This post is the third in a series devoted to pointing out How being a jock makes me a better UX Designer. Also, be sure to check out the second post UX and Sports? Ya, Damn Right! (oh, and if you are coming to Interaction 12 be sure to check out my talk How being a jock makes a better interaction designer!).

I can’t tell you how often I hear user experience professionals and designers talk about wishing they had proper mentorship. It is obviously something that is lacking in our field, as well as something that people are begging for. In this case, given that there is a clear lack of official mentorship, I think it is important for us to ask ourselves, ‘what if we never get the mentor that we are looking for? Will we then allow our careers and expertise to lack and suffer? Will we continue to go on and complain that it is the fault of the UX field not providing us a mentor that has disabled our ability to progress?’. Obviously this is something we’d like to avoid. So thinking of the problem another way, I was thinking that maybe it is possible that we are just not taking advantage of the mentor opportunities that are right in front of us. And we are not doing so, simply because they aren’t officially labeled as ‘mentor opportunities’. So in order to solve this issue, I think we should all take a step back and take a look at one lesson learned from being a jock that can help us solve this problem. That is: Leadership/mentorship comes in many different forms, it’s up to us to recognize it.

Every sports team has a captain, right? Just like most UX teams have a lead, someone who is to guide the UX approach and knowledge transfer for everyone. But, what happens when that person sucks or doesn’t do their job of leading and teaching others, or just doesn’t exist at all? Well, you could sit down and grumble or you could recognize your other options. The problem with sitting down and grumbling is simply that no progress is ever made on your end. You will never get the leadership and mentorship you need from someone that sucks at being a leader and mentor, and by continue to perpetrate the problem by expecting a different result from the same crappy person, you are just causing yourself to be more bitter.

So, we turn to the wide world of sports for our answer. I have been a part of many sports teams. Some have had great captains who have taught me how to excel, many have not. When I found myself on the teams that did not have the leadership I wanted, I went out and looked for it from other sources. I observed those on the sports team who I wanted to play like, and I asked them for help in every step of the way. Whenever they had a down moment, I asked them to show me a new move, or explain to me their line of thinking. I did this both inside my team and outside. I would play sports outside of my ‘official’ teams, and there I would find mentors in the least expecting of characters. The important thing to note is that by exposing myself to different experiences, and not rooting myself in my anger, I was able to see beyond my situation and grow as a athlete with or without my captain. You see, leadership and mentorship is a two way street. Sports taught me this. I could rely on just the captain or the coach or I could rely on myself to find and respect real leadership. The choice was up to me.

By applying this same methodology to my UX career, I was able to find leads and mentors without waiting for someone to assign them to me. I was then able to extract the type of information and insight I needed and wanted to grow into the UX professional that I am today. I am still using this methodology to grow even further (so yes if you’ve gotten a random email or tweet question from me, you have contributed to my mentoring… thank you ). Leadership and mentorship is something I’ve learned both how to do, as well as to extract from others. By doing so, I have become the master of my own destiny. Yes, that can seem scary when you don’t trust yourself, but the more information you are able to gather from others about your profession, the more you are able to internalize that information and build yourself up into the person and professional you want to be. That is… the leader of you.

This March will mark my very first time… attending the highly-regarded IA Summit! I couldn’t be more excited to finally attend the event. I literally have a feeling of joy and “going home” welling up in me. Like many of you, when I first started in this profession the term User Experience was not yet rolling off the tongue of anyone that looked to build a website. Back in those days, we were all Information Architects, and the IA Summit was our only chance to meet and exchange ideas about the new field we were a part of. I have heard tales of how amazing the Summit is, but, sadly, I have never gotten to attend, and thus part of me has always been missing.

Finally, the time has come, and I wait no more! I am coming home to my IA roots and I can’t wait to get back to them. To me attending the IA Summit is so much more than just going to another conference. It means:

• closing the circle of my life as an Information Architect, and me to finally feeling whole.
• that IA is still very much alive and well, and that I am a part of that community and can still explore the industry.
• that there is still a large group of us out there dedicated to this side of the “UX Umbrella”; a side that introduced us to thinking user first.
• that I didn’t completely F up when I started working in a profession that no one else had heard of before.
• that our passion for our users and profession has not diminished, nor has our passion to explore it further.

The best part is, I’m actually getting to speak at the event as well! (Be sure to check out UX is All About the Benjamins… Well, Partly the blog post that inspired my talk) I look forward to sharing my thoughts and hearing your feedback on them. If you plan on being at the Summit too reach out and let me know. I’d love to meet up and chat!

