I’ve noticed it with other designers when validating ideas. I’m even prone to it myself.

Validation is a central tenet to good UX design. When you’ve stared at a carefully crafted iteration for far too long, your only chance to break out of a vortex of denial and capriciousness is by invoking third party opinions – a fresh pair of eyes to look out for problems that your own may have glazed over.

With this in mind, projects will inevitably have a limited timescale for completion. Therefore, being able to move onto the next task quickly is imperative. Yet it’s easy to get stuck in a quagmire of small circular improvements that yield minimal progress from outside validation.

One potential issue arises out of a conflict of interests: you want an honest opinion so you can address problems as soon as possible, but your extra pair of eyes have their own prerogative. They want to give an opinion to validate their own selection in the role of design critic.

Cue the subjectivity of ego versus the objectivity of productive design.

Because of social norms, the person being asked for their opinion, the critic, will look to issue an output that they deem equitable for the exchange. What they hear is “I value your opinion. Here is the latest iteration: I want to hear your thoughts”. After all, if you’re asked to do something, especially something that comes as easily as giving an opinion, you’ll want to return value. Sometimes the best way is just to say something, even if that something is unproductive.

We know no single brain is the same based on physiology as well as observed behaviour. Our unique perspectives are the basis of subjectivity formed over a lifetime of many different experiences. Often, the design opinions that result from critiquing is productive and can pick up on things that the designer might’ve missed – this is essential and good.

The problem I’ve observed throughout my professional life lies in when the critic knows their opinion counts – they’ll try to find something to comment on in order to convey value as a critic, even if it’s unnecessary. This can stifle productivity in what might be an already very busy project.

Phrasing your request well will set an important precedent to receiving the right feedback, but ultimately it’s down to the designer to recognise when feedback is a productivity trap or when it genuinely adds value to the final proposition. Without this crucial sense of legit vs BS concerns, we run the risk of submitting to outside criticism that creates limited value for the end goal and sabotages our reputations as designers to stakeholders.

UX Designers are particularly prone to a bombardment of opinions from stakeholders in multiple areas during project reviews and idea validation meetings. Some of these individuals have been referred to as unsavoury acronyms :

HiPPO – Highest Paid Person’s Opinion
A stakeholder high up in the organisational food chain who thinks he/she knows what’s best for the product being developed. Sometimes they’ll use anecdotal evidence to back up their opinions but usually it’s about exerting executive power over the project to show who’s boss.

ZEBRA – Zero Evidence But Really Arrogant
Also has ideas of what should be done but is worse than the HiPPO because they provide no backing for their decisions; usually because they’re mired knee-deep in their own self-inflated sense of worth.

Seagull
Someone who doesn’t understand the notion of constructive feedback and poops on all your ideas because it conflicts with his/her vision of what is right for the organisation.

Luckily, we have some tools to mitigate, consolidate and drive our focused vision through the opinion onslaught:

• Countering HiPPOs, ZEBRAs and Seagulls – Difficult against high ranking stakeholders powered by egotism and likely paying for your services. The best advice is to carefully play your research card and support your reasoning with numerical data that shows how your idea can improve the value proposition of the business. Presenting audio and video recordings of users giving their feedback is fantastic at supporting your cause.
• Red routes – These nifty charts help to establish how much of your user base want to use any of the features they’re looking for in the next iteration of your design. A starter guide can be found here.
• Feature prioritisation chart – Giving precedence to important features based on ease of implementation vs researched-backed demand
• Project brief – Every good project starts with a brief from a stakeholder. Referring back to this throughout your project cycle will remind you of your prerogatives; but don’t forget to tie it in with user demand.
• Kanban board – Organisation is key to staying on top; this is increasingly going virtual with tools like Trello and Realtimeboard but personally I prefer the visual impact of hanging paper up in the physical world for your team to see everyday.
• Hard-earned experience – Nothing beats knowing personally from past experience what works and what doesn’t. Patterns emerge and soon you’re able to handle this stuff in your sleep. Experience will accumulate over time but you’ll want to throw yourself into opportunities at every given turn to hone your sense of priority and survivability as soon as possible.

