In the quiet of a crisp Minneapolis morning in November 2017, Zack Naylor stared at his laptop screen. An email had just blinked into his inbox, in reply to some routine customer research he was doing for his product strategy software, Aurelius. The sender line showed it was from one of their earliest customers, but it was the message itself that sent tingles down his spine.

“We’re actually exclusively using the beta now”.

At that time, Aurelius was product strategy software, just entering its third year. It had recently launched a beta version that reimagined the tool with a focus on research and insights. What made this email special was its confirmation that Aurelius customers were now using the beta—the optional beta—more than the product they were actually paying for. 

“It was an interesting, but also a very proud moment… It became very clear to us we should sunset the older product and focus everything on research and insights,” Zack told us.

It was the point where they pivoted direction, changing tack to become the popular research and insights platform we now know as Aurelius.

Planting the Seed: Zack’s Early Career

Zack describes himself in his early career as a “pretty good front-end developer, and an okay visual designer”. He was dabbling with an approach to design that didn’t really have a name or clear definition yet. He was working in start-ups, and through practical experience taught himself the principles of user research. Utterly fascinated, he read everything he could about what would later become popularly known as ‘UX’, working further back in the human-centered design process, starting with his design and development view until he was at the early stages of discovery and product strategy. As many UX professionals can relate, he got bitten by the UX bug and didn’t look back. 

Zack had UX experience working in both Fortune 500 and startup contexts, but it was with his move to Minnesota for a job at The Nerdery that many pieces fell into place for him. The Nerdery is a strategy, design and technology consultancy, and his role as the Principal UX Designer there gave him responsibility for up to 50 active projects across his team at any given time. What this meant, practically, was his ten thousand hours in teaching people and building a research practice.

“I realized that while I could teach anybody how to design, it’s much more difficult to teach people the right things to design.” 

He also realized that the best way to do this is by creating a design culture with a foundation of customer empathy backed by solid insights gathered from user research. 

The Nerdery gave him experience in helping people make the right decisions on designs, products, and features, and as a result, he discovered for himself the constants within this type of effort. “There are a number of patterns for how you ought to approach this work. It doesn’t matter where you are, what the industry is, what your team looks like… There are some pretty basic universal truths”. He wanted to help people make these decisions at scale, rather than have to hire someone every time. It was in this environment and way of thinking that he met his future business partner, Joseph Szczesniak, and Aurelius was born. 

Genesis of Aurelius

It was just before November 2015 that they were in Zack’s basement (surely a place where great ideas are born) discussing product strategy. “There’s got to be a way we can help people make these decisions better—like we did when we were actually hired to help them”. After an inevitable round of brainstorming, they emerged with some exciting concepts for building the software to help. 

Aurelius thus began as a product strategy platform that valued research and insights. A lot of hard work went into developing the idea and its execution, and things grew rapidly.

Juggling time while building Aurelius

Aurelius is 100% bootstrapped and self-funded – which means all the design mapping, UI creation, development, startup admin, problem solving, and everything else, happened on their own personal time. Zack would wake up at 4:00am to clock in on Aurelius for several hours, do a morning workout, and then go on to his day job. At night he’d get home to spend more time with his family, then make some more progress on Aurelius.

With two young kids—a one-year-old daughter and a six-year-old son—plus full-time work, commitments as the president of the UXPA, and all of the Aurelius workload, there isn’t much time leftover. 

“Any of my time and attention that does not go towards my family, Aurelius, or my full-time job; I basically don’t do”. 

Both co-founders are in Minneapolis, but much of Zack and Joseph’s connecting is done remotely. Despite being only 20 minutes away from each other, meeting online is much easier for simply getting things done.

Zack laughed when we asked where he got his energy and persistence from. He says it’s a matter of dedication; it’s because he loves what Aurelius does, and they really want to solve this problem with research, to help people and teams make sense of what they learn. 

This motivation is uncommon amongst a startup culture often driven by dreams of corporate takeovers and buyouts. Aurelius intends to remain self-funded. “We don’t want to take funding because both of us have worked in startups and seen how various levels of funding influence direction and priority and, quite frankly, mess up the direction of your product. That’s important to people like us because we are the people who do that work. We want to stay very true to solving that problem.”

As you’d find with many successful startups; it’s also about passion, “We work really hard learning from customers and folks in the industry to help Aurelius support successful products and successful companies. That’s what drives me.”

Motivation to solve the ResearchOps problem

You get another insight about what motivates Zack in the way he describes Aurelius as a vitamin;

“You may not feel like you need to take a vitamin today, but four or five years down the road, if you weren’t getting an essential vitamin, you’d really regret it.”

Aurelius helps you build a research repository so that you can come back and get even more out of the research you’ve already done. “When it comes to ResearchOps, InsightOps, and DataOps, there are great, sophisticated tools for doing the design. But we don’t have good, sophisticated tools for making sure we’re designing the right things. And that’s arguably much more important.” 

Zack suggests that most products fall on one side of the fence or the other: they are either a painkiller or a vitamin. Painkillers might suppress the problem for the time being, but vitamins keep the practice healthy for years to come. “Aurelius is very much a vitamin. It helps you grow your research practice into a healthy asset for the business.”

The Pivot: Moving from Product Strategy Tool to ResearchOps Engine

The original version of Aurelius was targetted to product strategy, and Zack estimates ten percent of signups wanted it just as it was. But it was the other 90% that often said things like ‘I love this. I wish we were mature enough to work this way. But tell me more about this research and insights piece that you’ve got’. Once they’d heard that more than a few times, Zack and Joseph got curious. There was a pattern of people struggling with organizing, applying, and getting more out of the research they had already done.

 “As you mature in research practice, the broader product strategy problem will actually start to become apparent.”

People were interested in the research and insights potential of Aurelius — but what was the solution? The decision was made to take it out and make it it’s own product: the beta version of Aurelius version 2 was a dedicated research and insights platform. While this was emerging they still had paying customers using the original version 1, but then came the moment that Zack will never forget. “It was one of those early mornings where I got an email from one of our first, early customers on Version 1. I was doing some regular customer research with them… and I remember them saying, ‘We’re actually exclusively using the beta right now’. They had paid upfront for a year’s license of Version 1, but were basically neglecting it for the beta of the new product.”

Their customers were using the new beta more than their paid product, justifying it by describing the purpose and supporting functionality as a better fit. It was a very proud moment for Zack. He followed it up with other existing customers “If we killed v1 tomorrow and just continued building this, would you even blink an eye?” The answer? No, they wouldn’t.

“It became very clear to us we should sunset the older product and focus everything on research and insights. And we’ve been far more successful as a result.”

The Shift: How Aurelius Changed

Aurelius reinvented itself as a research and insights platform with some novel approaches to solve traditional problems of user research analysis and synthesis.

In short, it helps you tag, analyze, organize, search, and share everything you learn from a qualitative research dataset. Notes, connections and patterns learned from customers, Aurelius helps speed up the process of discovery. 

By collating research in Aurelius, you automatically start building a research library. This holds some powerful potential. When asked what was learnt from a particular research project there are two common outcomes:

1. You weren’t the person who did the research, and maybe they’re gone, so a lot of the native fluency with the findings are lost. You may need to redo the research. Or,
2. What was learnt wasn’t captured in enough detail by the original report—so it’s only a snapshot in time.

With Aurelius, this isn’t a problem as it’s already been recorded and tagged, possibly even while still in the research session itself. The platform is flexible in how it can work, where you can add and connect key insights. You can take a bottom-up approach where notes can be used to create insights. It was intentionally built flexible enough for customers to do that.

It could also be described as a multi-functional note collation tool. Whether you’re recording research as transcripts, notes—or a mix of both—you can use Aurelius to tag as you record, and then theme and group thoughts you want to focus on and think about more deeply. It helps you see what you have and what you’re still missing, so you have more time to focus and work on your insights.

It also means more flexibility across design teams. You don’t need to just hand over a report; teams can explore and dig deeper into the original data, discovering new things of their own via tags and key insights in the project space. When teams have access to the entire, raw collection of evidence, organized in a way that’s easy to see, new opportunities for discovery can open up.

Zack recounts a story shared by a paying customer in the Version 1 days, who told him it was often ‘faster and easier’ for them to do a whole new research project than to put together learnings they had collected in past research.

“I mean, that just hit me like a ton of bricks because that should just never be true… As an industry we can do a better job than that. I got very passionate about tackling it, and today it’s one of the biggest reasons why people come to Aurelius.”

Aurelius supports user experience designers in the way they out to think.

“No single tool will make anybody good at UX design. I very, very strongly believe that. Simply put, Aurelius helps researchers do the work that they are doing today, but makes it faster and easier.”

The Meta of using Aurelius to build Aurelius

Zack and Joseph use their own platform daily, to understand future improvements for the Aurelius platform. “Everything I learned from customers, everything I learn even from prospects of the market, I use Aurelius projects to do that”

“We want research to actually inform the direction of where a company goes because these are the most successful products and companies in my opinion”.

