03. Why Are You Chasing a UX Career?

03. Why Are You Chasing a UX Career?

It’s not always sunshine and rainbows here in UX land

Why are you thinking about getting into UX design? What is it you’re hoping to achieve? Lots of you out there are switching careers, or just starting out in your UX journey.

You may have heard various experts online talking about how well-paid it is, and maybe you stopped there. Maybe you’re interested in design and you think it sounds cool. Or all those dribble shots look really impressive and you want to be able to do that too.

The problem is that UX design is often misunderstood by a lot of organizations. Maybe it’s because we have the term “Designer” in our titles, so we’re often seen as just making ugly interfaces pretty. At least by a lot of product teams and software engineers.

Before I get into it, I want to say that the things covered here really underlines why all the soft skills we’ll talk about on the show are needed in the first place. All these things simply highlight why those soft skills are important. Namely UX maturity is very low, so UX designers tend to have to put up with a lot to get our jobs done.

That said, I really don’t want to give the impression that it’s all bad. It really is an amazing, challenging job that is often a well-paid. For those of you who can put up with some of the crap we’ll cover, you’re going to love it. 

But be warned that it isn’t all sunshine, rainbows, design sprints, and people gloating over your high-fidelity Figma prototype and all those fancy micro-interactions you spent hours perfecting. Most engineers are going to take one look at it, ignore it, and build to suit whatever acceptance criteria was in the story.

As UX designers, our problems tend to start out with the fact that many organizations have what we call “low UX Maturity” which means they don’t really know how to use UX teams to their maximum potential.

So, we’re often given a solution by a product team or stakeholder and asked to, like I said,  “Just make it pretty. We already figured everything else out.” Lots of times, we’re not treated as partners helping to solve problems. Instead, we’re given solutions and simply expected to make them look better. That can be really frustrating.

So it takes the right kind of person to be able to come in there and get things done in a way that brings real value to our users.

I think that is where a lot of people go wrong. This assumption that UI and UX are the same. That UX is really just pretty visual designs.

I can’t speak for all boot camps, but I have talked to a number of people coming out of boot camps. Obviously, not all of them have had the same experience, but many times I see people coming out of boot camps with this sort of procedural idea of UX.

You do this thing, then you do this thing, then this thing, and that thing, and then you end up with good software.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of those types of experiences give the wrong impression of what UX really is and it leads to people getting a job and either not knowing what they’re doing or getting a job and having it be not at all what they expect.

Or worse yet, they can’t even get a job, because they really weren’t prepared for the career, to begin with.

A Word About Bootcamps

I don’t want to disparage boot camps. I think they can do a lot for you if you get the right one. Or if you get the right instructor.

I’ve seen people come out of them with a pretty good working understanding of the profession, and I’ve seen people come out of this with basically no understanding of the core principles of UX.

There are hundreds of different groups out there, so it’s really hard to generalize. So I really don’t want to give all of them shit. But I just want you to be aware that some of them can really be money-making scams. So please do your homework before handing over thousands of dollars.

First of all, no one can promise or guarantee you anything. If you think you can go into a six-month boot camp and come out of it a senior or lead role anywhere, you’re nuts. And if you do, I can almost guarantee you that you ended up at a company that has no idea what to expect from a true UX professional.

It takes Doctors years to become doctors. It takes lawyers years to become lawyers. Hell, even barbers and florists take longer to go through their respective courses to get a license to practice their respective careers. 

Why on earth would you assume UX is any different?

The problem with truncating something as diverse and complex and nuanced as UX design into six months, unfortunately, means they’re leaving a lot of stuff out. At best, you’re getting a surface-level understanding, and at worst you’re getting someone’s idea of a mechanical process without really understanding the core tenants of why you’re doing what you’re doing in the first place.

I see this come through in a lot of the portfolios I review. They’re mechanical. As if these designers are just checking boxes. I did the research. I did personas. I did a journey map. I did a low-fidelity wireframe. I did a high-fidelity prototype. I did a usability study. The end.

Why? Why did they do any of that? They don’t know. Or they never explain.

So I’m not saying boot camps are inherently bad. What I am saying is that if you are thinking of taking one or if you’ve already done one, please know that you are nowhere near done learning. You have to understand coming out of this program that you’re only beginning and you have a lot of work still ahead of you before you can consider yourself an expert.

I also think this is true for a bachelor’s degree. You can definitely go more in-depth with a four-year program. You might get a lot of hands-on experience. Hopefully, you’re getting internships or co-ops throughout the course of the program. But still, I think most people don’t tend to really start learning until they start actually doing it. The theories are great. The concepts are great. 

But just know that the real world is often different from what you are presented in school. And with the truncated timeline of a boot camp you are learning even less. Just be aware of that and don’t have any unrealistic expectations.

Before I go on, I really want to stress that I am not trying to keep people out of the UX profession. I think it is awesome that you’re interested. And I think it is amazing that you’re here. 

It Takes a Certain Person To Be a Great UX Designer

I want to stress that this profession is not all sunshine and rainbows. It really does take a certain type of personality to be successful in this role.

If you’re listening to this show, you already have some of the qualities that I’m about to mention. So congratulations!

