I tried to figure out who to speak to about this, either at Party City or at the suppliers of the devices in question (Bluebird Corp), but had no luck. Now that I’ve had some time away from that job, I thought I would finish writing up the problems I saw and experienced, along with proposing solutions when I have them.

There were a few different problems.

1. The touch targets on most of the touch screens were far too small, even for my petite fingers.
2. The text on the touch screens was too small for the distance at which a cashier was typically standing.
3. Some of the screens looked very similar, but the same actions that were correct at one would crash the program at another screen.
4. Cashiers were to ask customers for their email addresses, but there was no way for the customers to know if cashiers mistyped something.
5. The credit/debit card reader’s behavior at various points was very confusing and counter-intuitive.
6. Finally — and much less frequently relevant — the interface to access internal tools and websites was very poorly laid out.

Touch targets

Register — lock screen

Here you can see the screen view that a cashier saw when they left a currently logged-in register and it locked.

Now you can see the size of my — fairly petite — pointer finger as compared to the login touch targets. I did intentionally show all of my finger rather than just the pointer just so that it was clearer how much of a difference in size there was.

Many of the other employees had larger fingers, and most were much less computer and touchscreen-literate than I. The store owner basically never managed to hit the password field without stabbing the screen 3 or 4 times, and never remembered that he could use “tab” after he’d filled in his username to get to the password field.

I’m familiar with various tricks to make hitting small touch targets easier (resting my other fingers on the edge of the screen, for example), but I still sometimes missed. Less so for login, and more so for selecting an item’s count to change it. I’ll show that shortly.

Register screen — unlocked and with a transaction

Once a cashier had logged into the register, they were prompted to fill in customer info, as per above.

Once they had either entered a customer’s information (which was itself problematic and will be discussed below) or cancelled out of that popup, they could access the options at the bottom of the screen and behind the popup — see below.

Here you can see what it looked like when an item was scanned.

Continuing with the theme, you can see the difference between the size of the target for the quantity field and the tip of my (fairly petite) finger.

When trying to touch the quantity field, it is clear that the size of my finger vastly dwarfed the size of the field. It was impossible to tell if one had actually hit the place one was aiming for (for reference, once I lifted my finger after the photo above, I had not managed to select that field).

You may also notice that I was resting other fingers on the edge of the screen so that I had a better chance of hitting where I was aiming.

Register Screen — UPC field

Next was one of the most commonly used touch targets after login: the UPC field.

The software on all but one of the registers didn’t realize that if a scanner was used, it should put detected information into the UPC field.

As a result, if one had just adjusted the count of something as per above or by using the Qty field to the right of the UPC field, scanning something would try to put the UPC code into that field. Which rightly complained that it wasn’t a valid quantity, but the software should have known this belonged in the UPC field.

See how much bigger the tip of my finger is than the field?

IPod ‘scan gun’

One of the internal tools was an iPod with tiny touch targets.

It was used for a number of different things, including the printing of sticker labels for various uses. The one that a cashier would most often be performing was that of printing out sample balloon labels: 1) a sticker on a display balloon with a price & short code for requesting the balloon, and 2) the same short code plus the UPC to label the container for the balloon in question.

This touch target was even worse than the register screen — my finger looks gigantic here. The “label #” section was used to specify the size of the sticker to be printed, so the name was very misleading. Given that the size varied depending on if it went on a balloon or on the container that balloons are stored in, one typically needed to adjust it when requesting a sticker label. One also had to remember which number was relevant for a particular sticker type — there was no way to select the use and have the software know what size you need.

There were other areas that were too small, including the menu to select which option one needed at that point in time. I do not have a photo of that, however.

Summary

I think it’s pretty clear here that the touch targets were simply too small. There’s a number of different guidelines on how to appropriately size touch targets for typical touch screen use, none of which seem to have been followed.

Additionally, due to a wide range of skill-set and familiarity, and the typical distance at which a cashier stands, I would bet that we would need even larger touch targets in a point of sales situation compared to most touch screen situations.

Text Size

The text was too small for the distance at which cashiers tended to stand. I was unable to easily explain this distance in a text-and-photos post, and the photos and this section are my best attempt.

In many cases, reading the text at this distance was tolerable, but not ideal. Most notably, if it was something that one was going to see frequently (like the ‘who is the customer’ screen — more visible in the next photo), then the lack of precise clarity was still sufficient.

However, one of the many tasks was to read back an email address to make sure that we had not made mistakes.

I always found myself getting very close to the screen to make sure that I was reading things correctly. This contributed to preventable back and shoulder pain in the cashiers.

I suspect that this was as much about the font type as the text size, but regardless it was not good. I was typically unable to tell the difference between a ‘rn’ and an ‘m’, and ‘l’ and ‘i’ were also far too similar.

I’m not sure what the solution here is, as I do not know enough to choose a good font or text size to read quickly at a distance. I believe that research on this should happen (if it does not already exist for point of sales situations) with people of varying ages, since near vision is one of the first things to go as you age.

Similar screens, wildly different behaviors

This photo shows the view of a logged-in register. I used it earlier to show what a cashier saw before they entered — or skipped entering— customer information.

I am including it here to show the difference between this and a register that has not been logged into. Specifically, you can see a pop-up with a red bar on top, stuff in the middle, and a cancel button off to the right. There is also a bunch of background actions and information visible at this point.

When you hit cancel in this view, you had access to all the buttons and actions behind that pop-up, as well as access to keystroke-based actions (such as the all-important time clock).

Here you can see what the screen looked like on a register that no one had logged into. Just like a register that someone has logged into, you had a pop up with a red bar on top, stuff in the middle, and a cancel button off to the right. Additionally, the background information was exactly the same as for a logged-in register, which implied that it should be just as accessible as before.

Unfortunately, in this instance, ‘cancel’ did not give you access to the buttons and keystroke actions. Instead, it crashed the program.

It is true that the available actions at this screen were not precisely the same as for when one was logged in. For example, there was a time clock button here, as well as two other buttons. However, if one had gotten used to hitting cancel to get at useful actions — as I certainly found myself doing constantly as a cashier — it was hard to remember that it was dangerous to do in this very similar view.

Proposed Solutions

I suggest hiding all the things that one couldn’t access anyway (maybe use a blank or dimmed background behind this pop-up). The line on the bottom showing the register info likely needs to remain visible, however.

I would also recommend either 1) prevent a software crash on cancel and instead provide access to the underlying buttons and keystroke actions or 2) remove cancel altogether.

Email addresses

Here you can see the interface for looking up a customer and adding a new one to the system. You could enter any of email, phone, last name, or party ID.

