What are the rewards of a UX career?

The demand for UX designers is predicted to grow in the US for the next eight years. Leaders in every industry now recognize that a better user experience equates to more conversions and revenue growth. 

Because UX designers contribute heavily to online conversions and sales success, UX design roles are well-paid. Glassdoor estimates that the median income for a UX designer is around $97,000 per year and ranks it among the best jobs in the US.

But the best part of working in UX design is the high level of job satisfaction. When you work in UX design for websites, you’re working to make the internet a more accessible, easier-to-navigate place for all people.

While encouraging sales conversions and boosting revenue is part of the job, UX design tackles those goals by conducting user research and implementing quantifiable techniques to create a more enjoyable online experience for every user.

So, if you’re eager to learn how to get into UX design, I’ll share my best advice below, where we’ll explore the six steps I recommend to kickstart an exciting career in UX design.

1. Research what it’s like to have a career in UX design

Before you ditch your current job and dive headfirst into the unknown of UX design, make sure you understand the role you’ll be performing as a UX designer. An excellent place to start is to follow UX designers on Instagram or pick up a UX design book (I recommend The UX Careers Handbook). These sources will give you an idea of the daily life of a UX designer – and whether it’s a life you’d enjoy.

The core principle of UX design is user-centricity. That means putting the user first in every design decision, from information structure to ensuring consistency throughout a website. 

With user-centricity as a guiding foundation, UX designers also understand how hierarchy, consistency, confirmation, user control, and accessibility affect the user experience of a website. As a UX designer, you will advocate for the website end-user, balancing the user’s needs with company stakeholders’ goals and the technical feasibility and cost of each required feature.

2. Understand the UX design process and methods

UX designers use four basic steps to create an outstanding user experience: 

1. Research
2. Design
3. Testing
4. Implementation

It all starts with UX research. To effectively advocate for website users, you’ll need to understand them. A large part of UX design focuses on user research; you can build an entire career as a UX researcher if you’re so inclined.

Researching users’ preferences helps you understand your target audience, their expectations when they arrive on your website, and how you’ll meet them with your design, information hierarchy, and accessibility.

Next, you’ll move to design. Using your research findings, you’ll be able (in collaboration with a UI designer) to create a website experience that meets the users’ needs and requirements. At every stage of the design process, a UX designer checks to ensure that the design meets stakeholder and end-user goals.

Once you have a website product, you’ll conduct user testing. This will show you whether your design meets the needs of actual users in real-life scenarios. And from your user testing, you’ll uncover new usability problems that need solutions, requiring you to implement changes to the original design so that it is as finely tuned as possible.

3. Learn the tools of the UX design trade

UX designers work at the intersection of high tech and empathy. It’s a job that requires soft skills like collaboration, curiosity, and problem-solving, but you’ll also need some specific technical skills.

UX designers know how to use research tools like Lookback and Typeform, wireframing and prototyping tools like Figma and Adobe XD, and usability testing tools like Hotjar.

As a UX designer, you’ll need these tools every day, and any UX job you apply for will require experience in them. So familiarize yourself with them by reading about the software, watching YouTube tutorials, and using them as much as possible.

4. Practice your UX designer skills and build a portfolio

A portfolio of compelling website designs is essential to applying for a UX job. But as in any career path, getting experience without a job is hard. So what’s an aspiring UX designer to do?

UX designers gain experience by practicing their skills on any website they can lay their hands on. Tinker with your own website. Badger your friends and family into letting you structure the user experience of their websites. Volunteer your services for nonprofit or educational organizations’ websites. There are ample opportunities to build a UX design portfolio if you look for them.

You may even find that your current job role could benefit from a better user experience. If you’re in a small to medium-sized business with a website or app, analyze it from a UX design standpoint and then mock up a redesign based on your findings. Compelling wireframes, backed up with thoughtful user research, might allow you to land your first UX gig without changing companies.

5. Enroll in a UX design course

A UX course is a shortcut to the steps listed above. A good UX course will:

• Teach you about the principles of UX design
• Show you how to achieve user-centric design through UX processes and methods
• Teach you how to use the necessary tools
• Give you a portfolio of work

Excellent UX design courses include Career Foundry, Design Lab, and Learn UX Design by Erik Kennedy.

If you’re interested in designing the user interface of a website, you may want to explore UI design. UI designers use visual design elements, like graphics, fonts, and colors, to create an outstanding user experience. 

I highly recommend the course Learn UI Design, also from Erik Kennedy, for budding UI designers. In this course, you’ll cover every facet of becoming a UI designer. The course teaches graphic design basics, like design patterns and typography, and gives you rigorous, human-to-human feedback on your designs. Sign up for Learn UI Design here or watch my YouTube demo of this excellent UI designer course here.

6. Make industry connections to become a UX designer

As in any career, your industry connections can help you find job opportunities and land job offers. LinkedIn and networking events are a great way to build relationships, but a career coach can help, too.

With over 25 years of industry experience, I’ve helped hundreds of people find their dream UX job. When you work with me to develop your UX design career, I’ll help you find the right opportunities and coach you on how to approach them.

If you’re ready to forge your new career path, contact me for a free 15-minute discovery call.

The post 6 Steps To Kickstart Your UX Design Career appeared first on Mary Shaw.

UX and UI designers (user experience and user interface designers) work to create an inclusive, immersive experience for visitors to a brand’s website or app. While UX and UI design roles do require some technical knowledge that marketers might not have, the soft skills needed to perform these jobs are similar. So similar that many marketers have successfully pivoted to successful UX/UI design careers.

Below, we’ll explore why marketers are upskilling for a career change to UX and UI design and how you can forge your own UX designer career path.

How is marketing related to UX design?

If you’re currently working in marketing, you may have noticed that it has a lot in common with UX design, like:

• Creating a user-centric experience: Both marketing and UX design work to carefully tailor experiences for the target audience. 
• Conducting user research: In UX design as well as marketing, user research drives the work. Both fields conduct targeted user research to inform design and language decisions.
• Emphasis on messaging and communication: UX design, like marketing, needs a clear messaging direction to work effectively. While marketers may achieve that messaging through copy, UX design communicates through both copy and design choices.
• Mapping the customer journey: Both UX design and marketing work to lead a customer through a journey on the website, and both fields focus on moving customers through that journey in a way that increases their likelihood of converting to a signup, discovery call, or sale.

UX designers and marketers are also alike in using visual design to communicate an organization’s aesthetic. Marketing does this across all communication channels, while UX design focuses on the website or app experience.

Why move from marketing to become a UX/UI designer?

There is likely some truth in the assumption that, in general, UX design salaries are higher than marketing salaries. However, that generalization comes with many caveats like experience, job market, and job role. A senior UX designer is a coveted asset on a web design team, so it comes with a hefty price tag. But, depending on the local job market, a senior marketer could earn a similar salary. 

Instead of salary, those who want to shift focus from marketing to UX and/or UI design are usually driven by a more altruistic reason: the intense focus on the user. They want to have a direct hand in the user’s experience of a website and play the leading role in ensuring that it meets the needs of the website visitor as well as the needs of the brand.

