Category: career advice

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IAC23: Safe Tech Audits in New Orleans!

March 28, 2023 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM ET
Safe Tech Audit: Applying IA Heuristics for Digital Product Safety Testing at IAC23: The Information Architecture Conference

Register for IAC23

Are you creating products that respect the needs and autonomy of your users? Are you concerned about how GDPR, CPRA and the proposed ADPPA data privacy regulations might affect your digital product? Would you like to learn how to evaluate your digital products for safe technology behavior?

It’s possible to measure ethical behavior of technology, and Information Architecture heuristics provide a useful testing framework. Building on the Safe Tech Audit presented at IAC22, this full day workshop will discuss the role of usability and application of Abby Covert’s Information Architecture Heuristics in technology development standards from the 2011 National Strategy for Trusted Identity in Cyberspace to the Internet Safety Labs’ ISL Safe Technology Audit. You will learn to use the framework to perform a product integrity test of a web technology of your choice.

In Part One, you will learn:

  • What are technology specifications and how are findability, understandability, accessibility and usability factors in developing them?
  • How do the various data privacy laws affect the use and control of personal data?
  • How can Information Architecture inform the design of safe and respectful apps and websites?

In Part Two, you will

  • Perform Safe Technology audits to measure product safety of a website and compare different kinds of technologies (news sites, social media, university websites, retail stores, etc.)
  • Select a website or app of your own to test and develop a plan to address any negative results (you won’t be required to share the results if you don’t wish to)
  • As a group, we will create an artifact to present on IAC23 Poster Night.
Register for IAC23

UX-LX 2023

I am also hosting a workshop on Sensemaking, Search and SEO in Lisbon on May 24 at UX-LX 2023. More details soon! Registration

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The Occasional Mentor: How to Ask a Speaker a Question — Zoom Edition

THE OCCASIONAL MENTOR is a semi-regular column based on questions I’ve answered on line in forums, and other career advice I’ve given over the prior month. Feel free to add your experience or challenge me in the comments, if you have had a different experience.

Asking a Question on Zoom

A great way to engage with a conference presentation is to ask a question. But how do you get a question answered on a Zoom webinar?

A strategy I like for getting noticed was introduced to me by Rachel Patterson at a recent Technology Transfer Days mentoring session on applying for a Small Business Innovation Research grant (SBIR). For SBIRs, Rachel says that if you want to get noticed by the selection team, you should always submit a question ahead of time, ask again in during the live q&a call, then follow up after the call to thank the speaker and ask a related question or continue the conversation. You can use this strategy for videoconferences on any topic.

Before the Event

Often organizers will forward the list of questions from a prospective audience to the speakers ahead of the session so they can address the topic in their talk. If the event you plan to attend offers a way to submit questions ahead of time, do that and make sure to include your name, contact information and a few words about your company or project/program, so they understand your needs. Otherwise think about what you want to learn from the speaker and make a list of questions you might want to ask during the talk.

Personalize Your Presence

When the event is virtual, such as a Zoom call or similar, edit your name so it has your full name. It may or may not be visible to the whole audience but the hosts and speakers (usually co-hosts on Zoom) will see it. You can also add your company name, location or a brief phrase emoji, but keep in mind only a small part of it will be visible on the gallery view.

If the hosts are using the Zoom Q&A feature to collect questions, post your question and let your custom name speak for itself. The session host may be the only people who can see the question, but usually anyone can, so treat it as if public. (Be careful about posting personal information in a “public“ forum).

Submit Your Question

Ideally, the talk hosts will invite people to ask the question or summarize the context of a previously submitted question at some point during the call. Zoom has a feature called “Questions and Answers” that hosts can activate to take questions as they come up during the call. They may alternatively ask attendees to post questions to the chat feed. Be sure to submit questions in the way the host requires or your question could be lost in a long scrolling chat feed.