Once teams have the ability to organize and do more things with the research and insights they have stored in a respository, then they’re able to consider the bigger picture, and ask for more of what they need from the platform. Ultimately, as part of Aurelius, Zack wants to support these people as genuinely as possible. And 99% of the time Zack is the one doing that; answering support questions, responding to feature requests, fixing bugs. “I take a lot of pride in the fact that people really appreciate it, despite how small we are. We care about what we’re doing and the people we’re trying to serve”. 

Both co-founders are clear about the problem to be solved: to help people make sense of what they learn. “User research is going to help you make better products, better features, better designs, better decisions. We’re just trying to help you do that faster”.

Mention UX Mastery to get 10% off any Aurelius plan, just email Aurelius after you sign up to claim the offer.

The post Living the change from Product Strategy to Research Ops: The Journey of Aurelius Labs appeared first on UX Mastery.

I was lucky enough to sit down with one of the foremost educators of User Experience, David Travis. I picked his brain about what he thinks are some important areas of attention for aspiring and current professionals in the industry.

What do you see current graduates or practitioners struggling with when they first enter the field?

There are five things I see people struggling with when they first enter the field. These are:

• Self design
• Thinking product first, not user first
• Believing user likes are user needs
• Thinking that “Big Data” is better than “Thick Data”
• The Oracle misconception

SELF DESIGN

One problem I see in new UX’ers is that they fail to realise they are designing for people other than themselves. For example, when making design decisions they focus on what they like or what works for them or what’s fashionable.

Now, a core concept at the heart of user experience is, “You are not the user”. Intellectually, this is simple to understand but even the brightest UX designers seem to forget it as soon as they get in front of Sketch or any other prototyping tool… At that point, they begin to make design decisions based on their own experience.

Although this is an easy issue to understand, in my experience it’s the hardest for people to overcome. In fact, I think the only way you can overcome it is by immersing yourself in your users’ world: their context and behaviour. In practice, this means observing usability tests, going out on field visits, reading about users, getting first hand experience of their world. It’s very Zen like: you must almost become one with the user to prevent self-design.

You’ll often hear this characterised as “gaining empathy for the user”. That’s definitely an element of what you’re trying to achieve. You want to feel what it’s like to walk in their shoes. It takes work but when you follow that path of user immersion you get immediate, practical insights: for example, you might discover that the 10pt grey text that looks so good to you doesn’t work for your end users because they’ve got poor vision, or they sometimes forget their reading glasses. You may even discover that the team’s great idea for a new product doesn’t solve a problem for the user.

THINKING PRODUCT FIRST, NOT USER FIRST

The second misconception I see is people mistaking a field visit with a usability test. For example, a designer will say to me, “I want to do research on my product but I have no one to talk to because we don’t have any users yet”.

Well that’s a red flag.

That product will almost certainly fail, because the designer is thinking product first instead of user first. Instead of thinking about the product in discovery (the earliest stage of design), people need to think about the users. A good question to ask is “What meaningful activity do users carry out with my product or service?” Whatever your answer to that question, that’s the thing that you go out and research.

So if you’re taking a prototype with you when you’re doing early stage research, you’re not doing discovery at all… what you’re doing is usability testing. I’m sure you’re familiar with the Double Diamond approach that’s been popularised by the Design Council: the idea is that there is this important phase in discovery where you are trying to understand the needs of users before you come up with any prototypes or any ideas about the way that thing could look.

But most people forget that first part of the design process, or gloss over it. They start their research once they have got a definite product idea.

This is a problem because if you do research on a prototype web site, you’ll end up with a web site. If you do research with a prototype mobile app, you’ll end up with a mobile app. But your audience may have no need for a web site or mobile app. That’s what I mean by thinking product first. If the product is the start of your user research then it’s already too late. To overcome this, you have to believe user needs are more important than any product ideas you have. This is because understanding user needs will ultimately help you become truly innovative and develop much better products.

USER LIKES ARE NOT USER NEEDS

UX researchers will often show users a prototype and be influenced by what users say they ‘like’. For example, the researcher will show participants two alternative designs and ask which one they prefer.

Now obviously we want people to like our designs. But a raft of evidence shows that people are not very good at having insight into what’s best for them. I think this quotation from Rob Fitzpatrick captures it perfectly:

“Trying to learn from customer conversations is like excavating a delicate archaeological site. The truth is down there somewhere, but it’s fragile. While each blow with your shovel gets you closer to the truth, you’re liable to smash it into a million little pieces if you use too blunt an instrument.” (Rob Fitzpatrick, The Mom Test).

Asking people what they like is too blunt an instrument. A lot of the time, people may not have a strong preference but they’ll give you an answer, even if it’s not deeply held. To be more delicate, you must ask what works best for users. That means not focusing on what they like but focusing on what they do.

This is about believing that behaviour is more important than opinions.

User’s may well prefer Design A over Design B. But if they are more successful with Design B — that is, they are more successful at achieving their goals — then that’s what you choose. It’s not about what users like; its about what they perform best with.

BIG DATA VS THICK DATA

Why is it that people are more likely to believe the results of a survey of 10,000 people than a usability test of 5? People believe that having a large sample size must make the data more robust and reliable. But the data won’t be more robust and reliable from your survey if you’re not asking the right questions.

Nevertheless, people seem to believe that Big Data (quantitative data from surveys and web analytics) is somehow better than Thick Data (qualitative data from usability tests and field visits).

In fact, both kinds of data are important. Big Data tells us what’s happening, but
in order to do really great design we need to understand why things are happening — and that’s where Thick Data comes in. Big Data helps us identify areas where we should be doing in-depth UX research. And what we discover in field research and usability tests identifies the things we should be checking in our surveys, web analytics and multivariate testing.

Sometimes I wonder if this love of Big Data is actually based on a fear of speaking with users. Thick Data requires you to get face-to-face with your users. But real people can be unpredictable. They can make you feel uncomfortable. It’s easy to skirt this issue by sending out a survey or by studying your web analytics. That way, you can convince yourself you’re doing UX research while not having to get face-to-face with users.

Another example of this “fear of speaking with users” is the growth of remote, un-moderated usability testing. This is where users record themselves doing tasks and then upload the video to a Cloud-based server for you to watch afterwards. You don’t observe the user in real time: they work entirely on their own.
At first sight, it looks like a reasonable example of qualitative research.

But it’s not. If you’re not there to speak to the user you can’t find out why they are doing certain things.

What’s unique about the discoveries from qualitative research is that we often don’t know what we don’t know; we don’t know the questions to ask until we see people behave.

Do you think that’s a symptom of the companies commissioning these tests not properly understanding UXD, or does it fall on the UX Designer?

I think that novice UX designers and researchers tend to do what the client says or what their development team says. For example, their team might say, “Go out and do a survey to find out what people want from our product”. So that’s what they do, rather than pushing back and asking, “What hypotheses do you want to test? What questions do you have? What is it that you want to find out?”. A survey may be a good way of finding that out, but it might not be. So this is about understanding the problem before deciding on the best way to answer it.

THE ORACLE MISCONCEPTION

This is about the UX designer thinking they need to be the expert. Caroline Jarrett captures this well when she writes “User researcher’s fallacy: ‘My job is to learn about users’. Truth: ‘My job is to help my team learn about users’”.

User researcher's fallacy: "My job is to learn about users". Truth: "My job is to help my team learn about users". #ux

— Caroline Jarrett (@cjforms) July 4, 2014

An important part of the UX researchers’ job is to act as a facilitator, not just the person who does UX research. The findings from UX research aren’t useful if they live inside the researcher’s head. The findings need to be part of the development team’s consciousness. You need to immerse the team in the research to help everyone gain competence in understanding users and their needs.

The notion that the team is bigger than the individual is true in many areas of UX. For example, in the face to face courses I run we do a prototyping application activity where we split people into small groups of 3 or 4 and they create paper interfaces. This is very different to the way they normally prototype, which is on their own in front of a computer screen. The upshot is that people discover for themselves that design is best when you have multiple people involved. The problem with an electronic prototyping tool like Sketch is that one person is in control of the mouse, which means one person does the design rather than involving the whole team.

It also applies in other areas like expert reviews. We know from the literature on expert reviews that one expert will find about 75% of the usability problems that would be found if you had 5 experts doing the review. No matter how good you are, no matter how much of a guru you are in UX, you won’t find all the usability problems.

But UX designers and researchers don’t always want to believe this, especially those new to the field. They think they have to appear as an expert. If they don’t present themselves as the oracle of all things user, they worry they will appear weak. In fact, it’s a sign of strength to involve other people in UX research: not just users of course but the team too. That’s a misconception that people find difficult to overcome. Rather than think you need to answer every question thrown at you, become an expert in the process: “I don’t know the answer to that question, but I know how to find out”.

The post Things UX Designers Should Know – A conversation with David Travis appeared first on UX Mastery.

Leading an organisation from this role is also a major challenge. It’s hard work implementing a UX focus in a company where none exists. There will be battles against corporate biases, conflicting business needs, and results-driven culture.

In such a difficult position, how can a UXer go about creating a culture of great user experience?

It’s imperative to establish a baseline process, socialise the benefits of great UX, and prepare for the long road ahead.

Above all else, establish a process

When starting a culture of user experience focus, the first step is to establish a clear UX process. 

“UX process is a cornerstone of UX design, it’s a make-it-or-break-it aspect of UX design,” writes veteran UX professional Nick Babich in his blog for Adobe.

