Welcome, glad you found us. 
(but cats are better)
Where in the world are you? - UK
What stage of your career are you at? - A bit stuck.
What are you current challenges? - Find something interesting and useful to do - that also pays the bills.
What aspect/s of UX are passionate about? - Just started learning. Analysis of customer activity and creating mockups are both interesting and fun.
Cats or dogs? - Cats.
It is only in the last 2 months that I learnt that what I have been trying to do for 10 years has a name. I’ve put in countless hours on trying to adapt service management tools to work for the business and users - and now I can put a name to this process, and with luck, management may take an interest.
Well, @laciwhite48, I think a lot of the folks here find themselves in a similar situation. Heck, being relatively new to UX myself, I’m constantly working to build my skill set. For me, I spend a bit of time doing a few things each day:
1.) Read something. There’s so much written knowledge out there about our field. I find that reading something each day is always a great first step to build my skill set. There’s quite a bit of good stuff here on UXMastery.com, User Testing Blog, UX Booth, UX Magazine, and many others. I have a Feedly feed setup that drops in all the articles from these groups so that I can pick out a couple to read every day.
2.) Interact with the Community. The UX/UI community is notorious for being welcoming. I don’t think I’ve ever met another professional group that’s more approachable, even at the higher levels. Apart from getting started here, you’ll probably want to look at ux.stackexchange.com to get a good look at what questions others are asking. On Twitter there are some excellent people to follow: my favorites are Tobias van Schneider, Daniel Burka, and Jonathan Colman.
Shameless plug time: my twitter handle is @5280_CS, if you’re at all interested. I try to retweet the articles I like best each day, and to post any unique thoughts or scenarios I come accross. It’s a great way for me to meet people in the business, and to hone my skills while doing it.
3.) Problem solve. One of the best ways to get experience in a field is to work on tackling real-life problems other people are facing. UXMastery’s forums is a great place to start, but don’t overlook ux.stackexchange.com either. Take a problem that you feel is just a little out of your comfort zone, and get to work. Approach it like you would if you were working on a UX team. Do research, whiteboard, iterate, and test.
You don’t have to post your answer to the question if you don’t feel comfortable doing so, but posting will help you get used to putting you work out there for public consumption, and defending position as well. Additionally, you can compare your approach to others to see how your outcome is different, and analyze how your process may have affected that outcome.
With such an open community, I’ve never met a UX’er with their salt who wasn’t patient when asked to describe their process or logic pretaining to their solutions.
These are all good places to start. Hopefully this will help get you pointed in the right direction!
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Hi Doug,
Thanks for this! It is very well thought out.
I read all the time, but sometimes struggle with how to immediately use
that knowledge so I don’t lose it.
Great suggestion about ux stack exchange. Totally forgot about that.
Great help here! Thanks!
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No worries!
Where in the world are you?
- Working in New York City and living upstate in the Hudson Valley.
What stage of your career are you at?
- I’ve been working as a Product Manager for a legal tech company for 3 years but am starting to focus more time on UX and design in general.
What are you current challenges?
- Figuring out where my product manager skills mesh with UX and where I need improvement. Getting a portfolio together
What aspect/s of UX are passionate about?
- Creating and researching. I like to find a problem, research a solution, design it, and then validate the concept with users. It’s a circle of happiness.
Cats or dogs?
- Dogs. No lap dogs either. I’m talking Huskies, Retrievers, the BIG dogs
I’m looking forward to becoming a part of the community, particularly as I start to try and get my portfolio together. Also hoping to contribute where I can. Thanks all!
Where in the world are you?
Canada
What stage of your career are you at?
Beginner. Explorative. I don’t have a job yet, but I am in school… to qualify for one.
What are you current challenges?
Finding people in UX community who could help me learn and progress, and who could encourage me. I’m a bit low on the self-esteem rations.
What aspect/s of UX are passionate about?
I really really like IA and taxonomy. I also am interested in working in UX research.
Cats or dogs?
Cats!
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That made me smile, although it probably shouldn’t have!
You’re at an exciting point and you can make this work. If we can help, we will.
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It also makes you valuable.
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Hi everybody!
- I’m Alessia from Pesaro, Italy.
My colleague shares me a link of this community and I immediately fall in love with this community!
I’m sorry for my bad english; however I try to explain myself.
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Now I’m working as intern for an information technology company. My position is a mix of UX designer and front-end developer, and I really love my job. I studied for three years at school of fine arts and here I discover the beautiful world of Web. I’m really at the start of career, but I’m optimist.
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Now my challenge is to show my quality at my colleagues so I could work in my company over the end of employment contract.
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I really love the analysis of usability of product: I think it’s the best moment of all work process! Then I love also design new product.
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And…well, I love both (cats and dogs), but I love even more my boyfriend that loves cats!
Nice to meet you 
Hello and I’m glad that I found this place
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My home is in Austell, Georgia USA, but I’m currently outside of the country in Madagascar doing volunteer work.
