Hey there, design reader!

Long time, no see! Welcome to week 20 of my UX Academy Journey, which has arrived at long last (and after a few weeks’ hiatus).

Having delved into the nitty-gritty of rapid color palette generation in the last post, this week I’m taking a step back, and reflecting on the individual nature of the creative process, mentorship, and how to gear your learning experience to your own unique goals.

Sometimes things do fall apart

As those of you that have been following the series may have guessed, Phase 2 of UX Academy is effectively a practice in rapid UX design. But — Murphy’s Law being what it is — it didn’t matter to the outside world that I was knee-deep in my second capstone project, designing a fully integrated social feature for Spotify. *Life* means that other obligations to it may come knocking at any given time.

And knock they did.

In the space of a month, the apartment building I manage underwent a massive re-roof, my freelance clients shifted timetables (moving up a number of deadlines), and a mini-family emergency plopped itself right in the midst of it all.

Suffice to say, after a few weeks of schedule meltdown — reminiscent of my first few weeks in UXA — I was forced to take advantage of the Designlab’s option to “pause” the program.

“The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”
 — Adapted from “To a Mouse” by Robert Burns

One of the hardest-earned lessons of my career so far has been this: to admit when things aren’t working. Sometimes there just aren’t enough hours in our day to get everything done, or the processes that we’re using to complete tasks aren’t working.

It’s important to recognize — whether through being over-ambitious, or through a perfect storm imposed by the cosmos — the threshold of what is possible in the time available has been crossed.

I am terrible at recognizing this.

And as a result, I often feel like my own project management has spun out of control, which is not a good look when you’re face-to-face with clients.

What works for one, may not work for all

Feeling like your project has spun out of control is also not a good look when face-to-face with a mentor whose style and processes that are catered to corporate client-to-designer roleplay — not my first language.

At first I felt guilty that I couldn’t seem to fall in line with the practice of professionalism that my Phase 2 mentor had laid out for me. I was struggling to get all of my assignments done in the 25 hours a week I’d budgeted for schoolwork, and other clients and work obligations were just adding to the pressure. Add in meeting agendas and regular slide decks, and I felt completely overloaded.

Initially I looked at it as an opportunity to hone my professional skill-set. My mentor had a great deal of knowledge to share and I needed to be up to the task of taking it all in. So I tried structuring my weekly timelines as my mentor outlined, and used the Pomello timer (based on the Pomodoro technique) to keep meticulous track of every minute each assignment took me to complete. I structured in regular breaks, and tried my best to follow the streamlined processes my mentor recommended for each task.

Still, I just wasn’t able to get through the work fast enough — nor was I fully comprehending it. In fact, oftentimes I would find myself more confused after five or six iterations than I was at the start.

Having spent a while feeling like I was the problem, I then started to wonder if it was simply that I was trying — unsuccessfully — to make my own creative process conform to a mold designed by and for someone else.

I was a very square peg trying to jam myself into a very round hole.

Asking for exactly the help you need

Six weeks into Phase 2, I decided to take the reins and ask for what I really needed — a break, and a change. It was time to acknowledge that, while I hadn’t yet solidified the processes that work for me, I could definitely identify the ones that weren’t.

I took a calculated look at my own career goals, and determined that they weren’t necessarily aligned with that of a “typical” newbie UX designer. Personally, I’m hoping to fold my new skills into a freelance career, rather than a standard nine-to-five. Inevitably, this would mean wearing more hats, and remaining flexible in my approach to creative problem-solving.

So I made a list of my strengths (research, narrative storytelling, and high-level design strategy), along with my weaknesses (time-management, logo design, and a tendency to overwork things and get lost in bottomless design rabbit holes). I decided that it was time to stop trying to make my creative process mirror another person’s, despite their obvious success. Their processes worked for them, but it was time for me to find the ones that would work for me.

I requested a new mentor, and after working with three incredibly knowledgeable and talented men, I specifically requested a woman, curious if there would be any difference in mentorship style.

Within minutes of meeting Vesna, I knew she and I were a great fit. She introduced me to Scrum, an agile framework for project management often used by software developers, and reminded me that my process may be different from hers or anyone else’s.

She also made me feel more sane. Designers have a reputation for being methodical and logical, which often reads as cool, calm and collected. I, on the other hand, feel like I’m cut from a different creative cloth — prone taking on too much, regular procrastination, and frequent distraction breaks.

In our first chat, Vesma reassured me that I wasn’t a square peg surrounded by round holes, and shared some helpful insights into her own process.

“Usually I just mess around for two days, and then do everything crying in four hours,” she said.

Of course, completing the course — just like succeeding in all work — would take some effort, but it seemed much more attainable after I took a step back and reevaluated what wasn’t working, what was working, and what I would need to move things forward. And having a mentor in my corner who matched both my personality and my personal work habits, was already making the learning that much easier.

It all comes down to finding what works — which I’ve found Designlab will help you with — and building things from there.

“You have to make some effort, then I can pull you up,” Vesna said. “But I cannot push you up!”

Looking for a change of careers?

Designlab’s UX Academy program offers rigorous curriculum, personalized mentor support, and a thriving, global student community. Ready to launch your new career as a UX designer? Get all the details here.

Check out UX Academy

This post was originally published on the Designlab Blog. You can follow the whole series here.

Check out some of the other stuff I do!

UX Academy Journey—Week 20: Gearing Your Learning Towards Your Career Goals was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hey there, design reader!

Welcome to week 19 of my UX Academy Journey, where things are really starting to get serious. Actually, who am I kidding — it’s been serious pretty much the whole time!

Last week we took a little break from our regular UX design programming to zoom out and discuss how the lessons from UX Academy translate into everyday life. The week before that was all about improving a rapid UX design practice. This week I would like to do the opposite and zoom in on and dissect one particular process that always trips me up: color palette selection!

Color theory is hard…

…just take it from the artists who know. But we are not artists, we are designers. And we can reverse out of this rabbit hole with a little bit of methodology — at least that’s what I keep telling myself!

Working on a childcare brand, it was particularly hard for me to pare down my color choices, so I asked my mentor to walk me through his process. Unsurprisingly, he gave me the same pointer as he does whenever I asked him about font selection — go back to the brand’s keywords and make sure your choices meet as many of them as possible (preferably the most important ones).

In the interest of refining a color palette creation methodology into a bite-sized process that I can return to again and again, I decided to break it down into even smaller, digestible steps. This is by no means the be-all-and-end-all of processes, but it’s one that has been working for me as an overzealous color generator (and typography obsessor) who needs to focus on simplifying.

As my mentor said, “Be simple and focused out of the gate — that way your users don’t find your design confusing.”

Step 1: Start with the brand keywords

Right off the bat, this is a point where it’s easy for me to go overboard with the initial set of adjectives — as a writer (and those of you who’ve been reading these posts can certainly attest) I tend to be verbose.

To help avoid this, my mentor recommends turning to your stakeholders for guidance. Ask them to give you between five and ten adjectives or keywords core to their brand’s ethos. When I did this with Chicken’s Creative Care (my first capstone’s project stakeholder, aka my client), she came up with a list similar to the one I’d created in my mood board, but asking her to do the heavy lifting in the definition helped me to prioritize which were most important and pare down.

Here’s what she gave me:

• Fun
• Colorful
• Creative
• Uplifting
• Kind
• Resourceful
• Immersive
• Collaborative
• Happy
• Friendly

Step 2: Associate the keywords with colors

My mentor suggests putting these colors on a color wheel, with shade variances for each — but either a wheel or a standard bar will work. The important part is to prioritize keywords with colors, and start to play with shade variations to get a sense of the brand’s primary attributes and begin to thematically associate them with colors.

First I took a basic color wheel and started arranging my keywords around it. Using some standard color psychology, I looked for patterns between common cultural color associations and the brand keywords I’d laid out. And lo and behold, I began to see some overlap. Orange, for example, represented quite a few of my brand’s essential keywords: fun, kindness, creativity, and happiness.

Orange represents the combination of both the energy and happiness associated with each of its respective parent colors, red and yellow. It evokes a strong emotional response associated with joy, enthusiasm, creativity, encouragement, success and stimulation. In design and advertising, it catches attention and is well used as an accent color to highlight important graphic elements. All in all, not a bad choice when looking through a broader scope of the CCC brand’s core values.

