Working in the User Experience world, is it a whole different field for psychology graduates?
It has been a while now since my leap of faith jumping into the world of User Experience. Previously, 6 total years of education has led me to be a Psychologist in which was my line of work before I decided to take the leap from. Currently, I’m working as Experience Design Consultant in a top tier UX Consulting Agency with experience in handling well-known international clients.
Speaking of Human Psychology and User Experience, both are the two fields that cannot be separated from each other. Both will always be intertwined. As UX practitioners, we deal with users and try to facilitate and solve their problems by continuously creating the best experience for products and services. When we conduct research and design those products and services, we should always have that “Human-Centered” mindset in order for us to empathize with the users.
In this article, I want to share my learnings and takeaways of the things psychology graduates can bring to the table as UX practitioners and some other things that we need to learn and pay attention to when jumping into the field.
Okay, so some of you psych grads might have been wondering what other field outside of clinical psychology, educational psychology, and I/O psychology that you guys can work in with your degree. There is a field called Experience Design which we might oftentimes heard as User Experience that is of interest for psych grads to work in.
But, as someone who is not familiar, one might wonder how does the field look like? How can a non-design graduate be able to work in the field? Do I have something in my arsenal that could be useful when I work as a UX practitioner with my degree in Psychology?
From my journey jumping into the world of UX and my experience, I might say having a degree (or degrees of course) in Psychology is already an upper hand as a UX practitioner, especially as a researcher.
I want to start by reflecting on the important things that we as psych graduates already have in our arsenal from our years of education. Thank God for those of you who paid attention to your lecturers back in the day (haha jk).
Let’s get into it.
- Observation and Interview as data collection methods
Observation and Interview are the top expertises that a psych graduate is equipped with. With this, it should give you the upper hand as you already experienced and trained in both methods. Starting from establishing what psychological constructs or behavior to target until breaking it down to parts of questions and conducting the interview. In the science of psychology, we are taught to systematically observe with theories and specific indicators in mind depending on our activities (e.g. research, assessment center, therapy/counseling), which is an important data point complementing the interviews.
In User Experience (UX) research, in-Depth Interview is widely used as a qualitative way to gain understanding of the ‘whys’ we are looking for in regards to our product or service. The process is quite similar from determining specifically the goal of the interview, creating the questions, carrying out the interview itself and ensuring that all of the research objectives have been covered. The expertise and experience psych graduates have for interviews should be serving as added value. Not only in designing and conducting interviews but also how to build rapport, interact accordingly, and get the information that we need from the users.
It is also important to notice how the participants behave and their surroundings, during a field research for example. It can also be important for us in ensuring the research is going smoothly. Observing the participants, are they taking the interview seriously? Are they comfortable enough? Do I need to cut the interview section a little bit so it wouldn’t take too long and tiring for the participant?
2. Data analysis
You must have still remembered those days when you were studying Statistics, right? Or those days when you were taught by your lecturer about thematic analysis? Yes, those lessons and expertise are your weapons for analyzing the raw data and crafting into insights in UX research. You should be able to hit the ground running if you are adept in all of those things. Specifically for qualitative research, thematic analysis is key.
3. Being empathetic
As a UX practitioner, this attitude is very important as we are looking to design and continuously improve our products based on the users’ needs. Which requires us to put ourselves in the users’ shoes all the time. Having studied people behavior and its underlying psychological factors made psych graduates to already put humans at the center of their mind. The sensitivity of how the participants are behaving, asking questions, and what to do with it.
4. Behavioral framework and theory
Although some of the psychological theories might not be a good fit to use, the knowledge of the frameworks and theories in behavioral and cognitive psychology are widely used in the UX world. Having this on the back of our head helps in the process of research. How we are able to classify, synthesize and analyze the findings into insights.
Meanwhile during the wireframing or prototyping process, I’ll take one for example, knowledge concerning the human cognitive aspects could play a role as a guidance for us to design the UI (heuristics, perception, motivation, etc.). And of course, this will not be limited to only digital products.
These expertises and experiences would be helpful to make you hit the ground running when you enter the field as a psych grad. However, the User Experience world is a unique and broad field. There are other many things to consider starting from the business standpoint until communication and relationship building with the stakeholders that we are working with, just to name a few. Set yourself to be a SPONGE, learn and experiment as you go. Good luck!
Bhagas works as an Experience Design Consultant at Somia CX. He has a Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology. On the side, he is also practicing as a Clinical Psychologist. Find his LinkedIn and connect!