You Need To Be Curious

When you meet people for the first time, do you do all the talking or do you ask them a million questions? If you ask a bunch of questions and you shut up and listen, UX might be a natural fit for you.

This is number one for a reason. It really is at the core of what we do. Our job is to solve problems. It’s not to just design something. We try to understand why something is the way it is. What’s at the core of this issue? How can we fix it?

We do that by asking tons and tons of questions. If you’re not a genuinely curious person, you’re going to really struggle in this role.

You Need To Communicate

This goes with the one above. But if you find that you are good at talking to people and people genuinely like talking to you, or open up to you, then you’re going to do just fine.

This isn’t a role where you can go walk alone in a corner. It requires lots of collaboration and so you’re going to have to talk. You’re going to have to communicate with a lot of different types of people. 

Now that’s not to say you have to be an extravert. I’ve worked with a ton of UX designers that would consider themselves introverts. But they did find ways to open up and talk, it may have just been a little more exhausting for them.

If you find it natural to talk and have conversations with people this may be a good job for you.

You Need To Have Thick Skin

This goes for really any design role, whether it’s graphic design, visual design, interior design, or whatever. You have to have thick skin.

The fact is that people are not going to go along with your recommendations simply because you’re the designer. Lots of times, most of the time, people have their own ideas that don’t align with yours. And sometimes you won’t get your way.

You have to be able to take feedback and work with it. Not everyone will appreciate or like what you do. You can’t let criticism of your work get you down. 

So you’ve got to be able to take some punches. If you find that you don’t let these things get to you, or if you can at least control it you might be a good fit for this role.

You Need To Be Resilient

This obviously ties into the one above, but if you don’t let people constantly telling you “no” keep you from trying again and again, you’re on your way to being a good UXer.

Like I said before these boot camps give a lot of people the idea that there is a correct linear path to designing great software. Unfortunately, everyone else on your team missed that memo.

Lots of times you’re going to get told no. You’re going to get left out of conversations. You’re going to get told something totally different from what you believe is right. 

If you don’t let that stop you and you keep pushing forward, you’re going to do fine in this job.

You Need To Be Humble

I tell you what software teams hate. They hate a know-it-all asshole. Did I say software teams? I mean everyone. Everyone hates a know-it-all asshole. 

No one is going to listen to you simply because you are the UX designer.

In this role, you cannot come in thinking that you have all the answers. You are going to find that you are wrong a lot. You have assumptions, they will be wrong. You think users will do something? They will do the opposite. You think your solution will test well? I promise you it won’t. Hopefully not all the time, but some of the time, you’re going to be wrong.

You need to accept the fact that you don’t know everything.

If you can approach a situation and know that you don’t know everything and that you aren’t the smartest person in the room, you might have what it takes to be a good UXer.

You Need To Have Empathy

This is a word we hear a lot in UX design. And there’s a good reason for it. Our job as UX designers is to solve our users’ problems. In order for us to do that we have to get to appoint where we can put ourselves in our users shoes. We have to be able to see the world form their point of view.

We have to put aside our own biases and how we think or perceive the world in order to build software for people that are likely not exactly like us.

If you find you can easily understand where other people are coming from, if you find that you tend to have compassion for people that aren’t just like you, you might be cut out for a UX gig.

You Need To Be a Great storyteller

Having empathy for our users doesn’t do a whole lot if we can’t get the rest of our team to understand it too.

Remember that you’re going to get pushback and you’re going to get people who don’t fully align with our priorities. A great way to take that empath for our users and spread it is by telling a great story.

Take those personas that we build and those empathy maps and instead of just passing those along and expecting everyone to just get it– tell a great story. 

Make that story compelling so that everyone else cares as much as you.

If you can engage people with the ability to tell a great story you might make a great UX professional.

You Need To Be Able To Influence

Somewhat related to the last one is the ability to influence. Influencing skills are really important for this role. 

UX designers aren’t building software alone. We often come up against a lot of constraints. We come up against a lot of people on our team who aren’t going to agree with us. They’re not going to give us money for research. They’re not going to give us time to validate. They’re not going to want to do a lot of the things we think we should be doing.

We need to be able to influence other people on our team, sometimes stakeholders, sometimes executives or people above us in the chain of command. 

If you find that you have the ability to persuade people one way or another, this job may be a good fit for you.

You Need To Be a Leader

Kind of combining a few of these last ones is that you’ve got to be a leader. You have to be someone that people look up to. That people want to follow. And you have to do that without actually officially, managing anyone on paper.

This role is often a marathon. Not a sprint. We often don’t get what we want overnight. If we want to guide our teams to get to a final destination month,, sometimes years, in the future, we have to be able to lead them and guide them along that journey.

If you find that you can influence, inspire, guide, and organize, all the things great leaders do, and if you can do that without an official mandate, you might make a great UX professional.

You Need To Be Pragmatic

We pretty much never get to do everything we want. You have to understand your constraints. These could be technical, monetary, time, personality, any number of things. 

We can’t go in and design some blue sky app that is completely out of scope and expect people to take us seriously. We have to understand what our teams are capable of. We have to understand what is possible at that moment. 

