Workplace and Career Archives - Page 3 of 20

December 23, 2014 Design Principles / Workplace and Career

Designing for Harmony

In 1982, Scott Cook was watching his wife sit at the kitchen table struggling to balance the family checkbook. Personal computers were just becoming popular and he had seen them transform work at Procter and Gamble; yet here was his wife fighting to do something challenging for humans but trivial for computers. In a flash of insight, he realized that software could replace pencil-and-paper accounting for everyone. This aha moment set him on a path of user-focused innovation. Cook met

UX Researcher: A User’s Manual

Posted by Victor Yocco

This article is a guide on what to expect, and how to get the most from your UX researcher–a user manual, if you will. You will invest a lot in your researcher and you deserve the greatest return. You should have high expectations for this critical component of your UX team, and following the recommendations presented in this article will help maximize your return. A long and prosperous future Congratulations on hiring a user experience design researcher! When maintained correctly,

September 23, 2014 Foundational Thinking / Workplace and Career

Redesign Democracy: Dare to Think Big

Posted by Dirk Knemeyer

Why are you in UX? It probably isn’t to get rich. Yes, there is plenty of money in being a UX professional today. If you’re competent, you should be enjoying a very nice lifestyle. But we do this not for money–being on the business side would be far better at achieving that goal. We do it for creative reasons, expressive reasons, quality of life reasons, perhaps even altruistic reasons. Yet, despite the broader motivations we share for choosing our vocation,

September 16, 2014 Discovery, Research, and Testing / Learning From Others / Workplace and Career

Five Things They Didn’t Teach Me in School About Being a User Researcher

Posted by Chelsey Glasson

Graduate school taught me the basics of conducting user research, but it taught me little about what it’s like working as a user researcher in the wild. I don’t blame my school for this. There’s little publicly-available career information for user researchers, in large part because companies are still experimenting with how to best make use of our talents. That said, in the midst of companies experimenting with how to maximize user researchers, there are a few things I’ve learned

June 24, 2014 Learning From Others / Professionalism / Workplace and Career

Creating Your Personal Mission Statement

Posted by Louis Rosenfeld

You’re weird. In a good way, but weird nonetheless. Weird in the sense that people outside of work likely have absolutely no clue what it is you do. Maybe many at work as well. For me, this weirdness manifests itself at parties. Inevitably, a new acquaintance asks me what I do. Beads of sweat form on my forehead. My eyes dart around, desperately seeking my far more articulate wife, Mary Jean. I find her, ask her to explain me, and