luke: today we're talking about 'how to getan awesome ux job'—finding job opportunities, crossing over from another position, portfoliosand job interviews, and generally how to get started in ux. my name is luke chambers. i'm one of the co-foundersof ux mastery. we're based in melbourne, australia, where it's currently a cool, overcast 9amsunday 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 mattmagain. how are you today, matt? matt: i'm good. i've got my coffee, i've gotmy 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 thingsat once but that's okay. it's all good, we'll see how it goes, if it's too hard we'll canit for next time, but it should be fun. luke: very good. and we're also very luckyto have with us today patrick neeman, all the way from seattle. how are you patrick? patrick: pretty good. getting over a coldand enjoying the seattle rainy weather but yeah, i'm fine. luke: lovely. tell us a little bit about whoyou are and what you do. patrick: so my name is patrick neeman, i'ma director of product design in a company called apptio. we help companies managetheir 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 alot of really cool ux types while i was working there. luke: very good, so you have a lot of goodexperience of both sides! you also run the uxdrinkinggame.com... patrick: that is correct, i actually run twothings . i actually run something called usability counts, it's a blog that has over 45,000 wordsof advice about being in the ux field, and
i run the ux drinking game, which recentlywas featured in pragmatic marketing - which is a product management training webinar andevent company. luke: excellent. alright, lets kick on intosome questions now. just over a week ago ux mastery launched communityforums 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 toall who submitted questions - there are some great questions in here. i've got the listin front of me and we'll go through them with patrick. if you've got a question about landing a uxjob you'd like patrick to help with, then you should be able to submit it in your gotowebinarcontrol panel. we'll see it and get to them
after we've done these ones that have alreadybeen submitted. so patrick, the first one here we've got fromarmen. armen is asking: "how can i increase my job opportunities wheni 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 ido for my career?" patrick: basically the first question i'llask is where do you live? the second question is there are a lot of areas in the us wherethey don't have ux specialist roles and what i encourage designers to do, is do a lot ofux activities as part of their design process with customers.
there's nobody telling you that you can'tdo 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, thisis 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 relevantin my life is last weekend we participated in an event called start-up weekend here inseattle and we actually went through the process of building a whole prototype, including animminent, is there a place where i can type this url? (i'm going to go ahead and put itin the chat window) matt: i'll go ahead and write the url in thiswindow, patrick.
patrick: yeah, so we went through the wholeprocess of doing a prototype, we did a presentation, we were competing against ten other start-upsand we won the design portion and all the designers that i brought along to the eventthey're using it in their portfolio to say 'hey this the ux work that i did, that wedid. 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. sideprojects are awesome for doing stuff like this. luke: excellent, second question is from carrie: "i am currently working as the only developeron 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 understandingfrom 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 andhow important do you think it is to be able to share ideas? patrick: yeah it's really, really importantto share ideas, there's this wonderful thing called twitter where you can go ahead andfollow a whole bunch of designers and they're
all over the world, and i actually do thisa lot and they reach out to me for skype calls and we share the work that we're doing andwe get feedback it's like we're using the usability test and it's very, very powerful. most designers are very introverted becauseof 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 pointof meetups you can actually invite designers out for coffee. i actually lived right abovea 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 kindof design work that we're doing.
luke: very good. another question, this onefrom cassandra: "i've been attempting to break into a ux designerposition for a few years now (i have a few years of web design and front-end dev). availablepositions are for mid-level or senior ux designers. if i can't afford ux schooling and have limitedux 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 uxand his vision on stuff was great, and we're actually training him. he was lucky becausehe found an opportunity where he can get on to a bigger team and actually learn from someother people. that would be the first thing
that i would say - look for companies thatmight have junior people or junior positions open. i know that's kind of hard. another way that you could do it, you canreach out to other designers that are more senior than you, do side projects or do otherwork 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 thoseskills, go somewhere they already have a senior designer working, and say 'hey, these arethe skill sets that i have. i want to work with this designer, i'll do this web developmentand 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 ofthat, 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 prototypersi have at work, he has a background in infomatics which is basically the, and i'm doing somequotes here, "product management" degree at the university of washington and so he's aprogrammer and he has an interaction design background and so he's been real instrumentalin helping us create a prototype for the company. and i actually value that skill set a lotbecause he thinks of a lot of things that
we don't think of, because we're designersand 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 movedinto development. recently i did a solo job designing and building an in-house systemfor 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 muchof a market in the uxd world for back-office business systems? or does the money tend togo to customer facing products?" patrick: oh this is great, this is an awesomequestion!