The recent emphasis on user accessibility has also encouraged many marketers to change course as they see a way to make a positive difference in users’ online experiences. Improving website designs to be easy to read and understand for all users isn’t just the right thing; it’s legally required, and many marketers want to help lead that charge.

What technical skills do UX designers need?

A UX designer is expected to understand a user’s intent and frame of mind as they visit and navigate a website so that they can plan an informed website design that converts visits to sales or signups.

To do that, UX designers conduct user research. Understanding how to elicit helpful information from user research is crucial to the role. UX designers know how to plan research questions, conduct interviews and usability tests, and interpret research into applicable changes to website design. User research is essential to UX design and can be a job role in its own right: the role of UX researcher.

A UX designer also understands information architecture: the ability to structure the information on a website so that it’s easy to navigate. And to drive the information architecture, the UX designer can conduct usability tests on websites to ensure the design is intuitive to navigate and users don’t get stuck or frustrated searching for the elements they want to find.

UX designers use specific software for prototyping their website layouts, like Figma, Sketch, and Adobe XD. These allow them to create functional prototypes that show how users interact with the site and how design concepts look on screen.

And UX/UI designers must know how to design websites for accessibility standards. These ensure that all website users, including those with disabilities, can use a website with ease. Accessible website design is now a legal requirement, and it’s the best way to ensure that every client, potential customer, or casual website visitor has a respectful and enjoyable experience on a brand’s website.

Is a graphic design background necessary to be a UX/UI designer?

Visual design is vital to effective UI design, so successful UI designers should possess a working knowledge of graphic design. Understanding how graphic elements like shape and color can help your UX/UI career by enabling you to create more polished page layouts and prototypes.

But you don’t need to be a talented graphic artist to understand and employ visual design elements as a UX designer because UX design goes beyond just the graphics.

UX designers draw on user behavior research, usability testing, prototyping, and information architecture to create website designs that lead customers through a structured website journey. Graphic elements can play a part in that design, but they are not the whole story. Any graphic design experience needed to be a talented UX designer can be learned on the job.

Should I sign up for a UX or UI design course?

Even if you have a strong marketing background, earning a certificate in UX or UI design from a reputable online course is a good idea. For starters, you’ll likely need to learn some of the technical skills mentioned above. Plus, the endorsement of a respected UX design course will boost your resume. And a good UX course will give you work samples and experience as well as a certificate so potential employers can see real examples of your design skills.

I strongly recommend Learn UI Design from Erik Kennedy, a highly-regarded UI design online training course. It only opens for enrollment a few times per year. Still, with its emphasis on Figma and Sketch, its challenging homework assignments, and personalized feedback on projects, it’s worth waiting for. You can watch me demo Learn UI Design on Youtube here or sign up for the course here.

What should I do next?

Still trying to decide whether you should pivot from your marketing career to become a UX or UI designer? You have a few options:

1. You can keep researching and googling without getting anywhere.
2. You can take action by signing up for a course like Learn UI Design. 
3. You can talk to me about how I’ve helped hundreds of people start careers as UX designers and how you could be next.

Let’s talk about how you can leverage your marketing experience into a fulfilling UX design career with some retraining and rebranding. It all starts with a free 15-min call. Contact me today to schedule yours.

The post How To Pivot To A UX Design Career From Marketing appeared first on Mary Shaw.

Urgent things will always come at us. They’re like a river. Until you truly take ownership of your own priorities you will constantly be swept away in a flood of someone else’s.

One way to get a handle on what’s really important is to use the Eisenhower Matrix, also known as a time management matrix. Originally presented in Steven Covey’s classic book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, it’s a way to organize and prioritize your to do’s by urgency and importance.

Where It Came From

The idea began during a 1954 speech, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower quoted an unnamed university president who said, “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” 

It’s a super-simple concept to help you overcome “urgent” distractions and focus on long term outcomes. It’s especially useful for people who are constantly putting out fires, drowning in busywork or have trouble delegating. Sound good?

How It Works

It begins with pausing to think instead of constantly react.

Ask yourself, what is truly urgent? What is truly important? Urgent matters are always beyond our control. For example, your car breaks down and you have to deal with it immediately. Or a colleague calls in sick and you have to cover for them.

That next app release or quarterly report you’re working on is certainly important, but it’s not due for another few weeks. And some important things might not even have a deadline, like finally updating your portfolio. 

The problem comes when you spend too much time in firefighting mode and set your own priorities on the back burner. Eventually they also become urgent and it all becomes a vicious cycle. This leads to constant stress and burnout. 

Don’t let that happen to you. Instead, take the time to map out your priorities according to the matrix. 

Take out a piece of paper or notebook and draw a box. Then sub-divide that box into four quadrants. Label the first quadrant as Urgent/Important, the second as Important/Not Urgent, the third as Urgent/Not Important, and the last as Not Urgent/Not Important. Then assign your tasks and activities within each box.

Eisenhower Matrix In Action

Of course the Urgent/Important stuff has to come first. There’s no getting around it. The trick is getting to the point where you can spend most of your time in Quadrant 2, where things are Important, but not Urgent. These are the actions that move you toward your goals. 

While these tasks are easy to put off to put out fires, they have a much bigger impact on your long term success. Instead, protect them by scheduling them on your calendar and following through. 

If you can consistently focus on Quadrant 2 activities, over time you will naturally reduce the number of urgencies in Quadrant 1.

And what about Quadrants 3 and 4? Well, if it’s best to stick to Quadrant 2 activities, you know the answer. These activities are never the highest and best use of your time. It’s much better to delegate them or delete them all together.

If you need a task management tool to help you get things done, Todoist has been my go-to task manager for years. I’d be absolutely lost without it. By combining it with the bigger picture view of the Eisenhower Matrix, it helps me keep track of everything in my world. Give these tools a try and let me know what you think.

The post Important, Not Urgent appeared first on Mary Shaw.

This past weekend I built and launched a new website in an afternoon using Webflow. It’s not the best or most original site design I’ve ever done, but the Webflow user experience is decent, the site works great and I can’t believe how quickly it came together.

In fact, I put this particular project off for over a year because I thought it was going to take way too much time. I was wrong!

If you need an updated portfolio website or proof of concept for your startup, Webflow is the way to go.

What Is Webflow?

If you haven’t heard of it, Webflow is a visual website builder that lets you design, build, and launch completely custom websites without writing code. You can build custom blogs, portfolios, ecommerce stores, and more with a flexible CMS. 

They offer lots of free templates and tutorials to help you get started, and you don’t have to pay anything until your site goes live. It also works great with both Figma and Sketch.

The Project

If you’re a longtime reader, you may recall that I launched a side business back in 2020. When I’m not doing UX consulting, I write production music for various music libraries.These companies curate large collections of instrumental music used as underscore for corporate videos, events, YouTube and games.

They are big marketplaces with their own online platforms, so I didn’t need a website to get started.But now I’m going after custom clients and needed a professional website. Originally I was just going to build it in WordPress.

