A Project Guide to UX Design: For user experience designers in the field or in the making by Russ Unger, Carolyn Chandler
In my new post on New York Entrepreneur Week’s Site, How Can Entrepreneurs Learn About User Experience (UX) Design, I try to help entrepreneurs learn more about what we do as UXDs by providing some beginner/overarching resources. Take a read, and feel free to comment with any resources/tips I may have forgotten. Would love to hear feedback!
In my latest post on the New York Entrepreneur Week website, I talk a little bit about some more similarities that I’ve observed between UX Designers and Therapists. To find out how I think they relate, be sure to check out the newest post: How User Experience Designers are like Therapists. As always, any feedback is greatly appreciated!
My latest post entitled “Should Entrepreneurs Hire a UX Designer” is up on the New York Entrepreneur Week site. In it, I talk to entrepreneurs about what a User Experience Designer is and if they should make the investment to hire one. Be sure to go check it out!
As tomorrow begins the holiday that my family celebrates during this season, I wanted to take a moment and wish everyone out there wonderful holidays no matter which you choose to celebrate! Given that tomorrow and Friday are non working days for me, I’m going to take some time to plow through today and then shut down my brain for a few days and enjoy my life. I wish that you’ve gotten or will get the chance to do the same.
Look for something insightful (or at least an attempt to be insightful) next week and have a safe and Merry Christmas!
I don’t know that I’ve ever written about this topic before, but it is one I’ve definitely done a great deal of thinking on. Most of my thinking was done a few years ago while at a company that was just implementing agile as a development methodology. My gears started turning again when, yesterday, I came upon David Farkas’ article on this topic: How UCD and Agile can live together.
I love the way that he begins to define and categorize the different terms and phases within this realm. One thing, however, that I think is missing (and may not be appropriate for this article) is the idea that UX is ideally always iterative and therefore should fit pretty well into an agile environment. Otherwise, I mostly agree with the Phases that the author defines. Having a UX strategy is what I believe makes the entire process work. There needs to be solid ground (the purpose and overall “how” in this case) for the entire team (both UX and dev included) to stand on, in order to move quickly, efficiently, but with purpose.
I’d love to hear your take on the article and/or my comments on it. What is he missing? What did he get right?
Also, if you’re in the NYC area and are interested in this topic don’t forget to check out the Agile Experience Design meetup. Great discussion going on there!
Yesterday was the big day… I set up my doing business as name: Hubert Experience design. I reserved the name, got the federal tax ID and now I’m ready to rock (not that I wasn’t rocking before). It is such a great feeling to realize that I’m doing experience design for myself. Soon I’ll get some new business cards created, and will make some site updates but for now I’m trying to get everything else in order. There have been a ton of resources that I’ve been using along the way that I’d love to share here:
All of my friends over at IxDA
I officially have a lot more information than I thought possible, but I’m always looking for more. If you have any resources to share I’d love to hear about them!
Well my fourth week at home is coming to a close. I love Friday! This week I learned some incredibly important and exciting lessons. First, now that I’m freelancing there are times where I’m REALLY, REALLY busy and there are times when I’m just semi busy. The great part is now in my non working hours I have the time to attend some local events as well as network a lot more. It’s working out really well.
Also, last week I wrote that I needed to work on taking breaks throughout the day which I was much more successful at this week, perhaps because it was a semi busy week? Any thoughts on this?
All in all it’s going great. I have a few virtual seminars coming up 1. regarding Taxonomies 2. regarding getting info about legalities and freelancing. Should be awesome! Have a great week 
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Wanted to get in a quick update on the new freelance adventure. It’s been a little difficult to write as I have been VERY busy. I’ve been working from home about 3 days a week and am lucky to have access to the company office at my leisure, so I work from there about 2 days a week. The communication issues have sorted themselves out pretty well. Of course there are still challenges but now that I’m in a rhythm things are much better.
The one thing I am finding a challenge is taking enough “breaks” during the day. Most of the times I’m so heads down that I barely come up for air. Of course this is leading to a burn out effect which I’m now having to counter. Do any other freelancers out there have any advice on how to divide work time?
Today is day 3 of my working from home adventure. So far, it has been going really well. I’ve been able to set aside an area to work during “work hours” and promptly put everything away when I close up shop for the day. I do this in order to separate work from home life (even though in reality they are the same place!) Here are the things I’ve found the hardest so far:
Despite those two things, I’m really not running into any issues, although it is only day 3. Do you work from home? Any suggestions, comments or heads up??
Last week was quite a week. First I participated in a two day job placement workshop which, at first, seemed like a waste of my time, but ended up being THE BEST choice I could’ve made. I learned a great deal and was refreshed on other topics and I’m now fully invested in my job search. The thing is that there ARE jobs out there. Perhaps not a ton of jobs but there are jobs. Unfortunately for me I do not want just any job, I want one where I can contribute to the company and its goals and at the same time develop myself and my interests. Networking has helped me to start to uncover these types of jobs and also has allowed me to talk to and learn from so many people. Living in NYC with all these resources available really is a plus.
Second, I’m another year older! I had a great birthday and want to thank everyone for their wishes and support!! Well back to the search front for now…
UX 
Jobs 
IA 
Interaction Design
Freelancing