If you submitted a question prior to the talk, you should also post your question to chat or Questions and Answers, just in case your question is addressed during the talk without inviting you to have the floor or without giving you credit. If they do give you credit, you may get an additional chance to ask that question or a related one during the Q&A session.

When They Call on You

If you are lucky enough to get called on to speak your question online, introduce yourself, add 5-10 words about your organization or work and then ask your question. Make sure your question aligns with something the speaker said in his presentation. I learned this technique at in person entrepreneur events from Andrea Madho, founder of Lab141, an online, small-batch garment platform, who was in my cohort at the Startup Leadership Program. You are not only giving the speaker background on who you are and what your context is, but giving a chance for audience members to know you and perhaps reach out to connect.

You may also be able to post a chat message to just the presenters, if the host allows that setting. There will be settings that allow audience members to see and interact in the chat with all presenters, just the host, presenters plus audience or you may be able to chat directly with any individual person (but I try to avoid that if I don’t know the person, since it can be distracting and possibly creepy).

Read the Room

Notice the reaction to others who are asking questions about their own companies or who seem to be overtly selling. Are salesy comments and chat posts tolerated and built on or ignored? Are the speaker and organizers friendly to questions that are narrowly concerned with a specific company’s problems or are they brushing them off? What topics are getting brushed off?

After the Talk is Over

In an in person, F2F setting you usually have the possibility to ask a question after the session if the speaker sticks around or if there is a social hour. Online venues don’t usually stay open for long afterward so the opportunity to chat informally is limited if it isn’t explicitly given time. If they do extend the session, use the time to add to the conversation, show your interest and ask more questions.

If you try the above and still don’t feel like you were heard or acknowledged you can contact the event organizer to find out the best way to get in touch with a speaker after the event. Often, the speaker will provide contact details. Capture those details and follow up. And don’t feel weird about it. They expect it. That’s why they put their contact details on the first and last slide.

When you do follow up, whether it’s direct contact, LinkedIn request, or intro from the organizer or another party, be sure to mention something specific about the talk. If you got to ask a question, remind them of it. I don’t have a good rule for how long to wait. I usually give a day or two for the inbox to clear, but you can join (or start) a twitter conversation immediately.

These strategies are helpful for getting you noticed and also helps others on the call follow your lead and engage with you, making an otherwise cold and impersonal event feel more social.

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The Occasional Mentor: On Making Decisions and Getting a Job During a Pandemic

THE OCCASIONAL MENTOR:
A semi-regular 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 November.

Why do some people randomly do things to upset and confuse you right before you have to make a significant decision?

November 15, 2020

Whether they are deliberately doing it or not, there is some basic psychology and behavioral economics traps that can get in the way of making a decision that is in your best interest. Not having the facts, irrelevant facts or even having too many facts or too many choices can affect your ability to make a reasonable decision.

A famous psychology experiment explores a concept known as the “paradox of choice.” Supermarket customers were offered to taste test a variety of jellies at a supermarket. Those who were presented with six choices were more likely to buy than those presented with 24. Why? Providing too many choices can obscure the value of each individual part and make it difficult to compare one choice to another. Airlines use this when they give you a base cost and nickel and dime you for everything else. Auto salesman have been doing this for decades. Sometimes an abundance of choices causes you to accept (and pay for) too many variables. Other times, it leaves you putting off the decision altogether.

There could also be what you call random things that have little to nothing to do with your decision or that are things you may have little control over. Think about the decision you are trying to make and who it affects, and how it affects them and you. Try to eliminate anything that comes from outside that circle, especially if you know reasonably that you have no control over these things.

Here is a good mind-mapping method that will help bring you closer to a decision:

Write everything down, in concentric circles from the most affected to the least. Begin make connections and start crossing things off as a factor if they don’t connect. Do the same with people who are part of or not part of the decision, especially if they are coming up as possible factors. It’s good to do this in concentric circles so that the most affected people (or things) are in the center and the next level is in a circle outside of the center and the next one another ring further. Draw connection lines and note where those connections are weak or nonexistent. Cross off anyone or anything who is way on the outside or part of a weak or broken connection. Take what remains and draw a new set of circles and examine it. Things should start to come clearer.

