1. The Design Problem
2. Requirements, Scenarios & Task Analysis
3. Prototyping
4. Sketching
5. Design Judgements
6. Visual Design
7. Visual Communication
8. Interfaces
9. Personas

If you’re from a design background, you’re probably looking at this and going… WTF? Task Analysis? Interfaces? Personas? What does that have anything to do with design?

The graphic design course outline from Central St. Martins makes a bit more sense. I wish we had learnt more about sketching as a thinking tool (not as a drawing tool), about exploration in creative problem solving, about the various modes of working (individual vs. collaborative), about the different ways other designers produced their work as well as the various graphic design areas (photography, typography/letterpress, print, animation, etc.).

However, I actually think that the module hasn’t done much damage. I still see a lot of UX designers use patterns, tools, and processes as a starting point – when we should only be considering those when we’ve fully understood the fundamentals. I sometimes wish we could have sessions where we deconstruct the patterns, tools and processes we’re so used to – just to get at the essence of creative problem solving.

While I don’t discount the value I’ve gained from learning about cognition, affect, organizational psychology, ergonomics… it’s good design that really makes all those skills truly worth something.

And while I’m giving my alma mater a hard time here, I’ve also heard criticisms about CSM being too open and exploratory. Maybe we should get UCLIC and Central St. Martins to trade students for half a year.

That would really mess things up nicely.

Why?

I’ve been keen on improving my presentation skills (I hear it’s a good thing for UX designers), so I jumped at the chance to present when Lee McIvor announced LightingUX needed some speakers. I’ve given talks before, but it felt a lot harder speaking to my friends from the UX community. I was concerned that my talk wouldn’t be relevant, unique, or entertaining — in the end, I decided all this worrying got me nowhere, and went ahead with the developer-to-UX-designer idea.

I felt some UX folk would benefit from seeing things from a developer’s perspective. I also felt that while there’s much general advice about becoming a UX designer, no one has really shared their experiences publicly. Finally, I wanted to know how other people would respond to my talk in order to improve/learn/synthesize/etc.

How?

It took me about 24 hours in total to prepare for this talk. 5 minutes isn’t a lot of presentation, but it’s good to dive deep during prep. I started out getting philosophical and started brainstorming thoughts about the essence of what made developers different than designers, but that fizzled out quickly because I felt it would be hard to do in 5 minutes. I also scoured the internet looking to see if other people had similar experiences, but that didn’t help me focus my talk very much.

I posted a message on twitter asking what others would like to learn from my talk, and got some interesting responses:

• @myddelton – re: your talk. is it an advantage or disadvantage to know about practical coding constraints when doing UX design?
• @mikejthompson – Do you see your technical knowledge of what’s possible as limiting your creativity or ensuring the relevance of your work?
• @francisnorton – How to avoid the trap of premature commitment? As a coder, I want to start coding; as a designer I need to keep the options open.
• @futureshape – do you still catch yourself thinking of the development impact of what you design? I know I sometimes do
• @ifenn – How has your mindset changed? Do you approach/think about things differently? How?

I knew I couldn’t address everything in a 5 minute talk, so in the end I examined deeeeeep inside my gut and asked myself what it was that made the biggest difference for me, and what were the major paradigm shifts I experienced since doing UX full-time (it’s very different than doing it while being a dev). I came up with this one-pager of prep notes:

My main point was to highlight the fact that what specific things made a difference for me:

• Seth Godin’s AMAL book left an impression that led me to seek out more not-so-tech related stuff.
• About Face 3 – it was practical enough for me as a developer to not just apply it but teach others how to apply it as well (JJG’s Elements didn’t cut it although it’s a good book)
• The UX community – I felt I didn’t do that slide justice. There were specific names I wanted to mention (Alex Baxevanis, Ian Fenn, Tom Coombs, and the StartUX crew) but I felt it would kill the pace of the talk.

