Author: whysel

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The Occasional Mentor: More on the UI/UX Controversy, Learning UX, Hiring Designers and Hackathons

THE OCCASIONAL MENTOR:
A monthly column based on questions I’ve answered on Quora, heard on Slack groups, and other career advice I’ve given over the prior month. Feel free to challenge me in the comments, if you have a different experience. Below are questions I answered in February.

Why are UX advocates very picky about the difference between UI and UX?

February 25, 2019

UI is the part of the experience the user can directly manipulate. UX is much more. Consider an elevator.

UI is the elevator panel: Floor buttons, open/close buttons, key override, emergency call button, stop mechanism, etc.

UX is where the elevator is in the building. How high does it go? Should there be a button for the 13th Floor? How many people does it fit? Should there be more than one? How close is it to the exit or the mail center? Should there be an express elevator to higher floors to help with traffic? Will the elevator have a digital display? Will there be a TV screen? A mirror? A camera? Who lives in the building? Do they have pets? Does the weather outside get messy? Will it need mats? Is the elevator going to be used for people or freight? Will it occasionally be fitted with wall protectors? What are the safety mechanisms? How will the elevator be equipped in an emergency? What is the safety code for elevators? How fast should it be? Does the building even need an elevator?

Should I go to college for UX design or be self taught?

Answered Feb 16
The question of degree vs self teach is a common one. A degree is still a standard for employability, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it should be a UX labeled degree. There is an abundance of opportunities for self-learning including online courses, Meetups, Slack networks, boot camps and university club activities to help you learn UX on your own and/or in addition to a degree.

There is no set or accredited UX curriculum that I am aware at the undergraduate level, of so most “UX” degrees could begin to look dated after a few years if their focus is on current practices (like Sketch and similar tools). And because there is no real agreement of what a UX degree program should include, it would be difficult for recruiters to understand exactly what you know unless they are knowledgeable about the various programs.

You should go to college and study an area that interests you, making sure that you can also include design, psychology, anthropology and intro programming classes. Some UX designers will debate whether programming classes are necessary. My take on it is that the procedural logic and data structure foundations in computer science courses help a lot when mapping out a digital experience, particularly as more AI is integrated into digital spaces. Even library science courses, which are traditionally user focused are requiring some programming related subjects, if not outright coding.

It’s important to pursue an academic subject that you are passionate about or at least can really dig into. There are digital spaces in every field, even in the humanities, so there will always be a need for people who can design those spaces. You may as well enjoy the content of your experience by majoring in an area that appeals to you.

I hope this helps.

Where do I find and hire freelance UI/UX designers?

Updated Feb 16

TL;DR: UX designers often pass on any job description that says “UI/UX”. Don’t use it. Instead use a title that describes what the person is actually going to do.

For hiring designers, I’ve had good luck with TopTal, but I prefer to go on Slack groups and get out to meetups to really get to know people I want to work with. I don’t like Dribble or Behance for UX people. It’s typically a lot of eye-candy that shows very little of the designer’s process. If there is a designer I like who has a portfolio there, I’ll look, but I wouldn’t start there from scratch.

A good UX designer will show their process: the methods they use, the choices they made, even the designs they discarded. A good portfolio give you a sense of the problem space and challenges and will have a clear description of the person’s role. You can’t tell any of this from a glossy, finished product photo.

I strongly suggest that you not use the term “UX/UI” in the job description. As others have stated (and noted in a the first question above), it is too broad to really be meaningful. Most User Experience people will see that and read “visual design” which may or may not include everything from graphic design, animation, typography and stylesheets. Some good candidates may assume you want a front-end developer, and give the role a pass, because developers typically don’t do UX.

It’s better to use a title that describes what the person is actually going to do.

UI people typically are front-end designers and often are expected to know how to code. While UI fits into the UX umbrella, most UX Designers will be focused on user journeys, personas, user advocacy and may or may not do research. UI people use research, but don’t necessarily produce it themselves and may be a step or two removed from the user research process.

There is a rather hot debate going on as to whether UX Designers should know how to code. Most designers and researchers that identify as “UX” people do not code. I’m from the camp that says it helps, but if they are mostly coding (unless it’s to put together prototypes for testing and they don’t have devs to do that for them), they’re probably not a UX “designer”.