Will COVID-19 make entry-level web design jobs harder to get?

November 15, 2020

It’s going to take a lot of effort and network building to land an entry level job in these COVID times. My advice is to try to attend online design meetups and join design slacks (google the phrase, there are many) that make time for interaction, not just webinars that have speakers or panels with no interaction. With the entire world online and hosting events, you don’t need to stick to your local area right now. At the online events and discussions, take note of people who are working in areas you enjoy or want to develop more and reach out to them for a private conversation. Be sure to follow up!

Get creative. Look for start up organizations and incubators at local universities. Look for nonprofits that need to get their holiday funding message out. If you are a graduate of a university or Bootcamp, connect with the placement or alumni office. Alumni are often willing to go out of their way to help someone whose shoes they used to wear.

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Checking In: Coronavirus Edition

One of my startup groups suggested doing a check-in last week and one of the things I noticed In everyone’s worries was speculation about how markets might behave and comparisons to earlier periods of economic turmoil. I’ve been through 1987, 9/11 and 2008, so weighed in with my perspective.

The full effect of the 87 crash hit in 1990 right after I graduated from Columbia. Most of the companies I “interviewed” with at the career center admitted they weren’t hiring any time in the future. So, I temped my way to my first job at a small investment bank that went under within six weeks. I temped some more through most of April before landing an entry-level job in Business and Real Estate Valuation at Price Waterhouse. 9/11 pretty much ended my time there.

What I learned from that experience is that changing up your environment and learning how people do things at different companies is a good thing.

I did weird little jobs like stuffing gift boxes of logo socks at Ziff-Davis, cataloging buttons or prepping trunk shows at Chanel and a lot of phone banks and accounting. I learned a lot of software, and got pretty good at them.

I learned about how relationships work in business and solving problems, from the Chanel Boca Raton store dealing with button theft to fulfilling sweepstakes prizes and basic time and expense tracking. Plus if I ever got cold at Chanel I could always “go grab a sweater.”

9/11 was a weird time and very similar to now. Air travel was shut down. Bridges and tunnels were closed to private vehicles. Manhattan at least was pretty much on lockdown for three months. If you lived below 14th Street you had to evacuate.

Stores were open and I don’t remember a lot of hoarding. (I could be misremembering. I had a running drugstore.com diaper order so was probably pretty well-stocked, regularly). I remember hearing figures like $20 billion in losses just in NYC.

We didn’t have social distancing. That would have been devastating. There was a lot of bonding with neighbors and coworkers I hadn’t really known that well.

I was at PwC then, working remotely for the global web team, mostly operations and reporting. Some of my coworkers who worked out of the Jersey City office saw the towers go down. I had been going in for biweekly Tuesday all hands meetings, but that day was the alternate Tuesday, so I was home with my kids, getting my oldest ready to go meet her first preschool teachers.

We could go outside. The weather was beautiful, and so quiet. I remember a conversation in Sheep’s Meadow with a coworker who was losing her faith. I’d like to think I helped her.

In 2001, were already downsizing our department at PwC, so when I learned we were giving sublease space back to Lehman Brothers, I figured correctly I’d get laid off. That happened in January 2002.

By 2008 I had two school age kids and a part time contract at a virtual association. I had freelance design and technology gigs, too. We had just bought an apartment at the top of the market, but had sold our old one at a near 300% gain over ten years. So we felt secure.

But 2008 meant layoffs and job changes for my husband, who was at Citibank, then Ziegler, then BMO. We are pretty frugal but it’s amazing how much you can spend to live in this city. He is now a full time professor at BMCC. I teach two design classes at CityTech and advise a lot of startups and nonprofits. We’ve cut back, but we have two kids in college now, so feeling very uncertain.