Every project is about following the path that creates the most value. With multiple paths on offer, keeping sight of important features based on research will enable better validation and therefore increased value. Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide whether you should stick to your guns and challenge outside opinion or bend to their will to get the project done – finding a happy medium between these two will likely yield project nirvana.

Note: This is a brief overview. There are great guides on the respective sites for each of the platforms mentioned to help you get started. You’ll need to self-code your site therefore knowledge of HTML & CSS is essential to realise your portfolio.

The two essential components you need for a portfolio site are:

1. Some web space to host your content.
2. A brand-friendly domain name to point people to your site, preferably a .com address.
3. Bonus: A content management system for any blog posts you may want to write, much like this one.

1. Web Hosting Space

I wanted to see where I could reduce my server-running overheads so I looked to Amazon Web Services (shortened to AWS). The business model for AWS has a low friction adoption curve meaning that new users to the service can ride on their platform for free based on low traffic interaction. This is brilliant for a portfolio site in its early days where few visitors may drop by erratically and unpredictably.

I deployed one of their S3 buckets (‘Simple Storage Service’, essentially an FTP server) which also conveniently allows files to be viewed publicly. I can’t stress how good an offering this is because you can effectively host an entire website, as long as it is static, without any cost whatsoever. 

2. Domain Name

The first thing I did, even before grabbing web space was securing my own domain name – I look at domains like digital real estate – once it’s bought, it’s yours and will appreciate in value depending on what you build in that space.

All of my domain purchasing is done through Namecheap which I discovered based on professional recommendations. I’m not a big fan of their business’s name but they don’t lie – the domains here are cheap and the company has grown massively in the US west coast against the bigger and more established brands. They also have a great stance on net neutrality, unlike a certain “GreenlightFather”.

The Namecheap interface is responsive and slick, has multi-factor authentication (MFA) available; and although domain hosting was enough for me, if you so wished you could use them for your entire web deployment needs.

 3. Blogging Space

To complement my static content, I wanted a blog to convey my own thoughts and provide impetus for visitors to return. Unfortunately, this type of site acts as a purveyor of dynamic content. If you’re smarter (and more confident) than the average UX design bear, you can take advantage of AWS again and deploy a micro Elastic Computing (EC2) instance for free – I’ll lay this out at some point in a future post. 

I didn’t have time to run a server so these were the fastest deployments I could think of: Medium is an excellent platform with incredibly easy and consistent formatting, but it goes lone ranger when it comes to a specific visual theme you may have in mind; making my visitors’ experience a continuous one meant I had to look elsewhere. Blogspot by Google is also a very good solution, especially for its biased SEO properties, however its thematic template design offerings were rather weak to convey a designer’s site.

In the end, I went with WordPress for the great customisation, excellent theme choice and ease of use. WordPress blogs are naturally free provided you allow a little unobtrusive advertising to exist – there really is no such thing as a free lunch! There’s even an option to attach subdomain to your main domain, i.e. blog.myawesomedomain.com. Although there is a cost, it’s worthwhile to give your users confidence when they see the URL of your blog that they’re still within the same site and experience you’re providing.

In closing

Once you have all these, you’ll need to have a clear idea of how your site will look and the code you want to implement to make them a reality. Despite being out of scope for this particular article, I’ve mentioned some of the tools I used on my Mac to get my site built.

I just want to add I’m well overdue for the next iteration of my portfolio site. This one started as an extended exercise of my HTML, CSS and JS skills but I feel it doesn’t quite meet the high standard of other portfolio sites out there in the World Wide Wow (the impressive part of the internet).

But… this first version met my needs. The total annual running cost for my site is sub-$10. For this, I get to show my projects to the world, have the satisfaction of knowing I built it myself and can demonstrate my front end coding skills to potential clients! Not too shabby for a first portfolio site – Del Boy would be proud.

