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I am a UI designer and developer and have been designing websites for aound 10 years. I want to get into user experience design. I know how to do a design, but I am lagging the terminologies and the technical things in the user experience field.

So how do I go about getting the skills and mindset necessary for being a User Experience Designer?

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4 Answers

up vote 23 down vote

Original Source.

I hired a new UX person last year, right out of school. Some highlights of my inspirational (imho) UX talk with him:

  • Always be observing and analyzing. Why is the ceiling this tall? Who is that? Why do they do it that way? When do they decide this? How do they figure it out? Which? What?
  • Never, ever, ever nod your head and say you got it when you don't. It's not rude. They won't think you are stupid. Never accept a terrible answer. Say, "I don't understand what you mean, if you don't have time, how would you suggest I learn about that? I need to know it to do a good job". Designers fail at this all the time. You must understand what is going on. Don't assume you will figure it out. People go years at a job without understanding what that funny acronym stands for.
  • Most organizations communicate like crap. Read this blog post about the curse of knowledge. It's not anyone's fault, but realize that it's your job to help explain things. Learn, then teach.
  • Deliver something useful. This may seem like it goes without saying, but many designers out there (no one here of course) don't deliver usable designs. Think through the problems from the beginning to the end. Don't let people dictate how you deliver. You need to understand the problem and give a thoughtful response.
  • Don't be bullied into not thinking. You might get a boss/colleague who thinks they know everything and all you need to do is XYZ. Think it through no matter what from the beginning. You are responsible for the user experience, not them, no matter what they say.
  • Learn. This is a new job. Learn from it. Observe how an office works. Learn from peers. Find mentors. Learn, learn, learn. You won't be at this job is 5 years, but the lessons you learn stay forever.

Good luck. I hope these tips help.

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Glen, nice answer! – Dan Barak Aug 17 '10 at 16:24
+1: Great answer. – Jim G. Aug 19 '10 at 18:53
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up vote 7 down vote

There's only one way to become something: start doing it. Start designing user experiences and along the way you'll learn the "terminologies and technical things", although I'd have to argue those are pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

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"terminologies and technical things" value is relative to the position. If you're joining a big team where you need to communicate intra-team, this is important. If you're the sole UX person, not as important. In fact it may be counterproductive! – cbosco Aug 17 '10 at 18:59
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up vote 5 down vote

As an addition to Glen's answer I'd say: read books. You might find something useful here: http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/user-experience-books-for-beginners/

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I highly recommend Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug. You can read it in 1-2 hours and it gives you the mindset you need to start effective UX. I give it to all my new UX recruits and they love it. sensible.com/dmmt.html – Evan Sep 30 '11 at 21:15
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up vote 1 down vote

User Experience Designers, as opposed to people who program user interfaces, are a whole class of professionals in their own right. They may or may not be programmers.

If you really want to get into the business properly you will probably need to get additional training if you want to get into this field as a full-time professional- some kind of degree is most likely the minimum requirement. If you think this is unnecessarily strict, imagine how you would feel if someone with a degree in User Interface Design thought they were qualified to code that interface because they had read one book on programming.

Having said that, if you want to be a programmer with a high degree of interest in user interfaces, there are plenty of books that will teach you about this.

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...If you want to get into this field as a full-time professional- a Master's degree is most likely the minimum requirement. - I disagree, and I'd advise interested parties to read books and practice both at home and pro-bono for organizations that need the work. – Jim G. Aug 19 '10 at 18:56
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Most programmers I know (in the US) don't have master's degrees, just bachelor's. Actually, I worked with a User Experience designer at Microsoft that didn't have a college degree at all, just high school + experience. But damn, he could design a mean master-details view. – Fraser Aug 19 '10 at 22:39
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I think setting someone who wants to learn up with the expectation that they need "at least a Master's degree" is counterproductive. All you need to design interfaces is common sense. All you need to design great interfaces is experience. It only gets complicated and dependent on big theory once you start building really complex solutions, but most people won't be doing that. – Rahul♦ Aug 20 '10 at 18:21
I didn't set up the expectation of a Masters for people 'wanting to learn up'; I set it for people wanting to become professionals in that area. That's not the same as "people who design interfaces", and the perception that HCI professionals and "interface designers" are the same is hurting the profession, in the same way that not long ago it was thought that "anyone can write software". – DJClayworth Aug 25 '10 at 16:40
The statement about probably requiring a Masters was on the assumption that the questioner already has a Bachelors in a technical field, in which case a Masters is less effort than a bachelors. Otherwise I'm sure a Bachelors in HCI would work just fine. – DJClayworth Aug 25 '10 at 16:43
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