“Without a solid UX design process, a designer could be completely moving in the dark. A clear and concise UX process, on the other hand, makes it possible to craft amazing experiences for users.”

Every UX professional should have a favoured baseline process. In fact, you’d expect this to be the first question in any UX interview. Part of any quality answer to this question should be to acknowledge the importance of context. No two companies or products are the same. Processes should differ depending on organisational needs, technology stacks, and delivery speed.

No process is bound to be the perfect fit. An initial process’s existence is more important than its perfection. Install a process to address the largest problems and work to resolve the kinks later.

Whatever process you choose, tailor it to your organisation’s needs. This will help you with the second facet of gaining UX buy-in: socialising UX benefits among stakeholders.

Socialise the benefits of UX among stakeholders

In his Forbes piece Good UX is Good Business, Andrew Kucheriavy, founder and CEO Intechnic, lays out the argument for the business benefits of an improved focus on user experience.

“Good user experience is clearly good for business,” he writes. “ Studies show that companies that invest in UX see a lower cost of customer acquisition, lower support cost, increased customer retention and increased market share.”

While the benefits are clear, you must be able to explain why the UX process is beneficial to your stakeholders. 

UX success hinges on the cooperation and participation of the business as a whole. While you are the engine propelling the car, the whole machine must move forward together. It’s often difficult for internal stakeholders to see the progress and impact of UX focus. By clearly explaining the benefits, you’ll bring your company one step closer to fully embracing a culture of great user experience.

I’ve written previously on how big of a part UX professionals play in facilitating internal communication. We sit at the epicentre of our business. We speak with our business partners to understand project requirements. We work with our technical teams to understand what’s viable, and to support development efforts. We talk with customers to understand their wants, needs, and expectations. An established process allows UX pros to speak about the project pipeline and its direct impact to any stakeholder.

If we are successful as UX professionals, the benefits we add to our organisations should be clear. Our business partners should have a better understanding of our customers’ needs through UX testing. Our technical teams will receive projects that are both practical and well-defined through iteration and revision with our business partners. And, most importantly, our customers receive a product that exceeds their expectations.

Be aggressive in explaining your expected benefits. Take advantage of your team’s rituals and culture to discuss your roll and how your process will benefit specific projects and initiatives. This gives UX pros excellent opportunities to speak on how and why our process benefits the company as a whole, and gain allies in promoting usability throughout the company.

Cindy McCracken, a UX professional with more than 10 years of experience working for the likes of Fidelity Investments, agrees.

“The more you work with co-workers such as support, sales and development and show them the value of UX, the more support you will have within the organisation,” she writes in her article Proven Strategies to Win Over Stakeholders for Your UX Project. “These in-the-trenches supporters will see the value of your work and the successes with customers first hand, and that will go a long way toward impacting workplace culture and filtering up to senior level support of UX.”

There are a few ways UX professionals can quickly integrate themselves into the rhythms of the business.

Attend development standups. Listen for blockers and speak about how your UX process will ease these issues in the future. Pay attention for upcoming work, and ask for inclusion where practical. 

“In planning meetings, be alert for extensive development work planned to go work with interfaces that clearly need to be redesigned,” writes McCracken. “Rather than just let them proceed, bring potential design problems and ideas for improvements to the team.”

Set meetings with your business partners. Work to understand their underlying problems. Explain UX’s role in fixing those issues. Find the low hanging fruit to get some quick wins on the board. 

Take part in retrospectives. Retrospectives are a great platform to show the type of value you can provide for your new team. 

Listen for issues on previous releases. Present your UX process after discussing these issues. Prepare to speak on your process, and how that will affect any issues raised. After your first couple of releases, plan on asking for feedback to adjust your basic process.

Get in front of your customers. Some would argue that it’s not UX unless you’re getting in touch with your users. This is where great UX starts and ends. Working with your clients shows your engaged in their needs. It allows you to talk about projects that are in development. And it allows you to understand wants, needs, and pain points. We take all this back to our business partners to help create a better product.

According to McCracken, a great way to do this early in the game is to test early iterations of projects with your clients.

“[Use] an online first-click test to see if participants go where you expect when asked to perform tasks,” She writes. “You can even ask what people notice first on a page. Better yet, run one study with an image of your current design, and one with an image of the new design to see how user performance compares. If you have a clear winner, it should be easy to get buy-in to improve conversions, which would be a great return on investment.

Prepare for the long road ahead

The road to establishing UX as a team of one can be difficult and lonely at times. Larger teams, for starters, can divide and conquer work.

A team of one, however, does not have that luxury.

As solo teams, it’s important to take some steps to avoid over-extension. With no one to pick up the slack, whiffing on an objective or project can have major consequences. What’s more, the stress of working alone can be intimidating. 

So how can you make life as a solo UXer easier on yourself?

Work with your higher-ups to set reasonable goals and benchmarks. Talk about when you’d like to have processes installed and how you’d like to go about its implementation. Make sure that everyone is clear on mutual expectations and goals. Review your progress and blockers regularly. 

Engage with the larger UX community. One mind rarely surprises itself. In larger teams, UXers have comrades to give feedback. In solo teams, isolation can inhibit creative solutions and stunt professional development. Go to UX meetups. Follow industry leaders on Twitter. Start a blog. Ask and answer questions on Stack Overflow. Join an online UX group like the wonderful UXMastery Community. Whatever you do, get involved with the UX world as a whole in some way. Your conscious and career will thank you.

Conclusion

Working as the solitary UX professional in your organisation is not an easy job, but it can be tremendously rewarding.

In Leah Buley’s The User Experience Team of One: A Research and Survival Guide, she makes the best case I’ve yet seen for the allure of working as a UX team of one. The team of one’s work is as close as one can get to the fundamental values of the UX community as a whole.

“UX is a force for good,” she writes. “[As a team of one,] you help spread the growth of a new and exciting field, one person, team, and company at a time.”

What do you think are the greatest challenges for the solo UXer? Share your thoughts in the comments, or join the conversation in our friendly forums.

The post How to Survive as Your Company’s Solo UXer appeared first on UX Mastery.

Each year, UX Australia brings together user experience professionals from across Australia, and around the globe, for a learning and networking conference extravaganza.

All the action is happening in central Sydney this year, beginning with a series of full and half day workshops from next Tuesday, followed by the main event on Thursday and Friday. 

Emerging technologies, evolving niches and adapting methods will be covered, from mixed reality, chat bots and writing for UX, along with plenty of insightful design topics.

As is UX Mastery tradition, we’ll be there with bells on, and we’re pretty excited. Here’s why.

The buzz of new ideas

Conferences like UX Australia are always inspirational—mixing with so many people, of calibre or conviction or composure, in quick succession creates a hyper-stimulation that keeps me going for the rest of the year. Meeting new people, seeing fresh ideas and combinations explained, all adds a renewed energy and direction to my work.

Of course, learning is a big part of that – whether it’s from the talks or through the workshops. The keynote speakers are chosen specifically for the power of their thinking, but often it’s the lesser known speakers who surprise you with their experience and insights.

If you really want to build your UX skills, the workshops have a reputation for being colourful, practical and eye-opening. Shameless plug alert: we’ve been asked to run our popular Introduction to User Experience Design workshop again on Tuesday 8 August. More on that below.

Other workshops will help you brush up on research skills, plan your career trajectory, or learn how to use mixed reality in your work. You can even spend the whole day with Mike Monteiro for a workshop based on his famous book: Design is a job—a masterclass in making a living as a designer, and upping your game when working with clients. Take a look at all the workshops.

Getting social

You never know who you might meet at a conference like this. The duty of “networking” is replaced by a delight in discovery — the UX Australia conference is one of the friendliest in the world, so you’ll be happy in a sea of fellow UX nerds and have plenty in common with other attendees. Plus, the UX community is full of introverts (here’s some proof) expert in creating positive experiences, so there are plenty of opportunities to take time out, re-charge or mix with smaller and quieter groups.

Striking up a cold conversation can sometimes feel awkward, so check out these handy conversation starters. My favourite networking tip is to approach people already standing in a group of two. Discount any fears that you might be interrupting them; people in pairs often either already know each other (and know they should be mingling), or they just met and are already on the cusp of looking for a new conversation topic. Either way you’ll be welcome. Plus, who attends a conference to avoid meeting people? And if, ultimately, things don’t click it’s much easier to back out of a pair than to leave someone on their own.

If you prefer to chat over a glass of vino (hands up!), head along to the pre- and post-conference drinks on the Wednesday and Friday nights. These spaces are where the some of the most valuable conversations happen.

