What to do EXACTLY to start UXing?
as you know, I’m a cultural anthropologist. And I’m also a UX Researcher. How did it happen? Sadly, not a moonlight, not a cool auntie giving me job in her startup – just a lot of hard (at first: unpaid) work. Then, internship, then a proper job – continue reading and you shall get a handful of hints how to proceed with your occupation transformation *drums*.
Some introductory babbling
Ok, so here’s my first insight and first advice to all of you, young social scientists, trying your best to become a UX warrior: be prepared to do a shitload of money-free effort, so you NEED to have either way some external support (I lived with my parents), some serious savings or somehow divide your time between learning and your day-job. It's how our life is, but it’s not ok. It’s not right, when guys from poor environments can excel their talents and polish their skills, cause they can’t afford unpaid internship, not to mention private UX schools. I was lucky, in my generation it’s still not obligatory to have such certificate, but it opens a lot of doors. I’m double lucky, cause finally anthropology/ ethnography became recognized as a valid and valuable vocational training. Many of UX specialists come from business-oriented backgrounds: they just “re-oriented” in their previous jobs. We need folks with consulting or graphics roots, but the second they become overrepresented, the industry looses broader perspective: we all put different flavors on a plate. Psychologists, frontend devs, linguists and social scientists, we are all needed. UX Research differs from Marketing Research simply by its orientation: we want to investigate the real human person within our product/service, not the product within the market. I know that CX (Customer Experience) is for some a new brand term for UX. It’s true, BUT only in some specific contexts. And every time we replace user/person/human with “client”, we use free market narrative and see the design process through the narrow, capitalistic logic. But that’s a different story.
So, what to do to transform into UX someone? Oh sister.
Join all the UX-related groups and pages on Facebook, subscribe to newsletters, visit all the meetups and free/low cost workshops, follow Them Famous UX Gods on Twitter – not gonna prepare a list now, go Google yourself.
Oh, and if you’re still a student: check if any faculty at your uni has any technology/design related courses or even associations. You don’t have to sign in, just go there and listen. It’s the very last moment in your life, when you get formal knowledge for free. That’s what I did during my Erasmus scholarship – I took my sneaky butt to IT students-oriented lectures. I’m pretty sure that host Erasmus supervisor still hates me, she kicked me out from almost all of the courses (“you’re from anthropology, you can’t sit with us”). Official way doesn’t always work. World might not be ready for you. Be ready to bite back.
2. Tough stuff (aka everything else).
Think. Think who you are: what are your skills? What are their names in UX/commercial research lingo? What do you mean they’re not the same? Wait, so in-depth ethnographic interview is not correct? HOW COME.
Yep, my young padawan. We all spend hours reading Clifford, Hastrup and Geartz, and yet it taught us nothing about communicating non-etno-peeps what kind of tools are we using. Yes, they are tools, not sacred means of humanitarian contact. Get over it.
Start with reading blogs (e.g. Medium offers a tone of cool short articles) to update your vocabulary. Then read books: “UX Research” by Brad Nunnally and David Farkas, or if you know Polish: “Badanie jako podstawa projektowania UX” by Iga Mościchowska and Barbara Rogoś-Turek. Desk research, IDI, observation… yep, continue. I’ll get some coffee.
You know your skills (more or less)? Cool, now think again: what do you want to do within design process? For social scientists (anthropologists, sociologists…) it’s natural to aim into UX Research specialization. There are others, the names and scope of competences can vary a lot in every company. In general, you have UX designer or product designer, a person who’s responsible for flow, interaction, logic and basic interface structure. In package come also UI designer, who will make the prototype beautiful, usable and real-life-looking, so developers can start production. There are unicorns, that just do everything. You can think about it later.
Once you know what you want to do, I recommend learning more about general usability and design process. You will need this knowledge no matter which specialization you want to pursue. And, darling, you need to have be able to back up your future design decisions – people will challenge them. They’ll challenge them so hard. Pages like Coursera or Udemy can help you – you just need a lot of motivation to finish the courses. You register (and pay) to get access to recorded video lectures, sometimes there are readings. If you pay for a course on Coursera, then you’re able to participate in a class project and get feedback on your work, afterwards you get a certificate. Cool beans, I did the free version, cause I was poor. I found myself some offline occasions to practice.
Other options are (mentioned above) local meetups: find a UX community in your area and check if they’re organizing anything. Even better, ask if they need volunteers: you’ll help, you’ll meet interesting people and you’ll get the free pass for all the events. Same goes for conferences: email them and ask if they need volunteers. Some NGOs run continuous projects (does TechSoup ring a bell?) and they always welcome new people. Don’t be shy, all the programmers build their portfolio that way, you can do it too. Learn and help the world, even if it’s just for a few months. Same organizations conduct mentoring programs – I took part in TechLeaders by Women in Technology: totally recommended! You do your own project and have a personal couch to give you feedback, inspire and most of all, guide through the process. Go for it, mate.
If you’re a student, join or start an association. It’s easy, it’s free, you can play your “I’m an university student doing great scholar things” card, while dealing with institutions. Find people like you, creative, eager to learn and responsible (I’ll write a post on that one day). Think about a small project you can do together: new website for your institute, new service for foreign students, series of meetings with interesting specialists. The latter can become mentors/patrons for any design project you want to run – these people are busy, but also very friendly and enjoy sharing their UX wisdom.
Alright, how about internships? Well, they’re the hardest to get. The more known the company is, the more advanced recruitment process becomes. They might ask you for your portfolio, for sure they’ll ask you for a CV. Luckily, in IT it’s more common to pay interns (everywhere else – not so much). My internship turned into a fixed contract, so hooray for me. But even if you don’t get hired, internships are crucial. Worst case scenario: you just brew coffee and get a happy stamp on your Linkedin profile. Better case scenario, you learn things, you network and leave the place way smarter.
Last but not least: UX schools and long-term paid courses. Oh my. I’d love to enroll. I’d love to have people watching out for my education. But, as all the good things in life, it’s expensive and it’s requires free weekends (your lifestyle has to be regular enough to not skip classes every week). Plus, if you’re not from a big city, they usually it’s just not happening in your area. I got my skills anyway, but I can’t show THE paper. Still, I can show my two diplomas from the best uni in my country, so I think I’m covered 😉
Another thing is: UX is quite a young discipline, at least in terms of vocational training. There are very few places offering legitimate knowledge. Still, UX is hot, is trendy and it opens our pockets, so there are also “schools” offering courses with “experts” with two years of experience. Just don’t fall for that.
Did you manage to read all of that? Neat, mate. Now go and learn some Axure 😊
… or let me know YOUR STORY.