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 lookingfor people that understand this is the business system because they're a lot more complexthan developing say an iphone app. and the second thing is—and this is thestory that i tell people just me being an enterprise—it's literally 20 years of jobsecurity. as technology improves and as the products improve, the younger generation isactually expecting more products that work like an iphone or ipad and so having a greatuser experience designer on staff is very, very important.
does that make sense? basically like the uppermanagement i work with they are basically saying we know that you have to have the backupthing, but they also realize that a great user experience also sells the product. luke: yeah... patrick: and that's going to increase thedemand for people like us, which is great. the pay is awesome. luke: yes can be very good. and we've gota few more questions coming in now, we've got one from tim, who says: "i'm just starting out with ux conductingfocus groups, doing usability testing and
now creating personas, do you have any examplesof a good portfolio design?" patrick: there's actually... i'm going totype 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 portfoliothat i point people to. laurie, she's an assistant designer that i mentored, now working foramazon lab 126. one of her portfolio pieces tells this great story about how they wentthrough all the research and she talked about personas, and she did all the stuff and itwas a three-day project, and it tells an amazing story. luke: there's a lot of information about uxportfolios online. ux mastery has just published
an ebook about getting started in ux, andpart of the bundled bonus extras with the ebook is a portfolio template and a resumetemplate. that resume template is actually patrick's one. go head and tell us a littlebit more about what went into that, patrick. patrick: as for the resume template, thatwas 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 andso i had a copywriter re-write it, and so when i got to jobvite - which is an applicanttracking system - i actually tested my template through jobvite over and over and over againuntil 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 everythingand the template basically states 'hey this what i did at a job and then these were thegoals that i achieved'. for example, if you worked at a job like an e-commerce site andthen you can talk about how you increased the shopping cart conversion by 5%, that'sthe kind of stuff that recruiters are looking for. luke: excellent, excellent. we've got a fewmore questions rolling in from the forums. 'uxer' asks: "why all of a sudden does everyone want tobe 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, tostart the discussion? luke: sure, let's go! patrick: so the way that i interpret ux myselfis it's an overarching discipline that includes design, content strategy, visual design, front-enddevelopment and then the research. there's a couple of others in there, like informationarchitecture, so it covers a lot of ground so when you have a ux team and you look atthe people in the room like at apptio, 'right, how did these people ever get into the sameteam?' 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 youmanage that?'
i think the main reason why people got intoit is because of apple. the iphone is a wonderful product, and people think: "oh, i want todevelop iphone apps for that." what they don't realize when they get into ux, you don't startoff and get the creative product. you have to collaborate with a whole bunch of differentgroups of people and the right product managers and developers and they don't realize andthey think they're going to be able to design a product on their own, what it really comesdown to is you don't actually design the product, you facilitate the design. does that makesense? luke: i think that is exactly what this personis asking - they can make the connection between the business strategy and the design teamto provide value to the customer. and hence
the expression of "facilitation", as you say. patrick: yeah! on that note what i like is—alot of the products i worked on in front of millions of people. like, i was doing somework at microsoft with the potential to affect half billion people, and that was a huge driverfor why i like being in this field. matt: jeff gothelf, who wrote the lean uxbook, talks about that exact point too. he talks about how one thing we need to learnas designers is that we are design facilitators and that everybody has valid input to influencethe design, and we need to be prepared to create and instill a process where that collaborationand that input is synthesized and you end up with the 'synergy' of the team you're willingto use, to use a buzz word, yeah, to end up
with a great result. patrick: yeah it's really hard to create adesign culture. creating the right environment where that collaboration actually respectsour roles is really, really hard and what's really hard about that is that a lot of otherpeople think that, they think that everybody can be a designer and they don't understandthat a lot of us have spent years and years of beating our heads against the wall to reallyunderstand what ux is. matt: and so on that point, 'cause that issomething that i've really struggled a lot with in big enterprise clients and that'sthe idea of championing and justifying and selling user experience as a valid focus.