I expect we will probably hear a lot of comparisons to previous disasters. It feels like potentially very different this time.

9/11 was shocking. We were in mourning. Thousands of lives. Everyone knew someone who knew someone who died. It’s going to be the same for us, but it’s going to happen over a longer period of time, and we may not be able to predict who it will be or when.

That by itself is going to mean a lot of mental anguish and a lot of business lost. Hospitality may get its bailout, but how long before people are comfortable traveling again? We may all get our “two weeks pay” from the Feds. Then what?

We startup entrepreneurs and business owners need to brace for it. We need to brace for limited funding opportunities. We need to reach out to each other and partner, do in-kind swaps. We need to share info on grants and other opportunities.

We can’t hold hands or hug anyone anymore, but we can stay connected and check in with each other.

Here’s my check-in:

Going Well: Working on transitioning a three day, three track, all volunteer, live conference to virtual and it is actually going well! I also have my kids home from college, and Simone has been baking!

Excited about: The Information Architecture Conference. My grandnephew, born this past Friday. Moving my classes at CityTech online, and, somewhat ironically, how the fact that isolation breeds misinformation makes Mucktracker, the news literacy app I’m working with, much more prescient and needed.

Nervous about: The conference. My parents. How long this social distancing will last, wifi bandwidth, my IRA, running out of TP.

So that’s my check-in. How are you doing? I have been working from home since 1997, so can offer tips to anyone finding themselves out of the office or incubator spaces for the duration. Feel free to post your check-in and questions in the comments.

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The Occasional Mentor: On Minimal and Natural UI, Mid-Career Change and Hailing Taxis in NYC

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. Feel free to challenge me in the comments, if you have a different experience. Below are questions I answered in May. This one has a fun one at the end.

Why are more and more companies moving towards making their UI white?

Answered May 6, 2019

I trace the emergence of white background, minimalist design to the popularity of flat design and the explosion of sites offering crowd-generated content or media from disparate sources, like Medium and iTunes.

Flat design became popular for two reasons. The first, related to mobile frameworks like Material Design, is that people were becoming used to how buttons and links work and the raised, skeuomorphic styles were beginning to look old. Button colors that contrast starkly with the (usually) white background and colors with significant meaning (think red outlines for field errors) were enough to generate meaning. The second reason is the rise of mobile, which required sites to load faster in order to use less data. It’s become less of an issue as free WiFi becomes more and more available. This, along with a need for our mobile launch buttons to stand out, is why we are starting to see things like gradients and shadows making a return.

Minimalist design arose for utilitarian reasons. Having a busy, colorful layout too often competes with the images used by third party sources, so a clean, white (or black) layout makes sense on sites that aggregate a lot of content. There is also a recognition that certain background styles or fonts become dated very quickly. If you avoid using the style du jour, your products are less likely to seem old sooner.

How can I make the UX/UI design of a product feel more natural?

Answered May 1

There were a lot of good answers to this question. I thought I’d add a couple resources that might be useful in understanding the fundamentals of natural, usable design.

First is Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things, which discusses affordances like door handles and light switches and how people understand that a thing is something one can interact with.

Then read Indi Young’s Mental Models and Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think. These will get you good information about how to approach design in a way that is natural to the user.

I also like Donna Lichaw’s The User’s Journey, which pulls back to the whole experience of how a user finds and solves a problem and what their emotions and struggles are along the way. It goes well with the Empathy Map that some people described in previous answers.

Is it too late for me to take an UX design boot camp and get hired into an UX job? I have no design experience. I am 32 years old?

Anwered May 1

In an earlier post, I discussed the kinds of soft skills that are essential for an older, but new UX designer to highlight in a resume and portfolio and ways to bring up one’s design skills, in addition to boot camps, which I should say I have taught and recommend as a way to get the basics of UX along with some collaborative experience.