With the list of changes a.k.a. the paradigm shift after becoming a designer, I summarized it to these three main points:

• Big Picture thinking – much more holistic as opposed to complex like software architecture, scalability, etc.
• Creative work requires creative methods – learning that the screen is extremely limited, and that the critical part of the process is about thinking, not creating (e.g. wireframing).
• Communicating my work well became a lot more important (though talking code to non-dev people is usually unnecessary and leads to social ackwardness).

The Glue Thinking thing just came to me as a way to summarize the balance between architecture, making things work well, and delight.

Lessons

I screwed up a little on the 2nd last slide and thought I could’ve done a better ending. I think some people liked the Glue Thinking thing (especially the part about getting users high), so I should’ve played that up a bit more. I think I got a bit too self-conscious towards the end after I realized I’d gone over a little bit at the 3 minute mark. I got a bit sensitive when Cennydd made a remark about “staring at screens” just before he started his talk but I’m sure it was just me.

I was surprised to hear other people got some benefit from the talk. Johanna said she was happy that Design Jam had impacted me (she’s one of the local champions). Martin Belam, who does some really amazing work at the Guardian, came up to me after the talk and shared his comments (and made a blog post too). Others tweeted about the Glue Thinking thing. I was really touched – just the comments made it worth it.

Overall it was a good experience and I’m glad I got the opportunity to do the talk. I’m looking forward to the next opportunity and have a few ideas in mind. It certainly forces you to be critical about your work, and that’s what I like about it – that my work can be validated because it should be validated.

I encourage others to do the same.

p.s. The “drunken robotscape wallpaper paper-prototype mural” and the “epic win dragon” on the first and last slides were the awesome handiwork of reyhan (I forgot to credit him in the slides).

How a developer became a ux designer

In addition, there’s been a lot of conversation and interest from the UX community in this area – e.g. Jason Mesut’s rant on UX portfolios (sign-in required), Don Norman’s “Why Design Education Must Change“, Mozilla Labs’ first Design Jam event in London and my own conversations with Ian Fenn, Jeff Van Campen and Lane Halley about engaging in and improving Communities of Practice in the UX industry.

Broadly speaking, there are three main issues that practitioners and the industry is experiencing right now:

• The huge gap between research and practice
• Challenges faced by junior and non-UX practitioners seeking to gain employment in UX
• Difficulty for employers to find UX candidates who can articulate and present good design thinking

These issues are complex and extend beyond the point of this blog post, but I think that apprenticeships would be a good way to resolve some of these issues.

Why Apprenticeships – a Case for Situativity

This paper on “learning approaches for teaching interaction design” by Dr. Corina Sas does a really good job of explaining the challenges and possible improvements to IxD instruction. The four main approaches she suggests are interrelated (apprenticeship, constructivism, experiential learning, and situated learning & community of practice), but the gist of it is that IxD (and related UX disciplines) is more craft than science (though the science bit is still really important), and that what’s lacking is a systemic approach to procedural over declarative learning.

This seems to be a common observation elsewhere as well.

In the past few weeks, I’ve had the chance to experience this working alongside a more experienced IA. I was working on a product browser that would sit on the homepage on a site I was redesigning. Through our discussions, we came up with a better way of displaying the products and it was only because the senior IA had given me additional insights that helped me think more creatively about the solution.

I know it sounds really trivial as that insight could’ve come from anywhere, but I gained new IA skills by being a participant in the ”working out” of the solution together through discussion, observation, pen and paper, and our understanding of IA (see situated cognition).

Destroy Perpetuating UX Myths

In Jared Spool’s presentation on “The Dawning of the Age Of Experience“, he explains that design decisions can’t always be interrogated. He used examples of sushi chefs, midwives and chicken sexers who, through experience, just happen to “know” what they’re doing is right or wrong. As practitioners we can sometimes end up using our UX methods as a ‘design crutch’, and end up perpetuating the myth that it’s the right way to do design.

Jared’s research has shown that design decisions can come in five flavors, and that “activity-focused design” (expert reviews, heuristic analysis) and “user-focused design” (contextual research, ethnography) are only two of those. “Genius design” (like chicken sexing, midwifery) happens to be no. 3, and observes that this genius design is “a solid style that often has positive outcomes“.

