to establish that personal
connection which is better than a meetup.
There's another thing I want to mention about the whole networking thing, there is a study
by a sociologist by the name of Mark Granovetter and what it shows is that 60% of people got
jobs in what they call a weak tie, for example I'm friends with Matt, Matt is friends with
Luke. I ask Matt, "Hey you know any good designers?" and Matt says "Luke is a great designer" and
in my world, Luke is a weak tie. So if you network a lot and find people of different,
not just designers, but people of different skill sets, then you actually have a better chance
of getting a job. A famous strategy for this is, instead of going to meetups where the designers
are at, go to meetups where developers and product managers are at, and I guarantee you
that you be one of only a few designers there. Like, one of the interns that we brought into
Apptio. I met her at a product camp, not at a UX event.
Luke: Patrick in Galway asks:
"I'm working in graphic design in print, I want to move on to UX. I'm thinking of one day per
week working for a UX company to get some experience, would the be useful, or should
I try and do a longer bulk of time in graphic design skills?"
Patrick: Why don't you start doing it now? Because I'm a former print designer, and see
how it goes. I think it's a good idea.
Luke: So, one day a week would be enough to get value from that?
Patrick: Yeah, and then you can start doing side projects too that kind of play around too.
Luke: Allison asks:
"My current job title is digital designer. During my work, I create wireframes and develop notes on functionality
as well as the final interface design to produce apps. Does this qualify as user experience work?"
Patrick: Yes, absolutely any day of the week and then what you can do is ask them to change
your job title so it's closer to interaction designer or product designer or UX designer.
Luke: Karemba asks:
"Do you think a background in psychology can be helpful in UX especially when dealing with highly
political company cultures?"
Patrick: Every day of the week, yes.
Luke: Psychology is a big part of both designing a user experience, and facilitating and running
things too, cause you have to understand how people learn, teach, and communicate.
Patrick: A little background on HCD—Human Computer Interface—a lot of it is related
to pilots that during WWI and WWII, they couldn't figure out "Gee, why are they crashing?" and
so the US Army and the US Air Force actually did a lot of work in that area and that was
the beginning of work around HCD. Also there's a lot of talk about how Henry Ford, for example,
figured out how to make assembly lines more efficient, based on the work done with lithium
processors, and looking at how people use technology, even though it's not computers
it's still very relevant to our field.
Matt: Have you ever worked with a psychologist on your team Patrick?
Patrick: One of the people I have on my team she has a researcher background, yes ... she
talks a lot about mental models and that kind of thing, yeah.
Matt: A friend of UX Mastery, Jodie Moule at Symplicit, a Melbourne-based UX consultancy that is doing
very well and Jodie is a former behavioral psychologist who decided to get into UX and
they're doing great work and that's a bit of competitive advantage for those guys.
Patrick: Absolutely, and looking back I wish I knew more about this field. I'm a little
bit older. I had a job before the internet but I wish I knew more about some of this
in the more formal fields.
Luke: Very good. I think we've got time for one or two more questions. Sorry to everyone
who we're not going to get to today.
Todd asks:
"I was previously a UX designer at my company but I realized I would add more value as a
product owner so I've since transitioned my role into that direction. I've been a product
owner for about four months now and do really enjoy it. It seems like a natural fit for a former
UX designer, I'm still very passionate about UX though. If I was to look for a UX position
in the future would my experience as a product owner be an advantage or a disadvantage?"
Patrick: As a former product manager and program manager, sure. I actually have toyed with
the idea of going back over to product management because I think having a UX background over
there is very powerful and there are many-many UX designers that are making the transition
over to product management because we tend to identify better with the users than some
of the people that have been in that role.
Matt: I'm giving a talk at a product management meetup here in Melbourne. Later this month
actually—it's called Product Anonymous, so if anyone's in Melbourne come along to
Product Anonymous and the product mangers are interested in the UX. There's a lot of
product overlap between the two roles. There's stuff we can learn from those guys about marketing and market
validation, and there's a lot that those guys can learn from UXers, like visual thinking
and user research compared to market research. So I think there's a lot of overlap, and I
think there's a lot to be learned from both fields. It's going to help your UX career
by being a product owner, definitely.
Luke: Very good! A final question from Ben, who asks:
"Thanks Patrick for spending time to chat. Do you think it's more of an advantage being
either a generalist or a specialist?"