what has been your experience with that problemand how did you overcome it? patrick: it really depends i mean having adesign-influenced culture is really top down and what you do is you have to start poundingtheir 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 yetnobody had bothered to analyze it and so one of the things we've been working over thepast two weeks hey we have all this amazing data once they saw it like the light bulbtotally turned on, where you illustrate a light bulb and now they realize it, instead of justdoing 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 influenceculture 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 hadthose jobs. so for your career is it best if you're in that situation where you're inan organization and you see they don't get it and you're not, you know, an organisationalchange consultant—you're an uxer. should you acknowledge there is only so much youcan 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 canreally 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 hadconsultants in there and literally change doesn't happen overnight, like they're beinga ux consultant but they're like two different approaches. being a ux consultant you're thereto say "hey, there are obviously things that are going wrong, there are some areas youcan fix" (i'm moving my hands around) but when you're in-house that change comes muchslower 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 wearingpants" or something like that. it talked about how change has to be slow and you have todo it one piece at a time and you have to involve a lot of people. a lot of people dounderstand what design-led means, but they
don't know how it changes their job and soyou have to gradually educate them across the organization about hey this is what itreally means. and it's a very difficult conversation because it actually involves them sharinga piece of their ... of where they find pride. a lot of people want to be involved in thewireframing but they don't understand what the wireframing means and how it's an expressionof design thinking, for example. luke: cool, it's often said that 'the bestway 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 thereasons why i've really enjoyed this job and
i feel i'm successful at it, is that i'm ableto distill systems into objects and patterns. i see patterns in everything i don't thinkthat's something that can necessarily be taught at a very high level. some of the soft skillsare a little bit challenging for us because it involves a lot of times you have to disagreeand commit. where you disagree with the concept, but you still have to follow the businessneeds, 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. doesthat make sense? like spatial design, like information design. for example, there area lot of illustrators out there that do visual design but they don't understand the structureof a page for example.
luke: you were talking before about how uxas a field had a very broad range of skillsets, but if people didn't necessarily have the visualskills what sort of things could they head towards? patrick: content strategy, ux research, informationdesign because they can still sketch that out on a page. information architecture isan art form in itself and it's one that a lot of teams are missing a component of whichis taxonomy, which is understanding how information is structured (there you go) and what's anotherone... 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 hurdleof not having five plus years of experience in ux.
how does one get their foot in thedoor without years of ux experience coming from a visual background having several usesin that field?" patrick: yeah i'll use the example of likeone recruiter that i talked to, i actually wrote an article about it on my blog "howto get into ux" and it was mary guillen, i think her last name is, she gave me a calland 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 experiencewhere she directs a team at an interactive agency. and i didn't actually write the articleuntil after the call with her, but when i looked back it totally made sense. a lot oftimes what you can do is work at a company,
and a web producer says, "hey, i'm a projectmanager," 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—sometimesthey can make the shift. if you're a programmer and you can make the shift, it's actuallypretty easy. luke: here's a related question... sorry,matt? matt: i was just going to add to that andtalk about my own experience that i came from... i did work as a programmer for a while andthen as a visual designer and moved across and i think a lot of people get hung up onthis idea, that i'm going to find a ux job, i'm going to be a ux specialist and that'sgoing to be the job that i get and i'll do
everything right and i'll get that job ... andi just think you need to work towards this stuff and you need to be working in a rolethat may not have ux in the job title but lets you dip your toes in, and do bits and piecesalong the way where you're working on web projects. you're involved with the team, andyou can put your hand up for stuff as it appears and like patrick was saying make your wayand shift sideways. we talk about this a little bit in the book, right? there are a bunchof 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 wireframesand move across that way. i see a lot of people really hung up on getting that perfect uxjob right out of the gate and i think you
need to look at the long-term. patrick: yeah this happens. can i add to thistoo? matt: please. patrick: so i'll give you an example. theway that i broke into the field was i was a print designer. i actually volunteered towork for a political campaign doing all the direct mail and all their branding. at thetime i didn't know it but it turned into the most expensive u.s. congressional campaignin 1994. the guy that was the campaign manager went out and started an internet company andsaid, "why don't you join?" that was '95. i did a lot of side projects to learn more aboutthe web and look where i am today. when i
interviewed interns for apptio, i'm franklysick of seeing just school projects. because i have not gotten anywhere easy, i need tosee people that make the extra effort to do projects outside of school. we recently hiredan 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 illustratedhis thinking and talked about personas, talked about how he dealt with clients, and he wasby far the best candidate that we interviewed—because of the side work. there's no easy way, youcan't just expect anybody to say, "hey why don't you come work here, we're going to trainyou". that's not the way this field works.