TL;DR

Platforms

• Namecheap – easy to use domain name management at low cost.
• Amazon S3 – essentially an FTP server to store all your web content.
• WordPress.com – useful and free CMS for organising blog posts if you plan to write regularly.

All of these should be deployed with MFA. Multi-Factor Authentication ensures hackers can’t get through the front door, even if they manage to get their grubby hands on your password.

Tools

• Sketch – for wireframing and prototyping. Also useful for other graphics including icons.
• Photoshop – to touch up photos for presentation and act as the main image manipulation tool.
• Terminal – to spawn new files and manipulate existing ones.
• Sublime Text – to write HTML, CSS and JS.

Initially I was determined to build a personal brand fortress with nikgupta – it had my name and seemed unique enough to act as a consistent identifier across the web in a utopian ideal sort of way. Having already secured nikgupta.com years before, I was keen on establishing it elsewhere. 

A unified brand comes with clear benefits:

• A single identifier make it easy for your audience and clients to recall from memory (depending on the name of course),
• It also gives your reputation consistency. Visual design is important in this too but I’ll be focusing on wording first to set the groundwork for the look. 

My user-registration run was going incredibly well until I’d reached the fertile battlegrounds of Twitter.

Twitter is an incredible platform that warrants its own blog post. It’s infamously known for its ability to connect the average citizen with customer service departments of hulking behemoths (supermarkets, mobile operators, political organisations, hacker cliques, terrorist groups, etc.). Most of all Twitter allows for agency that’s not possible with its main competitors.

On this basis, I’d fallen in love with the little blue bird …and yet it managed to break my heart when I discovered @nikgupta had already been taken. My slightly megalomaniacal grand brand plans for web-wide presence were foiled and I was left to wonder what I could do from here. For a brief moment, I contemplated excluding Twitter which would’ve forced me to exist as an unregistered ghost floating in a sea of tweets. However, the temptation to contribute to the platform was too strong and so I began to think laterally.

Adding numbers or extraneous letters such as natalieportman123 or jeffgoldblumtastic didn’t quite work for me – they’d come across as cognitively-heavy at best and teenaged-amateurish at worst. I needed something that portrayed the professional essence of the nikgupta identifier without using the same.

I looked back to Twitter itself and sought inspiration from founder Jack Dorsey’s feed, admittedly with a tangential curiosity as to what his initial tweet was (I wrongly guessed it’d be “Hello World”).

“just setting up my twttr” was a modest yet poignant way to begin what has now transformed into a behemoth of a social network basking within its minimalistic communication boundaries. It was Jack’s unusual method of spelling his brand that inspired me to dispense with the vowels. Thinking it was highly unlikely that anyone would have that combination of letters as a username, I went about revisiting my branding plans by securing the necessary virtual properties. @nkgpt was mine!

I did revel in the fact that my personal domain was now only five letters and a dot long

I quickly registered nkgpt.com and later was very lucky to realise that I could obtain an even shorter domain – .pt being the national top-level domain name of Portugal, and with registration rules welcoming anyone in the EU to purchase a .pt TLD, I jumped on the opportunity to grab it immediately. I did revel in the fact that my personal domain was now only five letters and a dot long (although with Brexit on the horizon, this may be short-lived).

I’m happy that I could find a brand that I liked as well.  There are plenty in the world that don’t make sense or loosely reflect the purpose of the entity holding it. For me, it represents my professional self in a neat quick-to-type package. It should also fall into the realm of short-term memory – “seven-things” being the average human holding limit is potentially useful at industry meetings where names are quickly forgotten amidst the bumbling of networking chatter.

