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Monthly Archives: October 2017
In one answer, Sheryl Sandberg provides some of the best career advice you’ll ever hear
Lean into the twists and turns and you’ll become more successful in life
Sheryl Sandberg shared some insightful career advice on Quora. She’s clearly had a successful career, but life has also thrown painful challenges and tragedy into her path. As she states:
“There is no straight path to where you are going”
I think that most of us intuitively know this to be true. If we look at the path our life has already taken, there are so many twists and turns, and peaks and pits. It hasn’t been a straight path at all, but somehow we think of this as a failing on our part.
We mapped out the ideal path and the series of steps that we thought would take us from point A to point B. When we either discover that we must deviate from that straight line, or we are forced to make a course correction, we fight it and try to return to that straight path as soon as possible. But, life does not — and should not — work like that.
My unexpected path
My 24 year career has been nothing like I imagined when I started on this journey so very long ago. I’m not even talking about my childhood dreams of becoming an astronaut or rock star, which seemed pretty exciting as a kid growing up in a small farm town in the Midwest.
The initial plans that I made as I entered college changed midstream. Then my experiences during graduate school took me from an anticipated path into quite another when I entered the working world of Silicon Valley. Where I am today is not where I thought I would be even a few years ago.
Here is an overview of my twisting path and the variety of jobs I’ve had. It doesn’t include every job, believe it or not. Scroll quickly if you get bored. I won’t blame you.
- As a child I had a paper route, mowed lawns, and did some farm work.
- During high school, I had a job restocking shelves at a grocery store.
- I entered college and began studying Mechanical Engineering.
- To help pay for college, I joined the National Guard, worked at fast food restaurants, was an engraver at a trophy shop, worked in receiving and stocking at Kmart, held a brief job at a road construction company, and then became a night security guard.
- I changed my major to Psychology, and ended up working almost full time as a police dispatcher while I finished up my undergraduate studies.
- I was accepted into the graduate program at Rice University to study Human Factors Psychology, with the plan of working for NASA someday. See? There’s that astronaut dream again.
- After receiving my M.A., I worked as a software designer at IBM for a year in Silicon Valley. I fell in love with tech, the amazing energy of the Valley, and California.
- I returned to Rice to begin work on my dissertation to pursue my Ph.D.
- I did a summer internship as a designer at Apple Computer. They offered me a full-time job, so I worked for Apple remotely while I was conducting my research at Rice. I moved out to Silicon Valley and finished my dissertation while working at Apple.
- I left Apple to join a startup. We were acquired, then all laid off, spun up another startup, and I finally started my own design agency to have some stability (my first entrepreneurial venture).
- I had more clients than I could handle during the Dot Com Boom, but then the Dot Com Crash hit and all of the tech startups began collapsing.
- I joined eBay as a designer, but moved into management and eventually was promoted to Director.
- Left eBay to join Yahoo, and was promoted to the VP of Consumer Products for Yahoo Search.
- Left Yahoo to start my own company (again), this time advising tech startups and joining a few boards.
- Founded my own startup focused on mobile apps, built a team, ran hard for 3 1/2 years, and eventually — sadly — shut it down after failing to get enough traction.
- Took the entrepreneurial path again, and became a career consultant and business advisor. Moved out of Silicon Valley and up into the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Straight path? Far from it. The twists and turns were sometimes surprising, and I know there were times that I resisted changing course and redefining my career. The Sunk Cost Fallacy certainly played a role in that. Defining myself by my job title played a role as well.
But, I finally learned to accept that life has a natural series of cycles. Events that were initially labeled as failures, and felt disappointing and depressing, ended up becoming a personal revelation.
Risks and rewards
Looking back, I can now see points where following the obvious straight path would have been a career-limiting decision. I would not have accomplished many of my goals if I had let fear keep me on the safe path.
I know that the majority of my personal growth came from taking risks. My biggest lessons came from doing things that scared me. My best rewards came from making peace with unexpected twists and turns.
What I want, need, and enjoy now is very different than what my younger self thought. With every passing year, I have a better understanding of who I am and what I want to accomplish in my lifetime.
The truth is that you cannot and will not have a straight path to anywhere that is meaningful for you at every stage of your life. The right destination naturally changes as you change. The next stepping stone will flow from that as well. Life is a journey of self discovery, as long as you are open to learning and adjusting your path.
Lean into the twists and turns
If you’ve ever ridden a motorcycle or bike at high speed, you know that you must lean into a curve to make the turn. Try to stay upright and resist it, and you’ll spectacularly crash. If you live long enough, you realize that life isn’t that different.
Obviously, you don’t want to be a leaf blowing in the wind, being tossed helplessly wherever it takes you. There are times that you need to push through resistance and deal with adversity to make progress.
But, there are also times that stubbornness will blind you to opportunity. A less direct path often holds unexpected rewards. Sometimes an alternate route will take you to your end goal more quickly and easily than the obvious path.
“If you try to draw that line you will not just get it wrong, but you will miss big opportunities.” — Sheryl Sandberg
You’ll also start to realize that what the 18 year old version of you wanted is not what the 30 year old version of you wants. This is true for almost every decade of your life. At this point, I don’t even desire what I thought I wanted 10 years ago. Heck, I’m already pursuing a different path than what I was doing three years ago. My ultimate end goal is the same. I just found a surprisingly simpler way to get there.
