uxd v1 sample

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UXDEverything you need to GET STARTED IN UX,

FIND A JOB as a UX Designer and GET AHEAD in a growing field.

by Jon Izquierdo

© 2016 Jonathan Izquierdo. All Rights Reserved.

Please do not distribute or share without permission. If you have questions get in touch. My email address is

[email protected]. I typically respond to all the email I receive.

mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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I. Introduction

II. Getting Started in UX Design

The 30,000 ft. view of UX

Designing a memorable experience

What does a UX Designer do?

Tools of the trade

What other types of roles are there?

Educational opportunities

Getting real-world experience

Get involved in the community

III. Becoming a UX Professional

What makes a good UX Professional?

Technical skills you need

General business skills you need to be a professional

Developing your skills

Succeeding in the real world

The journey ahead

Table Of Contents

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IV. Getting Ready for a Job Search

Let’s get you a job!

First things first... lay your foundation

Your resume

Your portfolio

Your social media and online presence

V. Getting a Job as a UX Designer

Types of companies

Types of employment opportunities

Finding openings

Contacting companies directly

Working with staffing agencies or independent recruiters

Working your network

Preparing for UX interviews

Evaluating opportunities

Compensation, negotiation & accepting

VI. Managing Your Career

VII. Conclusion

VIII. About the Author

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1Introduction


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Introduction

I don't need to sell you on the importance of user experience (UX).

Apple has spent the last decade making that abundantly clear to the

world as they dominated sales and surpassed oil giants on the list of

most valuable companies. Everyone has taken notice. They did it with

design.

No. If you're reading this, you get that.

I probably don't need to tell you how important UX design is. Or the

influence a UX Designer can have on the success of a product. Not if

you're in the tech world. You already know designers are dominating

the space, especially in Silicon Valley, the epicenter of technology.

For years, the startup founder team was straightforward. You get a

business guy and an engineer. You dominate the world. In 2016, that's

not enough. You need a designer in the fold.

Even at large companies. Development teams used to be comprised of a

product owner, two developers and a QA guy. Maybe a Systems Analyst.

In 2016, that's not enough. There's a designer in that group now.

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Introduction

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WHO ARE THESE DESIGNERS?

The interesting thing is who that designer is. So many people think the

designer has a BFA and MFA in Design from the Rhode Island School of

Design. Actually, the odds are they don't.

No, they're coming from all backgrounds with a wide variety of skills.

Have a passion for making things? Like solving problems? Can you put

the needs of others before your own? Then yes, you can work in the UX

space, and make a great living doing it.

THERE AREN’T ANY STARVING ARTISTS IN UX

The average graphic designer in the mid-2000s was making $40k a

year. It was a saturated market and was becoming unvalued in most

companies. Many even called it a dying career field.

Fast forward a few years and the concept of user experience was

introduced. Apple destroyed everyone and along came the UX Designer.

Today, I don't know any experienced UX Designers making less than

$100k, even in places like Dallas, Texas (where I live). Junior designers

are making $60-80k around here.

There's such a shortage of quality UX professionals that salaries just

seem to be going up. The supply and demand of this job market heavily

favors the designer.

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Needless to say, many of those graphic designers are transitioning to

UI/UX work.

But the great thing is there are such a variety of jobs in the field.

If you can talk to people and listen well, you have a researcher position

available. If you have great graphic design skills, you could be a visual

designer in no time at all. If you can do even basic front-end

development, you’re worth 25%+ more than your peer who can’t.

Putting it all together opens even more doors. There are plenty of senior

and leadership positions available in every kind of company.

A WESOME! SIGN ME UP. HOW DO I GET STARTED?

If you have the passion for the space, you can start today. It's certainly

not an easy job. It can be difficult. Difficult, not impossible.

I wrote this short guide as a brief introduction to getting started in UX.

This is not an encyclopedia of UX Design. It's not a textbook. It's a

pamphlet. This is meant to provide early guidance and direct you to

more information.

There's a lot to learn. But you can learn a little about a lot or a lot about

a little. There’s a job for both.

Like any profession, you're not going to master it and earn top 5%

money in a weekend. But you can enter the field much faster than

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others. If you set your mind to it and put in the time, you can get to a

junior level in 3-9 months. Naturally, this depends on where you're

starting skills-wise.

A career changer from a tech field is going to have a massive advantage.If you have transferable skills, that's an advantage. If you have a college

degree already, that's another advantage. But you have to work with

what you have.

I wrote this book to accelerate the learning curve as much as possible.

So let’s stop waiting and get started.

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2Getting Started in UX Design


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The 30,000-foot View Of UX

What is User Experience (UX) Design?

Ok, we should probably put a little definition to what user experience is

before we get too far. The user experience is the collective feelings of a

person using a product. This product can be many things: a system,

device, web site, mobile app, etc.