Step 3: Select a primary brand color

Knowing that orange would somehow play into my color scheme, I decided to first select the brand’s primary brand color. In order to do this, I had to consider both the overall brand aesthetic and the logo.

While the logo design was not finalized yet, I knew that the chicken association — being that her nickname throughout her career was “Teacher Chicken” — was a primary element the stakeholder wanted the logo to incorporate. With that in mind, I conceptualized a first round draft using downloadable icons and some initial color selections. Teacher Chicken was also known for her multi-colored hairstyles (as evidenced by the photos used throughout her website’s design), so I threw a pop of purple/pink into the logo.

This started to throw off my palette — until my mentor reminded me that just because I use a color in the logo doesn’t necessarily mean it needs to be in the brand palette.

“Be careful not to use too much color,” he said. “If you make things too playful, you run a risk — there’s a thin line between being really creative and not being considered professional.”

With that in mind, he challenged me to look at the color selections I had made and determine which would be the one color I’d want associated with the CCC brand — and I could only choose one. For Coca-Cola it’s red. For Spotify, it’s green. Which would CCC’s brand color be?

Given that yellow represented many of CCC’s core brand characteristics, was a strong attention-grabbing color with many positive emotional attributes (and is also often associated with kids products), and was present in the initial logo concepts, I settled on yellow as the way to go.

Step 4: Build complementary colors

Now that I had my primary brand color (yellow!) selected, and at least one of my accent colors, it was time to build a complementary set. My mentor had suggested that I settled on something between three and five colors in total, including highlights and neutrals — quite the challenge indeed.

He suggested breaking up those choices according to the follow recipe:

• 1 brand color: the sole color meant to be associated with your brand (yellow!)
• 1 highlight color: to complement and accent elements in the design (orange!)
• 1 base color: this is usually a black or darker tone used to inform but not distract from the design
• 2–3 neutral colors: these are used to balance the brighter tones and round out the palette

Knowing I needed a cooler color to offset the brightness of the yellow and orange in my design, and wanting to emphasize some of the brand keywords not represented on the warmer end of the color spectrum, I knew I wanted to add a blue tone into the mix.

With my yellow and salmony orange pretty much set, I decided to use the Coolors color scheme generator to find complementary colors. There are a ton of color generation tools out there and I’ve used them all. What makes this one unique is the ability to lock certain selections and quickly generate new matches, adjust shades, lock and regenerate until you find a set you like.

After playing around with the way these colors fit into my design, I adjusted the recipe a bit to include one primary brand color (sunglow!), two highlight or accent colors (salmon and moonstone blue), one base color (that purplish charcoal), and two neutrals (melon and white smoke) for six colors total.

The result was a more balanced design that was bright and festive, but didn’t overwhelm or detract from the overall brand aesthetic.

And now, some helpful color resources:

Until next week, happy color theorizing!

Looking for a change of careers?

Designlab’s UX Academy program offers rigorous curriculum, personalized mentor support, and a thriving, global student community. Ready to launch your new career as a UX designer? Get all the details here.

Check out UX Academy

This post was originally published on the Designlab Blog. You can follow the whole series here.

Check out some of the other stuff I do!

UX Academy Journey—Week 19: A Recipe for Rapid Color Palette Generation was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hey there, design reader!

Happy week 18 of my UX Academy Journey (or at least it is for me!).

It’s time again to take a little break from our regular UX design programming, and zoom back out to the big picture — by looking at how the lessons from this full-on world of UX Academy are being synthesized into everyday life.

Last week’s post was all about how to transform a design education into a rapid UX design practice. This week’s menu includes a starter of self-psychoanalysis, followed by an entrée of affirmation, which I’d wager is a welcome dish for everyone (like me) still in the thick of Phase 2’s capstone projects.

Part 1: The Wins

Capstone 1 is all but finished! I’m in the midst of making final adjustments to my high-fidelity prototype and adding the case study to my shiny new design portfolio site. But aside from that, huzzah! One-third of Phase 2 is signed, sealed and delivered.

A few weeks back I was feeling a bit overwhelmed at some of the high-pressure professional demands built into the career preparation side of the Phase 2 curriculum. Initially I was struggling to stay spongey enough to absorb the stream of information. But that soon passed, and I’ve now settled in to the process and saddled up for the ride.

If ever there was a time for me to feel confident in my use of a trendy hashtag (#winning!) it would be now.

Part 2: The Reality Check

Remember way, way back in the early weeks of Phase 1 when I discussed my serial careerist habits and the joys and woes of being a multipotentialite? One of those woes is — and will likely always be — indecision. I have a lot of varied interests and paring down (and saying the occasional “no”) has always been a very real struggle for me.

I also have a huge guilt complex, which makes saying that occasional “no” all the more difficult. What I’ve had to learn is that in life and especially in work, things are always changing, and fast. It’s all relative. No matter how much I try to orchestrate a plan of action, MacGyver a mega schedule, or otherwise control the scope and delivery of a project, things can and will often always change.

As John Lennon famously sang, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

It pays to remember Murphy’s Law — that whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. While being deliberate with my project management is always a goal, building in a little flexibility to deal with unexpected setbacks definitely helps to keep the execution resilient to outside realities.

Part 3: The Hustle

My fiancé and I have this running joke that I tend to be a work hustler and always have been, but am pretty much terrible at it. What I mean by this is that I have numerous jobs, clients, projects, school work — multiple irons in multiple fires at all times. But I never seem to be successfully managing all of them — covering all of my bases — simultaneously.

This is more about appearances, I guess, than anything else. Hustling is hard, of course. It’s essentially figurative juggling, and juggling is super hard (especially for the physically uncoordinated).

A large part of a successful hustle is making something that is inherently tricky — like managing multiple projects and clients with competing priorities, deadlines and demands — look like it’s an absolute breeze.

This is the part where it all falls apart for me. When I’m frazzled and struggling to keep up the pace, believe me I look it. Mastering the art of the hustle is a long-term life goal. The good news: constant reiteration, a hefty Trello project management timeline, and numerous productivity apps are helping me design my coursework and my life habits a bit better every week. #slowwinning?

Part 4: Coping Processes

I have a tenant in the building I manage who writes positive affirmations in multicolored dry erase pens on his bathroom mirror so that every day when he wakes up and goes to brush his teeth, he’s reminded of what his goals are, why he’s working so hard, and is emboldened to stick with it however difficult the pursuit might become.

Whenever I go in to fix a leaky faucet or reattach his towel rack to the wall (it falls off regularly — I don’t know why), I’m inspired by his diligent and habitual self-care.

In order to improve my hustle and have enough confidence to actually understand what I’m learning and make it look like I know what I’m doing, I’ve taken to cultivating some habits, treats and rituals that maintain my confidence and keep me strong. Because if there’s anything I’ve learned in UX Academy so far, it’s that it takes time to build new processes that work for you. And effort. And practice. And time. Did I mention time?

Just for funsies, here’s a quick list of the things that I’ve indulged in that bring me joy and keep me going, as of late, when I’m tuckered out and hitting a learning/designing wall:

1. Coffee: I know, I know. I’m the quintessential Seattleite. I love it. Sorrynotsorry.
2. Nora Ephron: She’s amazing. Right now I’m reading I Feel Bad About My Neck, a book of essays she published in 2006 that discusses everything from plastic surgery, to the absurdity of women’s fashion accessories, to parenting, to the obscenity of Manhattan apartment prices. Maybe it’s just me being a young 30-something working professional woman, but darn it Nora is so relatable and so, so funny. If I wake up in the middle of the night anxious and sleepless, and I can literally open the book to any page and be rolling with laughter and sweet relief in minutes. I love her so much. She is everything.
3. GLOW: I don’t know what else to say about this except this: Strong female leads, plus 80s spandex, sequins and big, HUGE hair, plus showboaty wrestling?! The writing is amazing. Every episode brings me so much joy and de-stresses my whole situation, by the end I’m smiling ear to ear. Season 2 just came out so if you need a little break from work or studies, Netflix-and-chill this series right now (but trust me, you’ll be caught up with the watching and not so much with the chilling).
4. Humor: There’s nothing more gratifying (for me) that cracking a joke and getting a chuckled response. If I manage to wield my silly, jokester powers into diffusing an otherwise sticky or tense situation, all the better. I’m not saying I’m great at it, but it’s oh-so-sweet when I swing and don’t miss.