matt: totally agree. luke: what about internships? what if youoffer yourself to a company as an intern? patrick: what i tell people to do is followcompanies 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 issuesabout 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 aboutthe 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 otherquestions coming in here, thanks every one for having questions. we'll see if we canrip through a few. suma asks: "i'm a service designer looking to work inux who understands design process but i don't have any portfolio which showcases my ux skillsapart from my academic projects." patrick: is she working full time as a servicedesigner? luke: i don't know. maybe suma if you canclarify? patrick: like the process and the personasand all the research ... you could actually use that as your portfolio because there'sa lot of, i really like the field of service
design and i think there's a lot of valuein 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 rolenot directly in a ux area. how can i get the correct qualifications in order to land mynext 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 jobtitle, 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'sdoing web stuff? matt: should we try unmuting michael so hecan 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 workingon the web stuff, actually do some research
and figure out the persona, what are thescenarios for the website that you guys are doing and actually use that to develop yourportfolio. luke: are you with us now, michael? michael: yes, hi. matt: does that answer your question or doyou need to go deeper there? michael: yeah, i've been working in the publicsector, information design and information architecture. patrick: oh my, yeah so you shouldn't haveany problem then, because if you can show some of the taxonomy stuff and the side architecturestuff 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 articleon 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 isabsolutely 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 profilefor the kind of stuff i need. and so i actually
look to the side work to see if they can developthe skills to be an interaction designer. matt: so michael, have you had any experiencewhere you've been asked for your qualifications and told it was a roadblock? michael: no not really, but for my futurecareer path i've been looking towards a communication design post graduate. patrick: you know what you can do, you canemail me on the side and contact me off my blog and i can probably answer you a littlebit more directly. matt: i'm pretty sure that luke and i canhelp you out there, too, because we actually know jeremy who runs the communication designprogram at rmit which is, i assume, the degree
that you're looking at. i'm sure jeremywould be more than happy to take a few minutes and have a coffee with you and chat aboutthe 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 anagile environment for example." [loud laughter] patrick: i get this asked a lot, i like agileokay ... so a little back story. i use to work for a magazine company as a print designerwe had magazines going out, four magazines
to five magazines a week. my whole life runson weekly sprints, cause i worked in a lot of publishing places. i just view agile asa series of checkpoints, and always building to those checkpoints. so it's okay to spreadresearch out over four weeks, but the two week sprints, it says this is what it lookslike now it just allows you to course-correct. i don't get as fearful about agile as most otherdesigners because i don't know what the problem is. i was doing agile in 2001, actually iwas 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 projectsin lean ux philosophies. i was doing lean
ux in 2001, basically you do a very minimalidea—you start showing in front of users and you keep moving forward. there was a particularcase study out of the eric ries book about lean startup where they're actually doingthe product process for the customer, totally non-tech. it was around, let me think aboutthis, they were helping consumers select menus to cook for their family, and they would actuallygo out to the home and ask the customer a whole bunch of questions and then go out shoppingfor them, and they learned a lot about the process and the pain points and it helpeddevelop their product. it was totally by hand. luke: very good. rachel asks: "what are the most important qualities youlook for in a ux candidate?"
patrick: there's the soft skills, i'm actuallylooking for quieter designers. i've had the experience of hiring more extroverted designersand 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 theirground 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 iget 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 thatidea back together and show a larger concept. luke: cassandra is asking a related question:
"thinking about presenting that in a portfoliobefore a resume, how do we wow a recruiter or a hiring manager for a ux position?" patrick: it's back to that one rule ... basicallyi'm looking for step-by-step thinking, having nice formatted wireframes helps, but whati'm looking for is a very methodical process of the way that they designed it, and i'malso looking for research. like mia tweeted this last night: "if you don't understandthe user goals, how can you design?" luke: so you're putting those two togetherto tell the story of a project, wireframes, and showing some process. patrick: yep, and a lot of it is a way totell stories. one project that i did i use
it as an example—a friend of mine that runsa chiropractor practice out in long beach, california. i show the home page, i sharethe wireframes matt: this is bob, right? patrick: bob the chiropractor. everybody isgoing to go to him. i set the home page, i talked about the persona, talked about someof the research that we did. i did it all for beers and reduced rent on a condo he was rentingto me and we put together the website and we were getting 8% conversion rate. we madeone single change, or a couple of changes, and it went to 12% overnight. all i do wasshow the home page and the google analytics conversion tracking page and it's an incredible story.
