Starting a career in UX – Part 2

If you missed Part 1 of Starting a career in UX, start here.

In Part 1, I covered what UX is, skills you’ll need to be successful, why it’s a great career, and what you’ll actually do. In Part 2, I’ll cover where to start with making the transition into UX, things you should consider when applying for or accepting a role, and some important stuff to know before starting your first job.

Looking for your first UX role? Here’s what you should consider.

Working with a product team:

• Bigger teams
• Lots of subject matter experts to answer your questions and help you learn
• Deeper understanding of the product
• Deeper understanding of users
• Slower pace
• Easier to plan for “the work”
• Better feedback loops

Working for an agency:

• Often Team of One
• Many clients, each with their own product
• Work autonomously – minimal support
• Fast-paced
• Lack subject matter experts
• Shorter projects/shallower UX
• Less time for research
• Minimal feedback loops
• Rarely get to engage with users due to the pace

Regardless of whether you’re at a product company or an agency, your daily team will look something like this:

So, you think you want to be a designer?

I don’t just want to paint the rosy picture – there’s a lot to this profession, and it’s a very important job. The technology we put into the world can have a good or bad effect on it. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t talk about the hard parts of working in this field. Being a designer is not the same as being an artist, free of obligations and fully devoted to creativity. Our job is not to present our own view of the world.

• Read “Design is a Job” by Mike Monteiro
• A designer is not an artist
• Work to solve a client’s problem
• Charge for value, not time
• Choose the right clients – value your solutions. You provide strategy – not production.
• Don’t let the client design. Clients don’t have to understand design. It’s your job to clarify what they need.
• Never work for free
• Charge for your work, **and charge honestly

Last but not least: Design Ethics

In my opinion, this is one of the most important aspects of building technology, but gets the least amount of discussion and attention, which is why I’m bringing it up now. If you are considering a job in technology, it’s vital that you spend some time understanding the impact it can have on people. (Remember: we are designing software for people).

1. A designer is first and foremost a human being. You are choosing to impact the people who come in contact with your work, you can either help or hurt them with your actions.
2. A designer is responsible for the work they put into the world. Design is a discipline of action. The work you bring into the world is your legacy. It will outlive you. And it will speak for you.
3. A designer values impact over form. We need to fear the consequences of our work more than we love the cleverness of our ideas. Society is the biggest system we can impact and everything you do is a part of that system, good and bad.
4. A designer owes the people who hire them not just their labor, but their counsel. Your job is to relay the impact of that work – limit negative impact – if you can’t – it’s your job to stop it from seeing the light of day. (tell story)
5. A designer welcomes criticism. The role of criticism is to evaluate and improve work. Criticism is a gift. It makes good work better. It keeps bad work from seeing the light of day. The time to kick the tires on your work comes before those tires hit the road.
6. A designer strives to know their audience. Design is the intentional solution to a problem within a set of constraints. To know whether you are properly solving those problems you need to meet the people who are having them. Empathy is a pretty word for exclusion. If you want to know how women would use something you’re designing get a woman on the team that’s designing it.
7. A designer does not believe in edge cases. When you decide who you’re designing for, you’re making an implicit statement about who you’re not designing for. For years we referred to people who weren’t crucial to our products’ success as “edge cases”. We were marginalizing people. And we were making a decision that there were people in the world whose problems weren’t worth solving.
8. A designer is part of a professional community. A designer seeks to build the community, not divide it. If you are dishonest with a client or employer, the designer behind you will pay the price. If you work for free, the designer behind you will be expected to do the same. If you do not hold your ground on doing bad work, the designer behind you will have to work twice as hard to make up for it.
9. A designer welcomes a diverse and competitive field. That means making space at the table for people who society has historically kept down. Diversity leads to better outcomes and solutions. Diversity leads to better design.
10. A designer takes time for self-reflection. Evaluate regularly – are you staying true to who you are? Or are you slowly moving your ethical goal posts a few yards at a time with each raise or stock option award?

And finally, get to work! There’s a lot to learn, but you don’t have to learn it all at once. Start with what you know, and build onto it from there. Real experience is key and when you’re first starting out, having someone to learn from is your best bet for ramping up quickly.

Still have questions? Shoot us a message.