Monthly Archives: November 2010

I was fortunate enough to get a ticket at the very first Design Jam today. It was put together as part of Mozilla Labs’ work to encourage ‘open design’, and runs in the spirit of developer ‘hack days‘, but mainly aimed at UX designers (the first of its kind?). I’m happy to say the event was successful in generating a lot of conversations, getting involvment from the local UX community and beyond, and getting people excited about UX.

I was looking forward to seeing how other designers approached UX, looking to gain insight and value from other practitioners’ work. Although I expected many more UX people to be involved, there weren’t many experienced UX practitioners who participated. Still, I learnt a lot from my teammates who came from varied backgrounds (dev, research assistant, comms, anthropology, veteran generalist).

Here are some of the positive points from my experience with Design Jam:

1. It’s a whole level of experience doing design itself, as opposed to learning about it from books and events. Design Jam succeeded very well here.
2. There was good diversity of skills – many people I’ve never met before, and certainly had the pleasure to work with. We all learnt how good design could take place with the right conditions and environment.
3. Mentors – having them around provided a real yardstick and that extra polish and validation to our work. I was happy that Leisa Reichelt and Ivanka Majic came along to assist.
4. The space – kudos to City University and the organizers for setting up and providing the space needed to do the work. It was perfect.
5. Equipment, tools, etc. – apart from some minor glitches with the projector, I felt there were enough stickies, post-its, etc. although I did bring along my own design kit (instead of a laptop, like everyone else did).
6. The organizers (@johannakoll, @joelanman, @cyberdees, @bobbywatson, Kate from City Uni) were really helpful, went out of their way to get us coffee, and worked their asses off to make this happen.

I think some improvements can be made in future runs of Design Jam:

1. Incentivize more experienced UX practitioners to participate. I certainly saw many people hungry to learn about UX, and it’s not just about having the ability to create personas, using a UX process or doing user research. An experienced practitioner can make a real difference in how all that gets synthesized.
2. It would’ve been better if we had more time for reflection and learning. I felt there were many people, some of which were new to UX, who could’ve given their thoughts and opinions about their experience. It would’ve been much more valuable to gain those insights during the event.
3. The presentation phase could’ve benefitted from more structure. Having some sort of structure and time limit would encourage teams to focus and deliver a more compelling presentation, rather than a looser format of this-is-is-our-prototype-and-heres-how-we-got-there – keeping in mind that energy levels usually drop fast toward the end of these kinds of events.
4. It became a bit intrusive to edit the wiki while doing groupwork – it meant that occasionally one member of the team had to be disengaged from groupwork to focus on the wiki. While I appreciate the value of real-time conversation and updates, it could’ve been given a bit more thought – maybe allocate time for groups to do that rather than steal away precious group time.
5. For some reason, I feel it’s important to have good wall space do to UX design. There were teams that had to make do without ample space, but I guess no one seemed to complain.
6. It felt a bit harder to work without easy access to coffee (ok this is a bit out of place, but…). Thanks again to the wonderful organizers who went out of their way to get us takeaway coffee from a nearby cafe.

Some interesting highlights:

• Our levels of do – part of our conceptual map of the user’s re-finding activity.
• Our user research, done on twitter – complete with incentive for willing participants.
• Stephen Anderson’s Mental Notes cards came in handy.
• iPads as prototyping tool and makeshift powerpoint slides.
• Family friendly.
• Makeshift wall.
• Location-based piles.
• Design Jam wiki – thanks to @jeffvancampen.
• Our team, SevenHeaven.

I’m looking forward to the next one! Big applause to the organizers and sponsors (Mozilla, City University, Johnny Holland).

After two months of looking, I’ve finally found an opportunity to work in the user experience field as an Information Architect (my previous role was Lead Developer, although I did quite a lot of UX there as well as in the previous company). It was certainly the right combination of my previous skills and experience along with my interest in UX, as well as a healthy dose of good fortune, that led me to this job.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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