If you too are seeking a brand, the advice I can give is that there’s plenty of inspiration to be found in others’ usernames across the internet from Twitter to Reddit and everything in between. As time goes on though, be prepared to not find what you’re after and a stronger imagination needing to be evoked – act sooner rather than later to define your brand as the historical population of internet denizens grows. Most of all, you can find solace in the fact that a glowing reputation is not only affected by but can also drive the value of an unknown name …you don’t have to look further than the story of J.K. Rowling to see this.

Bonus: I’d read British literacy studies where it’s said the brain is able to fill in gaps when letters are missing and a word looks off. So a sntnce lk ths isnt ttlly cnfsng. As long as a large bulk of the letters including the first and last letters are present to form a pattern, the compressed word is usually readable.

There’s a caveat though in that the attention being sought should be derived from a platform that disconnects me from the content as an immediate person – no selfies, no podcasts and certainly no videos. Although excluding this auxiliary content is difficult in achieving successful attention-grabbing, I firmly believe the only medium that really allows the purity of my ideas to flow is the occlusive format of writing.

In this way, writing is a very rewarding experience on the internet in that it allows both the expression of ideas and a reaction to the same. On a more materialistic level, to potentially have access to a huge readership, be able to gauge reader uptake and to process their responses almost instantly is a feedback system that can attach an addictive character to the historically one-way process.

Social networks are very good in perpetuating this interactivity with writers – comments, sharing and ‘like’ systems validate and propel ideas (much like in this blog as well). It may seem obvious but as an unpaid blogger the potential for human response to something you’ve created is quite frankly thrilling. It’s certainly what encourages me to keep writing when the reception is good – a positive feedback cycle like this is, I imagine, keeps professionals and novices alike writing in an age of high quality video streaming. Even when the feedback isn’t great, the lack of response can equally create drive to try again with another attempt. I know that I’m susceptible to deciphering what might’ve put readers off and aim to improve my standard for a better quality of authoring.

The difficulty with pure writing on the internet, however, is that it rarely engages a wide range of users – many magazine sites deploy slick videos alongside high resolution image galleries, soundbites and other interactive lures. From a chronic perspective, gaining momentum at the beginning is difficult when you’re unknown. Readers seldom drop into your blog by accident therefore fishing and baiting them becomes an accompanying exercise to creating content.  And be prepared to persevere because building up a reputation takes time.

As a UX designer, these are challenges that I’m willing to take on because readers are important. No worthy endeavour can be accomplished overnight; the iterative nature of producing and testing is synonymous with a good UX process and can be applied to almost anything, especially writing. Understanding that applications, including websites, need to be created with content in mind first also warrants the skill of conveying information in the most useful way to readers – writing well and presenting information in an accessible manner is part and parcel of a good user experience. But crucially that responsive aspect must be present to allow preening and refinement. Much like talking to a brick wall, we cannot seek attention (and therefore feedback) from something that does not give it.

In short, whether as part of UX or on its own merits, writing is terribly addictive as a two-way street. If we can successfully foster a practical philosophy of positive responses then we’ve truly achieved something great with this simple and time-tested medium.  

However, prejudice can meddle with that which means we can undeservedly yet readily associate low-level societal concepts with people, especially with foreigners we don’t know – as a lowbrow example, the French using the slang “les rosbifs” for Brits, or “frogs” vice versa. This denies us potential connections and meaningful relationships as humans which could have led onto better things professionally or on a personal fielding.

These tips have worked for me in becoming a successful international ambassador and in fostering good relationships in foreign lands:

Befriend the locals
This is crucial and isn’t as hard as it sounds. Networking and friendship-building is a fundamental skill as a primate, whether you’re at home or abroad. Since you’re likely in the country for a reason, be it working or studying, you can tap into your immediate circle of people you have regular contact with on a day-to-day basis.

If this has too much collateral accompanying it, join a Meetup that speaks English and connect over a common hobby or liking. Avoid the pitfall of joining “expat” Meetups, especially if you’re from an English speaking country; you’ll probably need them eventually when you’re homesick from time-to-time but try your best to break the ice with locals – they’ll provide you with insights that you wouldn’t get from expats.

