Micah Boswell – User Experience, Silver Bullet or Scapegoat?

The high demand for top talent in the UX market continues.  On Twitter alone, the #UX and #jobs Hashtags are in constant motion.  But do recruiters, program managers and team leads know what it is that they’re looking for?

Often times, the perceived need for a UX talent is reactive.  The project is done, and the post-mortem research and conversations are all about how bad the ‘experience’ is, and how unhappy the client/user is.

These days, I regularly encounter frustrated UX talent that are trying to cope with unrealistic expectations – they were brought in as the ‘silver bullet’ resource that would solve a litany of design, architectural, conceptual and sometimes even cultural issues that may or may not be understood by the project team.

“Micah Boswell presents some of his own tricks and tips to succeeding when a project hasn’t met expectations, and the UX designer is brought in to ‘fix’ the problem(s).”

I’ve been in the same boat, and although the it’s wonderful to be in a place that’s discovering the need for UX, it’s also a perpetual challenge to remember that, as the ambassador of an often misunderstood discipline, it’s the UX person’s job to clearly manage expectations.

Here’s a list of helpful tips to get you through the challenging situation of being the UX ‘Fixer’:

• Be honest with yourself.  Where does your expertise lie?  Assess your own approach to the user experience and communicate it clearly.
• Do your talents compliment the challenges ahead of you?  Assess the project and its challenges.  Ask the tough questions about what happened.
• Don’t assume that your recruiter and hiring manager understand what you do.  Communicate the first two assessments clearly.
• Don’t be afraid to talk yourself out of the job.  The project may not need a UX resource.  It may need a re-alignment of expectations, or it may need more usability testing.  Help the project owners succeed long-term, even if it means risking discomfort.
• Never do a deep-dive without first scoping out the landscape.  Understand context and the project ecosystem.  Who are the stakeholders, and what are their priorities. Do their priorities match the priorities of the project?  Understand the user’s end goal.  Is there a match between what the user wants and what the project intends to accomplish?
• Be patient and realistic.  Adjust your personal goals against the realities of the team, the project and the organization executing.  Not every organization has the multimillion dollar budget of a Fortune 500, and not every organization can move and adapt as quickly as the 8-person startup.

These questions are framed around the idea that above all else, understand the context and environment of the project.  Often times, this understanding is going to give you the information you’ll need to circumnavigate the more difficult decisions in the project.

Micah Boswell makes the switch back to Firefox

It wasn’t very long ago that I switched to Chrome.  At first glance, the experience ‘felt’ faster and more nimble.  It wasn’t long before the Chrome interface began to wear on me.  Beyond the initial experience, Chrome is just unwieldy.  With its very small icons on the right for tweaking, I found myself all too often reaching to a browser zone that felt uncomfortable.  It’s the wrong place to put power-user settings.  Chrome extensions got buried, performance was less than desirable, especially with plug-in dependent sites and I just never fell in love with it like I did with Firefox.  So, yes – I am switching back.  Hello again Firefox.  Hello again, lovely extensions!

Download Firefox

UX Demand Explodes: Bubble or Trend?

In the past 6 months, I’ve noticed a spike in recruitment keyword ‘UX’ and ‘User Experience’, both in my Google Analytics logs, as well as in the calls I’ve been getting for employment opportunities.  Is this a passing fad, much like it was back in the dot com boom days with ‘Interactive Designer’, or is it a sign of the times that more and more people are beginning to realize that the experience really does matter?

With the explosion of mobile devices, a premium is being placed on ease of use.  The UX phenomena is here to stay as more strategists and business owners realize that it’s no longer enough to just ‘productize’.  As the tablet market begins to emerge, it’s only a matter of time before we see dedicated mobile UX talent in the field – but for now, demand is high, and supply is very, very short.

Great Work, Muggie!

I can’t help but look at Muggie Ramadani’s work and be both amazed and a little envious.  Muggie recently spearheaded the ‘Mental Workout’ branding project, and his attention to detail is simply stunning.  He’s posted a series of examples on the excellent ‘Behance‘ network.  Take a look – you’ll be blown away too.

This is the kind of hybrid designer that understands the importance of design context – his print work is clean, readable and takes appropriate advantage of negative space to really enhance information.  By the same token, his interactive work is well organized, concise and everything an effective user-experience should be.

Kudos Muggie!  Great job.  I hope this wins you an award.

Muggie Ramadani