It was strange that these had the same implied importance in terms of visual hierarchy. I never had someone give me a party ID, and only used organization/last name when someone couldn’t remember which email address or phone number they had used for their account.

Email was the most commonly used identifier, but the customer had no way to see what I typed for their email address. While it’s true that I could repeat it back to them — and tended to do so — entering in an email address and repeating it back takes a lot of time.

Additionally, when it was especially busy it also tended to be loud, which meant that it was easy to have made a mistake even after repeating the address back. When a customer indicated that they had an account (usually because they had a discount of some sort), there was a better chance of finding and fixing a mistake because the system told you when an account didn’t already exist.

Finally, for emails with unusual spellings or which used names that I was less familiar with, the text size problem mentioned above made it harder and slower to read back the email to the customer.

Proposed Solution

Ideally, the screen on which they could see their items and pay for them with a card or other electronic form of payment would let them see what was typed. Better yet, let people type the email address themselves — it’s a touchscreen card reader, so why not add in a keyboard interface for this part?

It would be really handy if existing emails would offer an auto-complete for existing customer matches before one has finished typing. It would also help a lot with the speed of entering these addresses if there were common endings available to auto-complete, such as gmail.com, verizon.net, comcast.net, and yahoo.com.

Duplications and forced customer data editing

After you told the system to do a search (in this case, on my account), it displayed a list of matches. You had to chose even when there was only one match. Email addresses and phone numbers — the two most common ways to find a customer — are by their very nature unique. There should be no need to select an account if there is a single match.

There was also no way to remove duplicates or merge based on name, email, or phone number. Additionally, if one’s name was later in the alphabet than the default name (the store number), the correct one was after the default one and thus took more time and effort to get to it.

Even after selecting an entry, about half the time the system wanted you to take the time to fill in additional information. I’m not sure what bits of information were necessary to allow one to skip having this screen appear. I would have thought that name and email or phone number would have been sufficient, but this did not appear to be the case.

If the minimum requirement for skipping this was the postal address, this makes no sense for an in-person transaction. It interrupted the flow of normal actions and often meant that I accidentally scanned an item while in this screen. Scanned items tended to take the place of a phone number or email address, which then required one to ask the customer to repeat it again to fix it. For some reason, there was no undo (not even CTRL Z using the keyboard worked).

Worse yet, if one was dealing with an account with a postal address, there was a good chance that the system would ask you to select a state. The thing is, in every single case I’d seen this happen, the system already had a zip code. It should have been able to fill this in itself.

When one finally got past these screens, the normal screen for scanning items had a code in the “customer info” field immediately below the empty list of scanned items.

If one realized that they needed to edit customer information at this point, one was brought back to the initial — empty — email address request screen. If you made a mistake or you needed to add a particular kind of discount to the account (such as organizational or military), you had to request the info again. This was frustrating and time-consuming for no good reason.

When one finished the transaction and asked the customer if they would like their receipt to their email, editing the email field to correct a mistake only worked if the customer did not already have an account with the correct email. You couldn’t tell the system that you meant that customer in the first place, and the other email was a mistake.

Confusing card reader

The interface for entering a PIN for a debit card (for which I unfortunately do not have a photo) included a green button that everyone tried to select to continue. Unfortunately, clicking on it treated your card as a credit card instead of debit, and asked you to sign instead of enter a PIN.

Similarly, when you got to the screen above, it looked like you needed to select a payment type. However, as soon as you put a card in, it auto-detected it. It only needed you to select a card type if it couldn’t detect it. Almost every customer I had tried to select a type at this point — entirely needlessly.

Internal Party City page

Finally, the list of actions on the internal party city page was really difficult to distinguish and select from . Everything looked the same, were too close together, and were in no useful order. While there was an order, alphabetical was not a particularly useful order with this many options.

For those of us who were not in management, the one we typically needed to select was “Party School” — number 24 — which is kind of in the middle of the pile of options.

Anytime I saw anyone using this screen, significant amounts of time was spent trying to find the correct selection.

Summary

There were a number of problems with the interfaces that cashiers were using on a regular basis, most of which contributed to fatigue, frustration, and pain due to the actions required to accommodate those problems.

Whether relating to frustration when trying to tap on something, difficulty reading what was on the screen from the most ergonomic distance from the register, or the system behaving as if it needed information from the cashiers or the customers that was not actually required, there were a number of things that I believe could be improved to help those who work there now and in the future.

Time lost to actions that should be easier to perform or are entirely unnecessary is a waste of everyone’s time regardless of how much they are being paid — especially during the busiest times like those leading up to Halloween or graduation.

I wish I had been able to figure out who to send this to while I was still working there, but at least writing this up helped me be a bit less frustrated about it. I wrote most of this while I was still there, but tidied it up for publishing just now.

Contract work

I am back to job hunting after a 6 month contract at a local Business to Business (B2B) Real-Time Location System (RTLS) startup. The position was not a great fit for my skillset, as it was astonishingly difficult to get access to customers and users and I was the only UX person there. There were other problems, too, but those were the two major ones.

That said, it was hugely helpful to be able to do full-time UX work at an actual company rather than on my own or with friends. I am much more confident in my skills than I was, and have slightly increased my visual design (in PowerPoint because that’s what the person doing UI work used) skills. I am also more able to explain why I do what I do. I got to explore the complications of B2B and lack of access to users, including using alignment personas. Still prefer to have access to users, though, since I am a researcher more than a designer!

Sadly, due to NDA, I cannot include what I did here in my portfolio. I knew this going in, but it’s still frustrating!

Job Hunting

GitLab

I got really close to a job offer from GitLab, where I’ve been volunteering. They are awesome people, but alas they went with someone else who had more experience. I suspect that I was their second choice, based purely on the timing of what happened when. I’m going to keep volunteering with them, having finally finished entering all the issues I found while helping with their accessibility Voluntary Product Assessment Template (VPAT) for which I got MVP.

InterSystems

I also got close to a position at a local healthcare company called InterSystems, but someone else was a better fit. They were pretty nifty people, although I did like GitLab better. I suspect that I may have been a second choice here, also, although I’m less certain than with GitLab.

BookBub

I have a call tomorrow with BookBub about a researcher position. I tried to figure out how big a team they have online and had a great deal of trouble locating information, so that will be part of what I find out tomorrow! I do know that I will be speaking with their head of design, and figure that there are probably other UX folks simply because researchers tend not to be brought in first. Honestly, even one other UX person — which the head of design clearly is — would be a huge improvement over the contract position and most of my existing work.