It is a news item worth repeating even thought it has been a little over a week since this was announced. It’s true what you are reading. Microsoft has ended their partnership with The Dealmap, and has inked a new deal (pun intended) making none other than 8coupons its official deal partner! It’s a very exciting relationship that will prove to introduce some great new opportunities and challenges. Can’t wait to see what the future months bring!

Wanna know more? Be sure to read Bing Ditches Google’s Dealmap — Inks New Deal with 8coupons

This post is the second in a series devoted to pointing out How being a jock makes a better UX Designer (Also, if you are coming to Interaction 12 in Dublin, be sure to check out my talk How being a jock makes a better interaction designer!)

As UXers, we are really great at researching and designing solutions for our users. The problem is that we are not so great at convincing our teams and clients, that 1. research is needed, and 2. our design ideas are sound. One way to combat this is to understand The Importance of Rationale. However, today I wanted to talk about a new method gleamed from the wide world of sports that can help you to evangelize your ideas both within your organization as well as with your clients.

First, I think it is important to highlight why not being able to sell our process and design ideas is a problem. Besides the fact that it makes us completely depressed about our profession, and therefore makes us wonder why we are even part of a project to begin with; not being able to sell our work means that when we walk into the project we are prey waiting to be pounced on. Any know-it-all marketing person, business manager, project manager or other project team type can out talk us and make our ideas look idiotic (even when they’re awesome) just because they don’t agree with our solution (or it doesn’t work best for their part of the organization). Thus, what happens by us not being able to push our process and ideas is we end up sacrificing our expertise to the greater team (everyone is a designer, afterall) and allowing group think and design by committee to create solutions for our users instead of us. Now, of course there is always room for critique and brainstorming, but what I’m talking about is different. I’m talking about someone just pushing their ideas over you, and through the machine in order to be the hero of the organization.

So how do we solve this? One way is to look at a timeless lesson taken from the world of athletics. That lesson? Be a teammate. Yes, it really is that simple. All jocks know this one. To be successful, you have to be willing to swallow your pride, be the bigger person, and admit when something is and is not your responsibility. Sure, you can have opinions about anything, but to be honest, the marketing numbers or the coding, or other non-interaction design focused things are not your responsibility. Might you be a better marketing representative that the person on your team? Sure. But you aren’t the marketing person responsible for this project, you are the interaction designer. Respect the other person’s role. Offer up suggestions to them in a kind way, in a way that you want people to offer up design suggestions to you, and then… leave it alone. You are not the saving grace of this company, you are a part of the company team. By recognizing and taking control of your responsibilities and by letting your other team members do them same, you are showing that you have faith in your teammates, the overall team and the team philosophy.

The outcomes of being a teammate are mutual respect and acceptance on both parts (yours and theirs). Having these makes it a lot harder for people to rip apart your design ideas in a meeting just because they might clash with an opinion. By showing respect and acceptance, you are asking to get them back in return (see “Respect is Something You Need to Give” for more thoughts). By letting your guard down you are inviting your teammates to do the same. And once they do, they will start to see you as a valued part of the team and will then be a lot more likely to help you to curate the best solutions possible for your users.

Guest blog post on the Women in Tech UK blog.

Being a woman in tech is can seem like an overwhelming feat to accomplish. However, there is so much that I love about working in this field, that I wanted to show other women the huge positives that they may be missing out on. In my latest WIT guest post I write about the Top 5 Reasons I Love Being a Women in Tech. Please be sure to read the post, and leave me more ideas in the comment section on why we should love working in this industry!

Recently, while at lunch with my friend and colleague, Neil Redding, we got into a discussion regarding Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg. The conversation centered around both men’s ability to see, so clearly, the vision for their products and to be able to push through to see that vision to fruition. The amazing part is not that they were able to push through to get to their vision and thus create amazing products and experiences, but that their visions were usually right! I believe that there are common traits & abilities that both men had that allowed them to have a clear, correct vision. And, no, I don’t think it’s just their genius (well at least genius isn’t the only thing). As a UXer, I’m sure you wanna know these traits so that you too can design amazing experiences. In order to explain it to you, let’s investigate our two amazingly successful examples so that we can uncover how to become successful like them.

First, let’s take a look at Mark Zuckerberg, or at least what we know of him from the film the Social Network as well as from general observation. Mark is an individual who, to be frank, is plain socially awkward. We see this both in his inability to be personable during real life interviews, and also in the film where he was more focused on becoming accepted and liked (pun intended) than he was about almost anything else. However, he could never quite make it to the social status he was looking for. We can see that not being in the “in crowd” meant that Zuckerberg was detached from it. He was, however, desperate to be a part of this crowd. I believe that it was this desperation that drove him to observe, in great detail, what interested people about in crowds, social groups, popularity, and their cliques so that he, one day, could enter this world.