The list of tools that I mentioned should be updated, as I predicted. We see shiny, new tools every year, but a few seem to get mention in job posting more than others. We did use Sketch and InVision in our course. There are other tools you might consider working with including Figma, Adobe XD (which is now free), UXPin, Balsamiq, Framer, Proto.io and collaborative design tools like Mural, Miro (formerly Real Time Board), etc. you can find a lot of these if you search “Best UX Tools”.

Don’t try to learn them all and don’t worry about having an expert level at any of these, as you will likely be introduced to new ones on the job. If you have a positive attitude toward learning new tools, it helps a lot. Pick a few to create some mock designs, and then see if you can find a pro bono project to work on. You can also do a mock project for your current company, which would be ideal since you probably know a lot about your customers/users and would stand out in your portfolio. (Ask your boss first).

I know a lot of people who transitioned to UX at a later age from other careers, including similar roles in graphic design and communications, and as distant as restaurant management. Some were over 50 when they made the transition. 32 is still very young, so you won’t have to struggle against age-related bias nearly as much.

Do I have to whistle really loud to hail a taxi in NYC?

Answered Apr 21

I love this question. Lol, no. Though it does call attention. I know a few doormen who have a pretty strong whistle.

If you can’t whistle, what you should do is cautiously step out a little off the curb, especially if you are on a block with parked cars, so the driver can see you. Corners are also good places to wait since you can direct a taxi heading the opposite way or on a perpendicular street to turn your way.

If you are too shy or too short to be seen, NYC Taxis also respond to Curb | The Taxi App.


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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.

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Where Should I Post My UI/UX Portfolio? and Is Wikipedia Failing?

I answer questions about UX, Information Architecture and other topics on Quora. A selection of these answers will be reposted on Medium with occasional, minor editing for clarity. Following are selected questions I answered in December.

What are the best websites to put my UI/UX portfolio, both personally and professionally?

Answered December 31, 2017

As an archives focused UX designer I always recommend creating a master portfolio that you have complete control over, whether on your own WordPress site or on your local drives. (Ideally both with backups in the cloud). Having control over the data means that you will always be able to access, edit and customize it regardless of whether the portfolio site of the day is still in business. A platform like WordPress is great because it allows you to import and export the CMS database. You should back it up frequently.

Your portfolio should be customizable content so you can craft a deck specifically for the job or contract you are applying for. It should contain not just your best work, but the work you most want to do and is most relevant for the job being offered. You can create separate portfolios for different kinds of work and direct people to those specific portfolio files. You should also have a PDF or Keynote/PPT version available in case a recruiter wants it emailed and also because it is easy to carry into a meeting and have available offline when internet access is slow or not available. If someone asks for work samples, you can either email the presentation deck or send a link to the relevant samples when highlighting your work history for a recruiter or prospective client, depending on their requirements.

If you use a portfolio site like Behance or Dribbble, only include a few top notch pieces and be sure to link it to your more detailed CV website. Be sure to tag the type of work you do on each sample you upload to these sites, and include a brief explanation of the problem you solved and how you came up with a solution. The story of the design solution is very important for UX work, and I don’t see it done quite enough. Can you explain why you made choices you did? Were there in-between stages that reflect some of the decisions or pivot points in the design? Was it an individual assignment or a team effort? How does your work fit in with the overall team effort? Are you effectively claiming the entire design as your own if you only show end results? How will you explain your role in an interview if the end product is a team effort? Is the visual enough? Usually, it isn’t.

My complete online CV is a WordPress website that lists blog posts (that I republish to a Medium account), speaking engagements (with presentation slides linked at Slideshare), a general resume and a bibliography of published work and exhibitions. My portfolio is just a part of that overall CV website. It is unlikely that a recruiter would make time to peruse it all, but it’s all there should someone want to dive a little deeper into what kind of person I am, what my interests are and what I like to write about.

