15 Things I Learned in My First Semester of UX School

Last fall, I began a 2-year program to earn a Master of Science in User Experience and Interaction Design at Jefferson University (formerly PhilaU).

I’m now beginning my second semester, so I thought it would be a good time to collect my thoughts on what I actually learned throughout those first 4 months/3 classes/9 credits of UX schooling. There are obviously a lot more than 15 take-aways, but these are some of the biggies.

1. There’s no one, clear, accepted definition for UX.
   One of the first papers we read was basically 12 pages leading up to this: “No generally accepted overall measure of UX exists.” (http://www.allaboutux.org/files/UX-WhitePaper.pdf) The field is so new that people are still using “UX” in a lot of ways, sometimes incorrectly in place of things like “interface design” or even just “visual design.” But the lack of a solid definition makes this a really exciting time to be sinking my teeth into the field since we have a chance to really shape the future. (I currently define UX design as the practice and methods used to create human-friendly technology. I do think UX is primarily used for digital applications, but I also think the principles easily apply to other endeavors such as service design.)
2. UX design utilizes a really handy set of vocabulary.
   These terms and ideas have been crucial during collaborative design processes and in honing better experiences: affordances, discoverability, signifiers, mapping, feedback, conceptual models, constraints, etc.
3. People come to UX from a lot of backgrounds.
   Just in our class, we have students who have studied and worked in fields such as business, architecture, graphic design, writing and communication, marketing, video game design, industrial design, fashion, dance, and more. (We’re also privileged to have students coming from all over the world and various parts of the United States, too.)
4. So, not surprisingly, UX borrows great design techniques from various disciplines.
   Methods such as prototyping, storyboards, ethnographic studies, sketching, and more are used throughout the UX design process.
5. Research is crucial in UX.
   You can’t design a good user experience without getting feedback from your actual audience. Things like user testing, interviews, surveys, and fly-on-the-wall observations are used to accomplish this. Then comes the step of synthesizing those findings into actionable ideas. (Cue the post-its.)
6. But, being able to successfully present your ideas is just as, if not more, important.
   In fact, our research class felt more like an ongoing presentation and public speaking club at times. Every few weeks we had to present our projects in 5 minutes or less, which is a lot harder than it sounds. (I may be overly critical, but I really think my group’s final presentation in that class was maybe the only actually pretty good presentation I’ve ever given.)
7. Evernote doesn’t suck.
   For some reason, I thought it did. Thanks to suggestions from some of my Facebook friends, I gave the note-taking app another try and ended up using it all semester for recording and aggregating my notes. Thanks, friends. (And sorry I ever doubted you, Evernote.)
8. Google Docs is still awesome.
   I never doubted it for a second, but Google Drive still provides some of the best tools for group collaboration you can find. The group projects in which we embraced a shared folder early on generally went much more smoothly. And, of course, it’s super free.
9. Reflecting on my notes and readings is really helpful.
   I tried to make time to transcribe my book highlights and written notes into Evernote within a week or so of each lesson. I wasn’t always successful in doing so, but when I did my retention was a million times improved.
10. Bootstrap is awesome. It’s like a shortcut for web design. AKA the secret toolkit web developers have had for years but schmucks like me never got to know about. (Thanks for the enlightenment, Tony.) Oh, and Bootstrap is also super free.
11. jQuery is hard.
    But, it’s way better than Javascript. (And Try jQuery makes it a lot more accessible.)
12. Making a responsive website really is NOT that hard.
    There aren’t really any acceptable excuses for having a non-mobile-friendly site anymore.
13. Don Norman hates bad doors.
    I spent a lot of time reading (and re-reading) and reflecting on Don Norman’s essential tome, The Design of Everyday Things. If you read and take nothing else away from this book (which would be impossible), the one thing you’ll remember is how poorly designed our world’s doors tend to be. He also offers ideas on how simple things like better handles can prevent all those awkward moments where you try to push a pull-door (and vice versa). It may sound simple, but the lessons from poor door design apply to just about every other interaction you might design, physical or otherwise.
14. I hate microwaves.
    Okay, not all microwaves, just the ones that make no sense. And yes, I definitely have Mr. Norman to thank for helping me put words to this issue of mine.(I wrote a whole thing deconstructing a confusing panel of buttons and offering a solution, if you’re interested.)
15. The best SEO isn’t that different from UX.
    I work at a company called FourFront specializing in search engine optimization. Our approach to increasing website visibility on search engines utilizes things like custom tools, machine learning and more, but one of the main objectives is pretty simple: give people the information they’re looking for, and Google will reward you. At the end of the day, this means optimizing the user’s experience on your website through providing great content in a format that’s easy to navigate and consume. And that’s pretty cool!

The Bad-Door Hater’s Bible. (http://a.co/bt6aMDS)