In my newest post on NYEW.org, I write about the need for entrepreneurs to hire two different people to fill the roles of visual designer and user experience designer. Give User Experience Design For Entrepreneurs… Can’t My Visual Designer Do That!?!? a read and be sure to let me know what you think.
For those of you that are return readers (thanks for coming back!) it’s no secret to you that I’m not the greatest technical writer in the world. I have no formal writing or English background, and, I’m afraid, it shows. That doesn’t mean I think I’m a horrible writer, but it does mean that I think I could do a lot better.
I’ve been reflecting on writing skills and the importance that they have for people in our community. As an independent consultant, I’m seeing more and more the need to improve my writing ability in order to evolve. Here are some reasons why. 1. I use this blog to share my ideas and in turn promote myself as a professional user experience designer. This means that the people that are looking to pay me money to help their business are coming here and I better be showing myself in the best light. 2. Other sites such as New York Entrepreneur Week and Vator.tv have asked me to start contributing to their posts. This means that other audiences outside of our tribe (thanks Whitney Hess for the terminology!) are starting to read my thoughts on user experience. These are people that have little idea what UX is so I better be crystal clear in getting my ideas across. 3. As I try to break into the space of writing longer articles and eventually presentations, I need to learn to be more concise and clear in order to better reach my audiences.
Ok you’re getting the point. Being a better writer is becoming essential to my career as an independent. But what I didn’t realize, is that it should be a priority in all of our careers. Todd Toler, Director of User Experience at John Wiley & Sons, gave me great insight into why. (As an aside, Todd wrote a fantastic post regarding Anti-pattern: Periphrasis on his site Solid State UX that I highly recommend. In it, he focuses on storytelling and the art of editing through our work.) Basically Todd pointed out that the same skills that one uses to create clear, concise writing are the same used to create clear, concise designs. Think about it, if we can’t use words to get our meaning across clearly, then how are we communicating our designs clearly to our stakeholders and users? Yes, I realize that designs are not all just words, but designs do include words and, in fact, rely on them in order to function properly (labels, micro-copy, etc). More importantly you need words, whether written or spoken, in order to communicate the rational and functionality in your designs/wireframes clearly to your colleagues. Without doing so, your designs may never get budgeted, developed or prioritized in a work queue… in short they would never see the light of day!
Thus, one can see the advantage that being a better writer has in our profession. It allows us to get our ideas out of our head and into others. I for one am going to make it a priority to improve my writing skills and I’m confident that as I do so I will see more success both as a consultant but more importantly in communicating the meaning that lies in my work. I’d love to hear thoughts on how to start my better writer journey!
In talking with fellow UXer Shaun Rance, he brought up a great point regarding user experience professionals and the need for them to learn new online technologies. I’ve been reflecting on this point for some time, and couldn’t agree more with his reasoning for doing so.
His thoughts were basically: if we don’t learn new technologies, what they are, how they work, and really understand them; then we as UX professionals cannot help our business and developer colleagues understand the most appropriate ways to use these new technologies. Without our expertise and filtering, these new technologies will be implemented just for popularity or other random reasons and without thought given to the experience they provide to the user.
A great example that Shaun used involves all of the implementations of augmented reality that we’ve seen as of late. There have been a ton of implementations, but only a few that provide great experiences and are, more importantly, useful to someone. Imagine that there were more UX teams working in this space and helping to craft the experience behind how the technology is used! Now I know that a lot of times the technology is invented before we are brought in; however, closing that time frame, from invention to UX, is done by us learning more about the technology as soon as we can.
Personally, in my work, I see the benefits of learning new technologies all the time. There have been countless meetings when a client has told me about a technology that is just perfect for what they are trying to do. More often than not, it is not (And they usually don’t always know what they are trying to do… the contents of a future post perhaps). I take it as my responsibility as a user experience designer to be ahead of the curve in order to talk these people off the ledge and show them how the technology they are looking at should be used, and how that either matches or does not match their needs. Usually, they see the value in what I’m saying, and work to change their implementation plan.
The main point of what I’m trying to say is that we should be ahead of the curve as much as we can be. We need to be reaching out all around us in order to find new technologies that people are using and how they are using them. How those uses work and how they fail. Ok I know what you’re thinking, “Lis, we already do that!” Yes, maybe (hopefully) but do you know why? Well that’s the reason why, not just because you like technology or digital, not just because you love designing for users and want to see what’s coming next, but most importantly to be able to help stop the poor use of these incredible technologies that are introduced to us daily. Doing so enables you to provide enjoyment to your users, and to be great at what you do.
Great news everyone! I’ve been asked by Vator.tv to begin posting some of my old and new pieces in the Lessons Learned section of Vator News. I’m very excited to be sharing my work with Vator, who prides themselves on being the voice of the entrepreneur. I have put a couple of my posts from this site up, and am looking to add more as I go. Feel free to check out my channel on the site.
I’m still getting a feel for which posts make the most sense to share with the audience. Ideally these would be posts about lessons learned focusing on user experience, being an independent and working with social media. I’d love to hear what you think would be good to share with the Vator.tv audience. Pretty please feel free to leave your ideas below, I would be most grateful.
In my new post on New York Entrepreneur Week’s Site, How Do I Know What Type of Designer I Need, I try to distinguish between the many different roles and titles that are associated with the term. I would love to hear where you think I went wrong and/or right! Take a read and let me know.
In talking with her about this series, fellow UXer Cassie Carter presented me with the number 9 reason that your developer hates you: I’m smart, I know about the web and users, but you don’t take or make the time to listen to my ideas.
I remember back in the earlier days of my career, and still at times today, I had to have a face of stone when describing user experience and its importance. I could not crack, could not let anyone see me back down. I was the user expert, and had to prove myself as such day in and day out. Basically, I thought and was told that that no one else ever thought about the user like I did, and if I didn’t represent the user to the fullest, then no one would. Why then, would I take the time to listen to what someone else had to say about user experience? They hadn’t taken the time that I had to learn all that I knew. They were just trying to get the project done on time, or stay within scope or budget. These people could never truly come up with any purposeful comments or ideas regarding UX.
That was 5 years ago, and things have most definitely changed. It is true that most people don’t think about users and user experience the way we as UX Designers do, but that doesn’t mean they don’t think about them at all. People are more and more aware of the importance of what we do everyday, including your developers. And, keep in mind, developers are really, really, really smart people who come up with really great ideas. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t be so intimidated by them. Developers scour the web day in and day out just as we do, if not more than us. Your developer is finding new trends and ideas and relating these new items to their work all the time. This makes them a fountain of knowledge from which you can pull. However, most of the time, we don’t always take the opportunity to listen to these ideas or put ourselves in positions in which we talk to our development team often enough to hear these new ideas. It’s time to open up your ears.
To bring it all together, the age where we have to think we’re the only ones that can come up with good ideas regarding experience is over, or waning very, very quickly. We, as UXDs, have been exposed. Our secret is out and other people are on to us, and that is ok! Bring your developer into brainstorming sessions or random discussions. Start to extract the knowledge that they have and use their powers for your own good. You’ll be surprised at how much more awesome the experiences you design will become.