As much as I love my UX blog, WordPress is a pain these days. There’s just too many moving parts and the editor is cumbersome and clunky. Instead I wanted something quick with an easy-to-use interface. I tried both Squarespace and Wix, but both of them were very limited and had a frustrating user experience.

Webflow User Experience

The Webflow user experience isn’t the best either, but I think it’s much better than the other two products. And while their marketing says it’s a “no-code” platform, it definitely helps to know a little bit of code.

For example, I got stuck on an alignment issue with the nav bar for almost two hours that drove me nuts. Making changes quickly within Webflow requires knowing where specific settings hide. This often means opening side panels upon side panels, some of which contain endless lists. It turned out the default padding didn’t match the free template I’d chosen.

It was a simple fix, but frustrating because 1) it wasn’t obvious where I needed to make the change and 2) if I hadn’t stumbled upon the padding setting I’d still be working on it.

Awesome Customer Support

What really sold me on Webflow was their 24/7 customer support. At one point I had an ugly error message on my home page that I just couldn’t figure out. I submitted a support ticket and they got back to me within an hour with a loom video plus written transcript of how to fix it. That blew me away.

The New Site

Once the home page error was fixed I launched the site in time for dinner. Check it out at maryshawmusic.com.

Webflow isn’t perfect, but it’s a great solution for anyone who needs a website done quickly and efficiently. They have great support, security and a ton of useful tutorials. They’re also getting a lot of traction in the marketplace. As more companies adopt Webflow I think the user experience will also improve. Have you tried Webflow or other site builders? How have they worked out for you?

I like Webflow so much I signed up to become an affiliate, so if you try it out using my link and join a paid plan I’ll earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. As always, thanks for reading!

The post Webflow Just Works appeared first on Mary Shaw.

In business, “White Space Analysis” refers to exploring future opportunities and untapped markets. For sales professionals, white space is the gap between what products or services a customer has already invested in and the other products or services that a company or business has to offer.

Besides identifying new opportunities for existing products and services, white space analysis often helps companies create new products and services that previously didn’t exist.

Most designers understand the concept of white space and how important it is for clarity and impact. The term originally described any areas of a document that did not contain text or graphics after printing on white paper. White space analysis is essential for anything you’re designing, whether it’s a website or app, a startup venture or even your lifestyle.

Gain Emphasis and Direction

In design, white space gives your eyes a break and a chance to focus on the most important elements on the screen. Junior designers often fill up all available space with lots of information to showcase a product. But doing that actually has the opposite effect.

Overwhelmed with information, our brains simply stop taking it all in. Instead, white space provides the breathing room necessary to increase understanding. This makes it easier to process information.

Intentional Focus and Rest

White space analysis in your career means finally giving yourself permission to move forward on your own priorities. It could be time you’ve blocked off to improve your existing design skills or starting your next job search.

Maybe it means blocking off Monday mornings to protect your schedule, collect your thoughts and effectively prepare for the work week. Or it could be as simple as not reading any email or Slack messages until you’ve had some time and space away from all the noise.

You could even do a mini-version of Bill Gates’ annual “Think Weeks”.

For example, last year I took a 3-day solo retreat to a tiny Airbnb apartment on 5 acres of beautiful open space in upstate Massachussetts. The purpose of the trip was to clear my head and focus on what was next for my business and personal life.

It was honestly one of the best things I’ve ever done. The change of scene, fresh air and time alone outdoors had a huge impact on everything I’ve accomplished this year and what lies ahead. Even during these stressful times, a change of scene might do you good.

So how do you find white space in your life and career? Let me know in the comments.

The post White Space Analysis In Your Career appeared first on Mary Shaw.

How well do you work with developers?

Newer designers often discover they have a gap in their tech skills. For whatever reason, they just don’t have a very good understanding of how computers and the internet really work.

They may have taken an HTML or CSS class at a bootcamp or in college. But it’s not enough to work effectively with developers. This is a growing problem in the industry.

Devs Are Creative

In my experience, developers are some of the most creative people I’ve ever worked with. They should be brought in early and often to a project, especially at the beginning.

A good developer will not only poke holes in a proposed solution (and they should), they can often imagine and craft workarounds that you may never even think of. So it’s important to lay the groundwork for solid communication from the start. How do you do that?

Talk To Them Regularly

First, you can work better with developers by scheduling regular 1:1 meetings with them. This will allow you to collaborate more effectively from the start.

Assuming you already have a solid grasp of technology, you can ask your developer better questions in a “safe” space. This will naturally lead to more robust conversations and more effective design solutions.

There is great wisdom in partnering with developers. Like you, they are often pulled in multiple directions on many different projects and have to work hard to keep up with ever-changing technology.

This might be challenging if you are working with an off-shore development team, but it’s definitely worth a try if management allows it.

Fight For Necessary Dev R&D Time

Talented developers often need sufficient time to thoroughly explore and solve thorny coding problems. This is especially true when the ideal solution pushes the established technology. This crucial R&D time often gets erased in the rush to do more with less.

As a UX design lead, you can help protect this time by demonstrating and defending its value to PMs and stakeholders.

Agree On A Standardized Handoff Process

Last but not least, if you haven’t already, start working with your dev team ASAP to agree upon and create a standardized handoff process. This way everyone will understand expectations up front, with less “gotchas” cropping up down the road.

For example, just because you put a red line with an arrow next to a text entry form doesn’t mean your developer understands what it means. Any handoff documentation should clearly explain how the user needs to interact with the system and how that system should behave. You’ll likely save yourself and your team many last-minute headaches by establishing a shared vocabulary from the beginning.

Working closely with developers is one of the smartest things you can do as a designer and a key to creating great user experiences. What are your best tips to work well with developers? Let me know in the comments.

The post How To Work Better With Developers appeared first on Mary Shaw.

What if you could be less reactive at work? This may sound familiar. It’s early in the morning. You’ve got your to-do list ready, a fresh cup of coffee in hand, and you’re excited for the day. Then you check your email and your day is totally trashed.

Someone else’s problem has suddenly become yours. So you spend the next few hours and possibly the next day or two putting out fires.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed and stressed at work, eventually something has to give. Why does this happen? How much of your time is spent reacting to other people’s requests vs. focusing on your own to-do list?

Reacting vs. Responding

When you get a request, do you react or do you respond? There’s a big difference between the two. Reacting is an automatic, impulsive behavior, based on our naturally protective fight-or-flight instincts. Responding is a conscious and intentional choice.

While it’s tempting to take things personally and immediately jump into reactive mode, almost 99% of those things in your inbox have nothing to do with you. It’s just information. Information that needs to be processed, but not necessarily acted upon right now. Having a process in place to deal with incoming information allows you to pause and assess the situation.

Being less reactive at work doesn’t mean you don’t care. On the contrary, it means you know your priorities. You understand what’s truly important to move things forward.

If you’re constantly putting out fires, that means your important work isn’t getting done. In other words, every time you say “yes” to someone else’s perceived emergency, you are likely creating one of your own down the road.