The presentations

The speaker program this year is a mix of friends and heroes. As with previous years, there are two stages, so the only real struggle will be choosing which sessions to attend and bustling through the crowds to nab a seat in the other auditorium. Here are a few picks that caught our eye:

• The opening keynote by Sharon Mackay, who has recently been working with the South Australian government applying design thinking to policy reform in the areas of democracy, public participation and strategic engagement. Talk about meaningful work!
• Co-founder of San Francisco’s Mule Design, Mike Monteiro is giving this year’s closing keynote. Anyone familiar with Mike will know it promises to be packed with candid, no nonsense pearls of wisdom on the business of design.
• Ash McKay, our friend and a frequent contributor to the UX Mastery blog and forums, offers a unique perspective on UX as an autistic practitioner. She’ll share what it means to design with and for a different kind of mind.
• Content strategist from Facebook, Elena Ontiveros will dive into content strategy for chat bots, and how to make communicating with a robot feel more human.
• Also on content strategy, one of our favourite content strategists Matt Fenwick will cover how UX research and content creation can be better integrated, and why content is essential for fostering good user experiences.
• If you can’t make it to Andy Polaine’s workshop on Wednesday, don’t miss his talk on Living Design, exploring how services continue to evolve based on user needs.
• While Accessibility is steadily (but still too slowly) gaining ground on the web, what about cultural inclusivity? Adam Faulkner will provide a framework for a more culturally diverse user experience.
• We’re super looking forward to what David Blumenstein and Luke Watson will share about using humour and visuals and stories to jump-start conversations in corporate settings
• And so much more! See the full list of speakers on the UX Australia site.

The UX community

Catching up with friends and fans is how we feel at home during conferences. It’s a chance to step outside of the usual internet bubble and connect with people face-to-face, including our interstate and international friends.

So, if you spot one of us before we spot you, please come and say hi! Here’s what we look like. We’d love to chat with you.

Teaching the fundamentals of UX at our workshop

Back by popular demand, we are once again running UX Mastery’s flagship workshop — Introduction to User Experience Design — on Tuesday 8 August. This time I’m privileged to be co-facilitating with Donna Spencer herself. It’s going to be great fun!

We’ll cover the essentials of human-centred design for anyone who wants to understand more about the practical side of creating experiences. This workshop will help graphic designers, developers, business analysts, or entrepreneurs—you don’t need any background UX knowledge to attend. You’ll go home with a day of solid experience, a brain full of ideas and your notes and worksheets created throughout the day. There are only a few tickets left, and we’d love to see you there. See the details and book on the UX Australia site.

Are you as excited as we are? It’s not too late to get a ticket, but be quick: www.uxaustralia.com.au/conferences/uxaustralia-2017/

Already coming to UX Australia? What are you looking forward to the most?

PS You might not know that UX Australia publishes copies of all presentations online with audio for free. Take a look: www.uxaustralia.com.au/library

The post 5 Reasons to Get Excited About UX Australia appeared first on UX Mastery.

In today’s digital world, the importance of user experience has never been more apparent. You have about 0-8 seconds to entice the reader before they leave, and so your website or app has a significant impact on a businesses’ sales, and indeed on customer satisfaction.

Designers need to create a unique experience across devices, customer-centric strategies, and constantly adapt to the user’s changing needs. Yet, there are still areas which are being underserved by developments in UX and UI. Ahead of the UX & UI Innovation Summit, we asked five UX/UI executives their opinion on what the industry can do to better serve consumers.

Leo Marti, Senior UX Designer, BBC Worldwide

“UX is too often seen as a way to make a digital product easy and appealing to use. Unfortunately, people are often unaware that UX can also be a strategic tool that can help sharpen a product vision and strategy. It balances the business’ needs with users’ needs.

“I also think we still have a lot to learn about design leadership. UX is a very young discipline, and only a very few people have experience managing and scaling large design teams.”

Vincenzo Zuccarello, Senior UX Architect, Aviva

“I feel that currently financial services is still seen as a beast that takes money away from people but doesn’t give it back when they need it the most (i.e. when claiming). This is particularly true when proposition pages are made shiny yet the claim aspect/process is still complicated and cumbersome to users.”

Andru Dunn, Senior UI Developer, John Lewis

“I think accessibility compliance is sadly still not part of every UI developer’s workflow, and as a community, those who don’t are excluding a lot of people. It’s part of the fabric of my day to day job, and I hope it becomes more of an expected standard.”

Tiago Marques, Senior UX Designer, Lloyds

“Technology-wise, most banks are struggling with outdated IT. Because their legacy back-end systems often impose enormous constraints on what can be created or modified, it is very difficult for traditional banks to experiment with UX, and that reflects on the end customer experience.”

Mark Shahid, Senior UX Architect, Sky Betting and Gaming

“We’re potentially missing good UX standards. In a world full of opinion and pushy boardroom meetings, UX-ers are being chased for guidelines and principles that they can gestate towards whenever they’re put in an awkward defensive situation.

“Although ISO 9241 broadly covers usability standards (in a roundabout and expensive way), UX practitioners today still need a solid yardstick to measure the effects of their hard work by. We often claim we can cause bumps in the bottom line or even more smiley faces in the surveys, but measuring success in a large organisation can be full of red tape and massive huge overhead. We’re also missing CXOs. We need more really senior UX folk, in the boardroom, at the top, having those in-depth detailed strategy and vision conversations.”

Hear from many more leading UI and UX experts at the UX & UI Innovation Summit, taking place from 12-13 June in London.

The Summit brings together 100+ UX designers, UI architects, and design experts in an intimate environment of collaboration and learning. Learn how your peers are finding success and integrating new technologies into their UX strategy.

To see the full schedule, click here. Make sure you use the special UX Mastery promo code: UXM100 for £100 off two-day passes.

The post The Often Overlooked Aspects of UX and UI Design appeared first on UX Mastery.

As highlighted in this example, the reasons a person could be using your product with only one arm could vary from permanent injury, a temporary condition, to a new parent who only has one arm free while nursing a newborn.

Everyone is different, and we all have a role to play in creating inclusive (digital) experiences.

These talks and videos provide the foundations for what makes accessible and inclusive design, and will help you see the world through another’s eyes.

UX Mastery: Everyone is Different!

Duration: 3:56

Produced by us in partnership with the team from Accessibility Bytes (http://a11ybytes.org) for Global Accessibility Awareness Day, this video is an introduction to accessibility for creators of digital experiences.

More: http://globalaccessibilityawarenessday.org/

Jinsop Lee: Design for All 5 Senses

Duration: 9:03

Good design looks great, yes — but why shouldn’t it also feel great, smell great and sound great? Designer Jinsop Lee shares his theory of 5-sense design, with a handy graph and examples. His hope: to inspire you to notice great multisensory experiences.

Michael Nesmith: Why We Need Universal Design

Duration: 10:29

Michael is a deaf and native American Sign Language speaker working as a creative designer for Amazon. Throughout his career, Michael’s visual/conceptual way of thinking and problem solving have served him both as an asset and a challenge. He finds solutions around his disability through Universal Design.

Microsoft: Inclusive Design Sprint: Team Xbox

Duration: 4:55

In an intensive one-week design sprint, team Xbox came together to re-imagine the possibilities in social gaming through the lens of inclusive design.

More: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/design/inclusive

Derek Featherstone: Accessibility is a Design Tool

Duration: 29:32
Designing for extreme use cases—outliers—results in a design process that leads to greater success in developing products that are more easily used by everyone. By systematically factoring these extremes into our designs we spark creativity and behaviours that encourage divergent thinking and help to ensure that what we create can be used by everyone, including people with disabilities.

More: https://simplyaccessible.com/articles/

Elle Waters: Lean Accessibility – Building inclusive design into your agile workflow

Duration: 53:42

Accessibility has a brand problem. But just as agile-minded thinking can transform your company’s culture, accessibility integration can actually serve as a catalyst for innovation and continuous improvement within your agile process. Learn how agile and accessibility make excellent partners in building a lean, cost-effective practice of user-centered, value-based design and development.

Sara Wachter Boettcher: Design for Real life at Delight Conference

Duration: 42:18

We can’t always predict who will use our products, or what emotional state they’ll be in when they do. But we have the power—and the responsibility—to build compassion into every aspect of our products, and to advocate for experiences that support more of our users, more of the time. Sara will share principles and practical approaches from Design for Real Life, her new book with coauthor Eric Meyer.

More: http://delight.us/sara-wachter-boettcher-design-for-real-life/

Neil Harbisson: I listen to colour

Duration: 9:35

Artist Neil Harbisson was born completely color blind, but these days a device attached to his head turns color into audible frequencies. Instead of seeing a world in grayscale, Harbisson can hear a symphony of color — and yes, even listen to faces and paintings.

Elise Roy: When we design for disability, we all benefit

Duration: 13:17

“I believe that losing my hearing was one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received,” says Elise Roy. As a disability rights lawyer and design thinker, she knows that being Deaf gives her a unique way of experiencing and reframing the world — a perspective that could solve some of our largest problems. As she says: “When we design for disability first, you often stumble upon solutions that are better than those when we design for the norm.”

Kevin Shaw: Design the Inclusive Experience

Duration: 19:00

Kevin Shaw’s talk is structured around the reality that a person isn’t disabled, rather the environment is. Kevin talks about his visual impairment and the work he has been doing with Zagga entertainment while emphasizing on the purpose of inclusive technology. Kevin tells the story of how he developed this service and discuss how tomorrow’s leaders can create inclusive experiences in media and other disciplines.

Ron McCallum: How technology allowed me to read

Duration: 15:44

Months after he was born, in 1948, Ron McCallum became blind. In this charming, moving talk, he shows how he reads — and celebrates the progression of clever tools and adaptive computer technologies that make it possible. With their help, and the help of volunteers, he’s become a lawyer, an academic, and, most of all, a voracious reader. Welcome to the blind reading revolution.