This is far from being a bad thing. Don’t beat yourself up for not becoming what you thought you would be years ago. It is a really good thing that you evolve as you learn more about the world, who you are, and what matters most. The fact that your destination has changed shows that you are growing. Embrace that and lean into the curves between here and there.
In one answer, Sheryl Sandberg provides some of the best career advice you’ll ever hear was originally published in Personal Growth on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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How To Develop Goals In A Usability Test
Usability is the glue that sticks your user to your web and mobile designs. A well-designed user interface (UI) does not mean much if your users do not know how to engage with it. It needs to be usable, useful and credible as well as desirable. If the UX-factor is not enough of an incentive, think of it this way: optimising your usability pays off. A usable web or mobile application can boost conversion rates, lower support costs and reduce design and development rework.
Luckily, it is possible to optimise your usability. By performing a usability test, you can assess how easily your users can connect with your UI. These studies help you adjust your design strategy to benefit the user and encourage them to return to your website and convert.
So it is time to think beyond the edge of the screen. When performing your usability test, your research goals should be the driving force behind each question you ask. What metrics should I test? Should I go for quantitative or qualitative research? How many participants do I need?
The answers will depend on your web or mobile end product. But do not worry, this article will walk you through all the usability basics and show you how to define effective usability test goals.
What is a Usability Test?
A usability test is how UX researchers evaluate how easy or difficult a task is to complete. In web design, usability research involves evaluating the way a user interacts with the UI, by observing and listening to users complete typical tasks such as completing a purchase or subscribing to a newsletter.
Studies are performed early on during the design process so that errors can be corrected as soon as possible and do not affect the fabric of the final product. In the worst case scenario, you will have plenty of time to start over and improve the overall user experience.
Usability tests can be split into two categories:
- Qualitative tests, or ‘qual’ research: These involve direct observation and assessment of how test participants engage with specific UI elements to determine which components are problematic.
- Quantitative tests, or ‘quant’ research: These consist of an indirect assessment of the UI design, either based on participants’ performance of tasks or their perception of usability (e.g. a survey or poll).
For a usability test, it is recommended that both quantitative and qualitative data is gathered.
Once the usability test is complete, the UX team will go back to the drawing board, or indeed wireframe or prototype, and correct the usability errors based on the participants’ behaviour and interactions.
Setting up a Reliable Usability Test with the Right Goals
So you are going for it. But before you get started, you will need a robust framework and some goals. You will want to define the following:
- Scope: What are you testing?
- Purpose: Why are you testing?
- Schedule and location: How long will the test take and where will you perform it? Will it require a laboratory or will participants be tested remotely? How often will you test? Do you intend to test in multiple locations? Will there be rental costs?
- Sessions: What is your sample size?
- Equipment: What kind of technology, materials, and resources will you require?
- Participants: Who are your target users? How will you source them? Will you be compensating participants for their time or travel? What role will they play?
- Scenarios: Who is the user? Why are they here? What goals do they have?
- Metrics: For each scenario, you will want to define the metrics you will measure their activity against
We know what you are thinking – how will you know the answers to these questions? It is time to define your goals.
Engage Stakeholders to Set Usability Goals
Sometimes it is obvious what you need to test. If you are redesigning a navigation flow, you will want to see how the user gets from Point A to B; if you are testing the user journey of signing up, you will want to take a look at how they interact with your sign up input form, and so on and so forth.
But often, particularly for new user researchers, it can be tricky to get your head around a usability test and what your goals are. UserTesting has a great analogy on this.
The first step to setting your usability test goals is to talk to your stakeholders. At project kick-off, hold a preliminary meeting with stakeholders to gauge what they know about the product. This will help you determine what high-level features you will build out.
Then, by drilling down into the details around each feature and process, you will be able to identify what to have reviewed in the usability test. If it is a redesign, take a look at past analytics to pinpoint where you have gone wrong and what impact it has had, e.g. high bounce or exit rate.
Tip: A common pain point for UX teams is having too many goals laid out by stakeholders. Prioritizing goals with stakeholders early on will help you avoid having too many test variables.
Categorizing your Usability Goals
Once you have identified your goals, you can start to categorise them and break them down into different groups. Sort these groups by importance to users and your stakeholders. Mutual Mobile’s Becky White offers up a helpful sample exercise to help you reduce the scope of your goals:
Gather your team together, get your hands on some sticky notes and have each team member write down some questions related to your target users. Then, group the questions and arrange them according to the themes that emerge.
Each group should have a problem statement/scenario with a list of research goals. For each research goal, list the relevant participant activities and behaviours. For each group of goals, write questions about what you want to ask the participants about the task they are performing. Like this:
- Feature/Process
- Goals/groups of goals
- Problem statement/scenario
- Questions to participants
UserZoom has an excellent template for outlining your problem statements or scenarios.
Template:
Example:
Once you have defined your goals, you can plan your testing framework and answer those questions from before.
What Metrics Should you use to Measure Usability?
Now you know what you are going to do in your usability test. But what about what you want to get out of it? As Jakob Nielsen puts it: “collecting buckets of user data will do no good if the resulting recommendations are not followed.”
This is the part of the usability test where lots of people get confused. There are tons of metrics to measure usability against, and it is not always clear which ones you should include. But do not be alarmed. Metrics are useful because there is no magic ‘thermometer’ to tell you if your users are going to interact with your web or mobile product.
