”Life as…” is a blog series where we dive into professionals’ everyday work life and get to learn more about their chosen profession.
Read the section on how it is to work as an Agile Coach.
In this part of ”Life as” we meet Paulina Raymond who works as a UX-designer at the consulting company Tretton37.
Research have shown that 32% of people who have a bad user experience will never come back to that service or product again. Never!
That's why my profession as a UX designer is so important.
When I grew up my dream was to become an architect and build beautiful buildings that a lot of people would like to visit.
During high school, I decided to study art to realize my dream. After a year one of my teachers said: You know only 1 out of 50 becomes an architect?! Maybe you should rethink?
I changed course completely and started to study at a cooking school. Three years later I was ready to start working as a chef. After 9 years working as a chef, I wanted to open my own restaurant but after a visit to the doctor I got the advice to do something else. I started to study to Digital Strategist at Hyper Island. After I was finished with school, I got an opportunity to do an internship at a consulting company and later I got a job as a UX designer.
UX stands for User experience and user experience means any interaction a user has with a product or service. When we write product or service, we refer to a digital one, such as a website or an application.
Is the product easy to navigate?
Is it easy to find the information you need?
Is it easy to complete your desired task?
It’s all about creating products that are relevant, easy to use and valuable for the end-user.
To make it as simple as possible, we start from the image below. It visualizes an iceberg, imagine that the iceberg is a product or a service. All you can see with your eyes on top, is what we call the UI which stands for User Interface. UI is e.g., colors, illustrations, photography, typography, icons and graphics.
In the lower part of the iceberg, you will find everything about UX that includes usability testing, psychology, interaction design, content strategy, wireframes, accessibility, prototypes, information architecture, understanding the problem and user research. The user research is a very big part of UX design.
There are as many answers as UX-designers, so my answer will be:
The experience is a big part, and it starts with the day you were born, to where you grew up, what friends you had to your first job. Everything strengthens your ability to become a great UX designer.
Another thing is your toolbox or what UX-methods you have been working with. If you have had several different assignments as a consultant within UX, you will of course get a better understanding of the different methods that exists. It is an advantage when you work as a consultant, as you get to know different customers' challenges and tools.
To continue to evolve and be willing to absorb news and constantly researching the latest technology, what trends are coming and new methods. That you are curious to explore and learn more all the time.
To be creative is also important, that you are able to connect your experience with UX methods, latest tools and processes to create new solutions.
Your personality will also reflect your work and solutions as a UX designer.
Now I’m a part of tretton37, which is awesome! Here I get the chance to work with all types of people, engineers, front-end, back-end developers and marketing people. I just love it because I get to learn so many new things every single day.
I don’t build buildings, but I build websites that lots of people visit every day. You could say that my dream came true!
With all experience and tools, a UX designer creates value for the users but also for the entire company, so in this way you can say that UX is the bridge between the users and business.
The UX designer is the one who "runs" back and forth between these two stakeholders to make the experience and the business as good and smooth as possible.
As a UX designer, you can end up in both small and large projects in a variety of industries, both are equally fun because it is an experience that I can take with me to other projects.
It depends on the customer and demand, but in a larger team working with agile methods then there are often: product owners, analysts, front-end developers, back-end developers, scrum masters, writers, and UI and UX designers.
Sometimes you come in when the customer has a finished product and no one is using it, then you must "put out all fires". The absolutely best is when you get to be involved from the very beginning and create the product or service from scratch.
The researcher is a role in UX that collects more data and does user tests to help improve the product so that it reaches its ultimate goal. It is thus part of the process for the UX work and depending on the company and project, it can be a person who only works with the user tests and the information base or it is a UX designer who does both the research and everything else that is part of the role as a UX designer.
A work process within UX design is called "Design thinking". It consists of 5 building blocks which are as follows:
Emphasize:
You start by understanding the users, what they want to achieve and do.
Define
Then you define the problem. What is it that the user discovers that is missing or that makes them not complete their visit to the website? When you find the problems, you start to ideate.
Ideate
This is where you start the creative phase to come up with new ideas and decide on what idea to go for and create a prototype for.
”Design thinking”-process in the image below.
Prototype:
A prototype is a skeleton or a sketch of your idea and when you have finished creating a prototype it is time to move forward to testing.
Test:
In this phase you test the ideas and get feedback from the users. If everything goes well and the users in the test are behaving as you want, your next step is to get help to develop your sketch from the developers. If the users in the test do not follow the steps you want, you need to go back to step 1 to understand the users again.
I was part of a project with the task of developing a new product for a customer who needed a tool fulfilling requirements for their sellers but also requirements for the service technicians. My team and I decided to use a process called "design sprint", which means that you develop an idea that solves big problems and test the new idea in just 5 days.
On day 1 the goal is to try and understand the user of the product. What’s the problem? You create a big map with the product owners and other experts in different areas but also the sellers. Everyone is in the same room mapping up how the current situation look like.
The day 2 you sketch down all the ideas and create solutions for the problem that you have identified.
It’s time to make the big decisions on day 3. Now you pick out the best ideas and start to create a huge storyboard. The storyboard contains sketches and step-by-step-processes that will take place in the new solution.
Day 4 the prototype is initiated. There are different kind of prototypes.
A” low-fidelity paper prototype” is a sketch on paper. It’s easy to change and my experience tells me you get more feedback and criticism on this prototype since it’s easy to change.
Here is another type of ”low fidelity prototype” that is digital often in grey and black. Its usually clickable so you can see and follow the user flow.
A ”high fidelity prototype” feels and look more like the end product.
Back to day 4 you get together with the team again and spread out all the sketches and go through them step-by-step and start to develop a “low fidelity prototype” so the sellers and technicians can test all functions at day 5.
The company has an application that their service technicians and sellers use worldwide. This is a project that I’m very proud of and it turned out to be a success story.
Take a look at the picture below, it’s a park which was designed to use in one way, but the users use it in a different way.
Another example is the image below. At first sight you don’t even know what it does, but if you take a closer look you see that it is a ticket machine. But how do I use it? How should I pay? I would get frustrated if I met this machine in the subway.
If we take another look at when digital design gone bad, I wanted to show you an example below. If you go into Lingscars.com you will get welcomed by several interactions. I don’t know where to start or what to do, or where to click.
I can’t say it to many times:
Research have shown that 32% of people who have a bad user experience will never come back to that service or product again. Never!
For me good design is something you can’t even feel or see, it just works. Imagine you walk down a street on your way to work and all the traffic lights turn green so you won’t need to stop and everything goes your way, that is what UX design is all about.
One more good example is when an application helps you to write. Your start to write and the application autocompletes the sentence for you. It’s making your life easier, you type faster and reaches your goal even smoother.
Another good example is when you get direct feedback on your screen as a confirmation that you’ve done something.
In the image below you find another good design example. With help from some icons, you can easily see how far to drive, go by train or bike to a destination. An easy and simple presentation for you to choose what fits you the best.
There are lots of different educations you can go to become a UX designer. I went to Hyper Island and really enjoyed their way of educating.
A Society is the consulting company of tomorrow and can help consultants connect with customers who are looking for UX designers. Register an account on the website and you will get a personal contact person who will reach out to you and hear what type of assignment you are looking for. You will also get access to all assignments that are advertised in our network. Joining our network is completely free. Good luck!