Plus it’s a total wear-out. Living in a constant state of overwhelm places an unsustainable cognitive load on people that almost always impacts performance. Not only that, you are more likely to rely on knee-jerk, short-term bandaid solutions instead of implementing well-thought out, long-term plans.

Reactive vs. Proactive Behavior

It’s important to understand the difference between Reactive and Proactive behavior. Here are some examples:

Reactive:

• Answering emails
• Attending meetings
• Accepting interruptions

Proactive:

• Defining and prioritizing your tasks
• Working on important, but not urgent items
• Giving yourself time and space to think
• Exercising
• Truly resting

Know Your Triggers So You Can Manage Them

We all want to be helpful and polite. I’ve been a people-pleaser most of my life, to the point where I was constantly stressed and overwhelmed at work because I always put everyone’s priorities ahead of my own.

But over time all that did was put additional stress on me and my team. Everything became an emergency. So I had to stop and take a hard look at why I did what I did.

For a week I kept a journal comparing my daily to-do list against a log of what actually happened. It was a real eye-opener!

After that I decided to get really good at guarding my time. So I blocked off “maker” time in my calendar, time that was just for me to do my most important tasks first. I also stopped checking email constantly, and to this day I process it in batches a couple of times a day.

I know that if I allow myself to even look at my inbox I’ll instinctively react to it, so I intentionally keep mental and physical blinders up to protect my time. For example, my phone has a cover over it so I never see alerts.

I also turn off all notifications when I’m in maker mode. Tim Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Workweek, calls this a “low information diet” and it works like a charm.

What about you? What are your best tips and strategies to be less reactive at work? Let me know in the comments.

The post How To Be Less Reactive At Work appeared first on Mary Shaw.

Solving Product Design Exercises by Artiom Dashinsky

In your current UX/UI or Product Design role, you are likely solving problems on a whiteboard with your team. “Solving Product Design Exercises” by Artiom Dashinsky was written to help you improve and practice these critical collaboration skills. This short book is also an excellent primer for anyone who wants to better understand the Product Designer role at big tech companies.

Why You Should Read This Book

If you’re a mid-level or more senior UX professional, it will help you refine and enhance your product thinking skills and work more effectively with other designers. You’ll also gain a better understanding of how design can impact business success. Entry level designers will find tips and strategies to build a more appealing portfolio along with valuable interview advice.

Dashinsky is a Product Designer based in Tel Aviv and Berlin. He has led the design team at WeWork and a number of startups. His products are currently used by tens of thousands of designers working at companies like Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Netflix and Boeing. They’ve also been featured in Wired, TechCrunch, Forbes, and more.

Overview

The book’s main premise is that successful designers have a deep understanding of how design impacts business and its value to the organization.

Unfortunately, many design schools don’t teach the critical skills that make designers successful, such as:

• Understanding how and why design adds value to the business
• The importance of research to understand customers
• How to work with engineers
• How to present your work to non-designers
• Understanding KPIs and measuring success

According to Dashinsky, the top 1% of companies like Facebook, Amazon and Google have figured out how designers can help them achieve their business goals. This knowledge is not shared externally, so these companies can afford to both compete for top talent and train entry-level designers in-house if necessary.

As a result, many designers outside of big tech companies “don’t know what they don’t know”, and wind up working mostly on the visual elements of design. The downstream effect of this is what Dashinsky calls the “Dribbblisation of Design”. I call this “Skipping To Pretty”, and it’s an industry-wide problem.

What’s A Design Exercise?

To address this issue, many companies now require a “design exercise” or “design challenge” as part of the interview process. Asking candidates to solve and present a proposed design solution in person helps interviewers assess a designer’s overall skillset outside of the standard portfolio and resume.

Interviewers want to make sure you can communicate effectively with the team, think critically by asking good questions, and handle constructive criticism. At the end of the day, a successful product design exercise clearly demonstrates your thought process and represents how you would work in the real world.

Types of Design Exercises

There are usually three types of design exercises:

• Live Whiteboarding – candidates are asked to explain their thinking and decisions while solving a given design problem in front of 3-5 people.
• On-Site Exercise – Candidates are given about an hour to solve a design problem in a quiet space with paper and pen, and then asked to present their solution at the whiteboard.
• Take-Home Exercise – This is usually a visual design assessment. Candidates a required to deliver a high-fidelity design within 4-8 hours over the course of a week.

Commit To A Process

The single most important aspect of solving any design problem is following a process. To that end, Dashinsky offers three tips to help you solve most design challenges:

• Make sure you understand the task
• Ask questions and make assumptions
• Be critical about your solutions

Design Exercise Framework

The author also offers a useful framework called the Design Exercise Canvas when solving and presenting any design solution:

• Why – Understand Your Goal
• Who – Define The Audience
• When/Where – Understand Customer’s Context and Needs
• What – List Ideas
• Prioritize and Choose an Idea
• Solve – Use Storyboarding, Task Lists or Sketching
• How – Measure Success

Lots Of Useful Examples

Have no fear if you’ve never done a design exercise. In the “Questions and Answers” section, Dashinsky provides several well-thought examples of how to conduct each type of exercise from beginning to end using his framework.

Packed With Resources

Last but not least, there are a ton of valuable resources in the back of the book. Everything from Vinod Khosla’s hiring philosophy to Jared Spool’s advice to companies on how to create useful job descriptions.

Final Thoughts

Solving Product Design Exercises is a very quick read at just over 150 pages. You can literally read it in an afternoon, but the biggest value will be in learning and practicing Dashinsky’s Design Exercise Canvas.

But if a book is too much to deal with, my short video workshop, “Surviving Design Challenges” covers a lot of the same territory in less than 20 minutes. This video was part of a larger group coaching program that originally sold for $997 and will help you quickly prepare for your next design exercise. See below for more info.

The post Book Review: Solving Product Design Exercises appeared first on Mary Shaw.

The “Talent Stack” is a concept by Dilbert creator Scott Adams. It states that you can combine ordinary skills until you have enough of the right kind to be extraordinary.

While Adams confesses he’s not much of an artist or a business expert, he’s combined those two skills with writing and his quick wit to create a $75 million comic empire. He intentionally designed his talent stack to make the most of his abilities.

UX Designers are no different. We draw from all sorts of life experience, not just in the workplace. But these days the UX Design community seems obsessed with specialization – I’ve been guilty of that myself. If you’re a long time reader, you know I’m addicted to online courses like Learn UI Design and Sketch from A to Z.

While both courses have been instrumental to my UX design career, UI design is definitely not my secret sauce. My talent stack makes me unique. Your talent stack makes you unique, so let’s look at what it takes to develop it.

From Ordinary to Extraordinary

An effective talent stack uses every aspect of your life experience to create something unique and powerful. Instead of becoming world-class at just one skill, you can offer value to the world by identifying the unique set of skills that make you one-of-a-kind.

For example, UX Designer, Educator and Author Joe Natoli was once a touring rock musician. Besides leveraging his considerable design skills to create an excellent library of online UX courses, his experience as a professional musician also helped him build a robust public speaking career.

