Where I truly learnt UX (before the actual practice)
(This article was originally published in August 2013 on my blog that I just deleted)
Finding resources about UX is easy. There are lots of articles on the web. A FR**KING LOT!
This is why it’s rather easy to obtain answers to most of the questions you might have. There’ll always be some dude who’s gonna explain you the advantages and drawbacks of some technique he’s learnt to adopt along the years. (Amongst the must-read, you’ll find: Smashingmagazine, UXmatters,UXmastery, MeasuringUsability and UserFocus. Subscribe to their RSS feed, now!).
However, what’s way harder to find is:
- where can you have a clear overview of the flow to follow while keeping a user-centered approach in mind ?
- also, where can you get a detailed explanations of “how to use this specific technique without writing it in a book of 744 pages” (yes, I’m looking at you,John Pruitt ! ಠ_ಠ ).
In the meanwhile, you’ll always hear the same basic advices :
“Keep the end user’s goals in mind and use your empathy”,
“Observe what the users do, not what they say”,
“Get out of the building and test your hypotheses”,
“Share your knowledge with the team and involve them in the process of research”,
“Use personas”,
“Use objective measurements and data”,
“Do iterative design”,
“Use paper prototype because touching a soft sheet of white paper will unconsciously reenact the warm feeling you got when you hugged a furry kitty for the first time”,
“blablabla…”
(I just saved you dozens of hours of reading within 8 short sentences. “Thanks” who ?)
Well, how difficult can it be ? Seems like I don’t really need to dig further. After all, in my case, I possess a master in Psychology. This is basically what I’ve been educated for ! Easy!
Not so fast…
Having a clear overview of which tools and methods to use (and how) is harder than it seems.
I’ve always had difficulties to know what to do or what to propose to my colleagues when I see they’re in trouble with the design of their products. When it came to know how to talk about UX major principles, hell yeah, I’d make you believe that my brain has a built-in fMRI that can’t stop screening other people’s brains ’cause that’s what I’ve been on earth for. But when it comes to actually plan and do something about a design issue, I actually freeze. This is quite of a bummer…
However, a miracle recently happened and gave me the courage, tools and directions I needed (well, many of them at least…) !
After having discovered the awesome UXmastery blog, they’ve mentioned several times the course of David Travis (from UserFocus) : User Experience — The Ultimate Guide to Usability. His course covered most of the things I already knew, and yet, it put some clarity in all this messy mind of mine.
If you decide to take this course, you will follow a user-centered general approach (based on ISO-9241) that allows you to tackle a project at any stage of development. You’ll have a pretty good sense of what you should start worrying about at that moment. In my case, I could also finally see some real examples of how research is done. (Reading papers is nice, but seeing someone doing it is better. There’s no secret, that’s a cognitive legacy from our cavemen ancestors. Damn you, evolution !).
However, I’m still rather unfulfilled with the information architecture chapter which hasn’t gone in depth enough, in my opinion (how do you handle an expert system like an intranet, for instance ? This is way more complex to me than organizing a “simple” e-commerce website). I’ve also always struggled to understand the true and practical advantages to run, spend time, reporting and reacting to heuristic evaluations… But if those topics don’t concern you (or even if they do!), don’t worry. David made clear that he’s been continuously working on improving his course. So I’ll continue keeping an eye on the future updates too.
All I need now is practice, practice, coffee, and more practice. The huge advantage is that I’ll always have the possibility to ask David more questions, while I’m trying to follow his advices and working on my own projects, or the ones from the company I’m working for. He’s always had the right wise words and replies to every comments within 24h. Being able to get direct feedback from your Professor is a true luxury. I wish I had more course setups like that back at the University…
And finally, and the end of the course, you’ll have the opportunity to receive weekly reminders of what you’ve learnt and how to apply it with your current projects, now that you have a better overview. Isn’t it sweet ?
Hopefully, this will boost my company’s will to actually invest in UX… If not, there’s no employer amongst you willing to invite me to his pool parties ? :-)
(Update: I now work full-time as a User Experience researcher. I will never thank David Travis enough for all his great advices and wise words)