David Eagleman: Can we create new senses for humans?

Duration: 20:34

As humans, we can perceive less than a ten-trillionth of all light waves. “Our experience of reality,” says neuroscientist David Eagleman, “is constrained by our biology.” He wants to change that. His research into our brain processes has led him to create new interfaces — such as a sensory vest — to take in previously unseen information about the world around us.

Chieko Asakawa: How new technology helps blind people explore the world

Duration: 9:29

How can technology help improve our quality of life? How can we navigate the world without using the sense of vision? Inventor and IBM Fellow Chieko Asakawa, who’s been blind since the age of fourteen, is working on answering these questions. In a charming demo, she shows off some new technology that’s helping blind people explore the world ever more independently … because, she suggests, when we design for greater accessibility, everyone benefits.

The post 13 Inspiring Talks on Inclusive Design appeared first on UX Mastery.

This completely natural experience has a devious ability to feel like it’s uniquely affecting you and no one else.

For UXers just starting out, this feeling is practically a prerequisite. What other group of people are meant to have extensive skills in research, design, strategic thinking, data and psychology?

Oh and to add to this list, user experience designers are meant to have EXPERIENCE. Our credibility lies in our immense knowledge of problem-solving built up from seeing different scenarios unfold with varying outcomes.

But we all have to start somewhere. If it’s not the first UX job, it might be the first interactive screen we design, or the first time we deal with a product in the financial sector.

In order to gain a deeper understanding of how imposter syndrome affects people in their careers, I had conversations with four different people. These were my findings.

It ebbs and flows but never completely disappears

Something that probably shouldn’t have surprised me (but did anyway), was that the seniors I spoke to still experience imposter syndrome on a regular basis. It’s become a part of themselves they’ve had to accept use to push them to produce the best work they can.

 “Not fitting in can be a hindrance or a motivating factor,” one Experience Design Director told me. “It can be a driving force to feel comfortable. It can be the thing that defeats you, or you learn to accept it and find the right way to utilise it.”

How do they use it? They over prepare, they assess every possible outcome, they live and breathe the problem until the solution is as clear as day.  

It varies in intensity

After 6 years in the industry, one woman I spoke to has a fantastic job and a great resume behind her. Nonetheless, she still struggles with imposter syndrome.

It often occurs after she’s performed well. After completing a project that she initially feels great about, she’ll have what she refers to as a “crash” about a week later after dwelling on the details. She explains this as a period of intense self-doubt and anxiety. It often hits harder when she’s particularly happy with a project – because it takes away positive feelings that she previously felt.

Now that she’s aware of this pattern, she gets help. She talks to others, she is open and authentic about her emotions, and picks herself up time and time again. She doesn’t let it consume her and by dealing with it, it doesn’t affect her when she starts her next project.    

Remember there’s a reason you’re in the room

One person I spoke to recalled attending a meeting where he felt like he didn’t quite belong. Suddenly, plunged into a senior role, people expected him to answer difficult questions that could even impact other people’s careers. The best piece of advice he got was “there’s a reason you’re in the room”.

Just remembering that you have been hired for a reason, or put on a project for a reason is a strong piece of knowledge to hold on to. It’s a cliche, but you simply must learn to back yourself. Even if it doesn’t come naturally to you.

Oddly enough, the same people who promoted the need to “back yourself” felt they had fluked their way into their positions – “I’m in this position because I must made the right guesses along the way”. This leads me to believe we’re all a bit blind when it comes to assessing ourselves.

Starting out, everyone relies on their gut

When you don’t have the wealth of experience to guide your decision-making, you have to get comfortable trusting your gut. My boss always says to me “what does your gut tell you the answer is?” and lo and behold I have an answer. It was always there, I just never thought to ask myself the question. We don’t always have the luxury of conducting research to back up every decision we make. This is where you need to tease the answer out of yourself.

Next time you feel stuck on a problem, try suggesting your gut feeling to your team. Ask their opinion on your gut feeling rather than asking them to solve the problem for you.

Exposure to different scenarios will fast track you to comfort

Everyone wants a shortcut to overcoming imposter syndrome. It doesn’t have to take years, you just need enough experience dealing with difficult situations. One resilient interviewee assures me the only way to improve as fast as you want to is “exposure to different stuff, different outcomes, how different things play out. Mix that with exposure to different personalities and that’s what experience is”.

You could experience a situation 10 times in 6 months or 10 times in 2 weeks. Throw yourself in the deep end. If you don’t feel confident presenting directly to stakeholders or clients, put your hand up to present at the next possible moment. Make mistakes often and early. But make sure you reflect on these afterwards to continuously improve.

One leader insists that his team push themselves into contextual enquiries – “you’ll feel awkward as a researcher until you learn to ease into it and get comfortable with it,” he says. Approaching strangers to ask them questions only gets easier with repetition.  

Don’t be an email signature

Easily my favourite piece of advice I’ve received (and arguably my own personal mantra), is that relationships are the key to thriving in new situations. This works on many levels. For instance, one man in his first strategic role claimed that you should work at developing relationships with your seniors from the get-go. This allows you to show some vulnerability and ask for help when you need it.

Another manager explains that if people are unhappy with your work, they are unlikely to speak to you directly about it if you only communicate via email. They’ll probably end up going over your head to your boss who they feel more comfortable talking to. In contrast, when you’ve built up those relationships “people will let you overcome your deficiencies if they know you and have a personal relationship with you”. I can’t tell you how many people I see avoiding personal contact, which I find mystifying as nothing compares to face to face conversation.     

I can’t tell you how many people I see avoiding personal contact, which I find mystifying as nothing compares to face-to-face conversation.     

The worst case scenario actually makes you stronger

“What if someone tells me I’m wrong?” – this is usually the worst case scenario when facing imposter syndrome.

The Experience Design Director I spoke to found that when he started in UX he wanted to be referred to as a Designer. This way he could sit in the design department and make strategic decisions that could impact on the overall creative result. The Creative Director he worked with at the time didn’t want UX impeding on the “design” space, and didn’t like his team taking this term. After a couple of years mulling this over and fighting for the right to be accepted as a designer, he found that now more than ever he believes UX should sit in a design space. After all, when you look at the history of industrial design and product design, it is problem-solving at its core. He felt like this desire to define identity has really helped him define his own UX identity and would never feel like an imposter again in the “design” space.  

The UX Researcher I spoke to had someone publicly refute an article she wrote. Normally, she is so fearful that people will call her out for being wrong, but when it actually happened it didn’t bother her in the slightest, because as she put it, “I knew I was right”. The worst case scenario of being called out can in fact allow for a strengthening of character and conviction.

Final thoughts

After these conversations, I don’t believe there’s a simple cure for impostor syndrome. However, I also don’t necessarily view this as a bad thing. Imposter syndrome creates a kind of humility that motivates us to constantly source solutions we might not find otherwise. If it’s taking the form of intense insecurity and anxiety I encourage you to talk to someone about it. I guarantee you won’t be the first person to feel this way.  

What are your thoughts and experiences with the imposter syndrome beast? Leave me a comment and let’s keep the discussion going.  

Are you new to UX design? See our guide on how to get started, or download our ebook: Get Started in UX. 

The post How Experienced UX Designers Manage Imposter Syndrome appeared first on UX Mastery.

In this interview, Deborah Clarke, Director of UX at CarTrawler talks to Sofia Quintero, Founder at NomNom. They discuss the interdependent roles of User Experience and Customer Experience, and why testing and communication are critical keys to organisational success. 

Hi Deborah! To get started, why don’t you tell us a little bit about CarTrawler and your role there?

My role is Head of UX but in reality, UX as a function in CarTrawler is actually more like a full product development team. I currently manage a team of Engineers, Researchers, Product Managers and Designers, who are all working towards producing and creating the best possible product that we can for our users.

It’s actually quite refreshing to have UX as a core part of what we do – rather than being restricted to the design discipline. In this way, everyone on the team owns UX and it has become synonymous with Product Development.

Our mission as a company is about simplifying how the world travels through innovative technologies. I suppose you could say we’re sort of like a hybrid of a travel company and a technology company.

What’s it like to run product and design and UX in such a large company as opposed to, say, early-stage start-ups that have a smaller structure and fewer people?

I think when you’re in a small team, it’s very easy to get everyone to buy into the same purpose, mission and ideas. But as you broaden the team and the organisation itself grows, broader commercial mandates and objectives come into play.

I think that’s when it becomes even more important to focus on clarity of purpose and efficient delivery. More specifically, crafting a compelling roadmap and building a culture across the team around what we create and how we build.

How do you keep your mission and vision aligned with all your teams in a complex, multi-faceted environment?

‘Customer-centricity’ is a long-term goal for any organisation in that it takes a long time to build relationships with customers that are meaningful. Most businesses are inherently focused on shorter-term goals like revenue and profitability which can often challenge this thinking. However, short-term commercial goals are indeed necessary to get us to longer-term customer-centricity!

I think as you grow in an organisation, it’s about being clear about what it actually means to embody the customer and drive customer-centric thinking throughout the business. For me, it ultimately comes back to understanding what the end-customer really wants and building on that.

