I thought I’d share a couple of articles I enjoyed reading recently: 

The Case Against On-staff IAs
http://uxmag.com/strategy/the-case-against-on-staff-ias?

A strong case is put forward by Hana Schank that being an outsider can give you a better perspective. While I do agree that its hard to maintain complete objectivity working inside an organisation, the familiarity also brings some benefits. I have seen many cases of consultants making poorly thought through recommendations because they didn’t have a firm grasp of all the issues. 

So, how do we get the best of both worlds? A lot of it boils down to the value an organisation places on customercentricity. If its regarded as being important, employing all the necessary tools and tricks to see the world from the users perspective will be routine and welcomed. If the interest in UX is just lip service (which is often the case), then all the subtle deterrents will be drip fed into the project, until all usercentricity is slowly asphyxiated. The only weapons against this are passion and education. You need to win over each stakeholder one at a time. And that is something only an ‘innie’ can do.  

5 Design Decision Styles. What's Yours? http://www.uie.com/articles/five_design_decision_styles/

Jared Spool outlines 5 approaches to UX. A horrifyingly accurate summary in my experience.  

I was at UX Lisbon on Friday. I decided just to do the last day as it seemed to be a great line up and I couldn’t really justify taking more time off work right now. 

While I got a lot out of it, I also felt that some of the talks were pretty routine to many of the speakers. Of course I don’t expect them to come up with something totally new every time, many of them have a bit of a road-show and do the same routine all over the world. So the outcome is a little generic and in some cases patronising. And I thought a couple were poorly targeted for the audience, in my opinion. Of course its easier to criticise than to do, but I do feel that, in our industry, not getting who your audience is is a major fail, as that’s what we are about, isn’t it?

Don Norman was great. I wondered if the fact that he kept it so high level was one of the keys to his success. That allowed each person there to interpret what he said to suit them selves. I am still getting used to his new suggestion that we start considering ‘signifiers’ instead, which he introduced not so long ago as an alternative to the now horribly abused term of ‘affordance’. You can get it straight from the Don here: http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/signifiers_not_affordances.html. I think he has a point, particularly about the social context of the clues we offer, considering the lack of location specificity of most digital experiences. 

Inspired by a number of UX related diagrams, I offer mine: the UX toolkit, a framework driven by quality of user experience and the focus of the digital product that maps out the relevant tools used to drive each of the four areas that make a product, relevant and usable, leading to loyalty and delight. ​

In each of the quadrants, I have mapped tools that drive each area: with business tools concentrated in the lower left. They help to establish product strategy. On the lower right hand quadrant, are all of the tools that expose usability issues and define a usable model for the product. Moving up the model, you start to get the tools that reveal what could be called the “nice-to-haves” (although in UX terms, they are absolutely fundamental), that take a product out of the ordinary and into the extraordinary. 

I will say, upfront, that ‘experience’ is one of my bug-bears. I am constantly amazed by the difference between what I’d call ‘senior’ (6-8 years, with or without a masters degree) and what recruiters deem to be acceptable (2 years + a masters degree). 

As Oscar Wilde said,  "Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing."  So true. I have seen far too many mid-weights who feel like they have been working forever, desperate to become seniors. It may be just a money-thing but, from my point of view, its a disaster. Surely, to be a senior is akin to being a “master” of one’s trade. So that means you need to have quite a few skills - as opposed to techniques you may have tried once, or know someone who has! Would any of us be happy with a surgeon who’d had such little experience? Or even a bus driver, who’d only driven around the block a couple of times? “Puleeeese”, as they say. 

What’s more, seniors manage people. Not too well, if they have no experience of being managed themselves. Classic example of the blind leading the blind. That’s not to say, being managed for longer will improve anyone’s management skills, but it will give them a pool of knowledge to draw from, even if its ideas on what not to do. 

Patience is an undervalued quality these days. We all need to do our apprenticeship, serve our time and really learn our trade before we unleash ourselves onto the world at large. Its not actually fair to either ourselves or our clients. Lack of experience will deliver amateur solutions. And, when it comes to work, I don’t think that ignorance should be bliss. Confucius said "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance." And we all know he was one smart guy. 

About 50% of the work I do these days is Agile. While I like some aspects of the approach, I have to confess I am not a big fan. I think it has a lot of potential to smother vision and innovation, because its easy to take a couple of small steps in the wrong direction and find that the destination is a few miles adrift of the original goal. The iterative nature of the Agile process allows key elements to get accidentally dropped or forgotten, which can take the project in a subtly different direction. 

