Category: Occasional Mentor

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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: Kill Your Darlings

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

THE OCCASIONAL MENTOR is 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.

Kill Your Darlings

I am working on a project with a friend who is acting as a client for a capstone project with an agile development class. She complained to me that the students were unable to create a simple one-sheet deliverable featuring a proposed design. The problem: WordPress hasn’t been set up yet. It didn’t occur to them that they could mock it up in a drawing program or simply sketch it by hand.

When I do in-class studios, I will often make the design students work entirely on paper and whiteboard, no computers allowed, to ideate and create a paper prototype. It can be done in two hours end to end. Is the final deliverable App Store ready? Of course not. But it is enough to move quite a bit toward a testable idea.

Students today, and especially developers, don’t understand the power of a piece of paper that you can throw away. When you start coding (or drafting in WordPress) too soon, you get too married to the code, making it hard later on to incorporate new learnings from your user research. It’s better practice to stay as low fi as possible for as long as possible. That’s at least one day of a five day sprint. Sometimes two (testing the paper artifacts with users). Then “Kill your darlings” before they become too dear.

Note: The phrase “Kill your darlings” (or “murder your babies”) is often attributed to William Faulkner and is a feature of many descriptions of the Beat poets: William Borroughs, Allan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac et al. In fact, the concept “murder your babies” can be traced to Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, a British writer and literary critic in a 1916 lecture series at Cambridge. (Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur (2000) [1916]. “XII. On Style”. On the Art of Writing: Lectures Delivered in the University of Cambridge, 1913–1914 (Online ed.). Bartleby.com.)

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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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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: 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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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.