Part 5: Inspiration

And when all else fails, it’s about keeping my eye on the prize and reminding myself what my ultimate goal is: to get trained up and ready for a new creative career that ticks all of my boxes (financial stability, intellectual stimulation, and creative satisfaction, all in the same job?!).

On tough days, actively recalling why I’m doing this always helps me hunker down and stay strong. This is a rapid learning experience, and the hurdles are made to be… hurdled.

Stories of fellow students’ success help a whole lot too — like this one from my awesome tea buddy Robbin Arcega, who has just successfully transitioned into a full-time UX design role with her company.

Until next week, happy designing (and happy affirmations!) Stay strong, people!

Looking for a change of careers?

Designlab’s UX Academy program offers rigorous curriculum, personalized mentor support, and a thriving, global student community. Ready to launch your new career as a UX designer? Get all the details here.

Check out UX Academy

This post was originally published on the Designlab Blog. You can follow the whole series here.

Check out some of the other stuff I do!

UX Academy Journey—Week 18: My Five States of UX Design Mind was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hey there, design reader!

Guess who’s back and blasting through Phase 2 of my UX Academy Journey? This aspiring UX designer is who!

A quick catch up on what’s been going on with the program thus far: With three back-to-back capstone projects (sort of like final projects that display both your design skills and the processes used all wrapped up into pretty portfolio pieces), Phase 2 is like the last leg of the marathon, to say the least. It’s all about distilling down the design methodology lessons learned in Phase 1 of the program and applying them in active bursts of rapid UX design execution.

When I say rapid, I mean it

In Phase 1, I worked on the KAUS insurance project for the better part of three and a half months. In Phase 2, each of the three capstones are completed in the span of three-ish weeks from start to finish. (You can stretch it if you use the week between projects to do a final round of revisions).

In the four short weeks since Phase 2 began, the coursework has progressed from synthesizing the lessons from Phase 1, then a personal branding kickoff (in preparation for those portfolio pieces I mentioned earlier), and now a running jump into capstone 1 — all with a new mentor both guiding my learning and raising the bar.

It is fast. It is intense. It is an amazing learning experience.

Yes, occasionally the information overload is still reminiscent of drinking from a firehose, but, as they say, practice really does make perfect. Repetition is the key to learning, and whenever I start to feel overwhelmed or struggle to fully understand and embrace an essential UX design lesson, I adopt a silly (but effective) little meditation to get me through: I step away from the screen, close my eyes for a moment, and imagine myself as a person-sized sponge, soaking up all the knowledge from that fire hose, to be squeezed out and saved for later when I hit a design wall, or my inspiration dries up. (Pardon the pun. And this whole analogy.)

I know it’s weird. You’re not wrong. But it also lightens the mood and reminds me that this is the hard work of rapid design learning that will, undoubtedly, pay off in the end. Much in the way yoga is referred to as a “practice” — it can take years of showing up and trying to bend and stretch yourself into a pretzel before your body actually starts to work that way and the benefits materialize — so has UX design become for me. Maybe some people are natural yogis, or instant UX design savants, but I, alas, am not on either front. It took me years of failed downward dogs before my body ever actually clicked into it well enough to enjoy the experience. It took me a decade of practice, but eventually — finally — I broke through.

Practice, repetition, reiteration. Boom.

Phase 1 was all about familiarizing myself with the fundamentals of UX design. Phase 2 has become all about — you guessed it — refining my practice and building better, stronger, and more efficient design processes.

As I wrap up the first capstone project, I thought it best to share some of the core lessons I’ve taken from Phase 2 thus far — not about the UX design methodologies themselves, but instead about how to support my practice as a UX designer in a rapid setting.

Tip #1: Do a “sanity check”

Translation: “Don’t bite off more than you can chew,” and “be realistic about the size and scope of your project.” They essentially mean the same thing, but I like the term “sanity check” (straight from my mentor’s mouth, thank him very much!) because it carries with it a certain amount of urgency — an intensity that the kinder, calmer translations just do not embody.

If you’re a slightly stubborn and highly ambitious person, like me, this advice is even more valuable. Trust me. For my first Phase 2 assignment I opted to build a responsive website for Chicken’s Creative Care, a local childcare/summer camp service here in Seattle started by a good friend. My mentor urged me not to pick an independent project for my first capstone, warning me of the high demands and tight turnaround time required, but did I listen? No!

Instead, I insisted I could hunker down and do the extra work required to get both the valuable experience and the sweet gratification that comes from true passion projects. I’m glad I did it, but I won’t lie: he was not wrong — it ended up being way more difficult and much more work than I would have faced had I gone with one of the standard project briefs.

Being realistic about what can and cannot be accomplished within a set amount of time can be hard, and enthusiasm and determination tends to cloud my judgement. As a result I came up with a huge product roadmap that was not at all realistic to execute in just three weeks with a design team of one.

I did that sanity check — though a little late in the process — and using the Time/Cost Curve to evaluate the scope, pared the project way, way down (reminding myself that I could always build out more features later, preferably when UXA was over).

Tip #2: Make sure you understand the “why”

This is a huge one, and another lesson learned as a result of my Phase 2 mentor’s structured curriculum style. There are a lot of steps to the UX design process, and as a relative newbie, I realized pretty quick how easy it is to gum up the whole process by taking a misstep early on. For example, in my research synthesis phase on this current capstone, I had a lot of trouble nailing down my user needs.

I kept trying to make them too big, too complex, and in turn I muddied up the whole purpose of identifying the user needs in the first place. My persona was immediately off, and even though the motivations and frustrations were all there, the over-complicated needs threw the definition and ideation steps that followed completely off kilter. But, because of the tight timelines, I powered through the next set of deliverables based on the faulty user needs, and this set me back tremendously.

My mentor had asked me to try a new technique for definition and ideation by doing a set of POV (point of view) statements and HMW (how might we) questions. The idea is to, essentially reframe the design challenge, or “problem statement” from the point of view of the user based on the needs discovered through the research and synthesis, and then use the HMWs to define possible solutions.

These statements, in essence, are used to brainstorm all possible solutions. If the problem statement is too broad, you end up with too many solutions, and if it’s too narrow, you end up with not enough. I’ll bet you can guess which one I ended up with.

That’s right! Way, way, WAY too broad. And many of my solutions ended up addressing multiple needs, which at first I thought was a win — two birds, one stone, am I right? — but I later came to realize this is a major red flag (I was not right). The needs were not nearly specific enough, so naturally the resulting solutions similarly lacked focus.

As I result, I spent the entire week going back and re-doing each step of the process over and over again until I finally grasped this lesson. I had understood the process in theory, but when it came to execution, there still a way to go to turn that understanding into practical knowledge. After six versions of my empathy map, three user personas, another six POVs/HMWs, three brainstorming sessions, two sitemaps, two user and task flows each, and another two stabs at the product roadmap, (and one completely shot schedule) I finally — finally — came out the other side.

Don’t be like me. Above all, try to wrap your brain around the why of what you’re doing. There’s nothing more frustrating (and nothing less rapid) than having to redo your work because you didn’t figure this out at the start of the process.

Tip #3: Forget about perfection

If you haven’t figured it out by now, perfection doesn’t exist in this world, and believe it or not, that’s a good thing. As a perfectionist myself, learning this lesson has been perhaps the biggest struggle of all.

Perfection and UX design are, in fact, pretty much mutually exclusive. That’s kind of the whole point. Attempting to make every design perfect is akin to working yourself ragged trying to race toward an ever receding horizon — getting there isn’t just impractical; it’s not physically possible. It simply cannot be done.

Feeling lost and stressed by trying to make perfect work is, however, not merely possible — it’s pretty probable. Just ask the countless designers — both students and long-established professionals — who still suffer from imposter syndrome.

And, for me, this is why UX design is such an interesting discipline. It’s creative in execution, but born of research, and process, and atomic methodology — like art and yet clearly distinct from it.