Given its “just enough” strategy, Agile also promotes short term goals ahead of long term thinking, so that you end up with what is referred to as “debt”, meaning a lot of rework needing to be done. Its usually referred to in a technical capacity, but I think there is a great build-up of shortcuts in all aspects of the development, particularly on the UX side. By not knowing what is coming, its impossible to make anything other than educated guesses about where the product is going. So every discipline in the team is likely to be confronted with rework as time goes on. 

My experience is that getting resource to repay an accumulation of “UX debt” is often impossible, unless there are pressing commercial issues - in which case they shoot right to the top of the backlog. So the product limps along, hobbled by an ever increasing technical and UX burdon. 

But, there are some great aspects of Agile, which should be celebrated and embraced. I love the great communication that comes from daily scrums and the innovation that results from working in mixed teams. From a UX perspective, the more the different disciplines collaborate, the better the outcomes will be. 

I have worked at a number of organisations, from the very obscure to the very well known, many of them market leaders in their field. And one thing I noticed is that each organisation has patchy skills. What I mean is, their staff range from brilliant to downright incompetent. At first, this discrepancy surprised me. “Why settle for crap when you know what excellent is? “ I used to wonder. Then I noticed the pattern: they hire excellent staff in their primary competency but have no ability to discern when they are dealing with the less familiar. So you get incompetent IT staff in publishing companies and poor design skills in software houses, for example.

Obvious but sad. Those companies can not produce well rounded solutions because they can not tell good from bad in disciplines that are critical to their future success, but secondary to their central expertise. 

Coming from a design background, I feel strongly that the actual design and experience of the documents contributes to both their usability and the level to which they are valued by internal and external clients. I am sure I am not alone in having this view. So, having seen many examples of horrible, unclear documentation, I am keen to get on my soap box about this. 

A UX’er could be called on to create a number of documents, from a sitemap and wireframes to flow diagrams and concept diagrams. And, of course, not every UX designer has the skills to make every output a work of art. 

I have seen some awful documents, but, to be honest, the awfulness doesn't come from the lack of design finesse as much as from the author trying do something they are not familiar with. I’ve seen outputs from IA’s trying to make hardcore tech specs by using language they’ve seen in other peoples documents and not understanding it. And an awful hash made by someone who was wrestling with a content audit ad clearly loosing the battle. 

So, what is good documentation?

• Its clear: it speaks clearly to the audience it is meant for.
  
• Any one in the team can pick up your outputs and understand your thinking on the subject, without having to ask you what you mean.
  
• Its pleasant to use. Anything that gives people a headache is definitely going in the wrong direction. 
  

Why is it so important to document well? 

• Good documentation helps you communicate your ideas clearly.
  
• Documents have a habit of drifting out of your control, so they need to be able to stand on their own two feet in what ever company they find themselves in.
  
• If you ever want to change jobs, you are likely to have another UX’er reviewing your work - and sloppy work will count against you. 
  
• Someone else may have to work on them. They won’t think well of you if they inherit a pile of s**t!

My advice is this:

1. Know your audience. A solution that suits board level directors may not be right for the development team. A one size fits all solution will end up suiting no one well. You may have to adapt documents to suit the people who will be using it.  
   
2. Ask around. If you need to do something you are unfamiliar with, ask someone who is. 
   
3. Use the internet. If there aren’t a hundred examples of what you need to to, I’d be really surprised. 
   
4. Do follow the crowd. As usability resides with the user, it make sense to utilise what’s familiar to them and build on that - rather than having to educate them each and every time you present to them.  
   
5. Consult a book. Dan Brown’s book on “Communicating Design’ covers the basics of UX deliverables quite well. He has a collection of examples on his website, too. 
   

Discovering what working environment suits you best can be a big breakthrough in terms of job satisfaction. I often meet UX’ers who are one-of-a-kind in the organisation they work for, and some are concerned about the impact this is having on their overall career experience. 

I think each option has its pros and cons...

Being the  “only UXer in the village” has the potential to give you loads of hands on experience in using all the tools you can think of as your manager is unlikely to know anything about UX and give you quite a free range in getting your job done. You will develop a wide array of skills, anything from graphic design to business analysis, on top of your original skill set. The downside is that you may feel that there are a million tools and techniques you know nothing about and you may feel compelled to invest lots of your own time in “keeping up”. Plus everyone in the organisation will think their X input is as valid as yours...

Working in a big UX department is quite different: you are surrounded by people who know exactly what you are talking about, have strong feelings on the same subjects you do and can often be quite inspiring. You may even find a mentor or two. The clients you work with will give you more of a free reign (within budget) as they regard the UX team as experts. But, you may end up being quite niche, with a lot of experience with a small number of UX tools and a belief that a wide range of specialists are needed for any task, however small. 