Usability metrics are standards of measurement to show you whether your UX strategy is working. They help you track changes over time, assess competitive position, benchmark against design interactions and product releases and set future goals to make your UI work better. The metrics that we use to measure usability include:
- Successful task completion: The most straightforward and most crucial usability measuring stick that measures the percentage of tasks that test participants complete correctly
- Critical errors: Errors that block the user from completing a task successfully, e.g. due to participant workflow deviation
- Non-critical errors: Errors that are recovered by the participant and does not affect their ability to successfully complete a task
- Error-free rate: Percentage of participants who complete a task successfully without any errors
- Time on task: The amount of time it takes participants to complete a task successfully
- Task level satisfaction: To flag a difficult task
- Test level satisfaction: To evaluate how the participant felt about the overall experience
With feedback on user behaviour and data collected from your metrics, you will be better informed about the usability of your web or mobile product. Apply what you have learned and start to build out those UX-boosting improvements.
Why Usability Tests Matter
You cannot fix something if you do not know it is broken. As Susan Farrell has it: “User research reduces the likelihood of building something that doesn’t meet user needs, but only when everyone knows what those are.”
Good usability makes it, so users do not want to leave your website and app. But without a usability test, you cannot evaluate user performance or determine if they can complete tasks efficiently, how long it takes them, and if they were satisfied with the experience.
Usability research helps you anticipate engagement roadblocks, and correct navigation and accessibility oversights which can curb learnability, efficiency and memorability. By evaluating actual user behaviour patterns, not only can you identify and correct usability and accessibility errors, but you learn more about your users, their expectations and goals. This will help you improve the overall user satisfaction and the user’s experience of your product.
Usability Testing Best Practices
- Do usability testing early on. It is easy to incorporate it early in the design process and will have the most significant impact the earlier applied.
- Perform QA testing before usability testing. Participants are not there to spell check or be slowed down by bugs and crashes.
- Consider doing your usability test with a prototyping tool, such as Justinmind. As the guys over at UXbert Labs have it, testing is most effective when done on a prototype because you can implement any changes before you have started development or your final visual design.
- You do not need loads of participants per test cycle. According to the Nielsen Norman Group, 5 participants could be enough.
- Test with real users and, actual data for the most accurate results – early adopters are ideal because they are tech-savvy and will streamline the testing process. Then, access the best usability testing tools and assess your design with real users!
The Takeaway
Usability tests are the best way to ensure the usefulness of your web or mobile UI, with the bonus of sizing up the market. Any form of usability research should be performed early on in the design process to avoid rework and wasted resources.
A successful usability test enables you to improve your product with real-world feedback. The key to a successful usability test is in the planning. You need to involve your stakeholders as well as your team in defining the goals of your test, and how to measure them. Knowing exactly what you want to take away from your testing will make the process more streamlined and the results more meaningful.
(Lead image: A quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Image retrieved from Depositphotos – affiliate link)
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By Teaching We Learn: Add Value to Your Career, Workplace, and the UX Community Through Mentoring
Mentorship is one of the best ways to learn about a craft, advance skills, and achieve personal goals. It is especially important to the user experience (UX) field, where methods and best practices are constantly evolving and professionals must actively continue to learn. The field is also growing, and mentorship is a great way for new UX professionals to learn foundational concepts.
When thinking of mentorship, one may tend to think of a scenario where there is someone teaching and someone learning. However, both people in the relationship are actually learning. The proverb “by teaching we learn” is attributed to Western philosopher Seneca the Younger almost 2,000 years ago. Recent studies have proven this to be true. A study in 2007 suggested that first-born children are more intelligent because of the time they spend teaching their younger siblings. Other research shows that students who teach others scored higher on tests than students who only learned by themselves. This is known as The Protege Effect.
Learning is a key way to stay motivated. In a 2014 article, Donna Spencer wrote that if we don’t learn, we stagnate and become unhappy UX designers. Spencer a said, “Teaching will force you to examine your knowledge and become a better designer as a result.”
As volunteers in the Triangle UXPA (the North Carolina Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill chapter of UXPA), we wanted to help members of our chapter realize the importance of mentorship, too. We helped create and shape a mentorship program that has brought value to our community and to us personally. In this article, we will discuss how to get started as a mentee or mentor, and how to build a program of your own. We hope this article inspires you to try mentorship. Before we dive in, let’s go over what mentorship is and what forms it may take.
What is Mentorship?
Mentorship is a partnership between two or more people that’s focused on learning and development. A 2007 review and critique of mentoring theory described the three major benefits of mentorship as knowledge sharing, the transfer of social capital, and social support.
- Knowledge sharing involves a mentor teaching a mentee about their area of expertise.
- The transfer of social capital occurs when a mentee earns credibility by working with a mentor. A common example is when a mentor acts as a reference for a mentee when they’re applying for a job.
- Social support involves a mentor helping a mentee work through professional and personal situations with advice and emotional support.
Types of Mentorship
There are many types of mentorship, and you might find one more suitable for you than another. You might even be doing some form of mentorship already without realizing it.
Direct mentorship — This is traditional mentorship, where a junior-level person is being mentored by someone who’s more senior.
Peer mentorship — This is where both individuals are in similar roles and discuss their practices and share knowledge with one another (for example, two senior UX designers sharing knowledge with each other).