Be honest about your intentions and establish reputation
Create curiosity in people and let them play with it. It’s likely they’ll pick up on the fact “you’re not from around here” by your accent and this provides a good footing for qualifying conversation.

If you’re there to study, describe your subject; if you’re working, describe what you’re doing and who you’ll benefit – build your social reputation so people can stand behind you if they’re not doing so already. The potential here is that people can forget you’re a foreigner, which is what we want to reduce cultural friction, and see you in a professional or other light.

Compliment the local culture where it’s due
Once your intentions are established, remember to follow through with compliments. Charisma on Command has unmissable information about this – I suggest you check them out if you’re curious to learn more.

The fastest way to make inroads with people is to highlight what they’re good at. This can cover topics from cuisine and fashion to sports and historical landmarks. Sending compliments their way creates a foundation of trust and encourages them to reflect the sentiments back. Engage in the local culture and find things that you love.

But don’t over do it if you don’t feel genuinely inclined – sycophantism is a globally-recognised concept that can work against you, especially when your non-verbal communication doesn’t match your intent.

Conduct yourself appropriately to avoid potential faux pas
Do your homework and read up on the local niceties and particulars that people in that country abide by. If you still don’t know, ask someone you can trust to explain more; there may be rules and protocols that may be hard to find on the internet.

One time, my hunger-induced enthusiasm earned me a slap on the wrist for grabbing a cutlery fork before everyone received their food and said grace. I’d been at a dinner the night before where this wasn’t protocol which demonstrates etiquette can vary within cultures – gathering your intel ahead of time saves you from any awkward and embarrassing situations.

Win over a mentor
When immersed in another culture, people will forgive you for being a bumbling foreigner; but this doesn’t do you any favours in strengthening your cause and building your growing social reputation in a positive light. If you’re lucky, you’ll soon find open-minded individuals who are willing to lend you a hand in supporting you on your cultural journey – make these people your best friends and consult with them often.

In closing, perception and reputation are closely intertwined. Make connections that positively contribute to your perceived value. In turn, you not only do a good service to yourself but the collateral value permeates through to the people of the future you represent in the mind’s eye of your hosts.

Full article here: https://hbr.org/2015/03/why-group-brainstorming-is-a-waste-of-time

Key takeaways:

• Fear of judgement of ideas by less confident individuals (social anxiety).
• Reduced contribution by weaker individuals depending on the stronger ones to carry the team (social-loafing).
• Reduced contribution by the smarter ones due to lack of inspiration or challenge (regression to the mean).
• Reduced output over time as only one idea of a contributor can be communicated at any moment for the others to understand it (production blocking).

The article goes on to explain why many organisations continue to use it. But what are the implications for UX, especially in environments where group input from other designers, stakeholders and even users is common?

Brainstorming can be a part of activities where an impasse is met in making progress, especially in defining crucial design stages of an app. An example could be feature prioritisation exercises with MoSCoW or affinity mapping where group consensus is needed and where brainstorming could be unproductive. Methods like affinity diagramming exist to counter complacency by allowing a transition of spoken communication to a more visually oriented one.

Within the UX designer’s arsenal are dedicated group workshops like design studios which have an element of brainstorming to them. In my experience, they’re usually productive exercises; perhaps this is due to the iterative nature of distinct splitting off (where the ideation takes place) and reconvening phases. When done properly, pitching in a design studio is quick and can bring across multiple ideas to the group via rough wireframe sketches in a short space of time.

Potentially, the key message here is to encourage your ideating group to rebalance their efforts from talking less to doing more within an agile structured framework.

Feel free to download and share with credit back to nkg.pt

In the buzzing grand hall of the Inmarsat building in London sat a calibre of one hundred participants the likes of which I hadn’t seen since my undergrad days – quite frankly the IQ levels and vague autistic tendencies were almost intimidating at times. Many had working demos churning through large amounts of readily-accessible satellite data or sported physics simulations for rocket engine thrust and manoeuvring calculations. In all, they shared one thing in common – they were passionate about the academically multidimensional nature of space. I knew from the outset it was an ambitious event to attend, but to make it my first really felt like a challenge considering I had casual interest in space-related issues.

