I was invited to join in a session run by Bakery for people wanting to move into a career in UX.
I touched on a few favourite topics including:
- How many UX designers it takes to change a lightbulb, and why we should be proud of that. (The answer is “does it have to be a lightbulb?”)
- Outcome over ego: Great designers work in service of the design, and the user and the outcome, not their own artistic vision.
- You can still build up a UX portfolio even when you don’t work in UX. The trick is just to do some UX things in your current role: Interview user, map journeys, identify points of pain, conceptualise solutions. There’s always something you can do. (One attendee told me, afterwards, that he’s admissions officer for an educational institution – but that he was mapping and improving the admissions user experience).
- There are couple of tips for how to handle a UX interview and a UX assignment/critique session. Jump to slides 42 and 43 for those.
- And how to get paid more as a UX designer: Learn how to talk about the financial value of what you do.
Here are the slides from the talk.