On the plus and interesting side, when they asked about availability they also mentioned their interest in making the interview as pleasant as possible. So I took the chance and asked if it was possible to have a video chat rather than a phone call because it’s much easier to have a good conversation if I can see who I speak to. This is especially the case given how little information is available through cell phones as compared to landlines. Pleasantly, they are happy to do a video chat! I shall have to remember to ask future interviewers if that is an option, because it does make a huge difference for me.

Looks like an interesting business concept and I’m an avid reader which… may or may not be good given that one wants to not forget that one is not the only or even ideal user as a researcher. Mind you, I do love interacting with users and learning what they need as well as finding out how well our design ideas work, so most probably I won’t fall into (or at least stay in?) that particular design trap.

Visual Design

When I was commenting on my desire to have a stronger sense of visual/graphic design the main UX guy at InterSystems specifically mentioned Robin Williams’ “The Non-Designer’s Design Book”, so I’m definitely going to play around with that one more.

I’ve also got a book by someone from UX Mastery, Rachel Reveley’s “Learn Graphic Design (Page by Page)”, so I’ll be playing with both books in the short term. I may end up a researcher, but it would be really useful to feel slightly less flaily about graphic design.

I did find it fascinating while at the company I contracted at that while I feel less certain about knowing how to make something look pretty, I definitely know how to make it more consistent and some basic theory about appearance once someone else has translated my low-fidelity design to something higher fidelity.

Volunteering

As I mentioned above, I plan to continue volunteering with GitLab, in part because they are, by far, the best experience I have had UX-based volunteering so far. Perhaps because everyone is remote, they are _very_ clear and transparent about stuff. They also respond pretty quickly to requests for clarification and information, which has not been the case at other places that I’ve tried to volunteer. When I asked if they wanted research help, the head of the research team was shocked — sounds like usually people want to do visual design, not research.

Hopefully I will be able to get experience on one of the two things about which I got feedback for missing: lacking in experience applying generative research techniques in the real world. I’ve asked about helping with that, and should hear back from their newly hired senior UX researchers once they have their feet under them and have something to include me in. The other thing I didn’t do enough of was ask questions: this is complex when there is a lot of information available about GitLab online! Nest time I’ll look at the past and pending research to see if there is anything that grabs my interest to ask about.

But, if you are interested in volunteering for GitLab, the term is actually ‘contribute’ not ‘volunteer’, and you can see more about that at their Contribute to GitLab page. If you are looking to help with research specifically, things get more complicated. I asked about research help during a public online meeting about the UX team and I’m not sure when another might be.

That was an interesting question, especially given that it’s difficult to say what that actually means. For example: If I don’t have to earn money, does that mean I’m able to do things that are more expensive than everyday things? Can I travel?

I decided to interpret it as if I had enough to be comfortable. For me, that includes at least some travel.

Season Matters

The first thing that came to mind with this was the significant difference in my mental state in winter and summer. I’m functional in winter (seasonal depression and insomnia are treated, but not completely countered). I’m good in summer — even with the insomnia, since it’s better with enough light.

So, ideally, I’d be doing something that feeds my soul (so to speak) in winter, and feeds my curiosity and enthusiasm and need for people in summer.

Winter

Having just returned from a week in Florida to visit my parents, I think that I would want to spend at least some of the winter somewhere with sun. I’m so much more… awake. Aware. Happy. Human. It’ll fade, since it still is February in Boston, but it’s such a strong reminder. I think Florida winter light may be better (stronger? More direct?) than Boston summer light.

So maybe in winter , I’d go somewhere bright for a few weeks to a month. And, overlapping or not, something involving animals. Whether it be spending time with lonely shelter animals, or helping out at a zoo or sanctuary, I find that doing something involving animals helps feed me in ways that help counteract the lack of light.

Summer

In summer, with better sunlight, I think I’d want to do two main things: Spend time outside in the sun, and teach UX to folks who cannot afford to pay for schooling.

At the moment, I’d need to spend more time learning and practicing UX research and interaction design, and maybe more visual design. I’d want to have years of practice, and maybe do some teaching on the side. Once I feel a bit less like I’m too new to teach (which isn’t actually true; I just would want to know more to feel comfortable), I’d want to pass that knowledge on to those who otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to get into UX. I’m already offering info to anyone who I know needs it, even though I am fairly new to UX. The fact that I tend to dive headfirst into anything I’m interested in means that — while I know there are gaps — I’ve learned a lot in the past two years of learning and practicing.

I think I’d want to focus on Women and Racial/Ethnic Minorities in tech (especially black folks and latin@s), as they may well be interested in and skilled at the UX field, but may not have any way to pay for learning. Similarly, I’d bet a fair number of people who would be excellent UX practitioners have no idea that such a thing exists.

Tech needs diversity, badly. Even if I ignore the fact that not having access to tech jobs means that there’s huge swaths of folks who aren’t making as much money as they could or need, diversity in a company means that there will be more people with different backgrounds looking at problems and the proposed solutions. There are far too many stupid mistakes and problems relating to thoughtlessness that would have a much better chance of being spotted if entire teams weren’t made of white, cis, men. It’s not their fault that they don’t spot problems, but different life experiences have a huge effect on how one thinks and the types of solutions one might suggest and implement. Refusing to admit that this is true is both short-sighted and self-centered.

So, I’d want to teach. And since I find UX so fascinating, and that’s my focus and likely to stay that way, that’s what I’d want to teach.

Always

I need people. I need my family, my friends, and to interact with people I don’t already know in low-pressure environments.

So I’d want to build in time to spend with my family and friends, and find ways to meet new people and learn who they are and what they think and what they want. Sure, that last part sounds a bit like User Research, but it’s more than that. People are fascinating. And if it’s low pressure to us both — which user research is not — I get the chance to get to know more people without anyone feeling pushed into it. Some parties are good for this, if there are quieter spaces so that conversation is possible.

I need touch. Both with people I’m comfortable with and with animals who rely on me and who do not. That would need to be part of an ideal life, as well.

I need to move. Walking is great, but often harder in winter due to weather and to seasonal depression making inertia stronger. Kayaking is shockingly fun, although my inflatable kayak is not heavy enough — I always feel like I’m going to fall out. Swimming is good, if I don’t have to deal with chlorine. I’m sure there are other things that easily and comfortable fill my need to move, but those are the first that come to mind.

What would you do?

If you didn’t have to earn money, what would you want to do?

The reason, I think, is that it was not clear a) if the entire process actually happened, and b) what all I was actually submitting. So, I decided to take a bit of time and add some redesign to make things a little less confusing. I’ve also blurred out the company name for politeness’ sake.

What did it look like at first?

When you look at a job description, you get something like this (with a bright orange ‘apply now’ button that is not visible in this screenshot). This seems fine.