It’s all in the language. The word “perfect” comes the Latin “perfectus,” which by definition means completed, but in design, particularly UX design, the work is never really complete. We are always refining, continuously reiterating.

This is also why user testing is everything in UX design. My Phase 1 mentor told me that, when approaching usability testing, I should be looking for my designs to fail; to identify where things break in order to understand the hiccups and pain points from the user’s perspective. How else can we fix them and improve our products? How else can we design better?

The sooner you let go of the pursuit of perfection, the easier the learning and the development of your UX design practice will be.

Tip #4: Embrace the process of practice

Learning is a difficult business. Much like in yoga, practice really is the only way to climb the ranks from newbie to expert. Most people don’t jump instantly from listening, reading, and absorbing new material, to being able to access, recall, and apply that learning.

Human brains don’t work that way. Or, at least, mine doesn’t.

And succeeding in UX design is all about understanding human brains — we are working at the intersection of humans interacting with machines, after all. So when it comes to your own UX design learning, get ready to buckle down into a routine. Practice it. A lot.

Embrace the process, because, if you’re anything like me, this is the only way to conquer learning hurdles and become a better designer — over time, with relentless, constant, routine practice. Reiteration is your friend.

Practice, repetition, reiteration. Boom.

Looking for a change of careers?

Designlab’s UX Academy program offers rigorous curriculum, personalized mentor support, and a thriving, global student community. Ready to launch your new career as a UX designer? Get all the details here.

Check out UX Academy

This post was originally published on the Designlab Blog. You can follow the whole series here.

Check out some of the other stuff I do!

UX Academy Journey—Week 17: From Slow and Steady to Full-Steam Ahead — 4 Tips for Improving Your… was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hey there, design reader!

Welcome to Week 16 of my UX Academy Journey. Last week we discussed the intersection of art and design, where they diverge, and how this thinking plays into design learning. Now it’s time to take what we’ve learned and jump, head first, into the first of three capstone projects. Are you ready? (I am!)

Ah, Phase 2! What’s it all about? (Capstone projects!) What are they? (Three back-to-back final projects each focused on a different product element, meant to serve as real-world exercises in executing on a UX design project brief and serving as the finished portfolio pieces in preparation for the job search at the conclusion of the program).

How ever do you choose one? What if I change my mind, or get off track? Does it even matter? (The short answer: yes — and no).

Setting up for a successful sprint

Throughout Phase 1 of UX Academy I had a potent case of the catch-up crazies — the distinct feeling of being behind (even when I wasn’t, necessarily), constantly requiring me to pick up the pace with repeated spurts of sprinting. And as any marathon runner will tell you, sprinting is not something you should plan to do throughout the entire race if you expect to keep pace. Or at least, so I hear (I have never — and do not expect to ever — run a marathon).

In any case, it’s no surprise that Phase 1 was a rapid introduction to all things UX design. This industry is vast and still growing — and when drinking from a firehose, it’s easy to get wet. But this quick surface-level exploration was by design, allowing us newbies the chance to get familiar with key processes and methods before embarking on our more substantial capstone projects.

And for me — someone easily lured along project tangents and down font-selection rabbit holes — recalibrating for the second part of the course would be key to staying on track.

Knowing I would need my wits about me to squeeze every last drop of valuable learning I could out of Phase 2, I started channeling my inner Sheryl Sandberg and decided to really lean in to the extra resources available in the UX Academy curriculum — not least the mentor–mentee relationship itself.

Transitioning from student to professional

One of the things I was most excited about at the outset of UX Academy was the emphasis on mentorship, and the opportunity to have 24 full hours of dedicated 1-on-1 digital facetime with a real, live, working UX designer.

The mentor–mentee relationship within UXA is similar to traditional mentorship outside of the program, but on hyperdrive. My Phase 1 mentor had a very holistic approach, and was exceptionally positive, encouraging, and flexible with both his time and the gentle guidance he provided me in and around any questions or roadblocks.

Looking back, I can also see that this mentoring style was conducive to the aims of the first half of the program, which were about building a general understanding of UX design methodology, and less on coaching the actual execution.

He and I fostered a strong working relationship, and aside from helping me develop my UX design skill set, he also offered individualized professional coaching and served as a personal cheerleader for me throughout the first three months of the program.

The course was still very much self-driven, which was both a benefit (I got to explore the world of UX design and figure out what areas interested me most) and a potential hazard (it was easy to let myself get distracted or otherwise side-tracked and lose the primary point of each lesson).

My Phase 2 mentor, however, has an entirely different mentorship style — one based on clear structure, professional accountability, and repetitive client-designer role-playing exercises. He integrates his own professional and professorial requirements into delivery of the curriculum, offering a taste of what this work might be like on a real life design team.

Such a sudden change in style might feel jarring at first, but it quickly became clear that this would be a blessing in disguise. Exposure to a different mentoring style is forcing me to let go of what had become comfortable, and benefit from the distinct insights and resources that will surely come with another perspective.

Professional development through regular communication and rigorous role-play

On our first capstone kickoff call, my mentor laid the groundwork for how the next three months would go: In additional to the regular curriculum deliverables, I would be required to complete — and be accountable for — an additional three items each week:

• a meeting agenda, due 24 hours before our next mentor call;
• an updated Trello timeline task tracker, which I am expected to stick to and keep up to date;
• a slide-deck presentation of all work completed since our last meeting, to be discussed in the first part of each of the three role-playing calls allocated per capstone.

All deliverables were to be consistently branded and delivered in order and on time. If I fell behind, my mentor would pause my progress in the program.

Hello there, stakes — look how high you are!

As per my Phase 2 mentor’s design, the first part of each of the subsequent calls would be entirely role-play based, with him playing the part of the client and me the part of the hired designer, running a full presentation just as I would with real clients and project stakeholders.

“During these role-playing calls I’m going to ask you questions just as a client would. You will need to be prepared to defend the reasoning behind your design decisions,” he said by way of a warning. “I may be blunt and direct. Don’t be intimidated or put off by this. I do it because it will give you the experience of running a real meeting.”

There would be time opened up in the second half of the call for mentor–mentee questions and answer. Beyond that, I was encouraged to reach out to him directly throughout the week with necessary questions (those I’d need answered in order to proceed to the next step in the design process), rather than holding them all for our next meeting and losing valuable hours in the already tightly packed project timeline.

While the prospect of additional work on top of the high demands of the existing UXA course schedule was undoubtedly daunting, more than anything else I was excited to have a chance to dive into some intense training — there would be no time to entertain any of the questionable habits I’d flirted with in Phase 1.

It was time to whip myself into streamlined UX designer shape.

Selecting a project brief

The only task left was to pick a project brief. The first capstone centers on responsive design, but what that means, and exactly what it will involve, depends on the details of the subject matter. And as someone with enthusiasm for many competing interests, making a quick and definitive choice is always a struggle.

The options were as follows:

• rebrand and redesign for a famous and now defunct airline (PanAm)
• a local bicycle shop (or another local business of your choosing)
• a national non-profit (an organization connecting animal shelters).

My mentor strongly encouraged me to select one of these rather than devise an independent project, which he said would be more difficult, especially considering the tight three-week deadline.

I geared up for option two, and settled on either a local neighborhood spa or coffee shop, narrowed down from a long list due to another stipulation from my mentor; if I would be redesigning, he requested that the business not have an existing responsive site, even if it was a very bad one. As it turns out, it’s quite hard to find a non-responsive website these days.

But after a day and a half of ruminating on the two local business options available to me — and feeling less than thrilled about each — an invisible light bulb suddenly turned on over my head in a last-minute “aha” moment, and I cheated a bit by pitching a project that was very personal to me.

A friend and coworker, who has over 20 years of experience as a teacher and a developmental educator, has been running a specialized program for afterschool, holiday, and summer camps for years. She has an existing brand and burgeoning clientele, but has never had the time or bandwidth to hire a designer to build her online presence.

Knowing I was running out of time, I feverishly pitched the new brief. One of the reasons I decided to take the plunge into a UX design career change was my desire to get to work with an array of different industries, and to access the opportunity to take on and indulge in coveted passion projects when they happen to come along.

It took a little defending, but after making a case to my mentor, I changed tack and — reinvigorated — barreled full steam ahead. I’m crossing my fingers that I can stay on track.

