Business: Careers in UX

Junior UX designers are obsessing over the wrong skills. While they’re mastering design tools and AI prompts, they’re missing the capability that will make or break their career: the ability to defend their design decisions against stakeholders who think design is easy.

After 18 years in UX design and now as the head of DataArt’s design studio, this pattern of behavior has become unmistakable. Talented UX designers fail not because they can’t create good user interfaces, but because they can’t explain how or why their solutions work. Half of being a successful UX designer is presenting your design decisions, communicating with stakeholders, and navigating the politics of opinion versus evidence.

This communication challenge has intensified as UX design has evolved from a niche specialty into a mainstream business function. The same accessibility that has brought data-driven design tools to every organization has also democratized design opinions. Now, everyone from CEOs to interns feel that they are qualified to critique user-interface design decisions. Read More

Over the last 15 years, I’ve had a recurring conversation with senior UX professionals: “I want to progress in UX, but I’m not sure I really want to manage teams.” It seems to many that the one way up is the management track—and in many organizations, this is the only upward path for UX professionals.

In my long and varied career working on staff within companies and for clients in agencies and consultancies, I have seen many roles in User Experience that need a senior, mature person—some with people-management responsibilities; others that continue to focus on product design. These roles include the following:

• Creative Director
• UX Principal
• Team Leader
• UX Manager
• UX Project Lead

Each of these UX professionals plays a specific role within an organization. For senior UX professionals, their quandary is to work out which role is required when and what role suits them best. Read More

Human beings are drawn to stories, which help us make sense of our world by letting us share others’ experiences as though they were our own. We feel characters’ struggles as they navigate difficult challenges and rejoice with them when they finally achieve their goals or share their sorrows if they do not. Stories help us learn to feel empathy—a critical trait for any UX professional.

Most importantly, stories are memorable. According to Jennifer Aaker, Professor of Marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, using a story to convey information is up to “22 times more memorable than facts alone.”

Telling a story can help influence the opinions of others in ways that few other modes of communication can. The value of storytelling extends to how we present ourselves and our abilities professionally. Having participated in dozens of on-site portfolio reviews over the years—sitting on both sides of the review table—I’ve found that the most effective UX-portfolio presentations have one thing in common: the candidate told a story. Read More