What is your definition of UX and how, if at all, is it different from customer experience?

I think customer experience is actually distinct from the user experience, in the same way that an offline interaction is different from an online interaction. When we craft our products, we do need to think about both the offline and the online experience. CX includes every touch-point a customer has with your brand, whether it’s contact via phone, in person or online. It’s really all-encompassing.

Whereas UX is specifically focused on the online experience that aims to actually make the product, website or app easy and enjoyable to use. I suppose that the distinction is there, but customer experience also encapsulates user experience and the two are inextricably linked.

For example, if a user experience includes an easy-to-use website when purchasing travel along with an app that helps with the journey, but the experience when reaching the customer service desk is poor, then the overall experience could be viewed negatively. Conversely, if you find it difficult to purchase travel on the website, you might never actually even get to the customer experience step. So I think the two need to be woven together in order to give customers a consistent experience, whether it’s online or offline.

Do you have within your organisation, a team that is focused on overall customer experience as well as the user experience, and do they overlap?

We have a UX Team, which is our Product Development Team, and then we have what we call our Customer Centre of Excellence (CCE). The latter handles most of the responsibility for the CX piece. Interestingly enough, however, our CCE recently produced a customer journey map to document what our customer experience actually involves – mapping all of the departments that actually affect each touch-point of that customer journey.

The most fascinating thing about this is that while one specific business unit is technically deemed responsible for customer experience, the customer journey map revealed that in fact, every single other department in the business also has influence on what that customer experience is going to look like in the end.

So rather than saying, “Yeah, we have the perfect solution,” I think sometimes, it’s around surfacing what you’ve learned and thinking about the ways in which the different business units are actually driving change within a customer’s experience. For instance, how Finance, Marketing or even just hiring the right people have as much of an impact and in some cases more of an impact on our customers. It’s about thinking that through and viewing things through a different lens.

So while we take responsibility for both within the organisation and within different departments, it’s actually incumbent upon all units and departments to understand what customer and user experience mean in practice.

What advice would you give to someone that is just starting their career in UX and may want, at some point in the future, to join a larger organisation like yours?

I think my advice is kind of two-fold – specifically in terms of UX and more generally, in terms of how we operate within these larger-scale organisations.

If we talk about UX specifically, I think the first thing I would say is work on the craft of understanding your end-user or customer. Because ultimately, you can’t get to where you’re looking to go without actually having an inherent passion or drive to understand what an end-user or a customer is actually looking for. That’s the foundation of engaging people with product, building things that they actually need, understanding why they need some things and not others. It also encompasses an understanding of the successes and failures of business – it’s as much about learning as anything else.

On a broader scale, certainly something I’ve learned through my own experience is the importance of mastering the art of efficient creation. I think, all too often, it’s very easy to get caught up in the research and forget to act. In reality, sometimes you just need to act because ultimately today’s digital world is moving at such a pace that we’re actually all struggling to keep up. The expectations of a user are changing every single day.

Recognize that we are operating in an environment that is constantly changing and evolving. The sooner you get things out there – and learn what works and what doesn’t – the better off you’re going to be.

Are there any common mistakes that people tend to make at the beginning of their careers that those reading this might be able to recognise in themselves?

Sure. I’ve seen lots of people thinking that they have the right solution without actually thinking about the end-user. Or embedding and investing so much into one area without thinking about the bigger picture. I also think getting caught up in the commercial reality can be negative to the creative process.

At CarTrawler, we do a lot of A/B testing on our products because we hold the philosophy that testing is actually for learning and the future success of our products. In other words, if you were to strictly look at A/B testing within a commercial environment, what people start to think about is the wins or the losses that come out of the A/B test.

So they start to say, “Oh, well, that led to an increase of X% in conversion,” and it’s all about whether that user converted or not. Sure this is an important success metric to measure, but sometimes it’s the losses that are actually our most valuable learning experiences. The more that we put the things that we’ve created out there and have them used and tested, the more we’ll learn. The future success of our products is dictated by the speed of our delivery and how our users respond.

Do you have any other advice or insights you’d like to share with our audience?

Yes, one final point. When we think about UX and CX we need be forward thinking about the integrated experiences they are – what it means to contextualise a customer’s or user’s experience in real time.

Phones are the devices that travel with us and therefore bridge the gap between UX and CX – they can tell us when to leave based on traffic conditions, order our coffee on the way to work, pay for our groceries through one tap – hubs of frictionless experience.

About CarTrawler: CarTrawler (www.cartrawler.com) is the world’s leading B2B technology platform. They build high-yield partnerships for travel businesses such as airlines, online travel agents and accommodation providers by connecting their customers with car rental, private transfers, bus and rail connections all over the world. CarTrawler also owns and operates Cabforce, Holiday Autos and arguscarhire.com brands and is located in Dublin, Ireland, with additional offices in Boston, London and Helsinki.

About Deborah Clarke: Deborah is the Head of UX at CarTrawler. Learn more about Deborah here.

About NomNom: NomNom is all your customer feedback and user research in one place. Learn from customer faster and share insights with your team easily. Learn more about NomNom here. 

The post How Companies Can Focus on the Customer Experience  appeared first on UX Mastery.

These are all ways you can take on a leadership role in UX.

Last week, we looked at the essential qualities of UX leaders. This week, our UXperts share their advice on overcoming barriers and practical tips to steer your career in the right direction.

If you aspire to be a leader in UX, read on for advice on how you can make your mark in the UX community. And don’t worry, you don’t need to be a unicorn to make it!

Cory Lebson

Cory Lebson (@corylebson), author of The UX Careers Handbook (CRC Press, 2016), has been a user experience consultant for over 20 years. He is the Principal and Owner of Lebsontech LLC, a successful user experience consulting firm he established in 1997. Lebsontech is focused on user research and evaluation, user experience strategy, UX training, and mentoring. Cory also speaks frequently on topics related to UX career development, user experience, user research, information architecture, and accessibility.

What are the barriers that prevent people from becoming great UX leaders?

I think that one of the primary barriers to people being great UX leaders is the assumption that leadership needs to take the form of workplace team leadership when there are so many additional ways to be a leader.

Not everyone has the inclination towards workplace leadership. In fact, while workplace leadership can certainly be valuable on a resume, other forms of leadership actually offer far more exposure within and outside of the UX community. In addition to a solid resume of UX experience, that exposure is just as critical (if not, perhaps, more critical) to UX professionals whenever they are considering looking for a new job. Really, though, UX professionals need to practice these other forms of leadership all the time, not just when job seeking. This helps build their personal UX brand – a critical piece of any UX job search.

Who are your role models in the industry?

It’s all those UX leaders who help build UX community – local community, national community and global community, by creating events, activities, conferences, blog posts, articles, and podcasts. It’s all those UX leaders who strive to help others grow and learn. UX is a career field about people – about people helping people – and that extends beyond what we get paid to do. We’re in a field where this kind of leadership is so common and so appreciated by so many.

What can people who aspire to be leaders do now to move their career in the right direction?

Get out there! People should go beyond their workplace and build community, build ideas, and inspire others. Find out what is missing or could be better in a given local UX community, for example, and help create it! Yes, there is enough time in the day and it’s well worth it – to the community, to the individuals within the community, and to the leaders who get to feel good about what they created while simultaneously building a name for themselves beyond what they may do on the job.

Jodie Moule

Jodie Moule is Co-founder & CEO of Symplicit, a Customer Led Innovation firm based in Australia that has focused on research, strategy and design services since 2003. Following a Design Thinking philosophy that was grounded in the psychology and industrial design backgrounds of the founders; Jodie believes that understanding human behaviour allows you to change the customer experience, and that change happens through great design. Follow Jodie: @jodiemoule @thecookapp @symplicit

What are the barriers that prevent people from becoming great UX leaders?

I guess it comes down to each individual and your tenacity. Opportunity always presents itself, it’s just whether or not you are a ‘grab the bull by the horns’ kinda person, or ‘the world owes me’ type. In my experience, it’s the opportunistic types that get shit done, don’t make a fuss, and therefore, ultimately get the gig. Proactive, persistent, and high energy wins every time in my book. In that sense, the barrier is attitude. Your attitude. 

Who are your role models in the industry?

How do I not sound like a wanker and say I don’t have any? I tended to be profoundly impacted by everyday people that I observed from my life when I was younger, and then strived to be like them in some way.  

Growing up, I was lucky to be surrounded by strong independent women who I admired. My Grandmother was fiercely independent. She supported her whole family through the war times, and was one of the first female lifesavers in Australia – which was a major coup, given women weren’t allowed to wear swimsuits and do that stuff back then. Shows how strong she was fighting the machine back in the day. Same with my Aunty – she was a high-flying airline consultant who lived, what I thought, was an incredibly glamorous lifestyle that I aspired toward. Even my Dad was a world champion Hot Air Balloonist in his spare time. These were the people I was surrounded by growing up, and they were the people I admired, and was heavily influenced by.

I also tend to admire people that do things I’m really bad at – or who have achieved something in a unique way that I think is clever or cool. For example, I walked into ‘Victor Churchill’ the other day – a crazy high-end butcher in Sydney. What that guy has done for butchery is something really different and amazing. What a vision! You can learn from that, no matter what industry you’re in.