In fact the website has become a bit of a “catalog raisonné” and to be honest it is due for an overhaul. I have mixed feelings about cutting back and will probably just remove thumbnail shots from some of the earlier work (some of the older visuals look quite naive compared to more recent standards). I’d love to hear how others manage the assessments of older work samples, particularly when it’s the type of project or industry work you want to keep doing.

What crisis is Wikipedia going through as everytime I open it they ask for donation?

Answered December 8, 2017

It’s not a crisis. It’s charity season. As people enter the holiday season, they open their wallets and give to their favorite charities. If you open your mail on any day from mid October through December (at least in the US, probably elsewhere), you will see similar, increasingly desparate-sounding appeals from other charities hoping to get a bit of your annual tax deduction locked in for the year.

That said if you like Wikipedia, use it and find value in it, whether as a source of information, community or for their really cool data tools go ahead and give. It’s a great service.

I use Wikipedia so much I started giving a small amount each month. Is the risk of them going offline as imminent as all that?

Answered December 7, 2017

When you make a donation on the Wikipedia website, you are giving to the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs several projects in addition to Wikipedia, including Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons and others. As a Foundation, Wikimedia offers grants to its worldwide chapters, project teams and individuals to cover costs such as travel, Editathons and other events, equipment, research, etc. According to their grants page, they give about $9 million US dollars per year in support to these efforts.

More info and links to awarded grants here:

Grants:Start – Meta

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UX Portfolios, Awards, Priorities and Why Is the User Often “Female”

I answer questions about UX, Information Architecture and other topics on Quora. A selection of these answers will be reposted on Medium with occasional, minor editing for clarity. Following are selected questions I answered in October.

What is the most important thing in UX design?

Answered October 31, 2017

The User.

As an in-house UX designer that is about to change a job, how do you update your portfolio? Do you add your in-house work/findings to it or work on other projects?

Answered October 25, 2017

Good advice so far on creating a portfolio and getting permission to include materials. And also a reminder that even if you are not considering a change in jobs it is always a good idea to keep up to date on portfolio projects as they are completed so you don’t have to scramble to remember what you did months or years later when you decide to look for something new.

You still need to ask permission to include work in a personal portfolio, but a smart design department will understand the value of keeping a record of quality work performed as an example for future projects, staff, clients or the public. Even better if you can get your manager to let you present your work at an industry conference. Often slide decks are made available publicly via Slidesharre or the conference library, offering an additional record of your (and your company’s) best work.

Why is the term “user” in most IT books a female (at least in the web design related literature)?

Answered October 24, 2017

One of the ways to develop empathy for your users when designing a product is to introduce stories, scenarios and personas that reflect a broad view of the types of users you are designing for, so that you can be sensitive to their needs within the category of users they represent. In writing, referring to the user with a female pronoun triggers empathy, not necessarily because it’s female but because it’s different, and therefore noticeable. We are rather used to the generic, male pronoun form in writing and even thinking about people in general, so when we see the female pronoun it strikes us as something noticeably different. We start to pay attention to “her” as a person and not just a generic “user.” It’s kind of a neat, and pretty subtle, psychological trick.

It seems weird that the same button initiates “publicly sharing” and ‘privately sending’ something on my phone. Is this a UX flaw?

Answered October 19, 2017

If what you are referring to is the Share icon, the little box with an arrow pointing up, then think of it more as a “Process This” button instead of Share or Send. What it does is pass information about the item you are starting on to a program that will process it in some way. If you select a social program it will share it, if you select a file drive it will save it, if you select a mail client it will send it, if you select a password manager, it will give you the password, etc. in other words “Take this and do something with it.”

Where can I find great, award winning examples of UI design for responsive websites that are heavy on data (lots of tables, charts, graphs, et cetera)?