Bottom line: You need users to do UX design. You could make a case for researching logs and customer support database, but since it’s after release, that’s really user acceptance testing, not UX Design. The user experience design process starts with user testing way before you release a product and occurs along with development, launch and beyond. And if you aren’t applying user research and integrating users into your design processes or at least talking to them, it’s just not UX.

What what projects did you create at a hackathon? How hard was it to create it in a limited time?

Updated Feb 16

Working within constraints is an important skill of any good product designer. At a hackathon, your constraints include time, of course, as well as available data, resources and the knowledge and skill of your team members. I try to join diverse groups that include at least one person who understands the underlying subject matter and available data, one strong open source developer and one designer/researcher type (usually that’s me). If you use and understand open source data and tools you likely have access to more resources than other teams, so unless the hackathon is restricted to proprietary tools and data, it gives you an edge.

Hackathon projects I’ve done:

The Nature Conservancy Stormwater Challenge: I hosted a service design hackathon with the goal to encourage private property owners to implement Stormwater mitigation technology.

United Nations Hack For Humanity: I co-chaired a weekend hackathon with the goal to create anti terrorist projects. The winning project employed machine learning to disrupt terrorist networks. Other submitted projects included a stateless e911 network and a SMS based marketplace for emergency supplies.

NYPL Open Book Hack: I went twice. The first year, my team created a poetry recommendation tool. Based on poems and genres a user likes, it created a booklet with twenty poems. The next year, my team created a PDF to ePub converter for Supreme Court opinions.

NYPL Open Audio Hackathon: created a tool to add multimedia content to audio podcasts.

Empathy Jam: My team created a prototype job training platform.

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Among the Information Architecture Luminaries

It was an honor and a joy to serve as the Experience Director and impromptu panelist at The 20th Information Architecture Conference this past week in Orlando. Jorge Arango in a blog post described members of the panel on the history and future of information architecture as “luminaries” and while I appreciate the recognition, I am truly humbled to be named among Louis Rosenfeld, Stacy Surla, Jesse James Garrett and Jorge Arango. These are each incredible people who have lit the path for me in my own professional journey.

 

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The Occasional Mentor: On Constraints in Service Design and Hiring Freelancers

THE OCCASIONAL MENTOR:
A monthly column based on questions I’ve answered on Quora, heard on Slack groups, and other career advice I’ve given over the prior month. Feel free to challenge me in the comments, if you have a different experience. Below are questions I answered in January.

What Projects Did You Create in a Hackathon? How Hard Was It to Create It in a Limited Time?

Answered 1/5/2018

Working within constraints is an important skill of any good product designer. At a hackathon, your constraints include time, of course, as well as available data, resources and the knowledge and skill of your team members. I try to join diverse groups that include at least one person who understands the underlying subject matter and available data, one strong open source developer and one designer/researcher type (usually that’s me). If you use and understand open source data and tools you likely have access to more resources than other teams, so unless the hackathon is restricted to proprietary tools and data, it gives you an edge.

Hackathon projects I’ve done (I try to do at least one per year):

The Nature Conservancy Stormwater Challenge: I hosted a service design hackathon in October 2018 with the goal to encourage private property owners to implement Stormwater mitigation technology.

Empathy Jam: My team created a prototype job training platform at the 2017 Empathy Jam.

United Nations Unite For Humanity: I co-chaired a weekend hackathon in 2016 with the goal to create anti terrorist projects. The winning project employed machine learning to disrupt terrorist networks. Other submitted projects included a stateless e911 network and a SMS based marketplace for emergency supplies.

NYPL Open Audio Hackathon: In 2016, my team created a tool to add multimedia content to audio podcasts.

NYPL Open Book Hack: I went twice. The first year, my team created a PDF to reflowable ePub converter for Supreme Court opinions. The next year, my team created a poetry recommendation tool. Based on poems and genres a user likes, it created a booklet with twenty poems.

Upcoming Hackathon: Escape from New York

I will be mentoring at MD5’s ‪Escape from New York Mass Evacuation hackathon in NYC the weekend of February 22-24. This Defense Department Hackathon features $45k in awards. Let me know if you’d like to bring a team or participate as a mentor. There are a few student and professional tickets left but you have to  have a promotional code to unlock them. Visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/escape-from-new-york-a-massive-evacuation-hackathon-tickets-51211081724‬

Where do I find and hire freelance UI/UX designers?