After you click Apply Now, you get an odd sort of thing about your personal data collection. I’m guessing this is because it’s a security company, but it reads all sorts of weird. Whatever, that’s not a huge deal.

Next, you get your first page of the application. I like that they remind you what you’re applying for!

If you upload your resume, your name and email are auto-filled. That’s cool, thanks! When you select ‘Next’, you get this:

Wait. What? We just jumped to questions about my nationality and my affirmative action status? What about my work experience? My education? A cover letter? Did the resume upload skip the need for work and education info? Maybe, let’s keep going.

You might notice (I didn’t at the time) that this button says ‘Submit’, not ‘Next’. I didn’t grab a screenshot (and didn’t want to apply twice), but that’s the end of the application process. It thanks you, and it sends you email confirming your application.

What? I don’t even know for sure what it sent! I don’t know how well it parsed my resume. I have no clue at this point what just happened.

What would I fix?

Ok, so that was all sorts of confusing. Enough so that last night as I was falling asleep, I was distracted by wondering what would help. I considered a progress indicator, as that would at least make the extreme brevity of the application not a surprise. I also wondered if they’d labeled the final button ‘Submit’, which they actually had. (but perhaps ‘Submit Application’ would have been a clearer signal!) Finally, right before I fell asleep, I realized that what I most missed was a summary of what I was about to submit.

So, my version of the first page, with a progress bar added (using their font as detected by What Font and the same color as the next button for the progress indication):

My version of the second page (which was the last in the previous version) also has a progress bar, and changed the button to say ‘Next’. Not sure why I couldn’t make the carets a little more visible when they are between things. And perhaps I need some sort of ‘completed’ indicator for the first step, like a checkmark.

Finally, I made the very barest of bones summary page (the progress bar, what one was applying for, and a brief statement about the summary page). I didn’t make the whole page, which means that I didn’t get to include a “Submit Application” button instead of just ‘Submit” or suggest ways to make it easy for people to change things they don’t agree with. The latter seems important, especially if it really is automatically interpreting the resume; perhaps offer inline editing?

Summary

I’m struggling with the visual design part of things, but at least I feel a little better about the weird application process, having “fixed” it (at least in theory).

I’m not sure what happens if you don’t submit a resume in that first page (or if you use linkedin or something instead). It seems like it might be a kindness for them to tell you what submitting your resume (or associating with social media) did for you, so that it’s less confusing when it never asks about jobs or education.

Also, Gravit Designer is a pretty nice tool for this purpose!

This is the final piece of the story I’ve been telling. It started with an explanation of some of the problems currently present in the implementation of UX practices. I then described various ethical problems in technology companies today.

I will now explain how UX folks are uniquely situated to notice ethical concerns. I will also explain how, despite their unique perspective, I do not think that UX folks should be the gatekeepers of ethics. Much like UX itself, ethical considerations are too likely to be ignored without buy-in from the top levels of a company.

Ethics and UX

Ethics and user experience are tied together for a few reasons:

• Folks who are working on the user experience of a piece of software will often have a good view on the ethics of it — if they stop to consider it.
• UX folks are trained to see the impact of a product on people’s lives. We are a bridge between software and humans, and ethical concerns are also in that space.
• Like UX, ethics needs buy-in throughout the company. It can otherwise be difficult or impossible to enforce, as ethical considerations can be at odds with short-term company priorities like shareholder profits or introducing convenient (but potentially problematic) features.

Given that UX folks are in a great position to see ethical problems as they come up, it may be tempting to suggest that we should be the ones in charge of ethics. Unfortunately, as I described in an earlier section, many UX folks are already struggling to get buy-in for their UX work. Without buy-in at the top level, we are unlikely to have the power to do anything about it, and may risk our jobs and livelihoods.

This is made worse by the fact that there are a lot of new UX folks in the Boston area. If they are on the younger side of things, they may not realize that they are being asked to do the impossible, or that they can push back. New UXers may also have taken out student loans, whether as an undergraduate student or to enable a career change into UX, thereby effectively becoming indentured servants who can’t even use bankruptcy to escape them.

Even new and career-changer UX folks who have not taken out loans can feel like they can’t afford to annoy the company they’re working for. Given how few entry-level jobs there are — at least in the Boston area — it’s a huge risk for someone new to UX to be taking.

The risk of pointing out ethical problems is even worse when you are talking about an ethnic minority or others who are in an especially vulnerable position, and who may also be more likely to notice potential problem-areas.

Individual UX folks should not be the sole custodians of ethics nor of the commitment to a better user experience. Without buy-in at high levels of the company, neither of these are likely to work out well for anyone.

Who should be in charge of software ethics?

Who, then, should be the custodians of keeping software from causing harm?

The UXPA Professional Organization

The UXPA organization has a code of conduct, which is excellent. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really have much to do with the ethical concerns that have come up lately. At best, we have the lines “UX practitioners shall never knowingly use material that is illegal, immoral, or which may hurt or damage a person or group of people.” and “UX practitioners shall advise clients and employers when a proposed project is not in the client’s best interest and provide a rationale for this advice.” However, these are relevant to the problem at hand only if a UX practitioner can tell that something might cause harm, or if a client’s best interest matches up with the public’s best interest.

The code of conduct in question may not be specific enough, either: the main purpose of such a code of conduct is to offer practitioners a place to refer to when something goes against it. It is not clear that this code offers that opportunity, nor is it really a UX professional’s job to watch for ethics concerns. We may be best positioned, and we may be able to learn what to look for, but ethical concerns are only a part of the many tasks a UX professional may have.

Companies Themselves

A better question might be: how do we encourage companies adopt and stick to an ethics plan around digital products? Once something like that is in place, it becomes a _lot_ easier for your employees to take that into account. Knowing what to pay attention to, what areas to explore, and taking the time to do so would be a huge improvement.

Maybe instead of asking UX folks to be the custodians of ethics (also here), we can encourage companies to pay attention to this problem. UX folks could certainly work with and guide their companies when those companies are looking to be more ethically conscious.

I’m not at all certain what might get companies to pay attention to ethics, except possibly for things like the current investigation into the effects of Russian interference in our politics. When it’s no longer possible to hide the evil that one’s thoughtlessness — or one’s focus on money over morals — has caused, maybe that will finally get companies to implement and enforce clear, ethical guidelines.

What do you think?

What are your thoughts on how — or even if — ethics should be brought to the table around high tech?

Thank you to Alex Feinman and Emily Lawrence for their feedback on this entry!

In the previous section, I described the state of UX practice at technology companies, and the need for high-level buy-in for successful UX integration.

There is a concerning — and increasingly evident — lack of ethical consideration in the processes of most software companies. In this section, I will describe some of the ways in which this has recently become more apparent.