Until next week, happy blitz designing!

Looking for a change of careers?

Designlab’s UX Academy program offers rigorous curriculum, personalized mentor support, and a thriving, global student community. Ready to launch your new career as a UX designer? Get all the details here.

Check out UX Academy

This post was originally published on the Designlab Blog. You can follow the whole series here.

Check out some of the other stuff I do!

UX Academy Journey—Week 16: Practicing Professionalism — The Benefits of Different Mentoring Styles was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hey there, design reader!

Welcome to Week 15 of my UX Academy Journey. Last week we delved into personal branding, and took a tour through ten years of portfolio iterations on the Wayback Machine. As we move away from personal branding and towards preparation for the first of three Phase 2 capstone projects, it’s time to wax philosophical on art, design, and how to develop that design eye!

When I was a freshman in college, one of my first assignments for the student newspaper was to cover a gallery opening showcasing the thesis project of a graduate student in the visual arts program. Not knowing much about abstract art — or art in general, to be honest — I probably asked her some very boring questions over the course of the interview, one of which was regarding the inspiration behind her choice and use of color.

“This took years of studying color theory,” she said.

I still remember it today. Years of color theory. Years.

As I walked around the gallery perusing her works, whatever small part of me that might have thought, “Hey! This looks so fun! Maybe I could learn how to do art like this. Maybe I should take up painting,” was intimidated right out of the room.

On being wrong

In my case, approaching my design education from the perspective of “but I don’t know anything about art,” was a major pillar of my own personal brand of Imposter Syndrome, and something I slowly let go of the further I got into UX Academy.

Why? Because at a certain point, it began disrupting my ability to learn and grow as a designer. I couldn’t go back and change the years of my childhood spent not taking art classes, and it wouldn’t really matter if I could. People say art cannot be taught. I’m not sure whether or not I agree, but I know for a fact that design can be. The only thing getting in my way was my own false assumption that design and art were one and the same.

The process of being wrong, making mistakes, and trudging through the not knowing, is good for learning. As famed graphic designer Paula Scher says, “It’s through mistakes that you actually can grow. You have to get bad in order to get good.”

Art is a craft, design is a discipline (for the most part)

Early on in Phase 1, I discussed how it was years before I even considered any sort of official design training and how, even after years of relevant on-the-job experience, I still hesitated to call myself a designer. Imposter Syndrome was certainly at work here, although I didn’t know it at the time.

Instead, I just assumed I didn’t have the skills to be a designer, and consequently spent years making the rounds at various jobs while daydreaming about the one I was convinced I could never have.

If you read much about art or design, you’ll see a lot of people declaring that they are two entirely separate entities, and I’ll get to that in just a moment. But this doesn’t mean they don’t share quite a bit in common — including a basis in visual fundamentals.

Elements at play both in art and design include color theory, drawing, the rule of thirds, and even typography. If you’re thinking about moving from side of the fence to the other, recognizing that you’re already familiar with these might give you a leg up.

They’re by no means prerequisites, though. In fact, there’s ample evidence out there that to become a designer, all you really need is a willingness to learn, wherever you’re starting from. (Speaking of which, check out Designlab’s own ultimate guide to becoming a designer without going to design school, especially if you’re someone who, you know, might be letting their inner designer Imposter Syndrome get the better of them).

Where art and design diverge

While art and design share much in common, unshackling myself even further from my feelings of Imposter Syndrome (as a designer and an artist), meant recognizing how the two are different. From what I can tell, although there’s a large gray area, there are some important primary distinctions:

• Art is meant to be viewed; design is meant to be used. Art, while a very personal creation of the individual artist’s unique vision, is meant to be consumed by others. Where art is exhibited for us to view and appreciate, good design often goes unnoticed by its users — some would even argue that invisibility is a marker of good design. Either way, the fundamental purpose of designed things is to function.
• Art poses questions; design answers them. Walk through any museum and you will be hard-pressed not to find at least one piece that speaks to you. Oftentimes, however, that response is entirely personal — the piece that stirs your emotions, and gets your mind spinning, may not speak to anyone else in the room in quite the same way. That is the power of art, and the emotional response it evokes is part of why we value it so much: it can awaken us and make us question our world, our systems, and ourselves. Design, on the other hand — while it can still awe and inspire — is typically born out of meeting predefined needs, shared by many people.
• Art is a personal process; design is a shared one. Artists have a reputation for being reclusive and even “weird” for a reason — in fact, scientists have proved the link between creativity and eccentricity. Design, however, is an intrinsically collaborative endeavor, involving teamwork and a culture of knowledge-sharing that drives the industry forward.
• Art applauds authentic expression; design solves authentic problems. Art is usually the product of an individual artist’s personal explorations. While an artist’s work may be informed by others they admire, or inspired by artistic movements, the work is likely to be labeled “derivative” and of less value if it isn’t distinct enough from what came before it. Design, however, is judged by how effectively it solves a given problem. Designers are encouraged to learn and master their craft by copying others — something that is frowned upon in the art world (and flatly prohibited in the literary world) — and a strong design solution will typically use previously established conventions and patterns.

Design is learning to design better

I have a friend who is a senior UX designer here in Seattle. She has over ten years of experience and has worked for some of the largest companies in the world — yes, Amazon included.

Recently, when attempting to organize a happy hour date, my friend offhandedly replied that she wasn’t available on Mondays, because she had class for a UX design certificate course.

“But you’re already a senior UX designer?” I said. “You’ve been working for a decade! When are you even bothering to get a UX certificate when you don’t need it?”

The reason, she said, was partly to quash her feelings of Imposter Syndrome — despite her good job and long, impressive resume — and to strengthen her credentials in an industry churning out more and more UX designers, seemingly by the minute (sorry friend!).

Even after ten years and a LinkedIn profile that will forever put mine to shame, my friend didn’t have any assumptions about her job — if she wanted to compete, she would have to keep learning.

And that brings me to the crux of what I’m coming to think design is, and how it is different from art. My friend’s work in design, to her, wasn’t about expressing her accrued skills and abilities, but being able to solve problems in the here and now. And in order to do this, you have to keep learning.

As my mentor put it on our most recent call:

“When we talk about art, art is expressive. Design is about the user. What’s the fastest way to design for our user? The fastest way to design for our user is to create designs, not art.”

Until next week, happy designing!

Looking for a change of careers?

Designlab’s UX Academy program offers rigorous curriculum, personalized mentor support, and a thriving, global student community. Ready to launch your new career as a UX designer? Get all the details here.

Check out UX Academy

This post was originally published on the Designlab Blog. You can follow the whole series here.

Check out some of the other stuff I do!

UX Academy Journey—Week 15: Art vs Design, and How to Develop that Design Eye was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hey there, design reader!

Welcome to Week 14 of UX Academy! What a whirlwind! As you may remember, I rewarded myself for reaching the UX Academy halfway mark by taking a much-needed (and largely tech-free) vacation, which reminded me just how valuable downtime is in feeding both body and mind. Now, as I jump back into the coursework and start gearing up for the final phase, the very hefty task of personal branding is at the forefront — of both the curriculum and my brain space.

There’s no time to waste — whole careers are in the making (no pressure)!

A brand new world

We live in a world of branding. Everyone — from stay-at-home mom blogger, to teenage Instagram star — has some sort of personal brand they’re using to represent themselves to the digital masses. The only question now is whether that branding succeeds in the new digital world where we all live and work.

As you might have suspected, the first part of Phase 2 of UX Academy — before launching into the “capstone” projects — is centered around developing individual portfolios and — gulp — a personal brand, aka my waking nightmare.

Why does the idea of building my personal brand give me such anxiety — especially when it is commonly accepted as a “non-negotiable” of the modern age? Well, because on the surface I suppose it seems egotistical, or even disingenuous. Like how the word “networking” makes the action of connecting with your peers for potential, mutually beneficial gain seem unpalatable. It sounds ugly, and self-serving.

“Hey, there! Look at meee! I do all of these things, better than anyone! So much so that you should give me all the monies!”

I know, I know. This has the air of Imposter Syndrome about it: how can I represent myself as some successful [insert desired occupation here] when I’m only [insert self-doubt here]? But, much like the classic affliction, personal branding turns out to be way less scary than it seems at first.