Graham Cochrane, one of my business mentors, has created a seven-figure online business by combining his love of audio recording, songwriting, music production and online marketing. His Recording Revolution YouTube channel has over 500,000 subscribers.

Besides UX design, my talent stack is comprised of a passion for writing, design, music, project management and being a mom. Like Joe Natoli, my first career was also in music. I toured the US as a solo singer-songwriter for 7 years, performing at over 150 college campuses and countless clubs long before smartphones and the internet defined my career path.

Despite having awful stage fright at the beginning, over time that unique experience gave me the opportunity to meet hundreds of people and confidently present my ideas. In fact, I still write and produce music on a regular basis. It helps me focus, relax and find the natural rhythms in work and everyday activities.

Stacking Your Talents

What are your unique gifts and talents? How can you combine them to create your talent stack? Clearly articulating this can definitely help you advance your career. I’ve seen it happen over and over again with my UX career coaching clients.

So grab a pen and paper and identify your main skills, talents and passions. What have you done over the course of your life and career? What makes it unique? How has it impacted you?

The post Developing Your Talent Stack appeared first on Mary Shaw.

Have you ever attended a kickoff meeting on a new project and notice several people on the team just don’t “get” UX design? While they know it’s important, you can tell they really don’t understand what it is.

This situation can set the stage for a very shaky foundation, and often results in miscommunications and project delays. Instead, why not take the lead from the start and help educate your team on the value of user experience? It’s possible to do this without ruffling feathers or potentially embarrassing colleagues.

How? For starters, never assume anyone understands the value of UX design at the same level you do. After all, they brought you in to help them figure this stuff out.

It’s so important to ensure your entire team has a good understanding of UX best practices from the very beginning – for example, how it can help teams communicate better, execute more efficiently and avoid surprises.

Three Key Concepts

Taking the time to explain why UX is valuable at a high level is a great investment for everyone involved in any digital design project. At my kickoff meetings I always include a few introductory slides to help people get better acquainted with UX design, starting with the three key concepts listed below. Feel free to use them in your presentations if you like.

1. What Is UX Design?

• In the online world, user experience design (UXD) is the intentional, informed process of creating a shared vision of a customer-centered digital product.
• UX design helps teams create effective websites and apps that improve business results.
• UX design answers the “Why”, “What” and “How” a product is developed.

2. What Users Want To Know

• What is it?
• Who is it for?
• What do I get?

3. UX Answers 2 Fundamental Questions

• What does the website or app need to do for the business?
• What do users need to do on the site or app?

That last point is particularly important. At the most basic level, clearly answering the two fundamental questions of UX is the key to articulating an effective strategy. Keep in mind it will probably take more than one conversation to get to the best answers. But once you have them, you’ll start your project on a firn foundation with a clear reference point for everyone going forward.

The House Building Metaphor

Once I’ve provided a high-level overview of UX, I also like to compare the role of a UX designer to that of an architect on a home building or renovation project. This visual seems to help people a lot:

Adobe also has a great series of instructional videos about The Role of A UX Designer. If you haven’t seen them they’re really useful and can help you explain your role to people outside of your immediate organization.

What about you? How do you communicate the value of UX design to people within and outside your organization? Let me know in the comments.

The post Communicating The Value Of UX Design appeared first on Mary Shaw.

How do you grow professionally? Gain better skills, get a new job, or just find time to think? How do you push past your comfort zone?

New Year’s Day is right around the corner. At this time many people, myself included, make resolutions toward positive behavioral changes.

A classic example is saying you’ll hit the gym three times a week, which only lasts the first two weeks of January. Another is saying you’ll finally clean out that cluttered closet, only to be distracted by the next shiny object scrolling past your Facebook feed.

Because Life Happens

Does this sound familiar? “Life” happens and your resolutions fall by the wayside. Kids get sick, you twist an ankle, or the weather puts a damper on traveling to that big conference. We can plan all we want, but the stuff we don’t know about yet is what usually derails our best intentions. And that stuff never goes away.

Plans are very important – we just have to expect to change them along the way. In other words, taking action and managing change are two sides of the same coin. It’s the managing change part and staying the course that gets us across the finish line.

So instead of making empty New Year’s resolutions, why not find something that will push your comfort zone starting now? What’s the one thing you could do right now that will move the needle for you professionally? Is it learning a new skill? Or asking for a raise? Or maybe even doing something completely different?

What and Why

What is it and why is it important to you? Finding your “why” is the secret sauce to pushing your comfort zone. “Why” is the magic motivator. You may even already know why something is important to you, but there’s a certain “what” that’s holding you back. The only way to remove those pesky “what” roadblocks is to identify them. And that usually means pushing past your comfort zone.

It’s easy to get caught in a rut over time and accept the status quo. Humans are wired for routine. Like other animals, we naturally want to conserve energy and only spring into action when absolutely necessary. Conserving energy is one thing, but complacency is dangerous. You don’t need to accept things as they are if you know you can do better.

Be Prepared

For example, before you go marching into your boss’ office demanding a raise, make sure you have clearly documented how you have added value to the company over the last year. What’s your professional ROI in the eyes of your employer? How have you made their life easier? Did you really make their life easier? Besides keeping you from quitting, how will they benefit from paying you more next year?

Or, if you’ve decided to look for a new job, have you really gone as far as you can in your current role? Are there any other opportunities you may have overlooked? Is there someone you can talk to? If it is time to find your next gig, are you ready? Do you have everything in order? What’s your plan and when will you start?

Your Best Year Yet

To make it your best year yet, what’s the most important thing you need to accomplish in 2020? How will you push past your comfort zone to make it happen?

The post Pushing Your Comfort Zone appeared first on Mary Shaw.

Depending on your outlook, Thanksgiving can be a wonderful holiday or a deeply troubling time. While it might be tempting to dwell on your current challenges, it’s far more productive to think about the gifts all around you. For example, while my wonderful mom is no longer with us, my dad is, so we’re going to make sure he enjoys plenty of turkey and football at our house this weekend.

Gifts are everywhere if you just take the time to look for them. You and I have a choice in how we respond to anything that does or does not happen the way we want. We always have a choice. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that when life gets challenging.

So in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’d like to encourage you to make a gratitude list. Life strategist Tony Robbins says it’s impossible to live in anger or fear when you’re in gratitude. I agree.

Your gratitude list can be a simple collection of one-word reminders or a full-blown essay to help you remember how fortunate you are.

Click the “Keep Reading” link below to learn more about how a gratitude list can make a difference in your life. And if you’re in the US, best wishes to you and yours for a safe and Happy Thanksgiving!

Keep Reading

The post Gifts Are Everywhere appeared first on Mary Shaw.

During our short, 18-minute chat Erik shares the beginnings of his career, what led him to create his awesome UI design course, and what’s next for his brand new UX design course.

If you’re thinking of taking either course, this interview might help you decide if it’s a good fit. While a detailed review of Erik’s UX design course is in the works, you may also want to check out my demo video of Learn UI Design here.

