The subject of design education, UX careers, and mentoring has been on my mind a lot lately. It wasn’t long ago that I was looking for UX job and I’ve learnt a lot in the process, not to mention the experience I’m gaining on the job right now.
In addition, there’s been a lot of conversation and interest from the UX community in this area – e.g. Jason Mesut’s rant on UX portfolios (sign-in required), Don Norman’s “Why Design Education Must Change“, Mozilla Labs’ first Design Jam event in London and my own conversations with Ian Fenn, Jeff Van Campen and Lane Halley about engaging in and improving Communities of Practice in the UX industry.
Broadly speaking, there are three main issues that practitioners and the industry is experiencing right now:
- The huge gap between research and practice
- Challenges faced by junior and non-UX practitioners seeking to gain employment in UX
- Difficulty for employers to find UX candidates who can articulate and present good design thinking
These issues are complex and extend beyond the point of this blog post, but I think that apprenticeships would be a good way to resolve some of these issues.
Why Apprenticeships – a Case for Situativity
This paper on “learning approaches for teaching interaction design” by Dr. Corina Sas does a really good job of explaining the challenges and possible improvements to IxD instruction. The four main approaches she suggests are interrelated (apprenticeship, constructivism, experiential learning, and situated learning & community of practice), but the gist of it is that IxD (and related UX disciplines) is more craft than science (though the science bit is still really important), and that what’s lacking is a systemic approach to procedural over declarative learning.
This seems to be a common observation elsewhere as well.
In the past few weeks, I’ve had the chance to experience this working alongside a more experienced IA. I was working on a product browser that would sit on the homepage on a site I was redesigning. Through our discussions, we came up with a better way of displaying the products and it was only because the senior IA had given me additional insights that helped me think more creatively about the solution.
I know it sounds really trivial as that insight could’ve come from anywhere, but I gained new IA skills by being a participant in the ”working out” of the solution together through discussion, observation, pen and paper, and our understanding of IA (see situated cognition).
Destroy Perpetuating UX Myths
In Jared Spool’s presentation on “The Dawning of the Age Of Experience“, he explains that design decisions can’t always be interrogated. He used examples of sushi chefs, midwives and chicken sexers who, through experience, just happen to “know” what they’re doing is right or wrong. As practitioners we can sometimes end up using our UX methods as a ‘design crutch’, and end up perpetuating the myth that it’s the right way to do design.
Jared’s research has shown that design decisions can come in five flavors, and that “activity-focused design” (expert reviews, heuristic analysis) and “user-focused design” (contextual research, ethnography) are only two of those. “Genius design” (like chicken sexing, midwifery) happens to be no. 3, and observes that this genius design is “a solid style that often has positive outcomes“.
He too, suggests apprenticeships as a way to get to good design.
Models of Apprenticeships
How can we get this thing moving? I think that apprenticeships (or shades of it) can come in different forms, and it’s up to the individual to seek out those opportunities and make the best of it. There are a few ways it could start or take form:
- An Apprenticeship Program where an experienced designer meets with a mentee/apprentice/protege and scopes a project in order to build an end-to-end case study of the individual’s work, which can then be communicated through a portfolio of some sort (as described to me by Lane Halley)
- A self-initiated scope of work/issue/topic by the practitioner alongside a mentor, in order to work towards some career goal (works well for mid-level practitioners who already know the basics and need to address gaps)
- An internship (though I feel internships can be abused, too) for an intense, short project (see Leisa Reichelt’s blog post)
- Internal apprenticeship programs (here’s an example)
- Working alongside senior practitioners in-house (my product browser example)
- Design Jams, but I think this will require some coordination and involvement of expert designers co-designing (rather than advising) with less-experienced designers for it to work well
As the field becomes increasingly multidisciplinary and complex, I don’t see how it works just to work alone and improve as a designer. At the same time, I don’t think we have the luxury of reinventing the wheel all the time, or perpetuating outdated methods and concepts. Maybe one way to formalize this is to improve on the mentorship programs available through the UPA, IxDA and IAI, and encourage more participation and involvment from the community. I just hope it won’t be a case for us of getting to a point and being comfortable that design should be done a ‘certain way’.