Answered 1/5/2019

TL;DR: Good UX designers pass on any job description that says “UI/UX”. Don’t use it. Instead use a title that describes what the person is actually going to do.

For hiring designers, I’ve had good luck with TopTal, but I prefer to go on Slack groups and get out to meetups to really get to know people I want to work with. I don’t like Dribble or Behance for UX people. It’s typically a lot of eye-candy that shows very little of the designer’s process. If there is a designer I like who has a portfolio there, I’ll look, but I wouldn’t start there from scratch.

A good UX designer will show their process: the methods they use, the choices they made, even the designs they discarded. A good portfolio give you a sense of the problem space and challenges and will have a clear description of the person’s role. You can’t tell any of this from a glossy, finished product photo.

I strongly suggest that you not use the term “UX/UI” in the job description. As others have stated, it is too broad to really be meaningful. Most User Experience people will see that and read “visual design” which may or may not include everything from graphic design, animation, typography and stylesheets. Some good candidates may assume you want a front-end developer, and give the role a pass, because developers typically don’t do UX.

It’s better to use a title that describes what the person is actually going to do.

UI people typically are front-end designers and often are expected to know how to code. While UI fits into the UX umbrella, most UX Designers will be focused on user journeys, personas, user advocacy and may or may not do research. UI people use research, but don’t necessarily produce it themselves and may be a step or two removed from the user research process.

There is a rather hot debate going on as to whether UX Designers should know how to code. Most designers and researchers that identify as “UX” people do not code. I’m from the camp that says it helps, but if they are mostly coding (unless it’s to put together prototypes for testing and they don’t have devs to do that for them), they’re probably not a UX “designer”.

Bottom line: You need users to do UX design. You could make a case for researching logs and customer support database, but since it’s after release, that’s really user acceptance testing, not UX. The user experience design process starts with user testing way before you release a product and occurs along with development, launch and beyond. And if you aren’t applying user research and integrating users into your design processes or at least talking to them, its just not UX .

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The Occasional Mentor: Happy New Year! Resolutions and Bad UX

THE OCCASIONAL MENTOR:
A monthly column based on questions I’ve answered on Quora, heard on Slack groups, and other career advice I’ve given over the prior month. Feel free to challenge me in the comments, if you have a different experience. Below is a question I answered in December (slow month) and an idea for the new year.

Happy New Year!

Wait. Bad UX? I guess we can start the year with something a little more aspirational first and then get on with my answer from December.

On the DesignX NYC Slack, as on many of my social media spaces, everyone is talking about what they plan to change, do, realize for the New Year. It’s a good exercise and I thought I’d share my New Year’s resolutions here.

What I really want to do is get back on top of my writing a bit (lot) more. I do this Occasional Mentor column, but realized that I had a couple months of content backlog that I didn’t publish yet. I’d like to get more articles out on other things I’m doing, especially insights from our Behavioral Economics NYC guests. I’ll be experimenting with a few other formats as well.

I’m all caught up on republishing Brett’s Forbes articles to the Decision Fish blog. Brett posts at least once a month on financial wellness, philosophy, behavioral economics and of course decision making. I’m taking the opportunity this year to redesign that space to be more useful, with timely posts, curated content and links to our Behavioral Economics NYC videos. If I find time, no…When I find it, I’ll put in some work on a much-needed revamp of this site.

I also plan to start having more meaningful F2F conversations. Some of the Slacks I’m on have used the @donut plug-in for peer mentoring/networking. It can be hit and miss, but when I do meet interesting people it’s a win. I’ve already had five meetings this month with people I met at meetups and via @donut, including one client pitch!

In the spirit of Give/Get, I encourage you to think about how you can learn from your networks and what you have to offer, because I’m sure you have a lot to share in the coming year.

How you can help? – Follows always help. Follow my Medium blog. You can also find our pre-Forbes content at the Decision Fish blog and follow Decision Fish on Facebook and Twitter. Join the Behavioral Economics NYC meetup. We have seats available for Donna Chugh’s Feb 28 webinar on The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias? I’m also working on a piece on behavioral interventions, featuring our Stormwater Challenge at The Nature Conservancy in October and psychologist John Pickering’s January talk on saving the Great Barrier Reef.

Also, don’t wait for @donut to match us. Reach out if you want to grab coffee or lunch some time.