From his detached observation, he was able to see what factors mattered to people when socializing and interacting, and he notated all of this in his attempt to “get in”. The important thing to note about Zuckerberg’s detachment is that because he was so far detached from those he observed, he was able to clearly observe them, without personal bias. This was key. He then used his technology skills, coupled with his findings to create Facebook, a “social network” that he knew would be cool and well liked among users. Thus, Zuckerberg’s gut feelings about what would make Facebook successful or not, aka his vision, were really due to his knowledge of the human interactions he had been observing in his quest to become socially accepted. If he had been knee deep in these interactions instead of detached, he wouldn’t have been able to observe them so clearly.

In our second example, we look through a different lens at the late Steve Jobs. Mr. Jobs social ability seems in contrast to that of Zuckerberg. Although he was sometimes mentioned as being cruel to staff and employees, Jobs was known to have very close and loyal friends. He’s been described as having a charisma about him that attracted others to him and we see and feel this during his Mac World speeches. However, I would venture a guess, that although he was well liked, Jobs’ ability to think in realms that his friends could not and his place as a highly intelligent man kept him detached from others. Of course he was well liked and probably had great relationships, but I would bet that there was something that kept him at a distance. In fact, you can almost see it as he is on stage in some of the videos. He too used this detachment from the masses, to observe them unbiased, and then design products and services that fit their needs and exceeded their wants.

In both of these examples, we see the first two traits that these men had, detachment and observation. We see how important it was for them to be and stay disassociated, in order to better observe their users’ needs and motivations. This is UX research 101 right? In order to be great observers and researchers, UX Law* tells us that we have to separate ourselves from the subjects we are researching enough that we can observe their behaviors and motivations unbiasedly. Zuckerberg and Jobs did this exact thing.

However, something we didn’t note was what they did with those observations, the third trait that set them apart and made them successful. That is that, almost assuredly, they also had a sense of empathy in order to turn the needs they observed into solutions that would make sense to their users. This feeling of empathy in Zuckerberg’s case most likely comes from his desire to be liked, accepted and socially apart of something bigger than himself. In the case of Jobs, the feeling of empathy came from his want to solve and design for human problems.

So we see that the secret traits that set these two men, as well as many other men and women apart from the norm, is their ability to detach from their subjects, observe them, and then instill empathy in order to solve their subjects’ problems and make their worlds better. The outcome of detachment and observation is the ability to clearly see the needs and wants of our users. By adding in an empathic point of view, one is able to fill the gaps in their subjects’ actions as well as fulfill their subjects’ motivations.

Perhaps the late Mr. Jobs, and Mr. Zuckerberg really are geniuses of our time. I wouldn’t hesitate to bet that they are both, in their own right, some of the smartest and most successful people of our time. But, when we dissect what sets them apart from us, we can see that there are some pretty common, practicable traits that we can harness in order to make ourselves better without having to be geniuses. Thus, greatness is not out of our reach, UX. In fact, it is right their in front of us. But in order to reach it, we have to detach, observe and empathize. By doing that, we are creating innovative experiences.

* Note: There isn’t an official UX Law. It is a sarcastic term for the dogmas that we hold onto. Unfortunately, there aren’t laugh tracks available for blogs to queue this joke .

Tomorrow around this time, I’ll be on a plane to Charlotte, NC, and when I return it’ll be time to ring in 2012. What can I say, I’m going to miss 2011! As I sit here and reflect on what this year has meant to me and my career as an Independent UX Consultant, I can’t help but get a little teary-eyed. It has been an amazing year, and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t feel lucky to be in this industry with the likes of so many wonderful people. I also can’t help but be thankful to have so much support and inspiration within my field. I owe every one of you a huge amount of thanks for pushing me forward each day. Thus, without further ado, here are the things from UX 2011 that I’m most proud of, and will most surely look back on in thanks:

• I got to partner with amazingly talented clients on some of the best projects of my career.
• I gave my first conference presentation at Midwest UX this spring, then went on to speak at the Big Redux in DC, the Big Apple Redux in NYC and the Future of Web Design conference in NYC.
• I was able to begin writing for UXMag, continued my guest blogging at the Women in Tech UK site, and was able to contribute to the Web Designer Depot site. You can see all of my contributions on the Writing page of this site.
• I wrote some of my most read blog posts in the entirety of my website (est. in 2007). Including:
  • UX… Let’s Stop Being Unicorns
  • UX… Are We Getting Ripped Off
  • UX in the Real World
  • UX… It’s Time to Grow Up
  • UX… It’s Time to Start Keeping It Real

And those are just a few of the opportunities that I have been given. Again, I cannot thank each and every one of you enough for coming here and participating in my thoughts and musings, for inspiring me with your comments and your work, and for supporting me along this journey. I hope that 2012 brings many wonderful things to you all. But for now… here’s to 2011!