A link to the video interview and show notes are below. Enjoy!

Show Notes:

:38 Intro to Erik Kennedy

1:11 How many students are currently enrolled in the course

1:28 How Erik began his career in UX/UI Design

2:30 Why Erik chose a freelance UX career over full-time opportunities

3:25 When Erik decided to add UI to his skill set

3:54 The Medium post that helped launch Learn UI Design

4:53 Why Erik is qualified to teach UI Design

5:24 Who the course is for

6:27 What differentiates Learn UI Design from other online UI courses

10:15 The biggest challenge for Learn UI Design students

11:22 How long it takes to finish the course

12:48 Results from previous students

14:15 When Learn UI Design is open again (as of this recording)

14:35 How Erik’s brand new UX course has been received

15:45 Just for fun #1: Dogs or Cats?

16:36 Just for fun #2: Beer or Wine?

17:10 Where to find Erik online

Book Recco: Practice Perfect by Doug Lamov

The post Interview with Erik Kennedy from Learn UI Design appeared first on Mary Shaw.

Hurray! You’ve landed the ideal UX job interview. Now, how do you prepare for it? How do you keep your nerves steady? What’s your strategy to win the day and actually get the job?

If you treat your UX job search like the design problem it is, there’s usually two personas to satisfy; the HR Recruiter and the Hiring Manager. If you’re going to meet them in person, how can you help them?

You read that right. What can YOU do for THEM?

Make Your Interviewer’s Job Easier

It seems counterintuitive, but if you focus on adding value first instead of what people think of you, you’ll send a stronger, better vibe and instantly stand out from the crowd.

I’ve seen it happen over and over again for successful applicants regardless of career level. Whether you’re early in your career or looking for a leadership role, to get to the next level you must add value from the moment you say hello to a potential employer.

How Do You Do That?

I’ve spoken with many CEOs, CMOs, hiring managers and recruiters over the last few years. They all have similar opinions on the interview process:

• If you’re meeting with them in person, then your portfolio has done its job. Now they want to know how you think, how well you communicate, and whether or not you will be a good fit with their existing team.
• In their minds they are hiring – not interviewing. That means they want to weed out the people who aren’t a good fit as soon as possible.
• So be concise yet informative when summarizing your career during the interview. Recruiters and hiring managers don’t have time for your life story. Keep it short – about 5 minutes max. They’ll ask you to clarify something if they need more details. Use their time wisely by effectively managing yours.
• Clearly demonstrate your process and the impact of that process. Websites and apps don’t magically start with wireframes. What sort of research did you do to come up with your solutions, who was involved and what was the overall result? How do you know?
• They don’t really care what happened at your last job. They want to know why you showed up for their opportunity. Make sure you have a well-thought out answer. And never say anything bad about any previous employer. That’s a big red flag.
• They expect you to know something about the company, its management and its culture. If you don’t, that’s another red flag. Do your homework.
• Last but not least, what sort of communicator are you? Can you explain a problem or solution clearly on a whiteboard? Are you able to connect the dots of your past experience so it aligns with their current needs? Can you convince and persuade stakeholders with compelling arguments based on solid evidence?

What’s In It For Them?

Find out their needs as soon as possible. What’s their main project, why is it needed, what’s the current problem, and how will the team slay the design and development dragons? Let them do 80% of the talking. Really.

Be careful not to ask too many questions since they’re pressed for time. But ask enough well-considered questions to show genuine curiosity and interest. And notice I haven’t mentioned anything about asking about salary and benefits yet. Save that for the second interview :)

Meet People Where They Are

The best way to truly connect with anyone is to meet them where they are. The same is true for HR recruiters and hiring managers. Most are honest, hard-working people who need to solve a pressing problem.

Clearly demonstrate how you can help solve their problems and you’ll be on your way to nailing your next UX job interview.

The post Nailing Your UX Job Interview appeared first on Mary Shaw.

Your UX portfolio serves one purpose only – to connect you with a recruiter or hiring manager. That’s it. A UX portfolio template is designed to achieve that one, specific goal. Here’s how to create one.

Who’s It For?

Your portfolio must immediately, clearly and concisely communicate your unique value from the moment someone lands on your home page. Three seconds. That’s all you get to capture and hopefully keep their attention. One, two, three. Done.

How do you start? First, identify your audience. For most UX job seekers, your audience is an HR Recruiter or a Hiring Manager in a specific industry. Use your user research skills and create personas for both. Name them. Know them.

Really understand what a day in their life is like. For example, I’ve watched recruiters with 25-30 tabs open on their computer, each with a potential candidate’s portfolio.

They click through them rapidly and get distracted often. Believe it or not, recruiters have a ton of other work to do besides look for job candidates.

If your UX portfolio actually makes the cut, you need to stand out before someone interrupts them. How do you do that?

Show A Clear Path To Purchase

Assuming you have thoroughly researched your potential audience, think of a typical user journey for a recruiter or hiring manager. For example, imagine someone comes across your portfolio from LinkedIn.

If your portfolio successfully gains their attention, now you have a real chance. Lead them quickly and logically from who you are, what you can do, to your contact form. Here’s the possible path they might follow:

LinkedIn Search–> Search Results–> Your Portfolio Website–> Your Project–> Contact

It’s About Process, Not Pretty

How many projects do you need to show? Ideally three, but less is ok if you tell a clear, compelling story. I’ve worked with many people just starting out who only had one project and got the job of their dreams because they clearly communicated their value.

While a winning portfolio is essential, recruiters are much more interested in your thought process, how well you communicate and how you work with teams. All your portfolio needs to do is open the door to start that conversation.

What’s Your Point? Why Does It Matter?

So start the conversation on your home page. Why should they care? What’s in it for them? What is your value statement? How can you make their life easier?

Wireframe it out – if you need help, see my article about thumbnailing. Do that if you don’t want to do full blown wireframes. The point is to have a focused plan of attack.

A Sample UX Portfolio Template

Job-winning portfolios seem to follow a consistent pattern. Below are two simple wireframes depicting a portfolio home page and a case study page with a single project. While it may be prescriptive, a UX portfolio template like this might also be a handy reference to help you update your existing portfolio.

You can easily create a portfolio template like this in Squarespace or WordPress. Even better, uxfolio offers great prompts to help you get your story straight without dealing with technical headaches.

Feedback Helps

As you update your portfolio, iterate and get ongoing feedback from trusted peers until you are satisfied that it’s ready for primetime. Does it do what it needs to do? How do you know? If not, how can you improve it? What’s missing?

Key things to think about:

• Is your name and contact info clearly displayed on the header of every page? This seems obvious, but I’ve seen portfolios using cryptic logos instead of the person’s first and last name.
• What happens when someone scrolls on your website? A “sticky” header matters here. Remember that they probably have dozens of tabs open with other people’s portfolios on them. If they scroll down and your name disappears they won’t remember who’s materials they’re looking at. Don’t let that be you.
• Does your navigation scheme make sense? Is it responsive?