Areas where I can help? – I can help walk anyone through the wonderful world of startups and can offer advice on pitch decks, founder programs and bootstrapping. I recently went through the Startup Leadership Program and was in a couple of incubator programs including NYU StartEd. We even placed well in MetLife Foundation’s Inclusion Plus. AMA.

And now, from Quora…

What are some examples of poor UX designs in good websites/apps

Answered Dec 5

I’ll clarify a previous answer. There certainly is such a thing as bad user experience and it is possible for UX Design to be implemented poorly. That said, Bad UX Design or Dark UX or using UX methods or knowledge of human behavior to trick users into actions that are against their interest does exist; however, it wouldn’t properly be called UX Design, since the fundamentals of UX Design begin with the users’ interests.

Poorly implemented UX is really anything that’s is irritating or gets in the way of the user’s goal: badly implemented user flow, difficult onboarding, “corporate underwear” (where content or structure is delivered from the corporate POV rather than the user), or anything that generally frustrates the user.

My favorite example lately of poorly implemented UX is the old Search Bar at Jet.com. They have since fixed it, but for a very long time it was an extremely frustrating experience. On the home page, the search bar is displayed prominently at the top of the screen. It used to be that when you entered a search on the home page, a new search page would open with a new search bar, forcing you to enter the search again. This was true no matter which device I used. I can’t figure out why delivering results from the home page search box should be so difficult that the user should have to re-enter a search. I was really happy when they finally fixed it, which incidentally was around the time they started delivering some items in more environmentally friendly packaging. (I could go on about their packaging issues).

The rest of the online UX at Jet.com is relatively good. I like the filtering and ratings information and the information about product safety. The cart functions pretty seamlessly and allows you to add or change items from a popout window. They could do a better job identifying second day only versus standard delivery, since there is an added cost. And their “buy more to reduce the price of everything” plays into some cognitive biases. You could call it a dark pattern, but it is not a new or unrecognizable one. Walmart has been using similar price drops for years.

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The Occasional Mentor: On UX and Journalism, Portfolios, Online Classes and … Pie?

THE OCCASIONAL MENTOR:
A monthly column based on questions I’ve answered on Quora, heard on Slack groups, and other career advice I’ve given over the prior month. Hope you like it, but feel free to challenge me in the comments, if you have a different experience. Below are questions I answered in September.

Can a professional with a background in journalism follow a career as a UX/UI designer? What steps should he take?

Answered Sep 16

I wouldn’t let the previous answer about programming scare you. UX designers rarely need to program. It helps to have some understanding of programming capabilities to communicate with developers on your team, but UX designers are more focused on the user. As such they are focused on user stories and there is where a background in journalism (or fiction writing or film or philosophy) really pays off.

What is the user’s story? What is their motivation? What problems do they need to solve?

You can’t create an effective solution without understanding how the intended user expects a product to work. To do that, you have to observe, ask questions, get an understanding of their mental model, really put your ego as a designer aside and focus on what the user needs. Journalistic training is excellent for this process. Interviewing skills, truth-seeking impartiality, storytelling.

What are absolute must haves in a UX Portfolio?

Answered Sep 16

Stories.

Too many people create a Dribbble portfolio with a lot of pretty pictures but don’t explain the rationale behind their decisions and why the pretty finished product was the right product.

It is also impossible to know from a finished app or website exactly what you did and what other people on the team did. Without that story it can seem like you are taking credit for all of the work your team did.

Don’t just show the end product. Explain who the users are.

What problem does your solution solve? What questions did you ask to discover that the solution you envisioned was the correct one?

Where were you wrong and where did you change direction?

Who else did you work with? Developers, stakeholders, visual and graphic designers, UX researchers? How were you able to negotiate your vision or incorporate theirs into the design?

Was the client satisfied? What do you see as the next step? Is there more work to come? Etc.

If I learn UI and UX online, will the skills I learn apply directly to websites?

Answered Sep 16

Much of what you will learn in an online UX design course will apply to all types of products including physical and digital products such as websites, as well as services.

Understanding who the user is, what problems they need to solve and whether a digital product or some other solution will serve them is a big part of what you learn. How to plan and create a digital solution comes out of UX and UI design, UI being more about the actual product interface, ie the digital components that the user interacts with.

That said, for an online course, you aren’t going to find users to interview in the course materials. You’re going to have to find them out in the real world.