He too, suggests apprenticeships as a way to get to good design.

Models of Apprenticeships

How can we get this thing moving? I think that apprenticeships (or shades of it) can come in different forms, and it’s up to the individual to seek out those opportunities and make the best of it. There are a few ways it could start or take form:

• An Apprenticeship Program where an experienced designer meets with a mentee/apprentice/protege and scopes a project in order to build an end-to-end case study of the individual’s work, which can then be communicated through a portfolio of some sort (as described to me by Lane Halley)
• A self-initiated scope of work/issue/topic by the practitioner alongside a mentor, in order to work towards some career goal (works well for mid-level practitioners who already know the basics and need to address gaps)
• An internship (though I feel internships can be abused, too) for an intense, short project (see Leisa Reichelt’s blog post)
• Internal apprenticeship programs (here’s an example)
• Working alongside senior practitioners in-house (my product browser example)
• Design Jams, but I think this will require some coordination and involvement of expert designers co-designing (rather than advising) with less-experienced designers for it to work well

As the field becomes increasingly multidisciplinary and complex, I don’t see how it works just to work alone and improve as a designer. At the same time, I don’t think we have the luxury of reinventing the wheel all the time, or perpetuating outdated methods and concepts. Maybe one way to formalize this is to improve on the mentorship programs available through the UPA, IxDA and IAI, and encourage more participation and involvment from the community. I just hope it won’t be a case for us of getting to a point and being comfortable that design should be done a ‘certain way’.

I think there’s a real challenge here for not-so-UX folks who are on the ‘fringes’ of the UX field and are really keen on building a career in UX. I’ve met many of them – developers, designers, business analysts, producers – many of whom are very well-read and passionate about UX and are looking to really build a solid career in the field. These are people who actually ‘get it’, as opposed to people who just seem to think that UX is just another label that’s been plastered onto another job title for added kicks.

It doesn’t help that UX isn’t as universally accepted as a practice, and individuals who want to practice UX properly will face an uphill climb as they not only have to attempt to do it right but also convince their companies that it’s worth doing in the first place. Some people I know have opted to gain academic qualifications in HCI/IxD/etc. in hopes to increase their value in the UX job market, often in mid-career, sacrificing potential career opportunities and valuable time. When they graduate, they will face an increasingly competitive field, despite claims from companies and recruiters that UX people are always in short supply.

What they really mean is that truly experienced UX practitioners are in short supply, and a growing number of companies and clients who are starting to see the real value of UX are becoming more selective, as UX (as with any other resource) can be seen as a considerable business risk – but with obvious benefits provided they hire the right skills.

I think it’s much harder to hire a UX practitioner, particularly when companies want pretty much the whole package in an individual (user research, interaction design, information architecture, user testing, web standards, accessibility, etc.) – it’s no wonder that seasoned professionals are in such high demand. Seasoned pros have the ability to move back and forth between high-level strategy (concepting) to low-level implementation (deliverables), which makes them perfect for either deep or broad deployment.

To get a foot in the door, junior UX practitioners have the option of seeking out the few companies who understand what it means to build a UX team and know how to utilize a junior UX resource alongside its multidiscplinary teams. This is fine if you’re fresh out of a HCI programme, but is a tricky thing to navigate for someone who’s transitioning into UX from another field, some of whom have been in management/strategic/senior roles.

I think that freelancing and volunteering can provide some solutions to this – what’s important here is the value acquired from the experience of doing the work, rather than the work itself. For example, it doesn’t count that one is able to produce wireframes – he/she must be able to articulate the thinking behind that wireframe and well as the process involved in producing it. Experiential learning is quite important in this field, and Mozilla Labs’ Design Jam event looks to be a step in the right direction, but we need a lot more stuff like this.

This isn’t always obvious, which is an irony as there are now so many UX books out there, you’d think that we would’ve leapfrogged a few decades ahead in time. But we haven’t – UX and its sub-disciplines are often more craft than science, and that takes a lot of focus, dedication, determination, synthesis, learning and collaboration to gain confidence in that craft.