Patrick: It really depends. I live in Seattle so Microsoft is here and Amazon is here,
and one of the problems I have - not with Amazon so much but with Microsoft - is they
have a lot of specialists. So I have a generalist UX team. (We can take a few more questions
if you guys want to) I have a generalist UX team and so I find specialists very hard
to hire and it goes back to the seven disciplines of UX that I hire against. I usually tend to look
for people that have a least two maybe three skill sets. They call it a T-shaped skillset.
For example I have a visual design background, and I tend to go more towards visual architecture
and interaction design and so I have more of a generalist skill set then some of the people and the
area I'm actually weakest in is research. Real quickly if you're in places like Seattle
or San Francisco—they have specialist roles but they are harder to find. In places like the Midwest and other
areas of the world, then, outside of London then yeah it tends to be more of a generalist
because companies can't support that specialist role. And once you really, really get your job then
you're a traveling consultant.
Luke: So there's something in being hired for your soft skills, and your ability to
learn deeper skills on the job?
Patrick: Yeah. It's a little bit hard. I've dealt with designers that were brought in
without a lot of the hard skills, and it's an uphill battle because other managers
come in and they're like, "Why did they hire this person?" and it's great that they have
the soft skills, but then at one point or another you have to perform on the job so
that's kind of tricky.
Luke: We've got 2 more minutes. Maybe we'll try to squeeze in one more question.
Patrick: You can keep me after 3, as long as we're not getting out of here after 4.
Luke: Cool. Tyler is asking:
"If you could choose one book to be your UX bible what would it be?"
Matt: I have a suggestion...
Patrick: UX Bible for what part? For learning UX, or for breaking into the field?
Luke: I guess it would have to include everything to be a UX bible of everything!
Matt: Learning, he said.
Patrick: Well the "Get Started in UX book" gives a really good overview. The one book that
I have been recommending lately has been Russ Unger's "UX Project Guide". And another one,
Kelly Goto has this wonderful book called "Web Design 2.0" that was published in 2004
that I actually still recommend today. It has a really generalist view of how to do
web projects in the end, and it actually includes a little bit of product management stuff.
And I'm not saying that because she bought me a drink, but, you know, I actually like the book a lot.
Luke: Well we'll dig that out and provide a link somewhere for that.
I think we're out of time.
Well, thank you very much, Patrick. That was an amazing set of responses to those questions.
Thanks also very much to all the webinar attendees for great questions and for joining us here today.
Just quickly, Patrick, can you let us know where we can find you online?
Patrick: So, again, I run a blog called usabilitycounts.com which is where I have a UX career guide about
45,000 words. You can also find me in your guys' book 'Get Started in UX' out from UX
Mastery. I also run a Twitter feed called @usabilitycounts—big surprise. I run the
uxdrinkinggame.com, and you can find me on Facebook as usabilitycounts (you're seeing
a trend) and if you're actually in the Pacific Northwest I'm generally available for coffee
when I can find the time.
Luke: That's very generous of you!
How about you, Matt?
Matt: My name is Matt, and along with Luke we contribute to UX Mastery. As we've mentioned
a couple of times throughout the webinar we do have an eBook out called 'Get Started in
UX' which we're very proud of, and Patrick is one of our feature interviewees and we
think that it's a very good overview on how to launch and shape a career, so please go
and check that out. And I'm on Twitter as @mattymcg, which is a nickname I've had for
a few years even though my real name doesn't have a 'Mc' in it, but please hit me up on Twitter.
Luke: And you can find me - Luke Chambers -- posting articles on the UX Mastery blog
(uxmastery.com). I also hang around in the UX Mastery community forums at community.uxcommunity.com,
and my Twitter handle is @lukcha. I'd love to help answer any questions you may
have about today's webinar.
If you're looking for more practical advice about getting started in UX, like Matt said,
our latest eBook is going to be excellent for you. There are links on the website for
that now, and come and ask us in the forums.
And finally, we're going to email all of you a link to the audio/video of today's webinar.
We'll see if we can chase up a transcript as well. I think that is about it. We're two
minutes over.
Thank you again everyone for joining us.
Patrick: Hey can I give a shout out to some people that tweeted during the event?
Luke: Sure, please.
Patrick: So Jen Blatts, Jolly Zaw, Brittany Vanheuten was there, Simon Catford, Chris
Klasser, I think he was in the event thank you all and Oscar, and Clare thank you for
all the wonderful tweets during the event.
Matt: And thanks everybody for getting up on the weekend too. Know that your personal
time is very important and we really appreciate that you've taken the time to join us on this
chat and thank you to Patrick for giving up your Saturday afternoon.
Patrick: Yeah you're interrupting my whiskey time!
Matt: Thank you everyone. See you guys.
Luke: See you in the forums!
Patrick: See you.