luke: so that would be very interesting tosee put together in a portfolio! it's something i haven't done in the past, but this lastmonth or two as i have been concentrating on all this stuff for ux mastery, i've been gettingmy head around a whole bunch of that stuff, thinking about portfolios and the different ways people provecertain things, it's fascinating! patrick: yeah, it's really fascinating. matt: i think that was the point that i felti could justifiably promote to the world that my role was "ux designer" and not just "webdesigner" and that's when i felt like i refined my process to something that i could relyon. so if you don't have a process, then start thinking about it and start learning fromother people's process and start working on
what you can rely on to be methodical in termsof getting a good result. patrick: yeah a lot of the ux work i do, quitehonestly, like you guys can see it behind me in my apartment like everything is at a45Ⱐangle, like i have this certain ux process that i've done over and over again becausei know it works, and it's by getting data, getting validation, talking to users, understandingthe different groups of users and designing against it and i just keep doing it and itworks. and i change it every once in a while but once you have that process and patterndown it actually makes it a lot easier to sign and commit on "this is what we need todo." luke: we've got about 15 minutes to go—afew more questions and then we might have
to continue the conversation on the forums.britney asks: "my background is user acquisitions, marketingand research i have a master's in sociology and i'm planning on getting a master's inhuman computer interaction starting this summer. do you think that it's necessary because ofmy 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 rightnow with your background doing user research and
some of that stuff. the hcd background mighthelp you learn how to do wireframing and understand information architecture that might be theone area you're missing. matt: worth mentioning a bit about establishinga network too, we talked a little about twitter, going along to a bunch of meetups and meetingother uxers in the industry, networking is going to be just as valuable or more valuable thantrolling job sites. so you want to open up as many job opportunities as possible andstarting down this path of making sure you have that degree and then applying to stuff isone way to go about it. but if you're connected and you've got your finger on the pulse aboutwhat's happening in your area and you know who's who, that's where the gold opportunitiescome 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 designerscharacterized in metropolitan areas and regions of the world that you can go follow, and iactually find that meetups are okay but i actually have built better relationships withpeople 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 awesomebecause you get to establish that personal connection which is better than a meetup. there's another thing i want to mention aboutthe whole networking thing, there is a study
by a sociologist by the name of mark granovetterand what it shows is that 60% of people got jobs in what they call a weak tie, for examplei'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 younetwork a lot and find people of different, not just designers, but people of different skillsets, then you actually have a better chance of getting a job. a famous strategy for thisis, instead of going to meetups where the designers are at, go to meetups where developers andproduct 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 ata ux event.
luke: patrick in galway asks: "i'm working in graphic design in print, i wantto move on to ux. i'm thinking of one day per week working for a ux company to get someexperience, would the be useful, or should i try and do a longer bulk of time in graphicdesign 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 toget value from that? patrick: yeah, and then you can start doingside projects too that kind of play around too. luke: allison asks:
"my current job title is digital designer. during mywork, i create wireframes and develop notes on functionality as well as the final interface design toproduce apps. does this qualify as user experience work?" patrick: yes, absolutely any day of the weekand then what you can do is ask them to change your job title so it's closer to interactiondesigner or product designer or ux designer. luke: karemba asks: "do you think a background in psychology canbe 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 designinga user experience, and facilitating and running
things too, cause you have to understand howpeople learn, teach, and communicate. patrick: a little background on hcd—humancomputer interface—a lot of it is related to pilots that during wwi and wwii, they couldn'tfigure out "gee, why are they crashing?" and so the us army and the us air force actuallydid a lot of work in that area and that was the beginning of work around hcd. also there'sa lot of talk about how henry ford, for example, figured out how to make assembly lines moreefficient, based on the work done with lithium processors, and looking at how people usetechnology, even though it's not computers it's still very relevant to our field. matt: have you ever worked with a psychologiston your team patrick?