I am fortunate that London has a thriving and supportive UX community, which has helped a lot in my career transition. But I am certain there are individuals around the world to whom this would be considered a luxury.

I have more questions than answers to this problem, which I perceive to be a real issue if we really care do about the issues people face with interactive systems. This is why I feel really strongly about mentoring, community, participation, and advocacy if this field is going to really take root and make real progress. The only thing I can consider is to not shy away from this despite being a new entrant (formally) to UX, as ‘new practitioners’ sometimes do.

Maybe I should consider submitting a proposal to the IA Summit as a ‘fresh voice’ – but what will I speak of?

I don’t care so much about math because I feel it’s hard to screw up math because it has been made comparatively standard and agnostic from politics and subjectivity, that I assume it hadn’t been whitewashed or dumbed-down for our consumption.

And life isn’t all about numbers.

About an hour ago, I was flipping through the pages of a free, relatively unpolished ebook by Seth Godin. Despite his rough outline about blogs and how to write them, I could tell that by mere reference to specific names and his understanding of journalism and the publishing industry set him many miles apart from so-called “blog experts” that promise to sell you the secrets to blogging success (and I’m not even mentioning “social media”… ugh).

And I feel that the difference about a man or woman is brought about by his perspective of the world, and more importantly, the appreciation and critical self-assessment of that worldview.

I feel that topics like history and geography actually provide the building blocks for thinking about important issues like culture, politics, business, society, philosophy and religion. I may never know what it’s like to have that rich perspective of life without a proper understanding of these basics – because it feels like I’ve been robbed of an opportunity to learn stuff like history and geography in all its richness when I was growing up, except for those moments when my mom was actually teaching me.

The overemphasis of rote learning could’ve been the cause of this. And I remember that I was told off for asking “why” so many times, despite genuinely seeking answers. Did I surpass my superiors’ ability to thirst for answers at that young age? Heaven knows.

Wikipedia only helps so much. Don’t take your education for granted.

Penelope’s post makes sense for people who are looking for a way out of the recession. And for the most part, I do agree with her. I don’t think it is a good idea to go for an MBA, an MFA, a PhD, whatever – if you’re trying to seek refuge from the storm.

But in a way, I don’t think that’s going to stop the tens of thousands who will end up in grad school. So, if you’re in that camp, well… my best advice to you is not to see grad school as a safe haven. It’s extremely deceptive to think that all you have to do is read books and write papers, and do well in class. There’s a lot at stake and a lot to lose in the years spent in grad school.

Grad school is deceptive

One of the main reasons is this – your professors have their own agenda that’s not the same as yours. They tend to value your intelligence and critical analysis of your work (and will reward you for it), rather than your ability to make money and survive. It’s noble, by all means – but far from practical.

The solution to this is to give them what they want, but get what you need. And what you need are:

• connections
• skills
• ‘tricks of the trade’
• opportunities

Connections: Know what’s at stake

It is incorrect to say that there is a huge gap between the corporate and academic worlds. Often times, very established leaders and experts move seamlessly between the two, providing an essential bridge for mutual benefit.

I was just given an opportunity to work with Microsoft for my Masters thesis, and I owe it to my lecturer through her connections. In a way, the process felt a little like going for a job interview, because I knew that it would make a difference to know what the stakes were, and at the end of the day – there were some students who didn’t get what they wanted.

Skills: Discern well between learning and applying

Penelope was right in saying that, to learn entrepreneurship, you have to do it. It can’t be gained by just reading books. But I also believe that there are some people who are so clueless they can’t tell the difference between reading a how-to book and saving their own lives.

If you can’t understand how to translate knowledge into practice, you’re in big trouble. If you think that books should be written in a style suitable for adolescents to make it easier to understand, you’re digging your own grave. This brings me to my next point.