When I got into this space, we were too busy making our own way to think about role models. I certainly read what others had to say and formed my own views, but ultimately I just got on with it. I think that was good on reflection. It’s best not to be too distracted by others, and pave your own way.

What can people who aspire to be leaders do now to move their career in the right direction?

Work hard, don’t give up, and focus on your career, because it will have to come first to everything. No really, give up on the idea of work/life balance for a long while. I have found the harder that I work, the more I focused, the less distracted by other things I was – the more successful I got.

There is no point being half-assed about it all. Success comes to those who work bloody hard to make it so. Start building a profile and personal brand.  Get yourself into positions where you are doing the things that leaders do – like have a voice in industry, write articles, present at conferences, do great work, be excited and engaged. And of course – take every opportunity you get – work hard and just fit it all in. Those who snooze lose.

James Noble

James has helped re-define, create and evolve user experiences for over two decades. Founding one of Asia Pacific’s most innovative experience agencies Carter Digital. An active UX industry advisor, mentor, radio presenter, public speaker and serves on a number creative juries globally including Australia’s first UX & Digital Craft representative for Cannes Lion in 2016. Follow James on LinkedIn, Medium, or Twitter.  

What are the barriers that prevent people from becoming great UX leaders?

Ability, knowledge, people

Some things take time to learn, evolve and perfect. Staying positive, understanding limitations helps you be honest with the team and yourself. Don’t be afraid to say ‘I don’t know’, own it. We never have all the ux suite of tools in our bag, have insight and the ability to know ‘how’ and ‘where’ to find a solution to a problem.

Some barriers are universal and difficult to shake. This is a team, leverage each member’s core skills to each task and trust they can achieve the right result. Share your knowledge and trust your team, massively reduces people who are prone to micro-managing. Leading from the front and focus on the bigger picture, adding value to your leadership, and help others feel a sense of empowerment, ownership and satisfaction. Make sure the right people are in the right seats, the right person in the wrong seat can hinder the entire team you are trying to lead. A strong leader will make the hard choices for the greater good and know when to make those tough decisions.

UX leaders are from all areas of industry, businesses and departments. Being siloed within your own comfort zone or organisation can happen to everyone. Look outside your environment and look for similarities with what you do to others. Something as simple as switching from Apple iOS to Android for a few weeks you’ll see how it affects interactions with the interface, environment and mood while you use it, help you break routine and spark new approaches to problem-solving.

Who are your role models in the industry?

This seems like an easy question, it isn’t. UX is part of a much bigger picture, and you have to look outside your comfort zone to find answer.

Staying within the standard comfort zone it would be Luke Wroblewski for his forward thinking and research articles on mobile first, Tina Roth Eisenberg (aka Swiss Miss) helping make UX mainstream and contributions to Creative Mornings, Mike Monteiro for saying what everyone is thinking and of course, the mighty Steve Jobs/Steve Wozniak combo for kickstarting the personal and digital revolution.

If I was honest, in my drive and motivations, my mind turns more towards Charles and Ray Eames, for understand and thinking outside the norm, Erik Spiekermann creating a typeface the world never knew we couldn’t live without, Wes Anderson for his beautiful understanding of the left vs. right human psyche and application of symmetry and of course NASA, without them we probably wouldn’t have Elon Musk trying to save the world, who also has a masterful plan b: MARS.

What can people who aspire to be leaders do now to move their career in the right direction?

Consuming information in all its forms, regardless to the likelihood of remember it. Learning is more than the user experience industry, startups can be a constant source of information and inspiration. Never stop learning.

Improve communication skills, and know public speaking comes with the territory as exposure grows within the ux community.

Voice your opinion if you have one and try to write articles on these observations, a difficult ask (I know). Don’t be afraid to be wrong, you can’t be, it’s an opinion right?

Create what makes you happy, the rest will take care of itself.

Dan Szuc

Dan (@dszuc) is a Principal Consultant at Apogee, as well as the co-founder of the UX Hong Kong conference. He has been involved in the UX field for 25 years, and has been based in Hong Kong for 20 years. Dan has lectured about usability, user-centred design, and user experience globally. He co-wrote The Usability Kit, an implementation guide providing best practices and guidelines for usability teams, and he holds a Bachelor of Science in Information Management from Melbourne University in Australia.

What are the barriers that prevent people from becoming great UX leaders?

The barriers to great humanistic leadership are the very systems that people work in that promote toxicity and lack of care. Where rewards systems are given priority and where people are incentivised to show a continuous lack of respect. Where people are treated like numbers and speed is considered the constant routine at the detriment and degradation of work itself.

So in order to consider the barriers to being a great leader, we in fact need to consider the barriers that get in the way of answering – how do we make meaningful work? One major barrier to this is that people do not have a common space, language, process, toolset and practices in order to make meaningful work. So people end up clawing at each other to gain access to the top of the summit that is a myth to begin with.

Who are your role models in the industry?

My role models primarily come from diversity of publications we read as we seek a holistic and diverse understanding of what drives behaviour and this also helps us seek clarity on themes and patterns that influence thinking.

If we could describe the characteristics of our roles models it would include: openness, connectedness, a willingness to challenge own bias and assumptions, one that is not driven primarily by digital or technological solutions for all that ails society, a yearning to understand people more deeply to better understand their needs and issues and dreams and people who encourage a more respectful, considered and reflective discussion and debate as grounded in evidence and a willingness to challenge that for an enlightened plateau as we all learn together.

The role models would be too big a list to share here but they are easy enough to find and reach out to as we are lucky to be part of a community we generically call UX that encourages people who do care about the well-being of other people and who get disappointed when they do not see as much progress as we should be seeing in this instance of futures.

What can people who aspire to be leaders do now to move their career in the right direction?

Consider the skill sets needed to be a leader and consider that not everyone who thinks they are a leader, is a leader, and that people who may not think they are a leader are in fact good leadership material.

Think about the leadership style that suits your personality. If leadership is about helping others be successful in order to have a greater sense of success for teams, business and community, under what circumstances have you exhibited those traits and what are those traits?

Fundamentally, an important part of any leadership role is clear communication and the ability to express where you would like to take people and why. This implies the need for a vision and the openness to iterate on that story or narrative to get you there. It also means you need to learn from people and see how those learnings assist the iteration of your direction.

The question also implies the notion of a career and consider a view down the path. Break this down into 2-3 year chunks and then think about the why you do what you do in the first place and then consider the implications on your direction. It also helps to have more experienced and diverse views around you to help shed light on that direction.

David Travis

Dr David Travis (@userfocus) holds a BSc and a PhD in Psychology and he is a Chartered Psychologist. He has worked in the fields of human factors, usability and user experience since 1989 and has published two books on usability. David helps both large firms and start ups connect with their customers and bring business ideas to market.

What are the barriers that prevent people from becoming great UX leaders?

I think there are two main barriers. The first is that many organisations still don’t get what user experience is about. For example, there’s a common belief that it’s only about visual design or making products that look cool. As a consequence, the people assigned to a leadership role may not have the right technical skills. Although those skills aren’t enough on their own to create a great UX leader, it will be very difficult to lead a team effectively without them.

The second barrier is having senior management support for some of the tough decisions that need to be made. Everyone loves user experience when it doesn’t impact delivery schedules or drain too much of the development budget. But when the user research shows that the product is a dog and needs to be redesigned from the ground up, our UX leader needs a supportive chain of command. If user experience doesn’t have a voice in the boardroom, the best UX leader in the business won’t be able to have an impact.

Who are your role models in the industry?

My role models in the industry are Jared Spool and Jakob Nielsen. They are both fine examples of UX leadership and both of them spend serious time growing the industry as a whole.

What can people who aspire to be leaders start doing now to move their career in the right direction?

You should certainly ensure you have the foundation level, technical knowledge that I’ve described in the previous post. You can develop those skills through training courses (such as on my course on Udemy) and through day-to-day practice on projects. But to become a UX leader, you also need to develop yourselves in two other spheres of practice.

I call the first sphere of practice “process skills”: these are the activities a practitioner uses when managing stakeholders and managing projects. This includes:

• Active listening: really seeking to understand the design problem and providing a solution that will fix it.
• Helping the organisation implement change: in many user experience activities, the real work begins when the activity (such as a usability test) has finished.
• Making appropriate ethical choices: in some organisations, the pressure to do your research a particular way can be overwhelming.
• Project management: good leaders know how to manage their time, manage the work of the team, and manage the projects that they work on.

The second sphere of practice is marketing. Typical marketing activities that user experience leaders need to master include:

• Explaining the cost-benefit of usability activities. A good user experience leader will be able to ground the main benefits of user experience in the organisation’s domain.
• Formulating a proposal and a research plan for the work you will carry out.
• Generating new work. As a leader, you need to keep your team busy and you need to identify the next big enterprise project, ensuring that the user experience flag gets flown.
• Leaving a legacy. Great UX leaders will grow their team, their company and the industry as a whole.

Catch up on part 1 of our leadership series: The Essential Qualities of a UX Leader.

What do you think makes for excellent leadership in UX? Let us know in the forums or leave a comment.

The post Finding Your Path to UX Leadership appeared first on UX Mastery.

