Hillel sums it up nicely:

Every new idea in the modern world, every new initiative, just about every effort, public or private, personal or business-related, includes some form of digital expression. Software is the medium for that digital expression. Today, software is everywhere, whether we know it or not. Not just on our computers, our tablets, our phones, and our gaming devices (which could all be the very same object) but in our cars, in traffic lights, and in our thermostats. And in the future, this pervasiveness will only increase — dramatically. Imagine a world where every surface (and plane) is a potential display. Software is the primary language of the digital world we are creating.

Whether it’s a birthday party requiring invitations, selling a house and advertising it on a web page, a new business, a new non-profit, a new curriculum from a third grade teacher, they all generate a need for digital expression. And that digital expression is more often than not sloppy, unfriendly, dumb, and in many cases… insulting. Whether the person with the idea is writing new software from scratch or using existing software to create a digital experience is irrelevant. The time we spend interacting with these creations is only going to increase. And the need for modern and talented technologists and software designers who share a holistic perspective on making these experiences positive has never been greater.

Software is the ubiquitous and universal medium that blankets our exponentially expanding digital world. More software is coming — whether we like it or not. The only question is whether any of it will be any good.

I’m sick. One good about being sick is that I’m catching up on some fascinating ideas and people on Twitter.  It’s what lead me to a lively debate between Helen Walters and John Kolko on the future of design education — which is really about the future of design itself; my guess as to why it was such a heated exchange.  Wow. I was shocked by how passionately and vehemently Kolko wants to throw visual design out the window.  Among other things, he says, “Bauhaus is no longer relevant.”

I’m not a visual designer myself, but visual communication is something I want to gain more facility in. Why? Well, I think good visual design is important in and of itself.  But more than that, there’s something my mind craves about getting better at it.  For one, I think it will open my mind and ability to be creative in important and good ways. Interestingly, the things Kolko thinks are the new foundation of design —”empathy. Prototyping. Digital literacy. Systems. Fourth dimension. Community. Facilitation. Codesign” — are actually things I have a natural inclination toward and strengths in.  But still… I found it shocking how visual design was deemed so irrelevant to Design today. While I don’t agree with him — I do think visual communication is important —  his perspective as a brilliant practitioner, thought leader, and educator is worth reflecting on and considering.  Here’s a taste of their discussion (btw, they reference  an article by Michael Bierut, titled, The Main Failing Of Design Schools: Kids Can’t Think For Themselves.):  

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thoughtyoushouldseethis:

Yesterday, Fast Co Design published an essay by Pentagram partner, Michael Bierut, entitled The Main Failing Of Design Schools: Kids Can’t Think For Themselves. In it, the legendary graphic designer, Pentagram partner and longtime advocate of design divides design education into two camps: process-driven or portfolio-driven, and concludes that neither serves anyone in this day and age particularly well. 

Modern design education… is essentially value-free: every problem has a purely visual solution that exists outside any cultural context. Some of the most tragic victims of this attitude hail not from the world of high culture, but from the low. Witness the case of a soft-drink manufacturer that pays a respected design firm a lot of money to “update” a classic logo. The product of American design education responds: “Clean up an old logo? You bet,” and goes right to it. In a vacuum that excludes popular as well as high culture, the meaning of the mark in its culture is disregarded. Why not just say no? The option isn’t considered.

It was Bierut’s conclusion that had me clapping my hands in agreement:

It’s the broader kind of illiteracy that’s more profoundly troubling. Until educators find a way to expose their students to a meaningful range of culture, graduates will continue to speak in languages that only their classmates understand. And designers, more and more, will end up talking to themselves.

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Inspired by Scott Berkun’s emphasis on building good relationships in his excellent talk on the top mistakes UX designers make, I’ve decided to make public an edited version of my job search “cheat sheet.” I originally drafted it last month in preparation for an interview.  Now, in addition to researching the specific company I’m interviewing for, and drafting questions particular to the role, company and hiring manager, I also re-read this writeup. It’s a nice refresher on who I am and what I bring as a person and potential teammate. Particularly helpful to have in my mind when I’m nervous! One of my biggest strategies going into interviews, by the way, is to be myself.  I do the research, draft the questions, review what hard skills I can bring to the role, but I put time aside to remember and work on the fact that being myself is one of the most important things I can do in an interview.