You also won’t learn a whole lot about what it is like to work on a team, especially if it isn’t group oriented such as a video course, or if group activities are asynchronous, such as a message forum. A good online course will have real-time, group activities and use virtual white-boarding/sticky notes. It will encourage discussion and positive design critique of other classmate’s work.

But still may not get the same kind of energy and feedback that you would in person. If you can do a class with a group of people or find people in the class who are in your area to do exercises with in person, it helps a lot.

And one more question for fun…

How do you make the crust of the pie when you don’t have enough butter?

Answered Sep 3

Joy of Cooking has one of my all-time, favorite recipes. It’s a chard tart with an olive oil crust. The crust recipe is essentially two cups flour, half cup olive oil, half cup water and a dash of salt. It’s a very soft crust so you need to press it out directly in the pan with your fingers. No need to grease the pan. It’s super flaky and the taste is divine. Works well for savory or sweet dishes.

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The Occasional Mentor: On Data Science or UX and Getting Started

THE OCCASIONAL MENTOR
A monthly column based on questions I’ve answered on Quora, heard on Slack groups, and other career advice I’ve given over the prior month. Hope you like it, but feel free to challenge me in the comments, if you have a different experience. Below are questions I answered in August.

Should I Learn Data Science or UX Design?

Answered on August 9, 2018

To find the answer look at the labels. Data or users? Are you more comfortable working with data or with people?

Data scientists work with data sets and computational analysis, while UX designers focus on people and their needs and behaviors.

Data scientists work with tabular data, charts, graphs, statistics/graphics programs like R and computer languages like Python, JSON and SQL. Their subject matter expertise is mathematics.

UX designers work with drawing and wireframing software, Post-Its, whiteboards and Sharpies. And lots of discussion, interviewing, observation, surveying and feedback. Their subject matter ultimately is people who use the products they design.

In some companies there may be an overlapping of the roles. For example a data scientist may work with user generated data, such as usage logs, to analyze behavior. A UX designer may help the data scientist test a visualization that is understandable to the users. So if you are interested in both you may be able to find roles that focus on your area of expertise, but give you some exposure to the other disciplines.

What Is the Best Way to Become Successful User Experience/User Interface Designer and Promote Yourself for Someone Who Is Completely New to this Career Path

Answered on 08/04/2018

Read: Read books, articles and blog posts on UX and design that are recommended by experts in the field and UX professional networks, like UXPA, IxDA, AIGA and the IA Institute. The Interaction Design Foundation has a concise set of encyclopedia articles on topics in UX as well as inexpensive online courses. A good intro is Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think. Rosenfeld Media nd O’Reilly Media have many of the bestselling UX books. Good online magazines include Boxes and Arrows, UX Matters and Smashing Magazine.

Be sure to read a wide variety of subject matter. Read about philosophy, cognitive science and behavioral economics. Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow and Thaler/Sunstein’s Nudge are good ones to start. Also read in areas where you have particular subject matter expertise or interest as you are most likely to succeed in getting a job, and enjoying it, in a product area you can be passionate about. I’m currently reading Gary A. Klein’s Sources of Power, a book that focuses on high stakes decision-making by military and emergency personnel and Planning for Everything, by Peter Morville, who coauthored Information Architecture for the Web and Beyond.

Watch: There are a lot of great conferences and talks that post their materials online that you can watch for free or for a small fee. I like IxDA’s Interaction Conference, Enterprise UX from Rosenfeld Media and Jared Spool’s UIE conferences. UIE collects talks in an “All You Can Learn” Library that are very good quality.

You can also find video courses on platforms like Udemy and Vimeo. I am currently taking a Cooper design course at Udemy taught by Alan’s Cooper, whose company Cooper.com, a user experience design and strategy firm offers design training. IDEO also has online design courses though these can be pricy for someone just starting out.

Listen: If you search “top ten UX podcasts” you’ll find most of the good ones. UX Podcast is the most cited. I like Postlight’s Track Changes. It has the banter of Car Talk and isn’t always so serious.

Also, since UX is all about the user, really build your listening muscle by listening to what people around you are saying about the products and services they use. What kind of language to they use when describing their experiences? What common problems or complaints do people have? Are they articulate or vague? Sometimes the vague ones are the most interesting to explore.