In reality, in the age of everything as brand fodder, we as individuals have a unique opportunity to break free from the confines of the traditional workplace dynamic between employee and employer. With a personal brand, we have the chance to create a new narrative in which we are the primary asset to our own success — a free agent, able to move about the world and our careers with both more space and flexibility.

While I may understand why a strong personal brand is necessary, however, that doesn’t make it an easy thing to build — and maintain — despite all the guides and how-tos out there. But like all things in UX design, it starts by defining the problem. What exactly do I want my personal brand to do? What do I really want to do with my career? And how can I present myself to make it happen?

Before UX Academy, I was never too good at this.

A longtime freelancer with a variety of work-related skills I needed to showcase, I’ve had many iterations of an online presence over the years, by way of a series of relatively basic portfolio focused websites, almost all of which I built myself on Wordpress.

On my first attempt I had no idea what sort of platform and image of myself I was trying to build, and the result was a wishy-washy mash-up of past work without any real and distinguishable thread of personality or qualifications running through it.

In short, my first attempt back in 2011 was a webpage, but it wasn’t a brand.

This is what that first attempt looked like. I know, please don’t judge me too harshly. I was young, hungry, and not at all in the designer camp… yet.

Piecemealing it all together — forever?

When I graduated college, my first journalism job was managing a hyperlocal news blog for my centrally located Seattle neighborhood. This job ended up being an incredibly fun and highly autonomous gig that involved doing a little bit of pretty much everything: I was part writer, reporter, photographer, editor, administrator, community liaison, sometimes web developer — you name it.

From day one I struggled to find a way to showcase all of my work and the services I offered, cleanly and effectively, in one online home. And as a result, I ended up with a pretty flimsy personal brand that continued to attract small-time projects for a couple hundred dollars a pop, perpetuating the same hard hustle week after week, month after month.

I didn’t know it at the time, but this hustle would become the recipe for my future career — the secret sauce that set me apart. At the time I assumed I would keep on hustling until I found that one full-time job that could become the be-all-and-end-all of my freelance life, giving me everything I needed — both financially and intellectually — all in one place.

Of course, when I did finally land that full time job, I quickly discovered that the hustle had broken me for pretty much any kind of normal 9-to-5 work in the future. Once you get a taste of operating as your own boss, it’s hard to go back to any other way.

After I accepted that my future would probably continue to be freelance, however, leveraging my brand started to get easier.

Rebranding is cyclical

A few years ago, when met with a career crossroads and quite a bit of downtime between jobs, I decided to dig into the agonizing endeavor of revamping my brand and building a new, more beautiful — and hopefully more powerful — online portfolio.

I’m not embarrassed to say that developing my current website, which is now starting to get woefully out of date, took me the better part of six months — and I never even finished uploading my actual portfolio pieces to it. The result was sufficient, but it never really satisfied my vision, and instead I dropped the entire endeavor and left the site unfinished.

It was, of course, a massive improvement on my original site, which — as you can see — was text (and typo) heavy.

Suffice it to say, I did not want to go through that long and arduous process all over again. That’s the irony of personal branding, and the problem that many of us face: we only end up putting the time into developing our portfolio sites when we’re looking for work. Once we find it, we oftentimes abandon our brand or give up maintaining it, revisiting it again only years later, the next time we’re shopping around for a new job.

But the more work I put into my personal brand, the more I realized maintaining a portfolio — especially if my goal post-UXA is to continue to build my freelance business — is going to be an ongoing process, requiring regular maintenance and curation. Just like tending to a garden, a few minor and regular updates will keep things clean and pruned for months or even years to come.

Finally defining the goals

I decided instead to approach it from a usability perspective and get right down to what the ultimate goal is: to showcase my work and build my brand so that it will, hopefully, get me more and better work (in exchange for money, of course) as a result.

Reminding myself of the problem I was trying to solve did help cut through all the gunk and second-guessing that we creative folk find often find ourselves hung up on… at least for the most part.

Instead of looking at myself as the user of my portfolio, I began to shift my thinking to the real end-user (potential clients and future employers), and reposition myself as the client.

My business goal: to gain future clients or employment opportunities.

The user’s goal: to understand what I have to offer, and assess whether I am qualified and capable of handling the work they have in mind.

To serve these goals, my relationship with the portfolio would have to change. Instead of being a hurdle I begrudgingly hurl myself over every three or four years as I make the lap on my personal brand, I would instead have to think of it as an exercise in creative evolution. A portfolio as a sandbox — a place to experiment and play, revisit and iterate regularly.

One portfolio, two portfolio? Red portfolio, blue portfolio??

Given my UX design career goals, my Phase 1 mentor had recommended that I build my business — and my brand — around a name other than my own. In so doing, he said I could then present myself as head of the company, and use the brand to leverage myself and my experience to gain greater and more prestigious clients and projects.

It was an exciting idea, but one that would require building yet another brand independent of my existing online portfolio. Yippee — double the work!

I’m a habitual URL hoarder — I have a habit of buying a new one every time I come up with an idea for a new project. This is also the source of the systematic disappearance of a large portion of my already tight disposable income, but that’s a story for another day… (It’s my problem, and one day I’ll deal with it. Maybe.)

When I began working on my rebranding efforts, I found myself struggling with the same question of how to divvy up all the areas of my work and showcase them, adequately, and in one place. I put the question to my fellow students in a Group Crit, and was surprised to find that many of them suggested a similar segmented branding effort — i.e., having two separate portfolios to showcase the two very different kinds of work I do — in this case my freelance writing and UX design work.

Much like a resume will have different versions catered to specific jobs, this too made sense, but I wondered — would this segment my audience? Divide my potential? What about the places where the two seemingly distinct arenas overlap — with book design, for example?

Lay the foundation first, then build upon it

Eager to maximize my time and improve my personal brand for this next iteration, I put the question to my new Phase 2 mentor, who thoroughly endorsed the advice my Phase 1 mentor had given me!

But it didn’t have to happen all at once, he said. His recommendation was to move forward with the personal brand I’d already developed, tweaking and reiterating and bolstering its reach, adding to it as I go.

And as I expand it to include more UX design work, the portfolio will naturally highlight these elements. As I continue to grow as a designer and gear my portfolio toward my capstone projects, I can then begin to slowly develop a design-specific brand for the future — which I can dedicate more time to developing if and when the time is right (definitely after UX Academy ends).

The key, as I’m finally starting to realize after three months of navigating rabbit holes and struggling over ambitious goals and ongoing distractions, is to not bite off more than I can chew.

My new motto: Take it one project at a time (and in smaller bites).

Until next week, happy designing (and personal branding)!

Looking for a change of careers?

Designlab’s UX Academy program offers rigorous curriculum, personalized mentor support, and a thriving, global student community. Ready to launch your new career as a UX designer? Get all the details here.

Check out UX Academy

This post was originally published on the Designlab Blog. You can follow the whole series here.

Check out some of the other stuff I do!

UX Academy Journey—Week 14: Ten Years of Personal Branding on the Wayback Machine was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hey there, design reader!

Last week we were discussing how a nice break from work does wonders for your mental state (and your productivity, once you’re back at it!) Let’s pick up right where we left off — exploring how folding UX design principles back into my other work has led to accelerating returns.

Ready? Set… Let’s go!

How user testing adds value to projects

Lately I’ve been approaching my existing client work from the perspective of a seasoned UX designer (well, a newbie half-faking it and learning as I go) — and I’ve noticed that both my processes and my work deliverables have vastly improved.

My marketing copy is cleaner, leaner, and more intentional (thanks, microcopy!). Visual designs are formed deliberately around planned information architecture, rather than responding directly to an amorphous idea from the client. And final products are the result of round of feedback, revision, and improvement.

In the case of my freelance book client (the financial advisor publishing the part-memoir, part-wealth management instruction manual we discussed last week), the book, being part financial “how to” guide, is supported by a number of activities and workbook materials that supplement the text.

They give the reader a bit of at-home curriculum to work through, and apply to their own financial investment plan. As project manager, I took it upon myself to design and refine that content through a user testing process.