Mutual mentorship — This is also considered “cross-functional” mentorship—where two individuals teach each other different subjects. For instance, a UX designer shares knowledge about how to prioritize information in a hierarchy with a developer. In return, the developer shares a plan for responsive layouts.
Figure 1. In mutual mentorship, individuals can learn about each other’s disciplines.
Reverse mentorship — In reverse mentorship, a senior-level person is learning from a junior-level person. For example, a seasoned C-level executive learns from an entry-level coworker about Snapchat.
Indirect Mentorship — In this type of mentorship, the mentor is providing guidance to a group of people. For example, at the Triangle UXPA, we have a Slack account where mentors can provide advice to mentees.
Apprenticeship — We also wanted to define apprenticeship, so you can see how it differs from mentorship. An apprenticeship is a formalized training program, where an entry-level person becomes more experienced with the help of hands-on training.
With so many types of mentorship, there are more opportunities than you might think to seek or become a mentor.
Getting Started with Mentorship
Starting a mentorship relationship might seem intimidating, but it’s much easier than you think. While these are professional relationships, they don’t have to be so formalized and structured that it prevents you from participating. We actually encourage a more informal approach, which has worked well in our mentorship program.
Getting started as a mentee
As a mentee, much of the responsibility falls on you to initiate the relationship. Following these four steps can help you get started in the right direction.
Step 1. Identify your goals. Think about your goals and what you hope to accomplish through mentorship. Goals don’t always have to be aspirational such as, “transition to a UX career.” They can be smaller and focused. In the past, mentees sought mentorship from us to review portfolios. We’ve also had people who are a “UX team of one” meet with us just to share ideas with another UX designer.
Step 2. Find a mentor. Based on your goals, think about what type of mentorship you’re seeking. This can help guide you on where to find a mentor. For example, if you’re looking for a mutual mentorship, you might look for a mentor in another department at your work. If you’re looking for peer or direct mentorship, you might turn to your local UXPA chapter or a UX-related meetup. Professors and students at your local university can be another option, as well as your professional network. You can seek mentorship from a renowned UX author or pioneer, but we recommend looking for someone in your local community. Mentorship on a local level helps build a stronger community, and those mentors will likely be more accessible than someone who’s further away.
Step 3. Set expectations. Once you find a mentor, you both want to set expectations on how the relationship will work. Figure out how you will meet (for example, lunch, video chat, email, etc.) and how often you’ll meet (once a month, etc.). Also determine the length of the initial engagement (for example, three months). Most importantly, your mentor should understand your goals and be the ideal person who can help you accomplish them.
Figure 2. Setting basic expectations can help the mentorship get off to the right start.
Step 4. Be Accountable Throughout the mentorship, be respectful of the effort your mentor is putting forth by being accountable. Be open to recommendations and ideas. Additionally, keep an open line of communication for anything small (for example, “I’m running late.”) to bigger concerns (for instance, you’re not sure the relationship is working out). Be professional. Even though we encourage a more informal approach, this is still a professional relationship. Always put your best foot forward. Most importantly, don’t use the mentorship for short-sighted gains! It’s not an opportunity for a job at that person’s company or access to their LinkedIn network. Mentors can sense that and sometimes it can hurt.
A Mentorship Relationship Agreement
At the Triangle UXPA, we use a mentorship relationship agreement, which is a simple form that covers all the basic expectations. This allows both parties to be on the same page, which helps ensure the relationship starts off on the right foot. You can download a sample agreement here.
Getting started as a mentor
Becoming a mentor can be one of the most rewarding career experiences, and we encourage everyone to try it. However, there are some common myths that we sometimes use to convince ourselves otherwise. Let’s dispel these myths.
Myth 1: You don’t have enough experience. This myth goes hand-in-hand with imposter syndrome or the idea that you may reject your own accomplishments and feel like you’re a fraud. You may think you haven’t “made it” far enough to be a good mentor or to have something meaningful to teach. An example might be a designer with just a few years of experience who doesn’t feel comfortable mentoring another designer. Even though you probably do have enough experience to be a mentor, if you’re not comfortable engaging in a traditional mentorship, there are plenty of other options!
Here are some ways you can mentor others:
- Try out a different model, like mutual mentorship. Start up a conversation with a co-worker or someone at a meetup and talk about something new that’s happening in the field. This is a great way to ease into mentorship because it’s informal, yet intentional.
- If you’re not ready to share with a peer, you can try mentoring somebody outside of your discipline. Find a developer or an art director and teach them about usability testing or prototyping. You might find it easier to mentor someone with less familiarity on a topic. Don’t forget to ask them to teach you something, too!
- Finally, if you’re not up for engaging in mentorship directly with another person, you can try indirect mentorship. Write a blog post on your company’s site, for example.
Myth 2: You don’t have anything interesting to teach. One can interpret this myth as not having any skills to teach or thinking that everything you know is already common knowledge. You may get this feeling a lot when you’re reading articles and watching talks. It feels like it’s all been said before, so what could anyone have to add?
However, our discipline thrives when we share a diversity of perspectives; we value thinking about different ways of doing things. Exposing others to your techniques and ideas through the lens of your unique background helps us advance our discipline. Whether or not you think your experience is interesting, somebody else probably thinks it is. There’s something to learn from every project—good, bad, or ugly.
