Business: Careers in UX

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

UX design is at a crossroads. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the world around us. Is this a good thing for UX design? Or a disaster? Every day, people post about how AI is going to kill UX design. Hiring freezes. Layoffs. Graduates who can’t get an interview.

On the other side, we are seeing UX designers building entire products alone, using new tools, products, and processes that are appearing every day. AI-native startups—whatever that is—are moving faster than any of the teams I’ve worked on, with a tenth of the headcount. AI native designers are more in demand than any other role.

As Dickens wrote: “It was the best of times it was the worst of times.”

I want to discuss this paradox here because I don’t think the people who are saying UX design is dying are wrong. And I don’t think the people saying this is UX design’s golden age are wrong either. I think they’re describing the same moment from the perspectives of two very different kinds of UX designers. 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