My client had no idea what “user testing” meant when I first suggested it. But observing just a few potential readers actually go through the financial planning tasks he’d created highlighted a number of pain points. For example, the instructions could be clearer (especially for readers unfamiliar with the financial industry), and the fiscal examples could be more realistic and relatable.

It only took a handful of tests to get these insights — they were all conducted in just one day, and at minimal cost to my client. His initial readers generously volunteered as participants, and the few hours I spent synthesizing and analyzing the data was the only additional billable item.

As a result of this process, we revised the materials, and the book will be able to reach a wider audience more effectively. And, after all, that is the overall goal of the book.

Oh, usability testing, you are a beautiful, generous goddess!

Design, Test, Repeat

While the book isn’t out yet, so I can’t share too many details about these supplemental materials, I cannot stress enough how vital user testing has been to pretty much every client project I’ve undertaken recently — not to mention my UX Academy coursework.

Just take a look at some of the results from my KAUS insurance project, which I had been working on for pretty much all of Phase 1.

I spent weeks laboring over the landing page design, futzing with the structural organization and prototype interactions, and even spending way too much time designing a custom logo animation (because, why not!). Yet, at the “end” of it all, I ran four user tests that revealed — you guessed it — some pretty obvious design flaws that I had entirely overlooked.

One irony here is that I’d put off doing my own user testing because I feared it would be difficult and labor intensive — when in fact, it turned out to be quite easy and surprisingly comprehensive. Clock that up to first-timer naiveté.

The truth is, a user test with just five participants will still uncover 85% of the issues within the tested UI. In fact, in most cases experts recommend testing more often with fewer users, rather than making more elaborate testing plans with large numbers of participants.

It hurt to see all those hours of work go into something that would ultimately change, but that is the iterative process — the whole point is that it changes, and for the better.

You can check out the current iteration of my prototype here — without the fancy animations because I couldn’t figure out (yet!) how to get InVision and Framer to play nicely together. The prototype is a work-in-progress after all, but it was improved massively by the insights gleaned from a simple round of testing.

The biggest lesson I learned here was not to be afraid of the user testing process — and in future projects to incorporate it earlier, and repeat it as often as possible.

3 Habits for Successful User Testing

Folding these techniques into my existing client base has catapulted my work — and the satisfaction of my clients — onward and upward. Just a few small adjustments have revolutionized the way I work, and these tweaks have naturally cut out the excruciating time suck of going round for round on a project where the client isn’t quite happy with the product, but doesn’t know quite why or how to express it.

My are my top three tips & tricks for successful user testing with clients:

1. Define the problem first. You know that excruciating time suck mentioned above? Oftentimes getting caught in the creative doldrums, especially when working with clients and stakeholders, is directly linked to a lack of clear definition of the problem at the start of the design process. We creative types love to get lost in research rabbit holes, and wax poetic about our creative wonderings — but it’s easy to slide from wondering to wallowing, without making any real progress. I’ve found that achieving a clear problem definition as early as possible in a project can help to avoid this creative cul-de-sac entirely, and instead light up a clear path ahead.
2. Create flexibility in the testing & implementation plan. Testing is essential. As designers, we all know that — but sometimes clients and stakeholders may not be as sold on the process. When you create a testing and implementation plan, remember to build flexibility into the proposal. Unfortunately, clients often look at cost first and results second. If you’re lucky enough to have a client who sees the value in robust testing, fantastic. If not, advocate for the process and explain its value, and present a range of testing plans that require different levels of investment. This approach should ensure that some level of testing is happening, and that you can avoid the burden of trying to design without the ability to test your work.
3. Test early, and as often as possible. Do as I say, not as I did! I feared the user testing and put it off. But by doing that I learned the value of building in user testing to the early stages of a project. Your design process will be more lean and more effective if you can get crucial insights from users before too much time and money has gone into the project. The last thing you want is for late-in-the-game user tests to indicate that you need to completely rebuild a design that the client is already wedded to. Even worse, suggesting user testing too late in the process, after the client has already invested a lot in the solution, may strain your relationship and make it harder to keep things professional.

Before we wrap things up for this week, I’ll leave you with some resources that helped me overcome my fears about user testing:

And with that, until next week, happy designing (AND TESTING)!

Looking for a change of careers?

Designlab’s UX Academy program offers rigorous curriculum, personalized mentor support, and a thriving, global student community. Ready to launch your new career as a UX designer? Get all the details here.

Check out UX Academy

This post was originally published on the Designlab Blog. You can follow the whole series here.

Check out some of the other stuff I do!

UX Academy Journey—Week 13: Why User Testing Is Everything was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hey there, design reader!

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post — did you miss me? I most certainly missed you!

In my last entry I was just about wrapped up with Phase 1 of my UX Academy Journey, and celebrated reaching the halfway mark (almost) by taking off for an entire week of dedicated “unplug and play” on a beautiful tropical island. Now I’m back, and ready to ramp up again for Phase 2. Shall we jump right in?

Relax, Reset, Repeat

Boy, time flies, especially when you’re on vacation — though, I must admit, it first appeared to slow to a halt the moment I turned off my screens and instead focused my attention on the non-digital, physical world around me. (Boredom is a good thing, I swear!)

It’s amazing how much good a little rest and relaxation will do, especially when you’re a workaholic, as I am (no shocker there). With the busy hustle and bustle of Phase 1 of UXA behind me, I took the opportunity to revel in a thorough brain-break.

What I found was, much to my surprise, abstaining from all things tech-related for several whole days actually deepened my understanding of UX design, its processes, and how I work best as a newbie (-ish) designer.

There’s even some solid neurological science supporting the idea that periods of rest, sleep, and full withdrawal from work are crucial for the consolidation of new knowledge — stepping back can actually heighten achievement.

Of course, that’s not why I did it — mainly it was for the tan and the mai tais — but enhanced cognition is certainly a perk.

Applying UX Design Tactics to Other Work

Remember back in week 7, when I discovered Atomic Design Methodology and it turned out to be a huge “aha” moment for me? Well that lesson, as it happens, turns out to be the gift that keeps on giving.

Being able to understand design simultaneously as a collection of individual elements, and as the sum of its parts, has changed the way I now see and approach pretty much everything — including assignments, work projects and everyday life stuff that on the surface seems to have nothing to do with UX design at all.

I’ve discussed before how UX design methodologies overlap with other lines of work, including my own background as a writer and journalist. The same is true for many industries, especially those in similar spaces — graphic design, architecture, industrial design… the list goes on and on.

One of the things I’ve noticed lately is that studying UX design, and starting to put it into practice, has also made me more efficient in my other work. I now have systems and processes in place to define tasks more clearly, iterate on ideas, and manage client expectations throughout the process.

For example, I have one client who has built a career on being a financial advocate and wealth consultant. A few months back, he completed work on a book — part memoir, part how-to guide (with the help of my writing-and-general-life-mentor and dear friend). Once the manuscript was complete, I was brought into the mix to work on some of the design elements.

I created a series of custom financial graphics to be included in his book (which, in fact, was also my first foray into using Sketch just before UX Academy started!), launched into designing the interior of the book, and worked to iterate on cover designs for the hardcover, paperback, and e-book editions.

Accelerating Returns

The project quickly expanded, and I now have a monthly retainer with the client to spearhead his book marketing and publicity — essentially working as a project manager for his launch. This required me to sit down and take a serious look at what his needs and goals are (defining the problem — aka “the brief”) and outline a clear plan of action. That included developing a research proposal, feature roadmap, and a series of other related project deliverables.

While I wasn’t designing the website myself, as the de facto project manager I was tasked with overseeing the design. In doing so, I put together a style guide to match the book jacket design, and even wireframed out what the website should look like in order to have optimal functionality for promotion purposes after the launch.

I have been doing book production work like this for years, but it never occurred to me until now that I could fold in elements of UX design and make myself that much more valuable — an asset for both my clients and for my own career development.

My clients don’t know they’re getting a UX designer (albeit a nascent one) for the price of a content writer/marketer and book designer — but they do see the increased value in what I’m delivering.

That, in turn, means I’ve been able to increase my rates and give myself the authority to handle my clients more confidently and assertively — less like a hired hand, and more like a consultant. And that, as any freelancers out there will agree, is sort of the dream when it comes to client work!