Answered October 13, 2017

First, look at the awards. Here are some big ones:

UX Awards: The Premier Awards for Exceptional Digital Experience

The Webby Awards

Best Responsive Design Websites (Awwwards)
Next look at related awards that focus on info graphics, visualization or data science. (These may or may not be websites). Here are a couple:

Data & Analytics Excellence Awards (Gartner)

Tableau Awards

Data Impact Awards | Cloudera

AIGA Awards Archive

Then look at “Best of” articles. They may not be Awards but are curated lists to get you inspired. Here’s the first one that came up in my search. There are dozens like this.

20 Best Responsive Website Design Examples of 2016, Social Driver

As a UX designer, how do you balance what is best for the user and what can realistically be developed? Do you compromise UX and push towards a deadline or do you fight for the user?

Answered October 13, 2017

We do occasionally have deadlines or budget limitations that force a compromise among a list of needed UX improvements. You can prioritize improvements by applying a severity metric and choosing the ones that will have the most impact, saving others for later sprints. You can also prioritize the easier fixes, particularly those that provide data that support other improvements in a future sprint. If planned well, some of these fixes will improve traffic (or sales or flow) well enough to justify the next set of sprints. Ultimately as the UX designer, your influence may be limited to what you can convince the product team lead to decide. As long as you are advocating for the user, you are doing your job.

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The Occasional Mentor: Career Advice — College Degrees and the Long, Post-Interview Wait

I answer questions about Careers, Mentorship and other topics on Quora. A selection of these answers will be reposted on Medium with occasional, minor editing for clarity. Following are selected questions I answered in October.

Are you going to be an unsuccessful person without a college degree?

Answered October 13, 2017

It depends, of course, on what success means to you. A lot of successful actors and artists don’t have degrees. All successful doctors and lawyers do. And while you can be quite successful as a plumber or electrician without a degree, the overwhelming majority of business leaders have one. The reason people keep trotting out the degree-less Zuckerberg, Jobs and Gates is because – try to name one more. It’s not that easy. And by the way, did you drop out of Harvard?

You may be tremendously rich and successful without a college degree, but if so you would also be very rare. A college degree will get you ahead faster in most professions that require it or some level of certification. With a degree, you qualify for any job that does or doesn’t require one, but without it you won’t qualify for any of the jobs that do, so you are limiting your options. Without a degree you will be competing not just for jobs but also for promotions or for clients. You will need to fight to stand out and suffer not even getting the call because it’s an easy way to narrow down a long list of applicants.

Not all jobs require degrees. I’ve seen many government jobs that require a masters degree that will accept a certain number of years of experience along with a lesser degree, say a BA with 5 years of experience, or no degree but ten years of supervisory experience. You would need to calculate the cost of the degree and potentially lost wages over 5–6 years of studying against starting at a lower salary class and working many more years to qualify.

It is true that in some fields, particularly trades, where a degree not required, having one may actually hold you back. In this case, your competition for jobs has already spent four years perfecting his craft while you were in school. It is also true that the significant level of student loan debt you may accumulate can hold back your financial future, especially if you end up in a job that doesn’t pay well or didn’t require a degree in the first place, or if you struggle (either to pay tuition or academically) and fail to graduate.

I went for a job interview over a week ago and have not heard anything. I forgot to ask what their timeline for the job was. Does this mean I probably didn’t get the job?

Answered October 3, 2017

A week or even a week and a half is the perfect time to call or email to follow up, ask about your standing, offer an update on anything you may have discussed that was in progress during the interview or to forward some interesting article or news that is relevant to the work.

Getting beyond two or three weeks is somewhat long but I would still follow up in the same tone as if it had only been a week. As others have said, sometime the process does take long depending on the number of applicants or uniqueness of the role.

Beyond a month or two, they may have passed on you because it seems that you have passed on them. But there still could be a chance at that point that they haven’t settled on a hire or have changed the need or requirements somewhat. At that point I would make a simple request for a decision, i.e., has one been made, so I can get feedback and move on.