Here are some ways you can mentor others:
- Tell a story about your last project at your next team meeting. Explain what went really well or really wrong and ask the team if they’ve had similar experiences or how they might have handled things differently.
- Try explaining a new tool to a coworker. Maybe you’ve been using Sketch and your coworker, a longtime Photoshop designer, is looking to switch. Even though there are hundreds of tutorials online, you probably know some tips and tricks specific to your workplace that’s ten times more helpful than what’s online.
- Try responding on Twitter to the author of an article you just read. We tweet regularly about articles we read and sometimes an interesting conversation is sparked where everybody learns something new.
Figure 3. Mentoring can be as easy as showing how your team uses tools like Sketch.
Keep in mind, we all have smart, interesting things to say, we just have to start saying them. You have a lot teach; you just have to begin teaching.
Myth 3: You don’t have enough time to be a mentor. We’re all busy, not just with our jobs, but with our lives outside of work and everything in between. It can be difficult to justify putting more time into the UX community when you’re giving it 100% at work. But through mentorship, you will find enriching and rewarding experiences. Mentorships are how lots of people get their first job; it’s how people learn new techniques, make new friends, and get inspired.
We’d go as far as to say that mentorship, when done right, isn’t an add-on to your life or career: it’s foundational to your life and career.
Here are some ways you can make time to be a mentor:
- Set boundaries for your mentorship. In the Triangle UXPA program, we ask mentors to specify the number of hours they’re willing to commit a month, so mentees align with the availability of each mentor.
- Mentor a co-worker at your office. Carving out some time at work might make it a little easier to jump into mentorship, even if it’s 30 minutes every other week or during lunch once a month.
- Get mentorship added to your work responsibilities. Check with your supervisor to see if this is possible. Then during quarterly and annual reviews, the great work you’ve put in as a mentor can be recognized.
Building a Program
In 2014, we created our UXPA chapter’s mentorship program to provide guidance to members interested in UX or just starting their career and looking to learn foundational concepts.
Over the past three years, our mentorship program has provided significant value to both individuals and our community. Mentorships from the program have not only educated mentees, but have also helped mentees land their first UX job. As our program evolved, mentees have become mentors and continue to pass on the knowledge they’ve gained, which has created a ripple effect throughout our UX community.
If you think a mentorship program could be of value in your community or organization, then we hope you consider building one, too! Creating something ambitious is a lot of fun, especially when you have the support of your friends or colleagues.
The Steps of Building a Program
The first step is determining who will help construct and facilitate the program. This could be one person or a small group of people who are directly responsible for determining the structure and launching it. For our chapter, we created a Mentorship Director position and their goal was to launch the program within a year.
Next, there are a few key considerations:
- Figure out how people are going to sign up. It could be as simple as a Google form embedded on your website. You just need a way to capture who’s interested in being a mentor or a mentee.
- Think about how mentors and mentees will be matched. Do they match themselves or does the program leader help match people? We use a self-service model in the Triangle UXPA program, where mentees can browse a directory of mentors. This means that mentees can find someone that they believe can more likely help them achieve their goals. Reaching out to a mentor might be too intimidating, so you might consider hosting “meet and greet” happy hours to help facilitate pairing.
- Consider how facilitators will follow up. Decide how you will follow up with mentors and mentees after they sign up and how you’ll get feedback on how to improve. For the Triangle UXPA, we email each mentor and mentee with directions and best practices after they sign up and we receive feedback via Slack and email.
- Figure out how your program will scale if it becomes successful. You want to avoid creating a program that can’t be expanded easily and efficiently. Figure out where you could have bottlenecks in the registration or matching process and take care of it while the program is still small.
Figure 4. Triangle UXPA hosts monthly happy hours where mentors and mentees can talk about UX trends and practices. (Credit: Michelle Chin)
Best Practices
Every mentorship program will be different and should address the needs of the community or organization it supports. However, there are some best practices that apply to any new program.
- Start small. Starting a program can take some effort, so keep the program small and manageable until a format evolves and the logistics are worked out. This will help increase the success of your program.
- Get support. Look to your local professional chapters of the UXPA, the IA Institute, IxDA, and others to build support for the program. They might be able to help promote the program, host mentorship events, and provide other opportunities to spark interest and facilitate mentoring matches. Leaders from other established UX mentorship programs might be able to offer insight.
- Don’t give up. Getting a mentorship program off the ground might be tough at first, but the value of trying to start one is worth the endeavor. You’ll meet some cool people along the way and you’ll be doing your part to help grow the field. Try different things, take note of what worked and what didn’t, and modify your approach with different solutions as needed.
Mentorship can have a big impact on individuals, workplaces, and communities. With so many different types available, there are many opportunities to try it, and it’s easy to start participating. We hope you’re feeling inspired to make mentorship part of your career!
Bond, J., Chin, M., Wirtanen, A. (2017). By Teaching We Learn: Add Value to Your Career, Workplace, and the UX Community Through Mentoring. User Experience Magazine, 17(4).
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9 Quick Tips from UX Portfolio Master Joe Natoli
When you’re on the hunt for your next UX role, your portfolio can make or break your chances of scoring an interview. We know how important it is to craft a UX portfolio that tells the story of your most important projects and how you work.