Talk: Find UX and Design related Meetups in your area and get out and talk to Designers. Ask them questions. What do they do? What do they love and hate about it? What are their most interesting or wicked challenges. Meetups are wonderful opportunities to network with UX designers, hiring managers and other likeminded people who can serve as mentors and travel buddies on your UX journey.

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The Occasional Mentor: On Computing Resources in Digital Humanities

THE OCCASIONAL MENTOR
A monthly-ish column based on questions I’ve answered on Quora, heard on Slack groups, and other career advice I’ve given over the prior month. Hope you like it, but feel free to challenge me in the comments, if you have a different experience. Below are questions I answered in July.

What Should I Learn About Computer Science for Studying History with Digital Humanities

Answered on July 25, 2018

I recommend visiting HASTAC.org. It is a group of academics and practitioners working in digital humanities. There are resources including local events, national conferences, blog posts, discussion lists and trainings.

You can look for digital humanities institutes and departments at local universities to see if they offer public programming. Many do. Where I live in NYC, Columbia and CUNY Graduate Center offer public programs. CUNY has an open access social media platform for digital humanities. Their digital humanities resource guide is pretty comprehensive: CUNY Academic Commons Wiki Archive.

I’ve seen some pretty interesting uses of text analysis, 3D printing and modeling to analyze historic texts and artifacts. Researchers at Rutgers used 3D imagery to scan Roman coins that they 3D printed. The scans offered a finer representation of the relief than the naked eye can see and the 3D prints (similar to photocopies of paper documents) allowed people to hold and examine the object without damaging the original. When I was in the Digital Humanities program at Pratt Institute School of Information I made a presentation on digital tools for archaeology. We learned about a professor at Indiana University who recreated an Ancient Greek archaeology site in Second Life, complete with a toga wearing avatar of himself as a guide. (I’ll add links if I can find them).

Text analytics and statistical/rendering software (like R) can help examine documents by displaying frequency of terms or associating phrases. Researchers have used these tools to render social networks or do sentiment analysis, for example one could study court decisions or news articles to see how action and opinion related to a social or political topic changes over time. Some basic Python, JSON and statistics are helpful.

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The Occasional Mentor: On Data Science in UX, Content Strategy vs UX Writing and the Durability of Digital Humanities

THE OCCASIONAL MENTOR
A monthly(ish) column based on questions I’ve answered on Quora, heard on Slack groups, and other career advice I’ve given over the prior month. Hope you like it, but feel free to challenge me in the comments, if you have a different experience. Below are questions I answered in June.

How are the user experience design and data science professions connected with each other?

June 6, 2018

According to Wikipedia:

“Data science is an interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract knowledge and insights from data in various forms, both structured and unstructured, similar to data mining.”

A data scientist is a person who is skilled in quantitative research and can formulate a study, analyze the results and create reports to inform other people about the topic of study. They may work with spreadsheets, statistical programs, graphical interfaces, and programming languages like Python, Java, JSON, R, SQL, MATLAB, SAS, C and F#, among others. They may also work with text analysis software, geographic information systems (GIS) and visualization tools like Tableau and Gephi.

UX designers use the results of quantitative research, created by data scientists and UX researchers. The reports help the designers understand user behavior, based on data collected from digital product user logs, web analytics, or quantitative user research tests. These data may describe typical user paths and places where users tend to drop off or bounce away from the app. It could include the results of A/B tests, card sorts, heatmaps, user flow diagrams and demographic and conversion data.

UX designers may also use the output of data studies in the content of the products they are designing for. These studies would be relevant to the subject of the product, not user generated data. For example, an infographic or other visualization that illustrates aspects of the product: weather maps, income disparity charts, election results.

What is the difference between a content strategist and a UX writer?

June 6, 2018

A content strategist creates a plan for all of the company’s reusable content assets. This can include graphics, text, labels, photographs, charts, PDFs, videos, audio files, documentation, directories, etc. The content strategist creates policies and manages the programs that house and govern content. This could include inventory, storage, workflow and governance of content (such as who has access to what type of content, who is responsible for updating or archiving content, who can delete or create new content).

A UX writer prepares written content for use in any number of media, including advertising, apps and websites, video/audio/animation, PR, etc. with a focus on maintaining a consistent user experience across all channels. This can include articles, product descriptions, documentation, headings, headlines, labels, microcopy, essentially anything that needs to be written in words.

Is the digital humanities an enduring movement or a trend?