Tricks: Learn the benefits of failing

One essential benefit of grad school that you can’t always get in the working world is the opportunity to fail, and fail often. Don’t take this for granted – smart folks know that getting out early and getting your hands dirty is key to understanding what works and what doesn’t.

In my meeting with the head researcher at Microsoft, I made an absolute fool of myself when I claimed that ethnography was the same thing as field studies. It took me a week before I realized this, but they still let me in. Students are easy to forgive, but there’s always a limit.

The tricks aren’t about failing, but learning from them. It’s easy to say, but I doubt that you’d throw yourself in the deep end of the pool if you knew you couldn’t swim. My take: jump first, swim later. There’s always a way out.

Opportunities: Practice, preach and play

From the onset of the course, I was determined to take the road less travelled. While some students avoid part-time work and external activities in order to concentrate on studies, I run the other way.

I hunted down a flexible job that would pay me enough but not drag me down, signed up as a volunteer on a project with the Interaction Design Association, tried my best to attend every single free event related to my industry, and started following industry leaders on Twitter and started a blog to share my thoughts. I got to work with industry experts almost overnight, and it makes a difference when they know you by name and can vouch for your work.

When it comes to push and shove, all that extra effort clearly stands out. If you’re in a really good school with the smartest bunch, you won’t just be able to collaborate – you’ll synergize with the best. There will always be opportunities to learn and lead, take what you can (or should) and run with it.

The biggest problem isn’t time management – it’s focus.

More so, I feel lost about this blog. How can I assume to have any advice about work, when I don’t even have a regular job?

Job responsibilities are like scout badges you don’t get in graduate school

All my working friends have very fixed schedules – I understand, because the corporate world lives between 9 to 5. It’s very different executing work in practice than it seems in books. There is constant pressure for employees to perform and meet deadlines – a whole system depends on this. If I screw up my assignments, no one else bears the pain (except maybe those who have put their faith in me).

By not being a part of this pattern of work makes me feel like I’m no longer a part of who I used to represent – the workplace, practitioners, and employees. It’s as though job responsibility acts as a “qualifier” for status – the more responsibilities you have, the better you look in other people’s books.

There are almost no scout badges in graduate school. Previous working experience does blur that line a bit, but there’s almost no politics. To some people, that sounds utopian. But politics is real and unavoidable, and we don’t cover this in class.

The gap between academia and the workplace

I also find that there’s a wide gap between academia and the workplace. Ideally, we want this gap to be bridged well so that we can put into practice the stuff that’s learnt and researched. But this is not always the case.

Company goals and academic goals are two very different things, even though they do contribute to each other at times. This conflict makes it hard for students to compare between what’s taught and what’s practiced.

I subscribe to a lot of blogs and forums in the field I am interested to pursue my career, but I find I have no credibility whatsoever, because I’m not doing the ‘real’ work. The credibility that academic folks impart onto students are often based on academic work, which aren’t always a true reflection of what happens in industry.

Associations, events, blogs, and message boards

I’ve been getting my share of the user-experience (UX) industry goings on through associations, events, blogs and message boards. Even though London is small in comparison to the US UX industry, folks here use the Internet enough to get attention, plan meetups, and share ideas – which are all good to pick up on.

Sadly, though – I feel that not a lot of companies are into making full use of students or interacting with them, apart from getting them to fill up questionaires and showing off how good their brand is, and of course, to attract top talent.

Not all practioners are like that, of course. Associations have student discounts to encourage membership, and their events don’t discriminate between students or practitioners. But students tend to take the backseat – as though we were meant to view things from the sidelines. There’s no PR, no real discourse and interaction, no synergy.

Maybe it gets better over blogs, twitter, and LinkedIn. I have yet to find out.

Reprise

The reason for this post is because I love the brazencareerist community, and I’ve learnt so much from people I haven’t met, I’m encouraged to keep sharing my side of the story – because it is as much as adventure to me as it is to another person reading it. I believe that despite my being in graduate school, my career and life goals are very much alive and kicking – and that’s what this is really all about.

Thanks for reading, and for coming back.

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