Digital Ethics

The software in our lives are not generally designed with our health and well-being in mind. This fact is becoming clear as Facebook, Google, and Twitter are in the spotlight relating to Russia’s interference with our elections and increasing political divides. Twitter has also typically been unwilling to do much about threats or hate speech.

There is too much focus on engagement and creating addiction in users, and not enough on how things might go bad and appropriate ways to handle that.

Internet of Things (IoT)

There’s a proliferation of products in the Internet of Things (IoT) space, many of which are completely insecure and thus easily turned into a botnet, have the private information on them exploited, or hacked to be used as an information gathering device.

Effects on Kids

Some IoT devices are specifically targeted at kids, but few or no companies have put any effort into identifying how they will affect the development of the children who use them. Concerned researchers at the MIT Media Lab have begun to study the effects of intelligent devices and toys on kids, but this won’t stop the continued development of these devices.

Similarly, it’s unclear how the use of devices that were originally aimed at adults — such as Alexa — will affect the kids in those houses. On one hand, it doesn’t involve screen time, which is no longer completely contraindicated for kids under two but is still wise to limit. On the other hand, we have no idea how those devices will answer questions they were not programmed to handle. Additionally, these devices do not encourage kids to use good manners — one of the important lubricants for the fabric of society. It’s hard enough to teach kids manners without having that teaching undermined by an intelligent device!

Finally, consider how machine learning can result in some truly horrific scenarios (content warning: the linked essay describes disturbing things and links to disturbing graphic and video content).

Someone or something or some combination of people and things is using YouTube to systematically frighten, traumatize, and abuse children, automatically and at scale, and it forces me to question my own beliefs about the internet, at every level.

James Bridle · Writer and Artist

Willful ignorance: Twitter and Equifax

Similarly, we’ve seen the results of a focus on metrics and money over security and sanity. Twitter not only knew that there were spam and fake accounts from Russia and the Ukraine in 2015, but refused to remove them because

“They were more concerned with growth numbers than fake and compromised accounts,” Miley told Bloomberg.”

Equifax stores highly sensitive information about people in the US, and left security vulnerabilities open for months after being told about them. As a result, they had multiple security breaches, basically screwing over anyone whose data was stolen.

Thoughtlessness: Google, Facebook, and Big Data

Even without willful ignorance, thoughtlessness alone can easily be enough to put individuals, communities, and societies at risk.

Considering the breadth of data that many companies are collecting on those who use their products, there is a worrying lack of thought given to the invasiveness of this practice and to how to safeguard the data in question. These companies often make poor choices in what information to keep, how to secure and anonymize the information, and who has access to that information.

Some might say that having conversational devices like Alexa and Google Home are worth the privacy risks inherent in an always-on listening device. Others might suggest that it’s already too late, given that Siri and Google Now have been listening to us and our friends through our phones for a long time now.

However, regardless of one’s thoughts on the timing of the concerns, the fact remains that tech giants have access to an amazing amount of information about us. This information is collected through our phones, through our searches and purchasing patterns, and sometimes through devices like the Amazon Echo and the Google Home Mini.

Some companies are better than others, such as Apple’s refusal to break their encryption for the FBI, but it can be quite difficult to identify which and where companies are making the best choices for their customers privacy, safety, and sanity.

Machine Learning

Take machine learning (also known as AI), and the fact that companies are more interested in selling ads than considering the effects their software has on their customers:

It’s not that the people who run, you know, Facebook or Google are maliciously and deliberately trying to make the country or the world more polarized and encourage extremism. […] But it’s not the intent or the statements people in technology make that matter, it’s the structures and business models they’re building. […] Either Facebook is a giant con of half a trillion dollars and ads don’t work on the site, it doesn’t work as a persuasion architecture, or its power of influence is of great concern. It’s either one or the other. It’s similar for Google, too.

Zeynep Tufekci · Techno-sociologist

One of the major problems with machine learning is that we have _no idea_ precisely what associations any particular algorithm has learned. The programmers of those algorithms just say whether the output those algorithms provide is good enough, and often ‘good enough’ doesn’t take into account the effects on individuals, communities, and society.

I hope you begin to understand why ethics is a big concern among the UX folks I follow and converse with. At the moment, the ethics of digital products is a big free-for-all. Maybe there was a time when ethics wasn’t as relevant, and code really was just code. Now is not that time.

In part 3, I’ll discuss the positioning of UX people to more easily notice these issues, and the challenges involved in raising concerns about ethics and ethical responsibility.

Thanks to Alex Feinman, Máirín Duffy, and Emily Lawrence for their feedback on this thread!

This will be a multi-part story.

In this first part, I’m going explain some of the problems inherent in the implementation of UX practices at technology companies today, to provide the background necessary to make my point.

You can also skip ahead to part two, in which I talk about ethics in the tech industry today.

First: Why do Businesses want UX?

Businesses are starting to realize that they need to incorporate UX to retain and increase their customer base. Discussions with Boston-area user experience folks suggests that companies have figured out that they need to have incorporated UX years ago, and that they’re behind.

Many of those businesses are so new to UX that they don’t understand what it means. Part of the reason for this is that ‘UX’ is an umbrella term, typically including:

• user research
• information architecture (or IA)
• interaction design (or IxD)
• content specialists
• visual design

In addition, some UX teams include front-end developers, as it can otherwise be difficult to be certain that the developers implementing the interface have a basic understanding of user experience.

When looking for UX employees, some businesses end up throwing the kitchen sink into their job descriptions, or look for the extremely rare UX unicorn — someone skilled at all parts of UX as well as development. This unfortunately makes it approximately impossible that they will get what they need, or possibly that they will get any decent candidates at all.

Other employers prioritize visual or graphic design skills over the skills necessary to understand users, because they have gotten the impression that ‘making it pretty’ will keep their customers from leaving. Often the problem is at a much deeper level: the product in question was never designed with the user’s needs in mind.

Successful UX needs high-level buy-in

Unfortunately, UX professionals brought into a company without buy-in at the top level of the company nearly guarantees that the UX person will fail. In addition to their regular UX work, they will also be stuck with the job of trying to sell UX to the rest of the company. Without support from higher-ups in the company, it is nearly impossible for a single person to make the amount of change necessary.

Surveying local people, I learned that being the only UX person in a small company or startup is probably doable, if the company understands the value you bring. There are fewer people to convince, and usually fewer products to deal with.

However, being the only UX person in a big company will likely be an exercise in frustration and burnout. On top of the fact that you’re trying to do too many different things on your own , you’ve also got to try to keep the bigger picture in mind.