Nevertheless, I persevered and sought out interested individuals and potential team mates. We banded together as a motley crew of UX designers, developers, a photographer and a musician working towards an educational app for kids. The aim of the app was to improve access to casual astronomy whilst creating a sense of intrigue and fun. The long term benefit would be to encourage interest in STEM fields for pursuit on their main educational path.

“Quite frankly the IQ levels and vague autistic tendencies were almost intimidating at times.”

In response to the competition, a unique selling point was needed to distinguish us from the swathes of projects running in parallel – this was the use of augmented reality (AR). Using a smart device, the user would try to locate the Moon and other celestial bodies wherever they may be relative to their current time and position on Earth. With a radar-style interface, kids would play a pseudo-game of Marco Polo. The truth was a few other local teams had similar visions for adopting an AR interface but this only became apparent towards the end of the event. Globally, there were hundreds – we couldn’t kid ourselves – any sense of uniqueness for our vision of the app was quickly dropped knowing the whole hackathon community was after the same cutting-edge kudos.

With the twenty-four hours we had to develop our idea, we managed to produce mockups in Sketch of what a potential interface might look like. With no time for any sort of usability testing, this was a pure problem solving/blue sky self-generated ideation exercise – not the standard process for a UX designer with user-centred design in mind. In fact, the project length, working hours and somewhat foreign environment made the whole ordeal into an intensely anxious one.

Despite the initial alienness of it all, there were some learning points during development regarding teamwork and accountability that we could take away with us. For example, despite having two developers on our team, we didn’t have a clickable prototype at the end which revealed a lack of communication within the team. This highlighted the value of checking in on teammates for progress and dealing with difficulties as they arose. Leaving them to their own devices meant that in terms of R&D, they spent too much time on research and not enough on development. Needless to say, a dedicated scrum master role would not have gone amiss.

Overall, I was pleased with the work we’d accomplished in the short time available and it hasn’t put me off venturing forth once more into the intensity and chaos of hackathon territory …although I may opt for a subject area closer to my heart next time!    

The final day of the User Experience Design Immersive course, number 11 in London. I couldn’t even picture this day when I started writing this journal!

We started by drawing our 10 weeks summarised into a single sketch – I decided to pay tribute to the memes that kept our cohort entertained during the course, courtesy of Arnie:

The rest was spent being debriefed by the instructors, including what to expect going forward and the action we can take beyond the course – job related stuff.

Because of the Easter bank holiday in England, the expected 50 days has been compressed into 49 days. The long weekend ahead certainly feels well deserved.

All that’s left to say about GA is a big thank you. I can officially call myself a UX Designer!

What a day. The team and I spent the first half rehearsing to ensure we were good to go for the presentation at 14:00. In between, we watched other teams perform to an excellent standard – they really delivered their pitches to a professional and theatrical level, and as us going last of all the teams, we really felt the pressure.

And when the time came, we delivered.

The nerves gradually dissipated as we progressed into the slides, and of course the passion of delivering the project to the client surfaced. In the end, the culmination of the two weeks was a passion (in the truest sense with pains endured) so we were all keen to bring it across. We performed a role play to complement the slides and ensure the prototype was demo’d in a potentially real life scenario.

And it was well received.

The client loved it. The instructors praised it. There was an incredible feeling at the end of 15 minutes standing up in front of a crowd consisting of 20 students, instructors and clients.

We discussed deliverables (basically access to our prototype and when to send the specifications document filling in the technical details not covered in the presentation) with the client straight after.

The rest of the day was celebrating the end of a magnificent journey in learning UX. With drinks. And a lot of fun.

I’m really going to miss this experience.