It’s the old wide or deep knowledge debate. And, of course, neither is better than the other. The answer for me is the same in both cases: 

Unlike other professions, there isn’t a clear UX career path. People come from a wide variety of starting point, the most popular, in my experience, being design, library science, journalism, computer science and psychology. And each of those foundational skills give the practitioner as slightly different perspective on this composite skill area called experience design. 

For a practice with its roots in cognitive psychology and ergonomics, UX design has blossomed on one side to include, more visual aspects of digital experience, that touches on but shouldn’t intrude on the visual design space. Additionally, the advent of more dynamic interfaces has started to bring front end developers into the fold. Which leads to a wide spectrum of expectation by employers and collaborators. I often find myself talking to other UX’ers about what skills and experience one should have in this field and what additional study, if any, should one sign up to. 

This is my view: we all have core skills that form the foundation of what we can offer and are likely to be our strongest suit. Mine happen to be design-oriented but, like I said before, others start off with quite different skills. You need to factor in inclination (what you are able to stretch to, essentially), to establish what you could add to your portfolio of abilities. In my case, having mastered very basic HTML very early on, I soon realised that my innate ability for programming was never going to take me very far.  Then the rest is an open field. 

Every year, hundreds of students pour out of under- and post-graduate courses, like hungry larvae, looking for jobs. Coupled with the fact that they are digital natives, the level of teaching they get gives them a hell of a head-start when it comes to doing great, creative work. Of course they need to get used to the rather more pragmatic world of work, but that doesn’t take long and soon they are pole vaulting themselves into rather amazing positions, often ahead of their slightly older alumni.

What to do? I am a big fan of formal education. I know it is expensive and time consuming and can sometimes load you with information you know you’ll never use. But, UX, as practised on the ground, can often veer into the pseudo-scientific and it helps to be able to tell one from the other.  

There are lots of options, starting with a vast array of undergraduate courses all over the UK. The OU do some short courses and I am noticing more and more short courses being offered by companies like Syntagm, Webcredible, Interaction Design Studio, Econsultancy and HFI in London covering basic UX skills. Please note, I have never attended any of them so this is not any kind of endorsement or otherwise, from me. 

I got a lot out of a masters degree from UCL in HCI with Ergonomics: what attracted me to the course was the chance to get my head around ergonomics and cognitive psychology. I knew a bit about each of them before I went there, but having a formal approach filled in a number of gaps. I personally find it hard to absorb that level of information on my own, despite the text books being freely available to all. I guess I like the lecture format, with the ability to ask (in my case, stupid) questions until it is all clear in one’s mind. I hear good things about other courses in London and around the country. 

What you also get out of attending any course, is new links with like minded people who are in your field, who are (usually!) doing really interesting things. That helps form a virtuous knowledge circle, as they go out in the world and then share what they know with their fellow students. 

Having worked in a number of organisations over the years, I am always amazed by the variety of structures people have devised to house the creative outputs. Depending on the background of the founders, the structure often echos existing models, like advertising with creative directors and account directors running the show or publishing, where the creative leadership will come from the editorial team and product management. 

Alternatively, it may be based around the skills and experience of the founders, and I have certainly seen places where IAs or planning or sales or technology is the strongest muscle in the studio. And I’ve seen all of these models work brilliantly - and a couple where it wasn’t so good... 

Is there a “best” way? Probably not. But there are certainly a plethora of “worst” ways. The key to getting it right isn’t about who is in charge - someone has to be and its always great if its you or at least someone in your gang and criminally terrible if it isn’t - but really, its more about finding a way for each disciple to contribute in a meaningful way. 

The process can get broken because ownership is often seen as being exclusive, so that one person or team is ruling the roost, telling everyone else how its going to be done - often to quite extraordinary (and unnecessary) detail. This is very demotivating for the other disciplines which often leads to creative withering in those areas, where the inspired staff leave and are replaced by more docile characters.

A better approach is where each team member is encouraged to feel as if they co-own the project and to be actively encouraged push for the most excellent outcome possible. The trick is to live it rather than talk about it: lots of places espouse this view but it rarely actually happens because too few people really believe in it. The trick is to get everyone involved right at the start, brainstorming, talking, reviewing, and keep that going every step of the way. Of course there needs to be a leader, the one keeps the project on course, but the fact that they believe that a great idea can come from anywhere (and anyone) is what will allow brilliance to rise to the top and deliver great outcomes.