Some important long-term questions include:

• “What are the right strategic directions to go in?”
• “Are the things that you are creating potentially going to cause or enable harm?”

The second question brings us to the question of “who in high tech is thinking about the ethics of their creations?”. Unfortunately, too often, the answer is ‘no one’, which I will discuss in Part 2.

Thank you to Alex Feinman and Máirín Duffy for their feedback on this article!

I started by hunting for family trees for common font families. Failing to find those — likely because there’s an astonishing number of fonts out there — I started doodling around trying to get something on paper for myself.

Without further ado, here’s my best approximation of the information in the section I’ve read, with some space available for further exploration. Mostly, I think I’m baffled by how one selects a font or font family, in part due to the sheer number of fonts out there, and in part because some require money. I’ll start out playing with with google fonts, because those seem to be specific for the web, and free. Open Sans seems to be a decent default, and Patternfly uses it.

Font Categories

“Thinking With Type” starts out by explaining the history behind fonts, and structures things by that history.

Humanist (or Roman) fonts include what were originally the gothic and italic typefaces — these came from hand-written, script and body-based styles. These relied upon calligraphy and the movements of the hand.

Enlightenment fonts were based on engraving techniques and lead type, and allowed for more flexibility in what was possible. This included both Transitional and Modern typefaces, which began the process of separating and modifying pieces of a letterform. Transitional started with Baskerville’s sharper serifs and more vertical axes. Modern went to an extreme with this, with Bodoni and Didot’s thin, straight serifs, vertical axes, and sharp contrast between thick and thin lines.

Abstract fonts went even further in the direction of exaggerating the pieces of a letterform, in part because of the additional options available with industrialization and wood-cut type.

Reform and Revolution were a reaction to the abstract period, in which font makers returned to their more humanist roots.

Computer-optimized fonts were created to handle the low resolution available with CRT screens and low resolution printers.

With the advent of purely digital fonts, creators of fonts started playing with imperfect type. Others created font workhorses using flexible palettes.

Humanist Fonts

Humanist fonts were based on handwriting samples.

Gothic fonts were based on German writing, such as that of Gutenberg:

Whereas the Italic fonts were based on Italian cursive writing:

These were combined by Nicolas Jenson in 1465 into the first Roman typeface, from which many typefaces sprung:

Enlightenment Fonts

With the Enlightenment period came experimentation.

From the committee-designed romain du roi typeface, which was entirely created on a grid:

To the high contrast between the thick and thin elements from Baskerville, no longer strongly attached to calligraphy (the point at which you enter the Transitional period for fonts):

The Modern fonts from Bodoni and Didot further increased the contrast between thick and thin elements beyond Baskerville’s font.

Abstraction Fonts

In the abstraction period, the so-called Egyptian or Fat Face (now known as slab serifs) fonts came about. These were the first attempts at making type serve another function than long lines of book text, that of advertizing — otherwise known as display fontfaces.

These took the extremes of the Enlightenment period and went to extremes with them, making fonts whose thin lines were barely there, and whose thick lines were enormous.

Reform and Revolution Fonts

Font makers in the reform period reacted to the excesses of the abstraction period by returning to their historic roots.

Johnston (1906) used more traditional letterform styles of the Humanist period, although without serifs:

The Revolution period, on the other hand, continued experimenting with what type could do.

The De Stijl movement in particular explored the idea of the alphabet (and other forms or art) as entirely comprised of perpendicular elements:

Computer-Optimized Fonts

The low resolution of early monitors and printers meant that fonts needed to be composed entirely of straight lines to display well.

Wim Crouwel created the New Alphabet (1967) font type for CRT monitors:

Zuzana Licko and Rudy VanderLans created the type foundry Emigre, which includes Licko’s Lo-Res (1985) font:

Matthew Carter created the first web fonts in 1996 for Microsoft, Verdana (sans serif) and Georgia (serif):

Imperfect Type

With the freedom from the physicality of the medium (such as lead type or wood type) that came with computers, some font designers began experimenting with imperfect types.

Deck made Template Gothic (1990), which looks like it had been stencilled:

Makela made the Dead History (1990) font using vector manipulation of the existing fonts Centennial and VAG Rounded:

And Rossum and Blokland made Beowulf (1990) by changing the programming of PostScript fonts to randomize the locations of points in letters:

Workhorse Fonts

Also during the 1990s, some folks were working on fonts that were uncomplicated and functional. Licko’s Eaves pair, with their small X-heights, are good for use in larger sizes:

Smeijer’s Quadraat (1992) started as a small serif font, with various weights and alternatives (sans and sans condensed) added to the family over time:

Majoor’s Scala (1990) is another simple, yet complete, typeface family:

Finally, at the turn of the century, Frere-Jones created the Gotham (2000) typeface. Among other places, it featured prominently in Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential election campaign.

Terminology

In an effort to better remember various suggestions and terms used throughout the Font portion of Thinking With Fonts, I created a terminology sheet.

I’m most likely to forget that there’s multiple different items which can be understood to be quotes, and how to use them. Additionally, that larger X-heights are easier to read at small sizes.

Common Fonts?

I started making a list of common fonts, but quickly realized that this was a complex and difficult task. I’m including what I made for completeness, but it seems like a superfamily (like Open Sans) will be fine for most of my work.

What’s next for me in Typography and Visual Design?

The book discusses Text next, after an exercise in creating modular letterforms on a grid. I’m looking forward to it, but I do need a break from it for now.

I’ve started trying to mimic existing visual designs (from the collectui.com website), as many folks have suggested it’d be the best way to get a feel for what works and how to do it. I’ll likely talk more about that here, once I’m further along in that process.

Thinking With Type: Fonts was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of the more interesting suggestions I have had relates to typography: many websites have typography and grid principles incorporated into them, so that is a good place to start. I’ve also had a number of suggestions to just make things, with pointers to where to get ideas of what to make. Below are the suggestions that make the most sense to me.

Typography to start?

A helpful fellow volunteer (Tezzica at Behance and other places — trained in graphic design with a UX aspect at MassArt) at the UX Fair offered me a number of useful ideas, including the strong recommendation that I read the book called “Thinking With Type”, by Ellen Lupton. This books is, if nothing else, a very entertaining introduction to the various types and type families. There is the history of various fonts and types, descriptions of the pieces of a piece of type, and examples both good and bad (she calls the latter “type crimes” and explains why they are type crimes). I’m only 1/3 of the way through it, so I’m sure there’s a lot more to it.

Tezzica also suggested that I take the SkillShare course by the same author, Typography that Works. Given that I currently have free access, I am in fact doing that. Some of what we’ve covered, I knew from previous courses (grids, mostly), and some recapped a bit of what I’ve read in the book thus far. Reminders and different types of media are really useful.