That’s why we recently hosted veteran UX consultant, author and speaker Joe Natoli in our Ask the UXperts Slack channel. Joe has been preaching and practicing the gospels of User and Customer Experience to Fortune 100, 500 and Government organisations for nearly three decades. He recently launched an online training course, Build a Powerful UX Portfolio (That gets You Hired), which has just opened for winter enrolments.
Joe’s session last month was full of pearls of portfolio wisdom. “Although we are all fiercely dedicated to delivering great UX in our daily work,” he says, “we often fail to apply the same discipline, rigour or effort to our personal websites or portfolios.”
We’ve gone through and hand-picked the best advice in response to questions from the UX Mastery community.
Thanks as always to the UX Mastery community who jumped into our Slack session with a wealth of thoughtful questions.
1. What makes a portfolio stand out to you?
They tell me what I need to know from the very first screen — I get a sense of the kind of work they’ve done, who they did it for, and whether or not it was successful. No intros!
2. Are there any portfolio templates that you recommend?
The problem with templates is that they all do this art gallery presentation. And that doesn’t tell a recruiter how you THINK, what problems you solved or how well.
Sites like Dribbble, Krop, Behance, etc. are OK — but they really shouldn’t be the ONLY source of your work. Formats are too constrictive and do not lend themselves to focusing on the process and story behind the work — they’re glorified visual galleries.
3. What’s the right level of detail for projects in my portfolio, to spark enough curiosity for employers contact you for an interview?
You need to think about your portfolio as two parts:
First, the “magazine cover” that tells you what’s inside and why you should care about it.
Second, the inside stories themselves — which will only be viewed if what was on that cover was relevant, appropriate and compelling.
4. How can UX researchers build a portfolio?
Researchers can and should build portfolios! You have something to show — your process. Whiteboard work, notes, infographics — find a visual way to tell the story of your research work.
5. So much of our process is centered around failure, learning, and iteration. How do you recommend presenting failure?
Failure is important — particularly lessons learned. No one does this, and it can speak volumes about you. Show potential employers that you cast a critical eye on your work, that you care more about the outcome than being right.
6. How do you suggest crediting co-workers in a portfolio? For example, working with people in analytics, visual/interaction design, product management and so on.
Focus on YOUR role. Don’t worry about naming everyone in your team, but DO mention the other types of roles that you collaborated with. That tells a potential employer you work well with a team, and taking the time to point that out says your focus isn’t on who gets the credit — it’s on doing good work.
7. How small is too small for a case study? Do you think redesigning product cards for an e-commerce company is a big enough project?
It absolutely is, if you can tell the story of why it came to be in the first place. What’s it going to do for users? for your company? That’s the story, the WHY behind why you’re doing this in the first place.
That applies to everything. Talk about what you’re aiming for, the desired outcome — and why that outcome matters so much, and why you think your approach will get you there.
8. What metrics do you use to measure success for case studies in your portfolio?
Outcomes, outcomes and outcomes.
What was the end result, what did it do for users/for the business? And if that’s unknown, what problem were you trying to solve and why did you feel this was the way to do it? As an employer, I want to see how you THINK well before I see the produced work.
9. What are your tips on interviews, when you’re lucky enough to face actual people?
Ask questions. Ask about the organisation, how they work, what challenges they face. Communicate that you care about what they’re dealing with and that you see yourself as someone ready to throw down and help them.
Interviews should never be one-sided interrogations — show that you have a need to know, that you’re curious, that you’re not afraid to ask about anything you don’t know.
Join our Slack channel to make sure you don’t miss our next Ask the UXperts conversation. You can also read the full transcript from Joe Natoli’s session here.
The post 9 Quick Tips from UX Portfolio Master Joe Natoli appeared first on UX Mastery.
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Share Your Monstrosity and Win the UXPin Giveaway!
With Halloween approaching, we’ve created a special project filled with dark castles at night, thunderbolts, and, the scariest of them all, ghost buttons!
We’re holding a giveaway where all you have to do is share your favorite monster with a font and name of your choice! From all the entries will draw one that will win a single user annual subscription on our Prototyping plan!
Create your monster here!
How to Enter our UXPin Giveaway
To enter our contest, create your monster in this app, then send us the screenshot in a reply to this post and retweet our tweet!
If you do not have a Twitter account, visit Twitter and follow the instructions to get on board. You don’t need a UXPin account to enter the Giveaway*
The giveaway only applies to users without an active subscription.
The promotion period begins 6 a.m. PST on October 26, 2017 and runs until 11:45 p.m. on October 31, 2017. The last entry must be received by Sponsor by 11:45 p.m. PST October 31st, 2017. The winner will be announced via Twitter on November 3, 2017.
Can’t wait to see your monstrosities!
*No purchase necessary to enter or win this contest.
The post Share Your Monstrosity and Win the UXPin Giveaway! appeared first on Studio by UXPin.
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Announcing OpenFermion: The Open Source Chemistry Package for Quantum Computers
Posted by Ryan Babbush and Jarrod McClean, Quantum Software Engineers, Quantum AI Team
“The underlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty is only that the exact application of these laws leads to equations much too complicated to be soluble.”