patrick: one of the people i have on my teamshe has a researcher background, yes ... she talks a lot about mental models and that kindof 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 behavioralpsychologist who decided to get into ux and they're doing great work and that's a bitof competitive advantage for those guys. patrick: absolutely, and looking back i wishi knew more about this field. i'm a little bit older. i had a job before the internetbut i wish i knew more about some of this in the more formal fields. luke: very good. i think we've got time forone 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 companybut i realized i would add more value as a product owner so i've since transitioned myrole into that direction. i've been a product owner for about four months now and do reallyenjoy it. it seems like a natural fit for a former ux designer, i'm still very passionate aboutux though. if i was to look for a ux position in the future would my experience as a productowner be an advantage or a disadvantage?" patrick: as a former product manager and programmanager, sure. i actually have toyed with the idea of going back over to product managementbecause i think having a ux background over
there is very powerful and there are many-manyux designers that are making the transition over to product management because we tendto 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 managementmeetup 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 mangersare interested in the ux. there's a lot of product overlap between the two roles. there'sstuff we can learn from those guys about marketing and market validation, and there's a lot that those guyscan 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 bothfields. 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 seattleso microsoft is here and amazon is here, and one of the problems i have - not withamazon so much but with microsoft - is they have a lot of specialists. so i have a generalistux team. (we can take a few more questions if you guys want to) i have a generalist uxteam 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 threeskill 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 generalistskill 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 harderto find. in places like the midwest and other areas of the world, then, outside of londonthen yeah it tends to be more of a generalist because companies can't support that specialist role. andonce you really, really get your job then you're a traveling consultant.
luke: so there's something in being hiredfor your soft skills, and your ability to learn deeper skills on the job? patrick: yeah. it's a little bit hard. i'vedealt with designers that were brought in without a lot of the hard skills, and it'san uphill battle because other managers come in and they're like, "why did they hirethis person?" and it's great that they have the soft skills, but then at one point oranother you have to perform on the job so that's kind of tricky. luke: we've got 2 more minutes. maybe we'lltry to squeeze in one more question. patrick: you can keep me after 3, as longas we're not getting out of here after 4.
luke: cool. tyler is asking: "if you could choose one book to be your uxbible what would it be?" matt: i have a suggestion... patrick: ux bible for what part? for learningux, or for breaking into the field? luke: i guess it would have to include everythingto be a ux bible of everything! matt: learning, he said. patrick: well the "get started in ux book" givesa really good overview. the one book that i have been recommending lately has been russunger'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. ithas a really generalist view of how to do web projects in the end, and it actually includesa 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 providea link somewhere for that. i think we're out of time. well, thank you very much, patrick. that wasan amazing set of responses to those questions. thanks also very much to all the webinar attendeesfor great questions and for joining us here today. just quickly, patrick, can you let us knowwhere we can find you online? patrick: so, again, i run a blog called usabilitycounts.comwhich is where i have a ux career guide about
45,000 words. you can also find me in yourguys' 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 onfacebook as usabilitycounts (you're seeing a trend) and if you're actually in the pacificnorthwest 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 lukewe contribute to ux mastery. as we've mentioned a couple of times throughout the webinar wedo have an ebook out called 'get started in
ux' which we're very proud of, and patrickis one of our feature interviewees and we think that it's a very good overview on howto 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 havea '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 theux mastery community forums at community.uxcommunity.com, and my twitter handle is @lukcha. i'd loveto help answer any questions you may have about today's webinar. if you're looking for more practical adviceabout getting started in ux, like matt said,
our latest ebook is going to be excellentfor 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 youa link to the audio/video of today's webinar. we'll see if we can chase up a transcriptas 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 somepeople that tweeted during the event? luke: sure, please. patrick: so jen blatts, jolly zaw, brittanyvanheuten was there, simon catford, chris
klasser, i think he was in the event thankyou all and oscar, and clare thank you for all the wonderful tweets during the event. matt: and thanks everybody for getting upon the weekend too. know that your personal time is very important and we really appreciatethat you've taken the time to join us on this chat and thank you to patrick for giving upyour saturday afternoon. patrick: yeah you're interrupting my whiskeytime! matt: thank you everyone. see you guys. luke: see you in the forums! patrick: see you.
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