I’m unexpectedly bemused by the current section, in which we are to start designing a business card. While I found the ‘business card’ size in Inkscape, I’m not completely sure that I’m managing to understand how to make the text do what I want it to do. I suspect that a lot of visual/graphic design is in figuring out how to make the tools do what you want, and then developing a better feel for ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ with practice! (I’m currently playing with Gravit Designer, which is a great deal easier to use while still being vector graphics.)

I’ve also had a chat with one of the folks I interviewed about getting a job in Boston, Sam, who had gotten a job between me talking to him and interviewing him. He also strongly suggested typography, and seems to have already worked through a lot of the problems I’m struggling with: not a lot of understanding of how visual design works, but a strong pull toward figuring it out.

Another thing that Tezzica mentioned was assignments she’d had in school where basically they had to play around with type. In one, the challenge was to make a bunch of graphics which were basically combining letters of two different typefaces into a single thing, or a ‘combined letterform’.

What do graphic design students do?

Tezzica suggested that it would be useful to peruse Behance for students of RISD and MassArt and see where the samples look similar, and potentially identify the assignments from classes at those schools. I have thus far not been successful in this particular endeavor.

Another possible way to find assignments is to peruse tumblr or pintrest and see if any old assignments or class schedules are still there. Also thus far unsuccessful!

Both Tezzica and Sam suggested doing daily challenges (on Behance, since the accounts there don’t require someone else to invite you) using ideas from dailyui.co or dribble. Tezzica also suggested taking a look at common challenge solutions and seeing if there’s an interesting and different way to do it. Tezzica also pointed out the sharpen.design website and its randomized design prompts.

Sam suggested taking a website that I like the look of, and trying to replicate it in my favorite graphic design tool (this will probably end up being Inkscape, even though it’s not as user-friendly as I’d like), and pointed out that it could go onto my portfolio with an explanation of what I was thinking while I did it.

Coursework

Tezzica suggested a Hand Lettering course by Timothy Goodman and a Just Make Stuff course by him and Jessica Walsh (this one being largely about ‘making something already’). She also suggested Nicholas Felton’s Data Visualization courses (introduction to data visualization, and designing with processing). Both are on Skillshare.

Sam suggested I watch everything I can from John McWade on Lynda.com, and a graphic design foundations: typography course also on lynda.com.

Other training methods

Finally, Sam recommended taking screenshots and making notes of what I notice about sites that are interesting or effective and why.

This reminds me a bit of my periodic intent to notice what design patterns and informational architecture categorization methods websites use.

Mostly, I need to train my eye and my hand, both of which require practice. Focused practice, and I think between Sam and Tezzica, I have a good sense of where to go with it. At the moment, I’m focusing on the Thinking With Type book and course, as otherwise I’ll overwhelm myself.

Organizing my links

I have a lot of UX-related links. They aren’t even all in the same place, as some are in bookmarks, some are in OneTab, and some are in email.

To handle this problem, and to offer others the chance to benefit from them, I’ve been sorting them into Enboard pages:

• https://enboard.co/xcb3cf/ — UX Beginners
• https://enboard.co/8xz0t7/ — Resources (various)
• https://enboard.co/ux9p1k/ — Tips
• https://enboard.co/gkp377/ — Books (not much here yet as I’m focusing on links)

If anyone has any thoughts on how to better organize these, I’m all ears. Especially the UX Beginners one, as it’s becoming unwieldy.

After I finish sorting the ones I have, I hope to ask some folks about their preferred terms for things and organization preferences (as per Information Architecture, aka IA) and improve the organization that way.

Online Courses

Skill Share

I’ve been taking an IA course on skillshare (https://www.skillshare.com/classes/UX-Series-Designing-Web-Navigation/503660567/) which has been decent. Unfortunately, it appears that the course instructor isn’t paying attention to it anymore, so it’s not possible to get answers to questions or ask for broken things to be fixed. Even so, though, it has been useful guidance and practice.

Skill share is free for a two month trial period, and if you get your friends to sign up, you get an additional free month per friend once they pay for their first month.

O’reilly Safari

I used the two week free trial of O’Reilly’s Safari to get a quick introduction to Sketch (https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/working-with-the/9781491998748/). This was amazing, as it didn’t require me to do visual design as past of learning Sketch, and the instructor is excellent at making sure to explain things, including the need to be organized and prepared before jumping into Sketch.

I also used it for Success Skills for Introverts (https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/success-skills-for/9781491930700/) which was useful for concepts like:

• Before going into a networking setting, come up with a few topics that you can help the folks you are talking to with, and a few that people you are talking to might be able to help you with. This way you have things relevant to you that you can have a quick conversation about. (https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/success-skills-for/9781491930700/video217197.html)

• Meeting preparation. Some of the things that hadn’t already occurred to me or I have trouble remembering included: asking if there is an agenda (to help keep things on track) and offering to make one if there is not, figure out something to say within the first 5 minutes of the meeting — aka the First Five Minute Rule (so you don’t get stuck in a position of never saying anything or being heard from), practice the heck out of your presentation (and make sure you say it aloud, whether to yourself or to a friend), and making sure you know why you’re there and what you can contribute. (https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/success-skills-for/9781491930700/video217196.html)

Joe Natoli’s Portfolio Course at Give Good UX

Finally, I’m about halfway through an excellent, concrete and straightforward course which should help improve the user experience of my (and your!) portfolio (https://wispfox.wixsite.com/hillmanconsulting/portfolio — the one I’m working on, not yet official). It costs a bit under $90, which is not bad at all. https://learn.givegoodux.com/courses/enrolled/217467 — I’m at the point of starting to make changes based on this course and on feedback from someone I had a chat with from http://designmentors.org/.

Unfortunately, I’m unable to make the live chat for the course, as I’ll be at AthenaHealth’s hackathon in Watertown (http://athenahackathon.com/).

I’m planning to write up a Medium post about portfolios after I finish this course. Maybe it’ll help others more than most such articles seem to?

What about Visual Design? And Quantitative Research?

I’m also trying to figure out the best way for me to learn Visual/Graphic Design. I’m currently hunting through SkillShare’s offerings, to start something after I finish my current courses. I have some idea of the basic stuff from the Coursera course I took on Design Principles (https://www.coursera.org/learn/design-principles/home/week/2), but I’d like to have stronger skills for contexts like my portfolio and to be able to say that I have experience with basic visual design when job hunting. Many jobs in the Boston area want visual design skills and already have folks who do research.