It never would have occurred to me that this writeup could be useful to other people except that I left a hard copy on the kitchen table and my roommate happend to see it, then asked if she could have a copy.  It’s been in the back of my mind to perhaps share it more widely. Blogging about Scott’s talk prompted me to finally do it.  This cheat sheet mostly concerns my soft skills and personal work and UX philosophies (not what prototyping tools I’m most comfortable using, for instance):

What do I want in a company

• Ability to grow and learn and get better and better.
• The ability to have impact.
• Work on important problems.
• Good relationships. To be around people I personally like and respect and where there’s a feeling of camaraderie. Where people help each other succeed. Where someone else’s success is also my success.

What do I like about X company

• From my research and what I can tell…. (You’ll need to modify this for each company)
• X company is working on problems I care about/am interested in, etc… (your research will lead you to reasons why you’re excited about working for X company)
• The UX role sounds exciting because….

Personal Work Mottos:

• Relationships, relationships, relationships. Relationships are the grease that makes things happen.
• Do what you say you’re going to do.
• Ask for help when you need it.
• Be clear on expectations. What other people expect of you and what you expect of them. Communication is so important!
• Have fun, listen, be humble, think big.
• Make friends with smart people in your industry. Have a pulse on what’s going on.
• Share knowledge. Appreciate and acknowledge success.
• Contribute your expertise to the whole team. Do what you do well, and share what you can with others.
• Have fun!

Personal UX Mottos:

• Problem solving is fun.
• You are not the user.
• Important question: how do we understand the user (goals, motivations, who they are)?
• What other pieces of the pie do we need to understand to prioritize: business needs? Budget? Decision makers? What story do we need to tell to make our case? How do we involve people in the decision-making process?
• The field is constantly evolving. Keep your eye on smart people who are part of building the new platforms.
• Make sure to keep an understanding of the big picture (cultural trends) and small picture (best practices + tested methodologies).

Strengths

• I’m passionate about UX + [hopefully something else connected to what the company is doing. [Give an example. For instance, a tweet, article that inpsired me, conference I’ve been to, etc]
• Idea generation and brainstorming
• Optimism and creativity
• Passion, enthusiasm, and domain knowledge about X
• Listener and empathy

* I love really listening to people. And am trained in it!

*Good at understanding behaviors and motivations.

• Thinker

* Big-picture strategy, context, and details.

* Connecting the dots: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever—because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.” ~Steve Jobs

 * Enjoy thinking through the different elements of what will make a good experience on a website or app.

* Natural ability to see what kind of information would be good for people to interact with and have good ideas on how to present it to them.

• Making things happen, putting ideas into action.
• Drive for developing my craft

I’m eager to learn and absorb everything I can related to UX so that I can get better and better and better and better (into infinity!)

• Collaborating with others

 * I’m good at identifying good ideas, but open to being proven wrong. Not forever wedded to an idea.

* Adept at picking my battles, and knowing what are the ideas that are worth advocating for, and really pushing on the things that matter.

• Fun to work with, and have a good sense of humor. I love people, and it shows in my work environment – both with clients and co-workers.

Final thoughts: be sure to think carefully through and come prepared to answer the question, “what are your weaknesses?” Also, research the hiring manager’s (and other people who will interview you) LinkedIn profile, website, Twitter feed and whatever else you can get your hands eyes on.  See if you connect with anything that person cares about or is interested in.  The point is to make a human to human interaction more possible in the interview. If you end up not getting the job, then at least you’ve made a human connection with someone and gotten better practice for the next one. 

[Note: I may be adding to this over time.]

