![\"Des-Traynor-Intercom-Careers-UX](\"https:\/\/blog.uxdesigninstitute.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Des_Traynor-1452699526408.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n
Pick what it is you want to focus on<\/h2>\n
\u201cUX has broadened and matured so much, there are specific parts to it. It\u2019s like accounting. There are general accounting principles just like there are general design principles. But tax accounting is quite different to Mergers and Acquisitions work.<\/p>\n
\u201cTen years ago, there was just one area. If you knew UX, you knew UX. Whereas today, UX is a blurry mesh of different things.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I don\u2019t think it\u2019s actionable to say \u2018I want to get into UX.\u2019 You need to pick what it is you want to focus on. I think it\u2019s actionable to say, ‘I want to get into UX research\u2019. Because then it\u2019s like, \u2018Okay: you need to learn ethnography, you need to learn how to interview, you need to read things like jobs to be done<\/span><\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cOr I want to become an interaction designer and lay out product interfaces. Because every time I use my microwave it strikes me how rubbish it is, how confusing it is and how I want to improve it. Then you\u2019re probably massively motivated by interface and interaction design.\u201d<\/p>\n [FREE UX DESIGN COURSE]<\/p>\n Click Here to Dive into the World of UX<\/span>\n <\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n \u201cUX research is one viable career path. You spend your time talking to customers and feeding back information to the product team. That\u2019s important work and it\u2019s really valuable. Everything a product team does should be guided by deep research.<\/p>\n \u201cThen there are designers at what I broadly call the product and interaction level. They look at real workflows and decide interactions and micro-interactions like ‘How do you add a teammate?\u2019 or ‘How do you start a project?\u2019 They\u2019ll come up with five or six different versions of interactions that will work.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd that\u2019s a different type of designer to a researcher. Fundamentally different. The output is usually ugly, bluntly. Because at this point, we\u2019re not worried about precision and pixels.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are also people who are excellent visual designers. What does the product look like and feel like emotionally? Is it as robust as a VW car? Or is it as playful as Twitter? You have to get all these thing right.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDecide which of these is your specialty. Are you a detailed person? Then look at interaction and UI design. If you\u2019re bigger picture, then maybe you need to look at the research end of things.<\/p>\n \u201cBy big picture, I mean being able to understand what we need to work on. Can you keep the whole software system in your head at once and identify the weak and strong areas? The exact opposite to that type of thinking is somebody who\u2019s brilliant at refining a precise screen but often might not understand the screen\u2019s value strategically.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s strategic design really. You\u2019re balancing multiple sources of data. What our customers are saying, what are competitors are doing, the state of the current product, the speed at which we can develop. You have so many different inputs.<\/p>\n \u201cWith visual design, some people can really go for the flourish. And, alternatively, what makes some designs really impressive is their moderation. Like Basecamp. It is designed but it\u2019s not gorgeous, everything works really well but it\u2019s not over the top.<\/p>\n \u201cOn the flipside, you have the likes of Spotify which is heavily designed. And design is part of the company\u2019s value proposition.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to decide which sort of designer you want to be. It\u2019s rare you\u2019d be good at both ends of the spectrum. Somebody who gets thousands of likes on Dribble probably might not be the right fit for designing a government website. Or a banking website.<\/p>\n \u201cSo if you\u2019re looking to become a visual designer, you need to decide what sort of designer you want to be. Because the industry is mature enough to support both. Most software teams have more than one type of designer now.\u201d<\/p>\n [GET CERTIFIED IN UX]<\/p>\n Take our Professional Diploma in UX Design course<\/span>\n <\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n \u201cThe way you can get a job is by showing how you can improve bad software. And the best way to get good at this is by practice – there are good books, and they\u2019re worth reading – but you have to go and do it. There\u2019s a fundamental difference between comprehension and application.<\/p>\n \u201cSo you should build animated prototypes that show improvements to existing interactions. These are often called ‘unsolicited redesigns\u2019. People take terrible software and show how it can be way better. The world is full of crap software which is why most consultancies are in business (so it shouldn\u2019t be hard to find something to work on).<\/p>\n \u201cYou won\u2019t know bad software until you\u2019ve designed it. And then your improvements will be obvious. And it\u2019s a good time to reach out to mentors or even just start a blog and throw your solutions out there. I\u2019m reminded of that quote: ‘The best way to get the right answer on the internet is to post the wrong one\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cPublish your ideas and say ‘Here\u2019s a better solution for this\u2019. And people might say that ‘Oh, that is<\/i> better. But here\u2019s another improvement. I see you\u2019ve used five radio buttons, whereas a dropdown might simplify the whole thing.\u2019 And that\u2019s how you learn.