Know Your Stuff

Finally, study your portfolio until you know it backwards and forwards. Be able to talk about your projects without looking at them. You never know when you’ll get an unexpected call from a recruiter or meet someone who can help you right now. Ready is ready. Be ready.

The post Stop Portfolio Paranoia appeared first on Mary Shaw.

While you will naturally gain confidence as a UX professional on the job, what happens when you’re looking for a new job or seeking a promotion? How do you demonstrate that you’re a confident UX designer to HR recruiters and hiring managers?

Positioning Your Professional Story

One of the first things I explore with my career coaching clients is their professional story. Besides knowing their resume inside and out, it’s much more important for job seekers to remember the human stories behind all that work experience.

While reviewing their resume, I’ll ask clients to describe each work experience in detail from an emotional perspective. What lit them up? What do they want to do next and what do they want to avoid? How and when did they add the most value? And why did it feel like they made such an impact?

Understanding Your Unique Value Proposition

What winds up happening is people get very clear on what they do and don’t want in their next job. They also identify some special qualities that only they can offer. We write those things down, and then use them on their resume, LinkedIn profile, portfolio website, and in any subsequent conversations with recruiters. It basically becomes the candidate’s Unique Value Proposition, or “UVP”.

Ask yourself – Why would someone want to work with you? Are you able to clearly articulate your unique value? Your confidence naturally increases when you know your professional story. And it starts with understanding the emotions connected to your work experience.

Confidence Boosters

The most obvious confidence booster is landing your first UX job or promotion. During your time in the industry you’ve likely become more comfortable managing stakeholders and prioritizing pain points. Heck, you may have even picked up some useful project management skills to work more effectively with teams.

As a confident UX designer, you love being part of an open and productive team. You enjoy the playful “ping-pong” of giving and receiving constructive feedback, feel valued and have the opportunity for endless learning. You like to optimize and find efficiencies wherever you can.

Overcoming Self-Doubts

On the other hand, you may be stuck wondering how to move up the ladder. For example, if you want to become a “full-stack” UX designer, you’ll need to identify any gaps in your skill set and make a plan to fill them as soon as possible.

It’s important to know your strengths and weaknesses, but play to your strengths. Becoming a confident UX designer also means having a process framework in place. It’s not necessarily what you do on every project, but more of an experienced-based tool kit you can draw from and easily explain to others.

Perhaps you were recently laid off, experienced poor management or just need a new challenge. Since many people define themselves by their work, those events often leave a sting that’s hard to overcome. But you can overcome it, and may one day realize it was the best thing that ever happened.

What’s Next for You?

Remember that most design teams solve problems with people, not computers, so constantly doubting yourself is unproductive. Instead, use your UX skills to figure out who you really are as a UX professional and what you can offer. Put some clay on the table right now and shape it into actionable, useful conversations for your future employer.

The post Becoming A More Confident UX Designer appeared first on Mary Shaw.

It’s hard to know where to start when working on a new application or adding a feature to an existing application. Some designers like to go straight to code, while others make sophisticated mockups in Photoshop or Sketch. I like to start with paper and pen.

About 10 years ago I took up watercolor sketching as a hobby, not realizing it would have a huge impact on me later as a UX designer. One of the most valuable concepts I learned was the practice of making several thumbnail sketches before proceeding in a specific design direction.

What’s Thumbnailing?

“Thumbnailing” is the process of making small, postage-stamp or thumbnail-size sketches of a subject without adding much detail. When drawing from life, thumbnailing allows the artist to look at the subject from several different angles before dedicating time and energy to a much larger rendering.

Thumbnail sketches are also very handy for digital design. There are no hard and fast rules with regard to actual size, so these tiny sketches can be larger if necessary. I often make mine about 2 inches square, plus or minus depending on the idea.

Why Do It?

Thumbnailing is great because it allows you to come up with multiple layout ideas quickly and inexpensively before jumping into the details. Don’t like that first or second idea? No problem – just keep doodling. Drawing skills don’t really matter as long as you can capture the required elements in your app.

It’s extremely useful for thinking through any type of interaction, from how a landing page should look, to an onboarding flow, or creating a signup process.

For me, the biggest benefits are speed and the ability to come up with multiple ideas before committing to one. If I just crack open Sketch at the beginning of a project it’s a lot easier to immediately get caught up in details like alignment, spacing and font sizes, which misses the point.

With thumbnails I can focus on answering the following questions:

• What’s the most important element?
• How is the user going to interact with it?
• What’s the next step?

Literally Get Your Team On The Same Page

Thumbnail sketches literally help your team get on the same page. If all they have is a feature list or user stories, people will often walk away from meetings with their own ideas of what something should look like and/or how it should function.

Simple thumbnail sketches can provide that first visual reference that points everyone in the same direction. They also encourage clarification and better overall communication.

How To Start Thumbnailing Your Designs

To get started, just grab an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper and a pen. I like to use pen instead of pencil. Using a pen forces me to get my ideas down quickly without getting hung up on whether my lines are straight or giving me a chance to erase and start over again.

Draw a few squares on the page and link them together with lines or arrows as you go. Don’t worry about details for now – think big picture instead. I also like to annotate any ideas for animations or other functionality. That helps me think through how the user will interact with each screen and how the system should respond.

Use Your Own Visual Vocabulary

It’s good to start your thumbnail sketching adventure with an existing visual vocabulary if you have one. What’s a visual vocabulary? It’s a collection of easy-to-remember design elements you draw from memory and use over and over again in your sketches.

For example, think email icon for email, putting an “x” in a box to represent an image, or several lines stacked together representing a paragraph of text. Check out my YouTube video on whiteboard sketching to get a better idea plus a downloadable cheatsheet to help you get started.

The post Thumbnailing appeared first on Mary Shaw.

Time, Effort and Attention. Everyone needs to pay attention to all three.

In our always-connected society, it can seem impossible to get anything done. Distractions are everywhere. It’s even worse for designers. Multitasking, meetings, and constant interruptions wreak havoc on creative flow every day.

When you were in school, did your teachers ever admonish you to “Pay attention”? Mine sure did.

Attention is our most valuable currency. It’s what leads to understanding and action. Without attention, nothing will ever happen. We must constantly pay attention to family matters, finances and work projects. You get the idea.

While your time is certainly limited, how you spend your attention makes all the difference.

So how do you slay the distraction dragon? First identify what it is that’s distracting you. Then eliminate as much as possible.

Remove Self-Inflicted Distractions

While distractions may seem like they are generated from the outside world, most are self-inflicted. For example, do you really HAVE to open that email because the little red circle with a number is on your phone? Do you really HAVE to respond to that Slack message right now because you heard the Pavlovian notification sound? No and no.

People can wait. They really can. Learn to let them.

Set Boundaries and Stick To Them

Next, what sort of guardrails can you put in place to protect your true priorities?

Just like distractions, you first need to know what your priorities are. Then relentlessly defend them.