This winter, I was asked by the awesome folks at Web Designer Depot for some predictions about what will happen in the world of web design in 2012. After I told myself to stop be baffled that they asked me, and after I got over the fear of putting my thoughts out there to their wide audience, I was able to come up with a few ideas. You can read them below.

Now that HTML5 and CSS3 have been unpackaged and utilized, and given the emergence and popularity of responsive and adaptive web design, 2012 will bring us back to the future of the web. After years of driving the two apart, 2012 is the year that we will begin to bring mobile and desktop technologies back together by using the web to bridge the gap between the contexts. From that, we will be focused on designing for a holistic product experience.

Expect to see an explosion of mobile/desktop web solutions that can work on many different devices and platforms. Mobile First as a methodology will grow in popularity, and people will also be thinking more about how their product extends across these many different contexts.

Look for an outbreak in designers and product developers wanting to better understand users in order to create appropriate solutions for coherent experiences. We’ll be looking more and more towards psychology and user research to better understand our user base as well as better translate our product into an interface.

From this we’ll see the appearance of new ways to navigate through site content (in order to stay responsive), as well as new patterns for creating delightful and engaging user experiences online.

There are many more predictions to review! Be sure to check out the full article: Web design predictions for 2012

Today, was just another day for this UX Consultant. I had another amazing opportunity to meet with a NYC based startup in order to sell my User Experience wares. Walking away from this particular meeting (and feeling slightly discouraged… *sigh*) I was thinking about how to improve the outcome of similar meetings, and how to move UX forward in the fast paced world of startups. There was one realization that stuck out in my mind… using the term “it depends” just doesn’t work in this world.

We, as UXers, are some how secretly trained to use the term it depends to answer questions about our work. This is not necessarily a bad thing and we usually do this for very good reasons. Those reasons being 1. we don’t want to over promise to our clients and/or partners in other parts of our organizations, and 2. we want to be sure that they understand the breadth of UX’s ability to solve problems so we can promote UX to others and make sure people know its value. Thus, when we are asked how long it will take to design a page, do user interviews and testing, figure out the solution, etc we respond with it depends. We then go into our long winded explanation of how there are so many different techniques that could be appropriate to this situation, that it really depends on nailing down the situation at hand, and defining the problem appropriately. This, of course, is still a valid way for us to sell our capabilities in larger organizations or to well established clients, but is probably a bad idea to do so in world of startups.

In startup world things move fast. Very fast. The business could be void of revenue one day, and the next have 1 – 2 million dollars in funding to spend. Thus, things in startup land really do happen overnight. Therefore, the problems with using “it depends” in this world are two fold. First, startups have no time to listen to our long winded explanations about our process and how great UX is. And, to be honest, they really don’t care. They, instead, care about their product being awesome and serving their users as best it can. Knowing the UX technique to use to get them there is your skill and is the main part of the service you are offering them. Therefore, save your explanation with these guys and gals because they don’t want the “it depends” answer. What do they want instead? The answer. The second issue with using it depends in the world of startups, is that by not tailoring the answer right away to the startup you are talking with, you are showing that you have not taken the time to listen to what they have been saying, and are not expert enough to tailor your UX process, on the spot, to their needs. Why would they spend their precious funding or revenue on you as a resource if you cannot pull this rabbit out of your hat?

Lucky for us, it’s not about magic or pulling anything out or your hat (except maybe a flushed out proposal). It’s very easy to solve the problems that it depends brings you in the world of startups. First, stop using “it depends”. At least, stop using it in the way that you have been. Instead of using it depends to preface a long explanation about how amazing UX is, use it depends to serve up options that are relevant to the specific problem the startup is looking to solve. For example, when a startup asks you how they motivate users from a competitors product to instead use their product, don’t answer like this “Well, it depends. We could do user interviews or focus groups or contextual inquiry. There are so many different methods in our tool belt to choose from!” Instead answer like this “Well, it depends on what we want to learn. If we want to get a throughout understanding of this, we could interview our target users to understand their mental models and behaviors. If we wanted to get a throughout understanding of this as well as know how our product stacks up we could do user interviews as well as some targeted usability testing with tasks that can be done on both websites. These are really the two options that are relevant to this product. In your case, given you needs, I would recommend the second option.”. See the difference? With or without it depends you need to tailor your response to your potential client. Of course, you are not going to have the exact answer, however, you should know the technique that applies to the outline of the situation that has been provided to you. If you don’t have a clear idea of the situation, use your knowledge gathering skills to get it.

