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  1. Advertising | Advertisingworld.co
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    […] UX in the Real World | Elisabeth Huberthttps://consulting.elisabethhubert.com/2011/10/ux-in-the-real-world/ […]

  2. ShawnCapizzi
    ShawnCapizzi at |

    Focus on doing the best work, everything else will work itself out!

    Reply
  3. Rick Thomas
    Rick Thomas at |

    Our customer trusts that we can craft exceptional web-based software based on our portfolio of completed projects.  There will never ever ever be any budget devoted to developing “soft” deliverables.  We equate good experience design as just plain common sense.  We took over a project with poor UX and a ton of user analysis and turned it into an exceptional product with zero user analysis.  We need to stress the importance great GUI design in UX.  People are visual, they want the tangible and they want it now.  We don’t even craft low fidelity wireframes anymore.  We develop fully dressed, high fidelity static experiences that are ready to had off to the development team to bring to life.  I won’t bring anybody on my team who doesn’t have a strong communication or fine arts portfolio.  We can teach them to craft user personas and test cases later if the need arises.  The artistic eye on the other hand is a god given talent.  We will always kill it with award winning aesthetics and solid interaction conventions over a stack of paper that says users prefer rounded buttons, blue links, skinny jeans, and soy lattes any day. 

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  4. Ray DeLaPena
    Ray DeLaPena at |

    Isn’t there another option Lis? To slowly but surely introduce some of the tricks and treats we pick up in workshops, blog posts, and conferences into the process? Sure, you may not be able to convince a deliverables-based organization to jump into design studio, lean agile, cross-functional design/developer pairing overnight but maybe you could introduce a persona deliverable or spend a little extra time on your wireframes and slip in some emotional annotations, maybe do a bit of guerilla research or paper prototyping on the side and present it to your team or the client as a bit of over-delivery.

    We often use the toolbelt analogy in our field. As we grow and learn we continually add tools to the kit. If we were carpenters we wouldn’t get to use all the tools in our first year.. we’re probably sanding stuff and pulling out bent nails. Eventually we get to do the hand carving and finish work if and when we get good enough. Or, coming at it from the organizational perspective, when you start out you might be the nail puller at a cheapo-carpentry company and you could be the one to introduce the cool new fill-the-hole-after-you-pull-out-the-nail technique you learned at your Young Carpenters Meetup group the other night, thereby improving your lot as well as the product your company delivers.

    This problem isn’t specific to our field either. Anyone who has studied or worked in architecture (the buildings kind) knows the first several years of your career used to be spend copying blueprints (their equivalent of wireframe monkeyery). Further, most architects are not designing Frank Gheary glass sculptures, but redesigning kitchens on tight budgets and maybe some townhouses for a new development. But… over time, some of the good architects develop and introduce their own style, learn and use more advanced techniques, and are hopefully satisfied and continually challenged to grow in their craft.

    I agree that a little reality check is in order and not every graduate with a UX degree will be designing the next ZipCar and there’s a good chance they’ll just be creating deliverables for a while. But I like to keep the notion that we can improve our lot on our own, even a little bit, a little at a time, if we understand the current state of things and set reasonable goals.

    Thanks, as always, for getting the conversation cooking.

    – Ray

    Reply
    1. Lis Hubert
      Lis Hubert at |

      Thanks for the thoughts Ray! I guess my point was  that we need to start to bring to light what the jobs are like in UX, just as the architects do in their field, so that not every UXer thinks they are designing the next iPad (even though hopefully they will).

      Yes, of course we should slowly but surely be changing things in our own organizations of consulting practices, I think that is a great point… thanks for the addition of it!

      Lis

      Reply

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