You may be able to use some of those storytelling and influence skills to move the needle one way or another. But if not, you have to know when you are beat.

If you are good at reading a room and understanding what you and your team are actually able to do without alienating everyone around you, then you might make a good UXer.

You Can’t Be a Perfectionist

You can’t let perfect get in the way of the good rough. Sometimes we have to just move forward knowing we can improve this software later.

Software is called software for a reason. It’s not hard. It’s changeable. Malleable. We can update it over time. If we aren’t 100% happy with what we have today we can always improve it later. We can iterate. That’s the beauty of Agile.

You’re going to find that your QA team missed something. Or your software engineers have some styling that is off. 

Pick your battles. Know when to fight for something and know when to move on.

You Have To Be Able To Collaborate

Another thing that bugs me about boot camps is they put design at the center of everything we do. 

The impression I get from a lot of people coming out of boot camps is that the end result of everything we do are high fidelity figma prototypes. 

That’s bullshit. 

The end result of everything we do is to solve problems for our users. And you don’t solve users’ problems with a high fidelity figma prototype.

You solve users’ problems when those amazing designs end up making it to production. 

Think about everyone involved with getting software to production. From beginning to end. 

Stakeholders. Executives. Maybe investors. Product owners. Program managers. Product managers. Front end engineers. Back end engineers. Software architects. QA teams. Other UX designers. Researchers. copywriters. UX architects. Product designers. Interaction designers. Visual designers. Design system teams. Hopefully, someone who knows a thing or two about accessibility is in there giving their opinions.

You have got to work with any combination or permutation of these people. You are not doing this alone. You have got to collaborate with all kinds of different people or you will not get anything done. 

If you find that you can collaborate and work well with others then you may be a good UXer. 

You Need High Emotional Intelligence

I think it goes without saying that all of the stuff we talked about here means one thing. High emotional intelligence is critical to be a good UX designer.

If you are interested in other people and their feelings/thoughts. If you are resilient. if You know where you need to improve. if You are aware of your feelings.

Then you might make actually thrive as a UX designer. 

Be Aware of These Things

Look if you have all those things we talked about, that doesn’t mean it’s all smooth sailing. 

There are some things to be aware of as you start exploring jobs and land your first UX gig. 

Most companies score low on UX maturity. 

Most companies rate about a 3 out of 6. Very few are at the high end of the scale. 

Most companies don’t really understand UX. I briefly touched on it before, but we have a thing in the industry called a UX maturity Score. It’s a 1-6 scale of how well companies have effectively integrated UX into their processes. 

So be aware that a lot of companies are still learning how to use UX teams. You probably won’t get to do all the things you think you need to do. You will probably get pushback. Which is where all those personality traits we talked about come into play. 

There is no UX standard

Unfortunately this means there is that there is no standard for UX across the corporate world. This job is not like an architect or doctor or lawyer. There are no set rules to follow or set standard roles and responsibilities that companies will expect you to perform. 

This means that titles and actual responsibilities may completely vary across companies and sometimes it’s really difficult to know what to expect. 

To see what I mean go pull up 5 job descriptions for product designer. I’m willing to bet they’re all different. Some are going to say something about research. Some will say something about design systems. Some might specifically mention tools. I’m willing to bet most of them are pretty different. 

The lower the company’s UX maturity, the more of a problem this is. But of course, no company is going to post their UX maturity score on their home page. So you really don’t know unless you do your homework and talk with current employees and past employees to see what they have to say. So go network!

You often won’t be starting at the beginning

You’re probably getting a job as a UX designer to replace someone who just left, or augmenting a growing team. In either case they’ve already started. 

This means you’re picking up somewhere in the middle. You’re going to read through maps, personas, interview notes or hopefully recordings, figure out someone else’s design files and just pick up where they left off. 

Not to say it never happens, but a lot of the time you aren’t starting from scratch. 

All of those linear processes you learned in your boot camp or in a book or a YouTube video are not something you will normally do from start to finish. 

And because of various constraints, unfortunately, you won’t do absolutely everything you were told you’re supposed to do. 

This is why understanding why you do something is really important. In order to break the rules, you have to understand why they exist. 

But sometimes you won’t get to do upfront validation so you’ll have to use heuristics to design the best possible thing and test it later.  

Sometimes, and this happens way more than I like to admit, you don’t get to talk to users. Because of gatekeepers, because management doesn’t understand why you should because you schedule meetings and no one shows up, or because you just don’t have access to them.

So sometimes you have to just do your best and push for some kind of validation at some point. I know it sucks, but this is often reality so be aware of these things. 

Lastly, and I can’t stress this enough, no one cares that you’re the UX designer. People aren’t going to just listen to you because you are the UX designer. 

You have to use all of those skills that we talked about, build strong relationships, trust and influence to get what you want. Don’t show up on day one and start yelling at people because the button in production was 10px too far to the left, because being a stickler for perfection is not going to get you where you want to be. 

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Helpful Links:
• The 6 Levels of UX Maturity
• World of UX with Darren Hood – Episode 75: Emotional Intelligence and UX

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