The potential influences on a person’s experience while using a product

can be ease of use, efficiency, desirability, learnability, beauty,

usefulness or perceived value of it. The perceived value is a particularly

interesting one to me. What is an acceptable experience (or barely

noticeable annoyance) in a free app might not be an irrefutable

experience in a $10,000 app. It’s like our senses are heightened by ourperceived value and actual cost of a product.

User Experience Design (UXD) is the process of planning, building and

enhancing the experience for people (users). The most important part

of this process is for people. We design technology for humans to use …

with all of their talents and flaws. Any given experience can be highlysubjective. It’s not an easy profession to make a career out of. But there

are very few things in this world more rewarding than building

something, seeing it used in the world and finding people truly enjoying

it.

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The 30,000-foot View Of UX

Getting Started in UX Des


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WHAT’S THE VALUE OF UXD?

I just provided a definition for UXD, but there’s another one I want to

give you. I actually really like the definition for UXD in Wikipedia. They

define UX design (or experience design) as:

The process of enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty by improving the

usability, ease of use, and pleasure provided in the interaction between the

customer and the product.

I absolutely love the essence of this statement. It’s rooted in business.

UX is often assumed to be this fluffy immeasurable thing, and that

couldn’t be further from the truth. In the definition, they use terms like

customer, loyalty, satisfaction and product. UXD is a highly valuable

business function. We’re designing to meet the goals of a business and

their customer (users of external facing systems) or their employees

(users of internal systems).

In our projects and feature enhancements, we’ll target metrics such as:

growth, conversion, adoption, satisfaction, profit, etc. These are tangle

outcomes. The field may not be as quantifiable as accounting, but thevalue of UXD is rooted in core business and product metrics. If we’re

doing our jobs, you can measure what we do really well.

As UX Designers, we’re highly valued and compensated assets for pretty

much every company with a technology department right now. This is

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because in 2016, a top-notch user experience is table stakes. A high

quality (and user-friendly) design is a standard customer expectation.

Fair or unfair, users have the same expectations for an app created by a

one-man development shop as the latest app from Apple or Google. If

you’re not serving your customers, one of your competitors will. Adding

a UX professional or a UX team can solve this problem.

WHAT MAKES UP UX?

Calling UX or UXD a multidisciplinary field is probably a slight

understatement. The UX process draws from many diverse academic

fields. It’s extremely difficult (read: impossible) to be an expert in all of

them. There are very few (if any) educational opportunities that a room

full of UX Designers would consider all-encompassing. By the way, this

is where the value of a team of designers really shines.

Some of the academic areas include: design, psychology, computer

science, human-computer interaction, information architecture,

usability, interaction design, business, marketing, but there are many

others.

The multifaceted nature of the field is both a good and bad thing. If yousurvey 1,000 UX Designers for college majors, you may get 250 different

majors … and plenty of people with no degree at all. You don’t need a

degree in design to be successful. In fact, design school graduates often

have to play catch-up in general office “professionalism” often taught

in business school (i.e., time management, project management,



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selling ideas, reading a room, presenting concepts, facilitating,

directing discussions, debating, etc.). If you ended up with a degree in

economics (like I did), there’s still hope for you. Naturally the business

major is going to need to pick up the technical and artistic skills. The

point is that everyone has strengths and weaknesses based on their

background.



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Hi! My name is Jon Izquierdo (just say “E-scared-though” and you’ll be pretty close)

and I'm a maker of digital things based in

Dallas, Texas. I design products with a

beautiful, intuitive, efficient, usable, usef ul

and desirable experience.

As a UX professional with over a decade ofexperience in technology and design, I've

had the opportunity to design, build and

launch products in a wide range of

environments, including startups, agencies,

small/medium sized businesses and Fortune 100 companies.

I might be the luckiest guy on the planet. I see myself as one of the few people who

doesn’t have to look back or forward for their happiness. It’s in the present.

I’m not special. I’m not rich and I don’t have fancy stuff. But what I do have is an

incredible wife (Maria) who believes in me and all my crazy ideas, and an amazing

daughter (Xela, pronounced “Shay – La”), who keeps me on my toes and lets me still

be a kid. Not to mention, I’m fortunate to make a decent living doing something I love

to do while having the flexibility to work from where I want. With all my wants and

needs met, I can spend my free time teaching and helping others.

If you like my work, I’d suggest joining my mailing list to hear about what I’m working

on: http://jonizquierdo.com/join/

About The Author

http://jonizquierdo.com/join/http://jonizquierdo.com/join/http://jonizquierdo.com/join/http://jonizquierdo.com/join/


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This PDF is a sample of

UXDEverything you need to GET STARTED IN UX,

FIND A JOB as a UX Designer and GET AHEAD in a growing field.

To purchase the full version, go to UXDbook.com.

© 2016 Jonathan Izquierdo. All Rights Reserved.

Please do not distribute or share without permission. If you have questions get in touch. My email address is

[email protected]. I typically respond to all the email I receive.
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://uxdbook.com/http://uxdbook.com/

uxd v1 sample

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