A recent recruit to Blonde; Jamie Adams-Hylands isn’t just a top-notch UX Designer, he’s also very much a been there, done that, Threadless did a T-shirt about it kind of guy. (I would have used the word ‘Polymath’, but wasn’t sure I’d spell it correctly.)

Over a cuppa recently, your intrepid reporter probed a bit further into Jamie’s background:

Intrepid Reporter: I’m told you originally planned to be a Therapeutic Radiographer ;- What else is in your background pre- Blonde?

JA-H: Planned is perhaps a misnomer. If Churchill really did say, “My education was interrupted only by my schooling” then I would have to agree. The Radiography course was the first of several attempts to force a ‘square peg into a round hole’ which ultimately failed. What emerged in its place was the desire to pursue a career in Rock n’ Roll and for that I needed to learn how to build myself a website. The rest is I guess is history.

Intrepid Reporter: What are the qualities of a good UX’er?

JA-H: With such a wide and varied group of people involved in the industry it is hard to define what makes a great UX’er. Typically I would say you have to really love what you do. The process of taking a lean UX concept from sketch to launch can be frustrating as often decisions are made that make the project less user-centric and you have to be the voice of reason on behalf of the end user. This could be an office worker trying to find when the last bus home is while on poor quality 3G or the researcher who needs to find the source of a citation quickly in a document library of 1000 papers. I take that responsibility seriously and don’t mind a good heated debate along the way to ensure it happens.

Intrepid Reporter: What advice would you give anyone looking for a career in UX?

JA-H: Training for a career in UX is like trying to hit a moving target. As soon as you set out to build your career the tiniest evolution in technology or behaviour will alter everything you think you knew. Ethan Marcotte’s now seminal work, ‘Responsive Web Design’ was a great example of this. Suddenly you had this evolution in how we planned and built websites and now almost four years since it was launched, many companies, agencies included are struggling to catch up.

Practical advice for anyone who wants to get involved? Build and ship something. Then do it again. Find out what its like to take your own project from design through development and out the other side. You will find developers are much more appreciative of your designs when they know you spend your free time pouring over the finer points of PHP syntax plus your UX work will be all the better for it.

Intrepid Reporter: How would you expect the skills-sets of UX professionals, and of course the wider area of Web Design evolve/change over the next 5 years?

JA-H: For the most part — reactive. I would expect that those who succeed are the ones who have the ability to move between technologies and languages when the need arises. Five years ago anyone with ActionScript was in hot demand but it has been a long time since I have seen a vacancy requiring anyone with those particular skills to apply.

Intrepid Reporter: Who do you respect/keep a professional eye on in the global UX and web design community?

JA-H: I have a wealth of bookmarked sites that I like to skim every week to stay on top of what the industry is up to but if I was to create a wish list then I would love to find a website that collated all of the findings of Usability studies worldwide in a beautiful and user-friendly way. If I get some time at the weekend maybe I’ll build one.

Intrepid Reporter: Can you give us a few examples of websites that get it right, and rock your world?

JA-H: Aside from being a Blonde client, I love the fact that a world-leading tech company like Skyscanner is based right here in Edinburgh. That is a hugely powerful symbol to the rest of the world that we can build and sustain digital innovation in the UK outside of London.

Intrepid Reporter: What 2 or 3 usability or user experience design books would you recommend

JA-H: Generally speaking I leave most of my offline reading to non-digital subjects. Although life with a one year old doesn’t leave a lot of spare time I generally devour anything by writers like Malcolm Gladwell, Seth Godin and Ken Robinson although my most recent recommendation is ‘Triumph of the City’ by Edward Glaeser. A great read about society and technology through the prism of the modern City.

Intrepid Reporter: What do you least like about your job?

JA-H: That’s easy. It is the frustrating minutes and hours that you grind through on a new project before the concept or architecture ‘clicks’ and everything begins to fall into place. I think of it much like a game of Solitaire where you think your hand may be impossible but then the card you need turns up and suddenly it becomes a much more enjoyable process.

Intrepid Reporter: You’re a lover of ‘disruptive tech, I believe. Can you give us some examples?

JA-H: I have been involved in the music industry for more years than I can remember and still class the launch of Napster as the greatest industry innovation since the invention of the transistor radio. What the media and major companies didn’t realise was that guys like Shawn Fanning imagined a world where the demand for music was out-stripping the tightly controlled supply from retailers and labels and they built what they believed was a solution to that problem. Although in practice it raised copyright and piracy concerns it was the precursor to all of the amazing platforms that we have now like Spotify, Netflix and Amazon Video. Unfortunately cognitive dissonance is stopping more musicians from embracing digital technology as a new way of life.

Intrepid Reporter: What interests you outside of your UX and Design world?

JA-H: I am also a qualified Personal Trainer as is my wife so we are heavily into health and wellbeing, especially the growing Plant-based movement championed by people like T. Colin Campbell, the Esselstyn family, Rich Roll and many others. In the past I have also competed in quite a few endurance events like sprint triathlons as well as a Marathon over the Mourne Mountains in Northern Ireland. I thought I had left that period behind me but I keep getting an urge to sign up for an Ironman Triathlon. Maybe next year. We’ll see.