Tailor your response

How then do you get to a point where you can surface up tailored information and feedback on the spot? Easy, learn the whys behind each and every part of your process (for more on this see: The Ultimate Key to UX Success). It is only then that you can eliminate the inappropriate use of it depends with startups. By knowing the whys, you can match the information that the startup is giving you about their problem with the appropriate tool in your tool belt. You don’t have to take the time to sell UX to them, instead you are taking their time to sell a tailored service to them and calling it UX.

By changing or eliminating your use of it depends when working with startups you are getting to the point and saving them time, as well as coming off as much more of a service professional. The only way for one to get to a point where they can tailor their wares on the spot, is to really understand the whys behind the different parts of their process. By learning these whys, you set yourself up for success. It stops being about educating others (who have little time or interest anyway) on what UX can do, and instead becomes about what you, as a UX designer, can do for others. You can know immediately what would work for this particular client and why, and this not only makes you much more of an expert in your field, but it also does one thing that the startup will be ever thankful for, saves them from having to think (pounds to Steven Krug).

This past summer, thanks to a reference from one of my favorite blogs, Scouting NY, I got my hands on an old and interesting book entitled Sailing Around the World Alone. For those of you who grew up in this area of the country, you may have read this book as a student. But, for others of us the book is probably new, at least it was to me. In short, it was published in 1899 and is the memoir of Captain Slocum’s trip sailing around the world alone (he was the first to do so). It’s an extremely entertaining read, however it was the last page that really gripped me. In it he states “To succeed, however, in anything at all, one should go understandingly about his work and be prepared for every emergency.”. I was moved by this statement, and, naturally, my thoughts turned towards my own profession. The part that stood out to me, and what I want to talk to you about today is “go understandingly about his work”. I want to discuss what that means for me within the field of UX Design, and what I think it should mean to you.

As UXers, we are in an ever evolving profession that, although young, has begun to mature over the past couple of years. Even though we have reached a level maturity, there are many of us that don’t know the whys behind our process, the activities we do, and the outputs we create. Thus, instead of trying to understand the whys, people focus solely on the hows. When I say whys, I’m talking about the reasons why we have the phases of the design process or the reasons why we talk to users. These are in contrast to the hows which are the ways that we go through our process (i.e. persona creation, wireframing, sketching) and the ways we talk to users (contextual inquiry, ethnographic study, user interviews). These two items, hows and whys, although living along the same plane, are in sharp contrast to each other.

To me, the people that only concentrate on the hows are not going understandably about their work. Instead, they are go absentmindedly about their work. They are aware of what they are doing and are probably very good at it, but they do not have an understanding of why they use one method vs another, or why they use one part of the process vs the other. Thus, the problem with UX professionals only focusing on the hows and not the whys is that doing so allows us to go only so far in our profession. By relying on the hows, we will not find ultimate success in both our own individual careers as well as within our field as a whole. Further, how can we sell the idea of UX to organization executives if we don’t know the whys behind our work? If we cannot sell our work then how do we advance in our individual professions as well as as a profession in general? If you are unaware of why the UX process is what it is and/or why the methods we use were put into practice, you will find a hard time with long term happiness, and ultimately long term success, in this field. And to make matters worse UX, on the whole, suffers. (Note: I’ve written about these ideas before. See Getting to the X in UX & When Did We Forget About Behavior for more thoughts).

The solution, if you find yourself in the hows side of the coin, is to reach out and investigate the whys. Use your resources, both electronic and human, to research why you have the process you do. Make it a point to gain knowledge on why certain materials and activities exist and should be used versus others. This, in short, is the only way to begin to turn the tide in your direction. The hard part is that it involves not only a desire to be more successful in your field, but a genuine caring for your career and profession.

By figuring out and understanding the whys, you are, as Captain Slocum put it, “prepared for every emergency”, and ultimately you will be on the path to individual professional success. You’ll make huge strides in not only being the “wireframer” but in being a holistic professional UX designer. But, perhaps more importantly, you will see more success in your own work, and ultimately within the UX world. Thus, let’s all take a lesson from Captain Slocum, and “go understandably about” our work in order to progress not only ourselves, but the profession we love.