Next week, we’ll be picking up where we left off with this theme of applying newfound UX skills — I’ll be exploring how the principles of user testing, feedback and iteration have all enhanced not only the caliber of my coursework, but also the usability of my client’s book. See you then!

Looking for a change of careers?

Designlab’s UX Academy program offers rigorous curriculum, personalized mentor support, and a thriving, global student community. Ready to launch your new career as a UX designer? Get all the details here.

Check out UX Academy

This post was originally published on the Designlab Blog. You can follow the whole series here.

UX Academy Journey—Week 12: How I Learned To Stop Working And Embrace The Break was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hey there, design reader!

Welcome to week 11 (actually, more like week 12) of my UX Academy Journey — the halfway point! Huzzah! If you’re a fellow UXA student in the Weingart cohort, go ahead and give yourself a high-five. It’s been a long road and you deserve it! And if you’re in another cohort, or just an enthusiastic follower of these posts, also give yourself a high five for being awesome and supporting this journey with your readership. Thank you!

After three months of rigorous study, we students are given the chance to take a break week — and break I, for one, most certainly shall — before progressing to Phase 2 of the course and embarking on three back-to-back capstone projects.

In fact, I’m writing this from a plane 10,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean, somewhere midway between Seattle and Hawaii (I know, I know — I’m sorry, okay?). Though the first half of UXA isn’t technically over yet — week 13 has a reduced schedule of assignments based around synthesizing and debriefing the conclusion of our final Phase I project — my coursework is going to have to take a brief but complete back seat to some much needed (and well-earned, I might add) rest and relaxation.

Enter Maui: an island in an archipelago in a state I have still never been to (yet) and a commitment (to which my partner will most certainly hold me) to take a break and unplug for an entire glorious, mostly sun-kissed week. (Apparently the Seattle rain has decided to punish us for fleeing by following us for half our vacation — but still, I don’t care because HAWAII.)

But before I turn my phone off, dig my feet into the sand and work on systematically decluttering my mind of all of the UX design thoughts that have been taking up most of my internal bandwidth lately, I wanted to take this opportunity to reflect on the first half of this accelerated, rapid-fire design learning experience, and how it has forever changed me.

What follows is a combination of musings on the lessons — about both life and design — that I’ve taken from the first half of my coursework. There’s also a sprinkling of tips for anyone currently studying, or interested in pursuing this UX design path.

Here goes!

1. UX design is hard to explain, because it’s sort of everything

The funny thing about UX design is that most people outside the industry have no idea what it is. Try to explain it and they get even more confused. We’ve talked about this before — on the one hand, UX design is this amorphous, all-encompassing, ever-expanding space where magical things happen. But on the other hand, it’s also a lot of other, more concrete things: user research, prototyping, interaction design — you name it.

My guess is that the definition of UX design will keep evolving until humanity eventually reaches a point of such technological advancement that we cease to occupy physical space (we’re talking millions of years in the future here people — I’m an optimist, see). Until then, UX design will continue to attract those of us who are simply fascinated with the multitude of possibilities it presents.

So buckle up and get ready for a lot of labored explanations to your relatives about what it is that you actually do.

2. Learning is hard, but only at first

Before I started UX Academy, it had been nearly a decade since I was enrolled in any sort of school or structured educational program. Most of my training has been on the job, and due to this, it was spotty at best, or so focused on a single task that it didn’t really provide any lasting skills development.

So yes, committing to some formal UX design education, especially in a fast-paced intensive setting, was definitely a bit intimidating. At first. But I’ve been drinking from that UX design firehose for twelve (and a half (ish)) weeks now. I’ve taken on board gallons of new knowledge, and as Phase 1 comes to a close, the tap has started to slow.

The first time I designed a landing page it was clashing, cluttered, and conceptually chaotic. The first time I wireframed, I wondered if I was doing it right. The first time I made a site map, I nearly pulled my hair out in frustration.

But the next time, it got easier.

3. Letting go of expectations will make it easier

Now, dropping a bucket down to fetch some magical UX water from that well is no work at all. In fact, I find myself doing it daily, applying the lessons from the past three months in my current part-time work (which has nothing to do with UX design, just so you know). And the more I learn, the more I see that the well is constantly refilling with new things to discover.

Traditional learning environments focus quite a bit of energy on the right/wrong dichotomy, which won’t serve you well in the world of UX design where there is rarely (if ever) a strictly correct or incorrect way of doing things.

This “middleness” of UX design is something I’ve taken to musing quite a bit about these past few months. It took me ages to let go of the idea that I was somehow missing the mark — doing it wrong. Even after every lesson, every group discussion, every mentor session had reinforced this new, iterative, collaborative way of thinking and working, I still insisted to myself that I was somehow failing, missing the mark, or just not “getting it”.

I’m realizing now that this was, of course, total baloney.

Don’t be me. Don’t make it hard on yourself. Let go, open your mind, and take it all in.

4. Experimenting with your passions sweetens the payoff

There’s this magical thing that happens when you get the chance to apply UX design methods to projects you have a particular passion for: the work is better, more satisfying, and higher quality than when you’re not fully invested, or just going through the motions for an assignment.

For example, I spent an entire Saturday learning how to animate a logo for my latest project in Framer, which is a code-heavy design prototyping platform (can you say CoffeeScript?).

I am not a programmer, or developer. I do not know code. The minimal HTML and CSS I taught myself a decade ago breaking apart and customizing Wordpress themes — a “hack service” I offered to clients who needed a website but couldn’t afford a professional designer — was long outdated.

But, after a two-hour Skype tutorial with an expert Framer designer (thanks Patrick!) I was able to apply what I’d learned to create this fun, interactive (and quite impressive, if I do say so myself) little animation.

Sure, I didn’t have enough time left to convert my entire InVision prototype to Framer so that the other funky animations I added in could be live in high fidelity. And sure, I spent the entire next day trying to make Sketch, InVision, and Framer play nice together so the GIF could appear on hover in its existing InVision iteration — another attempted hack that so did not work. But it sure was fun.

And learning what doesn’t work can be just as important as learning what does. Was this really how I should have been allocating my time when I had a high fidelity prototype to complete and user tests to conduct? Probably not. But was it time well spent? Absolutely!

If nothing more I discovered that I love animation — something I never would have found out or even attempted had my Group Crit facilitator not suggested I give Framer a whirl a few weeks back (thanks Robbin!).

5. All work and no play makes a for an unhappy designer experience

It goes without saying that, in any focused endeavor, a little legwork is required — especially when you’re transitioning into a new and unfamiliar career with a steep and technology based learning curve.

But I will say that — just as in life — finding a balance between work and play is paramount. In the early weeks of Phase 1, I would often find myself working long into the night, depriving myself of sleep, exercise, social engagements, even Netflix sessions with my (very patient) partner (thanks Jordan!).

Looking back, I can confidently say that pushing myself to work longer only made the process harder on my body and mind. About six weeks in, I adopted a new approach: “stop and turn in when your eyes are so strained you can’t see whether you’re done or not”. And, of course, the benefits were immediate.

Instead of waking up tired and frantic the next day, unhappy with the work I’d forced myself to complete through fatigue, I’d wake up refreshed — and the solution to whatever design problem I had been trying to solve was far easier to find from a rested, balanced state.

So with the importance of balance in mind, I’m signing off for a couple of weeks. I won’t be checking my email, or Slack, or Twitter, and definitely not Facebook. For the next seven days I am foregoing all the screens I’ve grown to love and rely on so much.

When I get back, I’ll be jumping into Phase II revitalized and, hopefully, with a bit of a tan — ready to jump into some new projects, consolidate everything I’ve learned so far, and write up that Framer tutorial I promised you last week.

Whether you’re a fellow UXA student, working designer, or UX design fan, I encourage you to find some time to “unplug and play” as well!

Until next time, happy designing!

Looking for a change of careers?

Designlab’s UX Academy program offers rigorous curriculum, personalized mentor support, and a thriving, global student community. Ready to launch your new career as a UX designer? Get all the details here.

Check out UX Academy

This post was originally published on the Designlab Blog. You can follow the whole series here.

UX Academy Journey — Week 11: Design and Life Lessons at the UX Academy Halfway Mark was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.