June 6, 2018

I think it will endure. Academics need to create original research. Digital projects and analysis represents an exciting way to discover new things about subjects that otherwise seem to be studied to death. Applied to art, literature, history and other subjects in the humanities, digital projects open up a whole frontier of analytics and visualization where computational study used to be rare. This can take the form of text analysis, network diagramming, geographic information systems, 3D printing and even the creation of virtual worlds.

Where it can hit a road block is the fact that people who pursue humanities don’t often have the skills or competence required to utilize computational tools in their research. This isn’t their fault, it just happens to be rare in humanities curricula. That is why many universities are investing in developing IT and library staff who have these skills.

Ultimately, schools will include more and more digital studies electives in humanities programs. So like art and art history programs now may include chemistry and material science in units on art preservation, and English departments will have more an more computer scientists on hand to help with digital humanities projects.

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The Occasional Mentor: On UX Certificates vs Conferences

THE OCCASIONAL MENTOR
A monthly-ish column based on questions I’ve answered on Quora, heard on Slack groups, and other career advice I’ve given over the prior month. Hope you like it, but feel free to challenge me in the comments, if you have a different experience. Below are questions I answered in May.

Is it helpful to get a UX certificate or go to a UX conference as a starting point for a college undergraduate who wants to work on UX later but has no experience yet?

May 26, 2018

I am going on be the contrarian and say absolutely go to a conference or a meetup that is aligned with your UX interest. A certificate program will probably get you some basic skills, but so would reading books and working on pro bono projects on your own. (See one of my previous answers on certificates). For someone just starting out, it’s the interaction with other attendees as much as the talks and workshops that help build your knowledge of what and who you need to know to get a job in the field. And most conferences offer student discounts or lower-cost workshops so you don’t necessarily have to pay full price to get a benefit. Depending on where you live, Meetups can be plentiful and free or cheap. Online interest groups like Designers Guild on Facebook or UX Mastery on Slack are also good ways to find a community. UX Mastery even has a mentoring program.

Keep in mind that the most valuable UX design skills are soft skills like communication, presentation and ability to make insights. Design tools are always evolving so what you learn at a boot camp may not be marketable in a few years.

Some positive things about taking a certificate course. You meet your competition and potential future coworkers. A formal program may be confidence-building if you fear you don’t have basic understanding of what UX designers do and how they do it and aren’t comfortable picking up these skills on your own. But do some research. Not all certificates or boot camps have a good reputation. Meetups and other UX events are good places to ask about programs in your area.

Even better if your university offers design courses that you can take as part of your degree. Also, look for intro level cognitive psychology and ethnography courses (typically anthropology classes that cover interviewing skills). If your school has business or entrepreneur programs, ask if they offer any design or customer discovery workshops. Sometimes these programs are open to students schoolwide.

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The Occasional Mentor – May 2018

THE OCCASIONAL MENTOR
I am rebranding my monthly column, The Occasional Mentor, based on questions I’ve answered on Quora, heard on Slack groups, and other career advice I’ve given over the prior month. Hope you like it, but feel free to challenge me in the comments, if you have a different experience. Below are questions I answered in May.

May 2018

On Startup Founders taking on a part time gig to make ends meet…

If you model your job search as a consultancy rather than man for hire, you can drop the resume and just use a portfolio. Limit the work in your portfolio to only the kind of projects that will get you the role you are seeking. If they do ask for a resume, I will usually include my startup in my consulting description as one of many ongoing projects.

Be realistic about how much time you are able to devote to a part time gig. Consulting clients are usually aware that you have other clients. As long as they know when they can count on you to be available, they will be happy.

On why companies won’t give interview feedback when you don’t get the job…

The same reason that during employment checks, companies will only confirm or deny you ever worked for them, and nothing more. They don’t want to put themselves in a potentially prosecutable situation.

Don’t be surprised if they don’t respond at all. It can sometimes take a while to complete a round of interviews. You may not actually receive a rejection notice. But don’t let too much time pass without hearing a word. At the end of the interview you’ve probably asked what the next steps are. Be sure to at least send a very brief thank you the evening after the interview or by the next morning. Include any additional information you want to highlight and reiterate your understanding of when you will hear from them. Follow up again within a day or so of the “next steps” date, if you haven’t already heard an answer.

If you do get rejected, ask if they would be available to discuss how you could improve your position for future openings. And if they say no, thank them for their time and move on.