Similarly, I’d like to better understand how to incorporate my existing quantitative research skills from graduate school into my UX practice. At the moment, I’m perusing a PDF of “Measuring the User Experience” by Tom Tullis. Lots of people suggested it! I have also obtained “Quantifying the User Experience: Practical Statistics for User Research” by Jeff Sauro and James R. Lewis as I suspect that it’ll be useful for someone with a statistical background like myself.

Projects

Recycle Bot

The Recycle Bot toy project I’m mentoring Radhika Sundararaman on is proceeding slowly. Our free Axure licenses expired before we did usability testing, so we translated it to InVision using screenshots from the Axure shares we’d published (you cannot access your Axure files when your license expires).

We’ve since done a pilot test (with each other) and will be making some changes to our scripts and tasks. Due to the expiry of Axure, we won’t be making any of the obvious changes that came up during the pilot test.

If I find time, I may see about adjusting some of what’s in InVision to be less inconsistent with itself. We hadn’t originally figured out how to make it possible for us both to work on the project in InVision at the same time, so I’d been talking Radhika through some of the problems and confusions she ran into (sadly without the option to see her screen and what she was trying to do). We since managed to share her prototype with me, but it’s a lot of work to change the screenshots after the fact.

We’ll be looking for a few people to do usability sessions with soon, and in cases where they are people we know well, will see about having the other person work with them to avoid some bias.

Newbies First Jobs in Greater Boston

I’ve presented to the board, but they are currently focusing on the UX Fair that’s coming up early next month.

Folks who weren’t at the meeting I presented at offered feedback on the summary I sent to the president of the board. This was a bit awkward for a couple of reasons:

• I hadn’t realized that I was writing something to be shown to people who weren’t there, so it was much less well fleshed out than I would have liked.
• I cannot reply to the list, so any replies I give go to the people I’m replying to, not everyone.
• When I asked the president to forward one of my replies, I wasn’t cc’d. So I have no idea what, if anyone, was said in reply.

That said, much of what they offered was useful. Some seemed to be assuming that I was focusing only on what I personally could do to get a job, when I’m hoping to help others as well. My current plan is to figure out how to follow-up on those points after the UX Fair.

I’ve also emailed with the XX-UX folks in San Francisco, as they have a mentoring program going. I’m aiming to get an idea of what they are doing, have done, and what has been working for them. They did suggest that I needed two other folks to work with on the mentoring idea (or creating an XX-UX branch in Boston), which has been difficult. I’ve had people say they want to help out with this project, but they end up being too busy for one reason or another. Alas!

PatternFly

The user dropdown research I was doing with Patternfly has turned into research on UI specifications for standard menu design patterns (https://github.com/patternfly/patternfly-design/issues/464). I should be able to use some of the information I gathered on the user dropdown, and the results of this ought to be related to that work.

Simmetri

I’ve been chatting with a couple of guys who are working on a tool called Simmetri (http://simmetri.com/) to help non-developers create VR worlds. We met at MIT’s Reality, Virtually hackathon (http://www.realityvirtuallyhack.com/), which was otherwise not a good experience for me for reasons not MIT’s fault.

I am _so happy_ this tool exists, and spent a couple of hours downtown a week or so ago offering them feedback on the things that tripped me up, and offered suggestions for areas where different organization was needed. The UI was initially based on Photoshop, which isn’t really an interface I’ve ever liked.

I don’t know what the best practices are around designing a design tool, especially a 3-D design tool or one that is meant to connect with VR devices! I also would want to identify their competitors to figure out what their unique contribution in this space might be (and see what others have done for their interface).

They are currently looking for funding (in the art/creative space) from friends and family, and indicated an interest in bringing me on if they get it. I typically would avoid a startup, but I _like_ these two guys a lot, and they seem like they’d be reasonable about the fact that I don’t know all pieces of the UX umbrella.

Information Architecture on a friend’s game’s site

I’ve not yet started this, in part due to the sheer number of other things I’m working on, and in part because I’d like to finish the IA course I’m taking. However, a friend has suggested that his site isn’t well organized and would like my help. I definitely like the idea of getting real IA experience, so that sounds good to me.

This friend has already found a couple of people in his gaming group (using his system) who would be happy to talk to me. Very nice!

Querki

I’ve not forgotten this project! I have been a bit stumped about how to approach it after I finish up with some of the things I’m working on. I have an ok understanding of what it’s about and for, but no strong sense of the users and their needs (which may mean that I need to watch some of the users who are not the developer use it?), nor the best areas to tackle first.

I think part of the problem is that it is a pretty nebulous concept (“support and encourage collaboration about and sharing of information within communities.”), which makes it more difficult to approach.

I shall keep it in the back of my head, but for the meantime it’s on a back burner.

Job Hunting

Red Hat

Looks like Red Hat is only looking for mid-level interaction designers, as they’ve got lots of junior and senior level people. At least based on the most recent opening I saw, this appears to mean at least 5 years of experience.

I’ll keep my eye on their jobs, but it’s looking unlikely that I’ll be working in UX at Red Hat any time soon.

Vitamin T

I’m happy with Vitamin T as a recruiting agency. They talk to me when I indicate interest in a position they send me, quite quickly.

No idea if it’ll go anywhere, but they’re passing my info along about a contract position in Waltham.

The Creative Group

I’m pretty happy with The Creative Group, too. They also want to talk to me when they have things that relate, and the person I most recently talked to specifically suggested that I get in touch if I see something I want to apply to. They may have contacts that I do not, and all.

Other

Job hunting is frustrating. I’ll have the two years most junior positions seem to want as of February. Maybe that’ll help.

And I do need to finish updating my portfolio based on the course and the feedback I got from the designmentor.org guy.

Networking

I’ve been going to a decent number of UXPA and Boston Chi events, although not all of either of them. Getting home from Boston proper isn’t easy to do, since commuter busses have stopped by then.

It’s really odd to have the major project I’m working on be the one about finding a first UX job. People ask me what I’m working on, and I find it a little awkward to talk about given that I am myself looking.

I’ve given my card and suggested resources to lots of other newbies, though. I have a lot of info after almost two years of this! Too bad I’m not getting paid to help my fellow newbies. ;)

I’ve also been using the #ux tag more on Twitter after attending the UX Careers Handbook presentation by Cory Lebson. Among many other things, he pointed out that it was a very useful way to be seen as involved with UX. I shall get that book at some point, because it does a good job of helping one keep track of the things involved in the job hunting process.

I’m doing a lot of things!

I sometimes forget. No wonder I feel overwhelmed at times.

I think my focus needs to be threefold: Finish the IA course. Fix my portfolio and make it be the new official one. Finish up the project with Radhika.

The portfolio part is definitely the most daunting piece. I’ve been working on that for so long! I guess it means I have a good grasp of what I’ve worked on?