Designing the Designer - Landing and Thriving in Your UX Role

Designing the designer
Landing and thriving in your UX role

Let’s talk about
• What is UX then?
• Finding where you fit
• UX is a journey

UX as a discipline…
• Develops a deep understanding of user needs,
challenges, and expectations
• And uses it to inform the design
• Of the experience that users have with
products, websites, and services.

How UX helps
• Defines, reframes, and refocuses the
problem space
• Brings user awareness and perspective
to projects
• Balances user needs with business objectives
• Crosses channels to promote cohesive experiences

It creates
experiences
that are…
…according to
Peter Morville
(who co-wrote the actual book on
information architecture)

It has a research foundation
Rian van der Mervwe (via Jesse James Garrett)

UX activities - examples
• Strategic - User research, persona development,
competitive review, expert review, design
principles
• Structural - Content audit, user objectives,
hierarchy, search, navigation, flows, page focus
and goals, usability studies, interaction design
• Sensory - Wireframes, design, design patterns,
functional prototypes

Finding where you fit
Here’s where you come in!

by Ben Melbourne
Here’s
one way
to look
at it

Overlap
• Overlap is where collaboration happens
• UX collaborates with many groups and disciplines
• We build and share context
• And bring passion and empathy for people

Aspects of UX
• Trip O’Dell makes this distinction:
• Artisan
• Storyteller

Artisan?
…sweats the details whether it’s the easing in an animated
transition, the polished comp, or the pixel-perfect CSS and
assets that go from prototype to final shipping product
• Intensely focused
• Passionate about craft

Artisan
• Creating sketches, wireframes, and prototypes
• Designing interactions
• Creating visual designs

Or storyteller?
Radical generalist who is really curious and likes to engage with
stakeholders, users, and develop a vision
• Empathetic
• User-focused
• Strategic
• Researcher

Storyteller
• Identifying user challenges and attitudes
• Creating personas, scenarios, journey maps
• Defining structures and workflows

Is this right?
• Which is a better fit for you?
• Are you both?
• Or could you stretch a little?

We’ve looked at a
house – now let’s look
at a kitchen

What bugs you about
your kitchen?

Remember that house diagram?
• Renovations should have the same elements
• Strategic foundation - understand user needs
• Structural interior - provide a good
underlying architecture
• Sensory exterior - make the design usable
and pleasing

If they don’t…
• The kitchen can look slick
• But function poorly

Strategic foundation
• What do these users want and need?
• Interviews
• Contextual inquiry

What I learned through
years of contextual observation
• Our kitchen layout was pretty functional
• But it could still be optimized
• And we also needed
• Desk space for phone and recharging
• Discreet dining area for dogs

Structural interior
• What sort of task flows are required?
• Where does the infrastructure - like outlets and
faucets - need to be?

Space and traffic flow
• From and to other rooms (multi-channel)
• Within the space

Proximity and task flow
• USB charging near desk
• Cutlery – dishwasher to drawer
• Cooktop – pots and pans, cooking oil

Sensory exterior
• Create design that engenders trust and reflects
the brand
• Make things discoverable and provide
affordance for what can be done

Discoverability
• Broke this rule!
• Pocket door
• Dishwasher

UX is a journey
Or, you can get there from here

Walking you through
So, now that we’ve defined the thing,
let me walk you through my journey
and what I’ve kept with me

BA in Canadian
literature, philosophy
MA in rhetoric, tech
writing co-ops
Tech writer in
big companies
Tech writing
team lead
Information
architect
UX team
lead
UX lead in
an agency
UX lead in a
small tech
company
Product design
team manager
Library and info
science classes
UX
practitioner
Learning
Doing
*
*
* Not mutually exclusive

Walking you through
• Education
• Roles
• Pivots or inflection points

Tech writer in
big companies
Tech writing
team lead
Information
architect
UX team
lead
UX lead in
an agency
UX lead in a
small tech
company
Product design
team manager
Library and info
science classes
UX
practitioner
BA in Canadian
literature, philosophy
MA in rhetoric, tech
writing co-ops

Education
• File under – Well, that was fun. Now what?
• Learned – Many things, some practical,
some not, but critical thinking.
• Opportunity – Co-op was a good chance to
explore jobs.
• Longevity – Always be learning!

Tech writer
• Explored – Company size, culture
• Collaborated – Talked to customer-facing
teams to learn about users
• Learned – To take ownership of my career
• Opportunity – Saw a gap, and asked for a
mandate to shift to information architecture

Tech writing lead
• Explored – Leadership and mentoring
• Learned – Wasn’t done being an individual
contributor

[Inflection point]
• Reflected – Writing was what I had to do after I
researched, organized, structured, and labeled.
• Learned – To let go of something of something I self-
identified with, was good at, but didn’t want to do.
• Did – Myers-Briggs and Skills Inventory to reflect on
what I wanted and request the IA role more strongly.

Library and info science
• Explored – Berry picking, taxonomies.
• Learned – It’s okay to be feral. And quit.

Information architect
• Learned (feral) – Content audits, card sorts,
user research, SEO.
• Did – The things, established a practice.
• Helped – Writers think differently about content.

UX team lead
• Explored – Advocating for the practice,
creating broader process.
• Did – Mentored about understanding business
culture and having empathy for stakeholders.
• Learned – It’s hard to both lead a team and
create a complex, content-rich website.

[Inflection point]
• Reflected – Had to choose to focus.
• Learned – To ask for what I needed to succeed.
• Did – Focused on the website and continued to
connect with the UX team.

UX practitioner
• Collaborated – Established rapport with team in
Sweden and created alignment.
• Shared – Openness, trust, and commitment to
excellent work.
• Helped – Created context for others.
• Learned – I liked the agency feel.

[Inflection point]
• Chose – To shift to an agency.
• Did – Presented to UX groups, treated my
resume and materials as a storytelling and
branding exercise.

UX lead - agency
• Collaborated – Engaged others early and
often.
• Identified – Ways clients could overcome
obstacles (stakeholder empathy).
• Learned – Liked variety and pace, but user
research was a hard sell.

UX lead – small tech
• Learned – Ambiguity is an opportunity. Trust is
important.
• Created – An opportunity to conduct research
through being empathetic and collaborative.
• Helped – Colleagues shift from a features
mindset. Verbs!

[Inflection point]
• Sought – Feedback from others before my next
move.
• Did – Shifted my focus to leadership. Formalized
the mentoring I’ve done informally for years.

Product design leader
• Exploring – Maturing a UX practice in an
organization rooted in engineering.
• Doing – Advocating for a practice. Up, down,
sideways.
• Caring – About culture, morale, coaching, and
creating room to do good work.

Speaking of leading
• What do we look for?
• Practice knowledge, of course – tell your story
• But also lots of soft skills – attitudes toward
learning and others

Speaking of leading
• What do we look for?

This is just one path
• You don’t have to do all of these things
• But hopefully, they give you
• A starting point
• Something to reflect on

Summarizing
Is it a building or a journey?

The building
• Overlap is where collaboration happens
• Artisan or storyteller? Or both?

The journey
• Always be learning
• Take ownership of
your career
• It’s okay to be feral
• Do the things
• Have empathy for
stakeholders
• Create context for others
• Ambiguity is an
opportunity
• Always be advocating

Thanks you guys!
@katewilhelm
ca.linkedin.com/in/
kawilhelm

Designing the Designer - Landing and Thriving in Your UX Role

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