As a working mom, I’ve faced this every day for over 16 years. In my world, family comes first, then work. In order for that to happen I’ve had to define some pretty clear boundaries over the years. Here are some of them:

1. Family First. My husband and daughter’s needs are always at the top of the list. Always. Everything else can wait. It’s the big reason I started my own business 13 years ago. Since I work part time, I start my day at 9am and end at 2pm. This is by far the toughest boundary to defend. It doesn’t always work exactly that way, but it does work about 80% of the time.

2. Work On The Business. For me there is no business without clients. While it sounds counterintuitive, working on the business vs. in the business must come before client work. Having a thriving business allows me to serve clients much better. It lets me truly focus on helping them instead of wondering where my next paycheck will come from.

3. Focus Sprints for Deep Work. I’m writing this email right now during a 55-minute focus sprint. My door is closed. My phone, email, and Slack are all turned off. It’s the only way this will get done and out to you this week. I used to try and schedule focused work sessions rigorously first thing every day, but that doesn’t work for me since my schedule is rarely consistent.

Pay Attention with Focus Sprints

Now I have a simple goal: accomplish at least 2 focus sprints every day. When they happen doesn’t matter as much as making sure they do happen :)

Focus sprints have really helped me get back on track. If you work in an office and struggle to get deep work done, try booking a meeting with yourself on your calendar, close your door if you have an office or hide out in a conference room if you don’t.

Even better, get outside or go to the local coffee shop for a change of scene.

Add Buffer Time To Your Schedule

Back-to-back meetings are a total productivity killer. Don’t schedule them. There’s no way to process new information when you are rushing from meeting to meeting all day long only to come back to an inbox filled with dozens or hundreds of notifications.

You need room to breathe and time to focus, so add it into your schedule.

I’ve been a lot happier since I started routinely adding transition and buffer time into my calendar. It makes it almost impossible to get overbooked these days.

And while it helps to know how long something is going to take, endless rabbit holes appear more often for designers and developers on a tight schedule. When making estimates of any kind, always double them. That will give you some buffer against the unknown (see above).

How To Have More Time, Effort and Attention, or “TEA”

It starts with intention. It starts as soon as you become aware that you might need to pay attention to this issue. How do you manage distractions in your life?

The post TEA: Time, Effort and Attention appeared first on Mary Shaw.

The “5 Whys” approach is one of my favorite research methods to get to the root cause of any issue and solve it. The approach is pretty simple. Just keep asking “why?” until you figure things out, right? Well, simple isn’t always easy.

How To Use The 5 Whys To Figure Out The “Real” Why

Originally the brainchild of Sakichi Toyoda at Toyota Motor Company, this technique was implemented throughout Toyota’s manufacturing facilities as part of their continuous improvement strategy. Like peeling back an onion, each time you ask “Why?” you uncover a deeper level layer.

Here’s a simple example:

1. Why is your phone’s battery dead? – Answer: I forgot to charge it.

2. Why did you forget to charge it? – Answer: My phone charger wasn’t nearby.

3. Why isn’t your phone charger nearby? – Answer: Because I keep it downstairs in the kitchen.

4. Why do you keep it in the kitchen? – Answer – I like to keep it next to my car keys.

5. Why don’t you keep it on your desk nearby? Answer – Because I don’t have a spare charger.

That last “Why?” identifies the root cause, which is the fact that the person doesn’t have a spare phone charger. They should either move the existing charger or get another so the chances of having a dead phone battery are greatly reduced.

How To Apply 5 Whys In UX Research

As part of your overall UX Process, identifying the root cause of a problem early on has multiple benefits. For one thing, surfacing the issue before designing it into a feature will likely save time, money, and numerous headaches. Secondly, it will help your team collaborate better together. Here’s how:

• Get everyone on your team in the same room (or virtual room if you’re on a distributed team).
• Assign one person to be the group facilitator
• Clearly define the issue together and confirm everyone is in agreement.
• Try to get the problem focused as tightly as possible – in fact smaller is better.
• Ask the 5 why’s and capture the answers on a white board or other note-taking system.

As you go along, you may discover that working through small issues often uncovers larger systemic problems that might otherwise go unnoticed.

For User and Stakeholder Interviews: Ask Why But Don’t Be Annoying

When interviewing users and stakeholders, it takes empathy and tact to ask somebody why they do something 5 times without annoying them.

Follow up each “Why” question with simple phrases like “Really? Could you tell me more?”, or “That’s interesting. Please go on”.

Anything you can do to keep the conversation flowing as naturally as possible is best.

Always Be Curious

Genuine curiosity is at the heart of an effective “5 Whys” exploration. You have to really be interested and truly care. Curiosity drives interest, empathy, and ultimately answers. Have you used the “5 Whys” recently? Why or why not? Let me know in the comments.

The post The 5 Whys Method appeared first on Mary Shaw.

When you’re heads down working on an ongoing project (or series of projects), weeks and months can slip by in a flash. Sometimes even years with bigger projects. And since technology changes rapidly every three to six months it can seem like an eternity in internet time.

So how can you stay current when you barely have time to gulp down lunch at your desk? Some companies provide training, but many do not. Budget and resource constraints prevent them from offering these perks. If you’re a “UX team of one”, you may find yourself on the short end of the training stick.

At my last agency job we had the same problem. Everyone was so wrapped up in the endlessly urgent “project du jour” that skill rot was a real risk. It was one of the big reasons I left that job to start my own consultancy.

While it was hard to find time to level up, it wasn’t impossible. In Tim Ferriss’ great book “The Four Hour Workweek”, he advises that it’s better to catch up when necessary vs. constantly trying to keep up. I agree.

Online courses are great, but sometimes you just need a quick “digital snack” to give you a quick tip or useful idea in the moment. In that spirit, here’s a list of eight awesome websites I visit frequently to help me stay aware of what’s happening on the interwebs and in the design community in general. Check them out when you can sneak in a quick break here and there.

Digital Snacking Menu

The Next Web – If you can only pick one, this is the site to visit for the latest and greatest in tech.

User Testing’s Blog – This is a great resource for a pure UX perspective and current industry insights.

User Interface Engineering – Jared Spool’s UIE content is unmatched, especially his All You Can Learn Library. If you have a specific question or problem the answer is probably here.

Boxes And Arrows – Christina Wodtke’s wonderful Boxes and Arrows continues to provide powerful, relevant essays on UX best practices.

A List Apart – If you’re not reading A List Apart, you should be. Some of the best brains in the design field are writing for them, plus they are always looking for contributors. Why not you?

Specky Boy – Specky Boy is geared more toward helping small agency owners and freelancers, but it has great articles and useful freebies for designers and developers.

UX Design Weekly – A wonderfully curated collection of useful UX/UI content published every Monday by Kenny Chen.

UX Pin ebooks – I included this one for extra credit. UX Pin’s comprehensive ebook library is more of a digital meal than a snack, but it is regularly updated with excellent content by current UX/UI thought leaders and influencers. You’ll have to part with your email address to access it but it’s worth it.

Over To You

How do you stay up to date? What other methods do you find useful to help you keep your skills sharp? What other sites do you find useful? Let me know in the comments.

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