–Paul Dirac, Quantum Mechanics of Many-Electron Systems (1929)
In this passage, physicist Paul Dirac laments that while quantum mechanics accurately models all of chemistry, exactly simulating the associated equations appears intractably complicated. Not until 1982 would Richard Feynman suggest that instead of surrendering to the complexity of quantum mechanics, we might harness it as a computational resource. Hence, the original motivation for quantum computing: by operating a computer according to the laws of quantum mechanics, one could efficiently unravel exact simulations of nature. Such simulations could lead to breakthroughs in areas such as photovoltaics, batteries, new materials, pharmaceuticals and superconductivity. And while we do not yet have a quantum computer large enough to solve classically intractable problems in these areas, rapid progress is being made. Last year, Google published this paper detailing the first quantum computation of a molecule using a superconducting qubit quantum computer. Building on that work, the quantum computing group at IBM scaled the experiment to larger molecules, which made the cover of Nature last month.
Today, we announce the release of OpenFermion, the first open source platform for translating problems in chemistry and materials science into quantum circuits that can be executed on existing platforms. OpenFermion is a library for simulating the systems of interacting electrons (fermions) which give rise to the properties of matter. Prior to OpenFermion, quantum algorithm developers would need to learn a significant amount of chemistry and write a large amount of code hacking apart other codes to put together even the most basic quantum simulations. While the project began at Google, collaborators at ETH Zurich, Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, University of Michigan, Harvard University, Oxford University, Dartmouth College, Rigetti Computing and NASA all contributed to alpha releases. You can learn more details about this release in our paper, OpenFermion: The Electronic Structure Package for Quantum Computers.
One way to think of OpenFermion is as a tool for generating and compiling physics equations which describe chemical and material systems into representations which can be interpreted by a quantum computer1. The most effective quantum algorithms for these problems build upon and extend the power of classical quantum chemistry packages used and developed by research chemists across government, industry and academia. Accordingly, we are also releasing OpenFermion-Psi4 and OpenFermion-PySCF which are plugins for using OpenFermion in conjunction with the classical electronic structure packages Psi4 and PySCF.
The core OpenFermion library is designed in a quantum programming framework agnostic way to ensure compatibility with various platforms being developed by the community. This allows OpenFermion to support external packages which compile quantum assembly language specifications for diverse hardware platforms. We hope this decision will help establish OpenFermion as a community standard for putting quantum chemistry on quantum computers. To see how OpenFermion is used with diverse quantum programming frameworks, take a look at OpenFermion-ProjectQ and Forest-OpenFermion – plugins which link OpenFermion to the externally developed circuit simulation and compilation platforms known as ProjectQ and Forest.
The following workflow describes how a quantum chemist might use OpenFermion in order to simulate the energy surface of a molecule (for instance, by preparing the sort of quantum computation we described in our past blog post):
- The researcher initializes an OpenFermion calculation with specification of:
- An input file specifying the coordinates of the nuclei in the molecule.
- The basis set (e.g. cc-pVTZ) that should be used to discretize the molecule.
- The charge and spin multiplicity (if known) of the system.
- The researcher uses the OpenFermion-Psi4 plugin or the OpenFermion-PySCF plugin to perform scalable classical computations which are used to optimally stage the quantum computation. For instance, one might perform a classical Hartree-Fock calculation to choose a good initial state for the quantum simulation.
- The researcher then specifies which electrons are most interesting to study on a quantum computer (known as an active space) and asks OpenFermion to map the equations for those electrons to a representation suitable for quantum bits, using one of the available procedures in OpenFermion, e.g. the Bravyi-Kitaev transformation.
- The researcher selects a quantum algorithm to solve for the properties of interest and uses a quantum compilation framework such as OpenFermion-ProjectQ to output the quantum circuit in assembly language which can be run on a quantum computer. If the researcher has access to a quantum computer, they then execute the experiment.
A few examples of what one might do with OpenFermion are demonstrated in ipython notebooks here, here and here. While quantum simulation is widely recognized as one of the most important applications of quantum computing in the near term, very few quantum computer scientists know quantum chemistry and even fewer chemists know quantum computing. Our hope is that OpenFermion will help to close the gap between these communities and bring the power of quantum computing to chemists and material scientists. If you’re interested, please checkout our GitHub repository – pull requests welcome!
1 If we may be allowed one sentence for the experts: the primary function of OpenFermion is to encode the electronic structure problem in second quantization defined by various basis sets and active spaces and then to transform those operators into spin Hamiltonians using various isomorphisms between qubit and fermion algebras.↩
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What Is Design Thinking? Is It Really a Thing?
There is a new business buzzword in town. From the boardrooms of IBM to General Electric, executives are talking about this mysterious new business methodology called design thinking. But what is it and does it have any real value?
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Ask the UXperts: How to craft language for better experiences — with Kah Chan
UX writing is a topic that seems to be raising its head with ever increasing frequency in our community, so you can imagine how excited I was when I showed up at UXNZ earlier this month and had the pleasure of listening to Kah Chan talk on that very subject!
Kah’s talk was one of my favourites from the conference and I took advantage of the fortuitous situation by hitting him up to spend some time in our Slack channel so that we can all benefit from his wisdom.
It’s also the first time in my many years of organising these sessions that I’ve not had to negotiate time zones!
So… UX writing. As designers, the way we use our words can have a profound effect on our users. Used thoughtfully, words can create feelings of trustworthiness, integrity and joy – so choose them with care. Kah is very enthusiastic when it comes to making better choices with words. Don’t miss this opportunity to pick his brain.