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA software background can be a real strength. So much of what\u2019s valuable in application design these days is prototypes. If you have a background that lets you understand how to build something quickly, then that\u2019s what you should be doing.<\/p>\n \u201cUX designers will be messing around with Keynote or Omnigraffle trying to make something look animated. But if you have an understanding of HTML, you can just build something that works. There are great prototyping tools which save so much time compared to wireframing every case.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat software developers have over UX designers is that you can realise your designs. You can realise it, play with it, tweak it and improve it. While the UX design guys are still setting up their master templates in Keynote.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEvery good software project is a combination of three things: good technology, good user experience and good business principles. That\u2019s what Bill Buxton<\/span><\/a> calls BXT – business, experience, technology.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you come from a BA or MBA or project management background, you\u2019ll be very strong on the business side of things. If you want to get into the design side of things, you need to repeat your business research and ideas on the user side.<\/p>\n \u201cThe big shift is to stop being so inward facing with your thinking. It\u2019s not even thinking about markets and what the market wants, it\u2019s more like what are the tasks people are trying to do and how can we innovate there.<\/p>\n \u201cThe research principles they have are largely solid. The skills they have acquired are largely strong. They just need to apply them in a fundamentally different way. It can be summed up in the phrase, \u2018It\u2019s easier to make things people want, then to make people want things\u2019. It\u2019s looking at the demand side.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA 15-year-old visual designer can post stuff on Dribble and if he\u2019s clearly good, then he\u2019s clearly good. Let\u2019s hire this guy, he can obviously design.<\/p>\n \u201cFor UX designers, it\u2019s a little more difficult. For us, all our deliverables end up in the bin somewhere. The designer can say that\u2019s my design. Developers can say that\u2019s my code. But the UX guy can only say, I sort of orchestrated this. I made a few decisions. That dropdown was my idea, but I didn\u2019t code it\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cYou can still do it, though. The way I got approached by a previous employer, iQ Content, was because I would publish design critiques: here\u2019s a website, here\u2019s what doesn\u2019t work about it, here\u2019s some changes I would make, here\u2019s a simply improved version, here are the benefits.<\/p>\n \u201cHave a blog. A blog is a form of CV. Especially for UX people – a lot of it is how your write and how you think.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople often confuse a blog with a personal diary or think there\u2019s no point having one if I don\u2019t have 10,000 readers. Whereas, in reality, where a blog is most useful is if you\u2019re applying for a job, people will Google you. If they find your blog, and like what they read – if it makes sense, it\u2019s well considered and well written – you\u2019re already +1 in their book.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you write a blog and you only get 17 readers a year, but one of those is a UX researcher in Google who is thinking of hiring you\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA good application process is one that assumes nothing about what a good candidate would look like. Asking for formal qualifications isn\u2019t smart, in fact most of the best designers I know have none. A good application process is a design challenge, open to anybody.<\/p>\n \u201cA simple challenge would be something like ‘Here\u2019s a piece of a product. Design a different way this could be done\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cUnlike so many other industries like law or dentistry or whatever, design is an area where you can just show whether you\u2019re good or not.\u201d<\/p>\n If you’re ready to dive into the world of UX and put some structure on your skills, why not study with us and become a certified<\/a> UX professional in just 6 months with our Professional Diploma in UX Design<\/a>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" People often ask us how they can start a career in UX. If they don’t have opportunities to practise UX in their current role, making the switch can seem difficult. Just where do you start? Des Traynor, co-founder of Intercom, has worked in UX and software development since the early noughties. He shared his expertise […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5233,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[270],"tags":[293,299,288],"class_list":["post-1212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-expert-interviews","tag-community-advice","tag-ux-interviews","tag-ux-thought-leaders"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1212"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8143,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212\/revisions\/8143"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Different UX roles<\/h2>\n
![\"How](\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/How-to-get-a-job-in-UX-design-board-1-1-1-1.jpeg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\nChoose your niche<\/h2>\n
Learn by practice<\/h2>\n
Coming from a Developer background<\/h2>\n
![\"ux](\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/How-to-Get-a-Job-in-UX-sketching-2.jpeg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\nComing from a Business Analyst background<\/h2>\n
Portfolios and blogs<\/h2>\n
The hiring process<\/h2>\n
Ready to learn more about UX?<\/h3>\n