(Note: I'm not affiliated with any of the mentioned products or companies.)
“Get Into UX: A Foolproof Guide to Getting Your First User Experience Job” by Vy Alechnavicius is a career advice book aimed at helping both new and experienced designers navigate the competitive field of user experience (UX).
Although I'm not personally aiming at entering the UX field I was curious about what it actually entails and what its relationship with UI is. This book addresses that and more: from distilling UX design workflows to acing portfolios and interviews, it equips readers with strategies to bridge the gap between beginner and professional in the UX field.
These are some notes I took while reading it. They are just the selection of things that seem interesting to me, rather than a systematic overview of the whole book.
Junior Designers and Their Portfolios:
- Junior designers often forget to apply UX design methods to their own portfolios. It’s crucial to showcase your skills effectively through your portfolio.
Problem Definition:
- The quote “If I had only one hour to solve a problem, I would spend up to two-thirds of that hour in attempting to define what the problem is.” emphasizes the importance of understanding the problem thoroughly before attempting to solve it.
UX Beyond Design:
- UX is more than just design; it involves change management and the organizational adoption of user-centric methods. It’s about creating a holistic user experience.
Designing the Right Things:
- UX is about designing the right things. This involves using both quantitative and, more importantly, qualitative insights gathered from user research.
Designing Things Right:
- The process also includes collaboration, compromise, and finding overlap between user desires, business goals, and technological feasibility. It’s about designing things right.
Quality User Experiences:
- Combining both aspects—designing the right things and designing things right—leads to quality user experiences.
Impartial Problem Solving:
- During the UX process, it’s essential to employ principles and guidelines that keep you impartial when solving problems for others.
- Designers often make the mistake of creating solutions based on their own preferences. Empathy alone (especially without engaging with actual users) is insufficient.
- To avoid this bias, familiarize yourself with the right toolkit to make unbiased, informed, and justified decisions throughout the design process.
Understanding the User Deeply:
- Rather than projecting your own experiences onto the end-user, strive to know just enough to understand the user deeply.
- This approach adds value both for the customer (usually the business) and the end-user of your solutions.
Original Definition of User Experience:
- User experience revolves around three simple elements: context, content, and the user.
Information Architecture:
- Information architecture is a critical area to explore as you develop your skills. It involves organizing and structuring information effectively.
Audience Profile for Improvement:
- Create a profile of your audience to identify and outline their journeys, pain points, and challenges.
- Translate these insights into opportunities for improvement within your team.
Research Focus:
- Your research should uncover both user attitudes (what they say) and user behaviors (what they do).
- Express these findings through quantitative measures (indirect insights) and qualitative insights (direct insights).
Usability Testing and User Insights:
- Jacob Nielsen’s guidelines emphasize that zero users provide zero insights. Around five users can uncover 75-80% of usability issues.
- Beyond that, additional testing with more users yields diminishing returns in terms of identifying problems.
- To reveal 100% of usability issues, you need to test with at least 15 users.
Individual Paths vs. Perfection:
- “It is better to follow your own path, however imperfectly, than to follow someone else’s perfectly.” - The Bhagavad-Gita
- Embrace your unique journey rather than striving for perfection by imitating others.
Changing Landscape of UX:
- While the purpose and application areas of UX have evolved, the core remains human-centric and user-focused.
- Consider future visions such as UX design for digital UI-less neural UI solutions, AI-driven services, self-evolving machinery, a blockchain-based UX revolution, humane and ethical design, and sustainable tech.
Framework for Skill Improvement:
- A simple framework can make you 2x better at any skill every 72 days:
- Acquiring theory
- Learning with others
- Getting support and guidance from mentors and more experienced designers
Overcoming Resistance:
- Important calls or actions related to our soul’s evolution often trigger resistance.
- Resistance makes you feel unworthy or unready, leading to procrastination or feeling blocked.
- Those who challenge this notion and show up anyway excel.
Persistence and Flow:
- Be disciplined and do the work even when faced with resistance.
- Repetition leads to a state of flow, where engagement and motivation sustainably drive progress.
Discipline Equals Freedom:
- The quote “Discipline equals freedom” emphasizes that having discipline and structure in your actions ultimately leads to freedom and success.
Mapping Groups into a Story Structure:
- When working on a project, map groups into a story structure using formats like 2x3 or 3x3.
- Outline key scenes or slides related to:
- The as-is experience users faced before the project.
- The new experience being developed for users.
- The ways of working and the process of delivering the new experience.
Overcoming Impostor Syndrome:
- The key to overcoming impostor syndrome is competence.
- Repeatedly doing something improves your confidence and reduces feelings of being an impostor.
Seeking Learning from Others:
- Instead of connecting for connection’s sake, seek to learn from others.
- This approach requires humility, curiosity, and openness.