The Details
- Where: Our dedicated ‘Ask the UXperts’ Slack channel (You’ll need to request an invitation if you haven’t yet joined our Slack channel)
- When: 2pm Wednesday 15 Nov PDT or 9am Thursday 16 Nov AEST (or find out what time that is for you)
Meet Kah Chan
Kah Chan is the Head of Product Design at Flick Electric Co., which is really just a fancy title for the only designer in the house (way back when).
Since joining Flick, he has worked on everything from designing tools to empower the Flick customer to helping out on the digital ads. As Flick has grown, he spends an equal amount of time on new products, annoying the development team, and drinking coffee.
How to Ask Your Questions
If you can’t make the live session but have questions, we’d love to collect them ahead of time and we’ll ask Kah on your behalf. You can ask them in the comments below. We’ll publish the responses (along with the full transcript) in the days following the session.
How does Ask the UXperts work?
These sessions run for approximately an hour and best of all, they don’t cost a cent. We use a dedicated public Slack channel. That means that there is no audio or video, but a full transcript will be posted up on here in the days following the session.
The post Ask the UXperts: How to craft language for better experiences — with Kah Chan appeared first on UX Mastery.
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The Best CX Leaders ROCK at These 3 Things
For those of us who’ve studied CX for decades, seeing it featured as a “new topic” is a little jarring. It seems every business article now mentions the customer’s journey as if that’s a new revelation. “The journey is just as important as the product!” Wow! (Who knew!?) Now leaders worldwide are resolving to improve CX. Yay! But here’s the thing: Few actually understand what the best CX leaders do with this knowledge.
Those of us who know what works and what doesn’t need to share their knowledge. You see, most leaders want to show customers they care, but many aren’t sure how to do that. It’s time to help our colleagues, employees and even our bosses understand! They need to see why customer experience isn’t just a catchy phrase.
Being customer-centric means so much more than just talk. It means real action every day.
What sort of action? That seems to be the question.
1. The best CX leaders put themselves in the customer’s shoes.
However, they DON’T do it to sell more.
It’s critical to continuously evaluate the real experience of your customers. It’s better when leaders throughout the organization connect this to their roles, and not just the annual “customer summit.”
Leaders get so far away from customers in so many organizations. Leaders can regularly assign tasks like calling support, visiting a storefront, or ordering online- to themselves and others. First-hand customer stories help others internalize what needs to change. More importantly, it helps them decide what to do about it.
Many leadership teams only explore the buyer’s journey, not the overall customer journey. They focus on one small part of the entire experience. And they set the tone for the focus of their organization. So once they obtain the customer, the focus is no longer there! Leaders should care about the entire journey simply so others do, too.
2. The best CX leaders collect consistent feedback.
But they don’t think there is only one way to do so!
ANY consistently measured score, whether it’s Customer Satisfaction (C-Sat) or Net Promoter Score (NPS), or some combination of things, is better than nothing.
If you can track scores on an ongoing basis, you can discern what customers are trying to tell you. Is that C-Sat score going up consistently? Yahoo! Then, look at why so you can continue to deliver. Is that NPS score declining in the same month every year? Then that might tell you about a cycle of unhappiness you need to correct.
There is no perfect metric.
There is no one-size-fits-all here. Sometimes overly enthusiastic new customer-centric champions become enamored with the idea of that perfect metric. Compelling case studies about how it was used make it seem attainable. This is when the leader announces “let’s use NPS!” and changes how their team measures customer experience. Then comes another case study about one company’s success using C-Sat exclusively… So the same leader wants all the language and reports to reflect C-Sat instead!
Most leaders have good intentions. However, the results will not be helpful if you don’t track the ups and downs of a given segment or experience. There’s no crime in adding different methods! But jumping from one to another whenever the mood strikes leads to disaster.
Customer experience, like any part of business, is about constant improvement. Therefore, the only way to know if that is working is to find a way to measure it repeatedly.
“Think of #CX as a verb, because it’s about action.” @jeanniecw
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3. Instead of talking about CX internally, the best CX leaders educate.
Educate your teams to embed and embrace a focus on delivering exceptional experiences. That means discussing the desired outcomes and specific actions around what CX really means.
It’s great that your Customer Insights Team is privy to the reports. It’s great that they understand those numbers and how they reflect the work they do. But what about the other teams? They continue operating in the dark about how their activities directly impact the customer experience.
Education takes time.
Education takes commitment, so don’t give up when people don’t “get” the concept of customer experience! Show them and help them understand.
Talking about becoming customer-centric or tossing out NPS results is not educating. Your organization may already have a history of embracing buzzwords temporarily without attaching them to real actions. People do get cynical. They do nod along in meetings when leadership announces the next big idea. But they forget about it three minutes later when it’s time to start their “real work.”
Don’t let customer experience become a buzz word.
Live up to it by doing the work, then continue to live up to it by tracking real results.
Think of customer experience as a verb, because it’s about action. It is not a nice-to-have aspect of business. The customer experience is a must-have focus for every organization.
Everyone wants to deliver those magical customer experiences that seem so easy and effortless to others. But it takes some heavy lifting, some determination and some serious business acumen.
You can do it! It’s time to stop talking about customer experience, roll up your sleeves, and get to the real work done.
The post The Best CX Leaders ROCK at These 3 Things appeared first on Customer Experience Consulting.
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My First UX 