As I tweeted earlier, the ability to craft and facilitate a truly interactive talk (not just one billed as “interactive”) is difficult —  few can actually pull it off. Scott Berkun (@berkun) made it look easy at his Puget Sound SIGCHI talk on The Top Mistakes UX Designers Make.   The night was my first time volunteering with PSSIGCHI after Josh LaMar invited me to get involved during an informational interview he graciously agreed to.  I found the PSSIGCHI board members and people who attended to be a warm and welcoming bunch.  That night Scott asked for a scribe which I also volunteered for — and got a copy of The Myths of Innovation for my effort (thanks, Scott!).  Scott included my notes in his writeup.  What I like most about his talk is that it focuses on culture. As Scott explains, “Rather than talk about tactical mistakes, such as in prototyping and running studies, I focused on the ones we overlook the most, about attitude and culture.” Understanding how to be successful in a particular work culture is, in my opinion, just as important as designing amazing experiences.  If your ideas aren’t listened to, aren’t bought off on, or no one will help you build them, what good are they, really?

I encourage you to read the whole thing.  Here are some snips I particularly liked:

Pretending you have  power.  Most specialists play advisory roles. They give advice. There is nothing wrong with being an advice giver. The challenge in being an advice giver means the critical skill for success is persuasion and sales. You need to be an expert at selling your ideas. To pretend that you don’t need to sell your ideas, is to pretend you have power. Advice givers should be evaluated heavily on how much of their advice is followed. Giving advice is easy. Getting people to follow it is where your value is.

…

Never make it easy. The first users you have are your co-workers. How easy is it to follow your advice? 

…

Forget your coworkers are meta-users. Unless you write production code, you are not actually building the product customers use. You make things, specs, mockups, or reports, that are given to others who must convert your work into the actual product. This means you must design both for you actual customers, and for your coworkers, who are the first consumers of your ideas.

…

Never get dirty. In many tech cultures there is plenty of dirty work to do: mainly finding bugs and reporting bugs. Anyone can do it, but no one wants to do it, and everyone avoids it. Often there are bug bashes or engineering team events to find and deal with bugs. As a specialist, its easy to go home early while the development team stays late to do the dirty work. If you’re part of the culture, you’d stay and help when there is dirty work to be done. But if you’re a consultant, you’d go home. How do you want to be perceived? For people who don’t know what you do, helping out with the dirty work may be the first way to earn a positive reputation, or to make that first friend or two.

…

Dionysian pretension. For designers, its the dreamer mentality as an excuse for not having to do the thinking required to make an idea real. “I just come up with ideas for things, its not my job to figure out how to make it work.”

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Don’t know the business.  Everyone should know why they have a job. Who decided to hire a UX person instead of another developer? What argument did they make? Find out. Find out how the company makes money and which kinds of decisions are likely to make profits grow.  Having a better UX doesn’t guarantee anything: many market leading products are UX disasters. How can this be? If you don’t know how that’s possible, then you don’t understand how many other factors beyond  UX are involved in your business.

…

How do you become credible? (Audience question)

• Ask your best ally (who is not in your job role) that question.
• Don’t always change the conversation in meetings to ask the same question you always ask. You’ve become a UX robot, always saying one of the same 3 things.
• Saying the same things over again and again, but not affecting change isn’t helping anyone.
• Know and be aware of “what conversation are we having?” for each meeting (tip from audience)

…

How do we educate our co-workers of our value?

• Most people have no idea what you do.
• Part of your job is always being able to give the 101 talk well.
• You can’t do it en masse so divide and conquer:
  • Ask your co-worker, “I’d like to talk to you about what I do so I can get your feedback on what I’m doing.” The next meeting you’ll have one more person (hopefully) on board and who understands what you do.

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Another Mistake: Never Make It Easy

• Designers have multiple users along the way, for instance, developers who get our wireframes, with color codes, pixel sizes, or CSS they can reuse, are happy developers.
• Developers are always busy juggling 9 things they need to get done.
• Set it up so the devs get some reward every time they work on your design.What positive reinforncement of the behaviors you want do you provide?

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Inspire people to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. Have vision (observation brought up by audience member)

• There’s a thin line between being inspiring and being a douchebag. One person’s inspiration is another person’s annoyance. The most inspiring thing a person can do is to work hard on problems they care about that align with what the team cares about, share that work with others, gracefully take feedback, and continually produce.