Tag: career advice

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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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Press Mentions: Beta Phi Mu Initiation Speech

New Initiates and Guest Speaker Noreen Y. Whysel

Noreen Whysel addressing the 2017 Initiation Class of Beta Phi Mu Theta at Pratt Institute School of Information

“A lovely Initiation Ceremony and Dessert Reception were hosted by the Beta Phi Mu Theta Chapter on May 17, 2017.

“Guest Speaker Noreen Y. Whysel (SILS ’14) gave a fantastic keynote speech, which she described below:

Dreams, Resilience and Making a Difference
Our goal as we embark on our journey as Pratt SILS graduates is to make a difference. Whether we leave Pratt to become a school librarian, a legal librarian, a UX designer, or an archivist, we stand as a gateway between a deluge of Information and the people we serve.

“Using an example of a proposed 9/11 geographic archive, Noreen Whysel explained how between our dreams and our goal of making a difference is resilience.”

The full talk transcript and presentation slides

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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.