So what qualities do you need to become a UX leader? And what defines UX leadership?

To find the answers, we asked our UXperts to weigh in on what UX leadership means to them. The good news is, there are types and pathways to become a leader.

Make sure you read our second instalment, featuring practical advice from our experts on how you can become a UX leader.

Cory Lebson

Cory Lebson (@corylebson), author of The UX Careers Handbook (CRC Press, 2016), has been a user experience consultant for over 20 years. He is the Principal and Owner of Lebsontech LLC, a successful user experience consulting firm he established in 1997. Lebsontech is focused on user research and evaluation, user experience strategy, UX training, and mentoring. Cory also speaks frequently on topics related to UX career development, user experience, user research, information architecture, and accessibility.

What do you think makes a great UX leader?

A great UX leader realises that there are many pathways to great leadership. In my book, I talk about four kinds of UX leadership: workplace leadership, UX organisational leadership, mentorship and thought leadership.

Workplace leadership is what someone may typically think of when they think of UX leadership: leading a UX team in the workplace, making good UX decisions and ultimately producing successful products. While I started down this pathway myself, I chose a number of years ago to become a freelancer and instead channelled my UX leadership energy into UX organisational leadership, helping a local chapter (UXPA DC) and later UXPA international on a voluntary basis.

A UX practitioner who doesn’t lead a team can also be a workplace leader by mentoring others and helping them to improve their skills. Mentorship doesn’t just have to take place within the workplace and can involve giving advice and support to others outside of one specific company.

Finally, thought leadership involves promoting new ideas and information to UX professionals and advocating for UX to those who aren’t already embedded in the profession. Thought leadership can take many forms – writing personal blogs, publishing articles in established electronic periodicals, giving talks and providing training in person, and doing podcasts online, for example.

How can people lead great UX teams?

Sticking with the theme of leadership outside of the workplace, leaders leading a UX Meetup or local, national or international UX professional organisation should not just do everything themselves. Instead, they should create a proper infrastructure to support events and other activities and should pull in other like-minded UXers to help them.

Not only does this make volunteer leadership more enjoyable and provide a basis for more resources to scale upwards towards greater events and activities, but it also spreads the “wealth” of volunteer leadership – that is, provides opportunities for exposure to more people.

Jodie Moule

Jodie Moule is Co-founder & CEO of Symplicit, a Customer Led Innovation firm based in Australia that has focused on research, strategy and design services since 2003. Following a Design Thinking philosophy that was grounded in the psychology and industrial design backgrounds of the founders; Jodie believes that understanding human behaviour allows you to change the customer experience, and that change happens through great design. Follow Jodie: @jodiemoule @thecookapp @symplicit

What do you think makes a great UX leader?

What makes a great UX leader is what makes any other leader great, really. To my mind, this is a mix of being good at what you do, and also being a great people person. To lead a group of people, you have to have a certain ‘gravitas’ about you, and that to me is the intangible aspect of leaders that gives them the X-factor.

In a practical sense, I think someone who isn’t afraid to jump in and help their team get shit done, and get their hands dirty–guiding by example–is someone I think is a great leader. That would be someone not tied up in the ‘ego’ of merely being a leader for the title’s sake. In my opinion, too many people place too much value in job titles and job descriptions. Those people are not leaders.  

To me, a leader really thinks about the future of the space they work within, and is constantly looking at connecting the dots on where the industry is headed, pushing the boundaries beyond the standard approaches, with a clear vision of where their team needs to head–whether that direction is the popular belief or not–they trust their gut and go for it!

How can people lead great UX teams?

When it comes to leading great teams, I think ‘like attracts like’. If you build something that is great, others will want to be part of that. I also think if you are just setting out to ‘build a team’ you might find that hard. If you are setting out to achieve a mission rather than just ‘building a team’–that’s how you end up building and leading a great team. For example, we always set out to do great work, the rest kinda followed. Be yourself and enjoy the ride! Model great qualities, be passionate and engaged in what you do. Others will see that and want to learn from that, and most importantly–they’ll want to be part of it.

James Noble

James has helped re-define, create and evolve user experiences for over two decades. Founding one of Asia Pacific’s most innovative experience agencies Carter Digital. An active UX industry advisor, mentor, radio presenter, public speaker and serves on a number creative juries globally including Australia’s first UX & Digital Craft representative for Cannes Lion in 2016. Follow James on LinkedIn, Medium, or Twitter.  

What do you think makes a great UX leader?

Empathy. A regularly refuted topic in UX articles. In my humble opinion, this is where UX began. Being in a position of leadership is easy. Being a competent leader, whom people want to listen to is much harder to achieve. If you can embody what you represent and embrace it, people will follow.

Confidence. Cultivate your craft before your passion. Regardless of profession, UX or otherwise. Be sure of yourself and understand the entire suite of approaches available to you: Learn them, break the rules, and remake and refine it. The knowledge to define and tweak the process to ensure the best possible outcome with certainty is invaluable.

Focus. Empower yourself with the knowledge of process from books, speakers and fellow leaders both in and out of the user experience industry. The solutions you are trying to create can be similar but never identical, forever adding to your mental library. People are your focus, not the medium by which a solution is presented.

Awareness. Know your team. Understand each personality, role, drive and focus of every member of your team. Harness their individual drive to empower to push themselves past that imaginary ceiling.

Inspire. Communicate clearly, concisely and emotively. An engaged team wants to learn, and the goal is to make them better than you. Share ALL your knowledge, thought processes and thinking.

How can people lead great UX teams?

No matter how long you’ve been in an industry, never be too senior to muck in and get your hands dirty. People often let their title get in the way of just getting things done, and done well.

Understanding an audience, defining research questions, analysing results, creating personas, user journeys and flows is never linear. People are individuals. Understand and nurture each need, want and goal to harness your team’s drive and success. Inspire, engage and communicate with each individual in a way in which best fits their personality. Turn your understanding and knowledge of the UX process to motivate the team, including yourself. You’ll effectively set expectations, create a roadmap to understanding your audience, needs, wants and goals. Listen. Respect. Consider. Act. Repeat.

Dan Szuc

Dan (@dszuc) is a Principal Consultant at Apogee, as well as the co-founder of the UX Hong Kong conference. He has been involved in the UX field for 25 years, and has been based in Hong Kong for 20 years. Dan has lectured about usability, user-centred design, and user experience globally. He co-wrote The Usability Kit, an implementation guide providing best practices and guidelines for usability teams, and he holds a Bachelor of Science in Information Management from Melbourne University in Australia.

What do you think makes a great UX leader?

I suggest we can consider what makes a great leader. Or we can consider that UX is a word in front of leadership that helps describe a type of leadership that does not exist today. Or maybe it’s about what kind of leader do we need in order to have the type of places we wish to work in going forward?

In the spirit of integrated and connected thinking, the answer probably lies in a hybrid of answers to the questions above. I consider a great leader to be a human leader and a person who does not put process above care. A leader who thinks about the needs of the team and a selflessness to get to great outcomes together. A great leader is also someone who can help a team understand and get clarity on a narrative that everyone can get behind and to work together in respectful ways.

How can people lead great UX teams?

By learning from other people who know how to build a sense of team spirit and know how to help people be at their best. To create work environments that are not just about the delivery of work, but to also provide spaces for people to stop, slow down, reflect and talk about their work and to identify gaps in their own capabilities to assist them to be better on a weekly basis. To give people the necessary artefacts to help structure their routines at work and to have a connected understanding or sense of purpose as to why they come to work in the first place. To know that learning never stops and that we need ways to constantly mature and to have people who can play explicit roles to help us to do that, namely–facilitator, mentor, connector and custodian.

David Travis

Dr David Travis (@userfocus) holds a BSc and a PhD in Psychology and he is a Chartered Psychologist. He has worked in the fields of human factors, usability and user experience since 1989 and has published two books on usability. David helps both large firms and start ups connect with their customers and bring business ideas to market.

What do you think makes a great UX leader? 

I think there are certain characteristics that all good leaders share, whether they work in the field of user experience or in something else. For example, a quick Google search turned up this article. It describes “22 Qualities That Make a Great Leader” such as decisiveness, communication and accountability, and I can see all of them applying to people in a UX leadership role. So I think to really answer this question, we need to address what, if anything, is different about UX leadership?

I want to avoid talking about technical skills here, because although our UX leader needs to know the process to follow to create a good user experience, they won’t be doing the work day-to-day. Technical skills like field research, usability testing, information architecture, interaction design, visual design, technical writing and prototyping are the table stakes—but they are not sufficient to lead a user experience team.

When I mull over this, the one characteristic that I’ve seen in great UX leaders is “Vision”: the ability to describe a future state for the product and to have the soft skills to motivate the team behind this shared vision. As user experience professionals we’re lucky to work in a field where we really can make the world a better place. This is something we do every day by ensuring we’re developing the right kind of products and services for people, avoiding waste and making people’s lives simpler. Articulating this vision to the team is the single most important thing we can do to encourage people to do their best work.

Read part two of the series: Finding Your Path to UX Leadership.

What do you think makes for excellent leadership in UX? Let us know in the forums or leave a comment.

The post The Essential Qualities of a UX Leader appeared first on UX Mastery.