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I’ve been an independent iOS developer for just a few years now. I’m always striving to improve and expand upon my last project. At this point in my career, I’d like to focus more on quality and usefulness rather than hurriedly pushing something out of the door. My latest app is in beta testing right now. I have a designer working on the interface, but it has one function that I have not yet seen implemented for the community I’ve developed it for. I have the luxury of controlling every aspect of its release and decided to take some time with UX, even though I will end up using someone else to help me with that.
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My current challenge is making functionality transparent, if that makes any sense. As a developer, I focus so much on checking off the functions’ bullet list. Once it works, I often find myself stagnant because I want the app to be engaging and I’m at a loss.
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Sorry, I don’t know what aspect of UX to be passionate about yet. I just jumped right in here and signed up. When I’m done here, I’m going to educate myself a lot more.
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Cats for sure. When young, my brothers and I saved a couple that were stuck in a tree and brought them home. Even trained one to come home from blocks away when we whistled (Yeah, right, he let us think that we trained him). He was special.
Henry
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Glad you found us too.
Madagascar! Amazing! What kind of volunteer work are you doing?
Thanks! My wife and I serve as volunteer missionaries here.
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Hello UX Mastery Community!
You can find me here in Chicago, IL. I am currently doing quite well in my career as a Human Reaources professional but have known for some time that HR is not my forever career. My interest in UX began as a slow burn as I took my time learning more about it over the last year and a half or so.
My pursuit of UX really began in earnest in March of this year. Since, I’ve gotten a UX friend whose really got a lot of confidence in my abilities and has been helping me with my resume & portfolio. I’ve been enjoying learning wireframing lately!
My biggest challenge at this time is my portfolio. I’m confident in the content I have, I feel there is a lot of substance there, but have concerns about how to package this in portfolio form (help appreciated)!
I’m very passionate about the research focus of UX. I’m a research junkie! I also love how practical UX design is - no “form over function” here as UX strives for balance with the user focus.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly - DOGS ALL THE WAY! I have “Frenchie Fever” as I love French Bulldogs particularly.
That’s all for now. So grateful for this community.
Best to all,
Candra
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Hi Henry! I’m from Atlanta, GA! Small world. Also, I work at Moody Global Ministries. We train students for ministry including missions - have you heard of it?
Best of luck to you in your pursuit of UX!
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Hey Candra, and welcome.
[quote=“candramichelleg, post:108, topic:669”]
but have concerns about how to package this in portfolio form (help appreciated)!
[/quote] This is a super helpful article that would be worth a read.
Here are some examples of portfolios that I think do a great job of presenting information.
If you’re struggling with getting started, Michelle’s article about portfolio writer’s block is a good one.
Glad you found us.
Hi Candra, and thanks
We’ll have to look it up next time we’re in town. We’re planning a vacation in the fall, if our plans come together.
All the best to you too!
**Where in the world are you?
Austin, Texas
**What stage of your career are you at?
I am a writer and editor with many years of online marketing experience. I’ve dabbled in SEO, I spent several years at an agency creating and managing PPC campaigns. Realizing that I was more interested in information design, I made a switch and began working as an editor for a large tech website here in Austin. Then I was the casualty of one of their fabled layoffs, so I made another switch and am managing expert product reviews for a very lovely web company.
**What are you current challenges?
Making the reviews ever more user friendly and instilling them with unique features that beats our competitors. Also … Figuring out if it is possible to transition into UX full time, since I’ve realized it incorporates all the stuff I’m passionate about.
**What aspect/s of UX are passionate about?
I’ve long been passionate about user experience and usability, even before I knew what they were called. After I did ethnography research for a class project in college, I went to the career advisor and told him that I wanted to find a job studying how people use technology and advising how to make it better for them. He got me on to usability and suggested I take a couple courses. I did and I loved it, but when I went to look for work, there weren’t many usability testing jobs to be found, especially for someone without a full out human factors degree. I went into internet marketing because it was a hot field and I thought I could incorporate aspects of usability. I got to run the a/b testing and landing page optimization for some of our client accounts, and loved doing that. I recently trying to decide where I want to take my career. I started looking at job postings. There were many ux design positions. I had assumed these were graphic designers that just incorporated user experience principles into their design. But when I looked at the descriptions, I found all the activities I’m interested in: user research and testing, wireframing, prototyping, designing flow, thinking about the overall flow and architecture of the site. The one thing I’m unsure about is visual design. I know graphic design is not part of a pure ux role, but many of the descriptions are calling for someone with visual design skills, or a combo of ui/ux, so I want to do some training and try my hand at visual design to see if I have aptitude. If nothing else, knowing something about web design comes in handy when working on a website.
**Cats or dogs?
Both. I’ve owned both and enjoyed their distinct advantages.
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Where in the world are you? I am a UX Designer, who lives in Ohio.
What stage of your career are you at? I am a beginner when it comes to UX. I have a varied background, including owning a business for three years that I sold. I apply what I learn from different jobs to my new one.
What are you current challenges? Keeping up with learning UX information and meeting other UX people since I am not by a big city.
What aspect/s of UX are passionate about? I consider myself a Multipassionate person, I enjoy variety and performing different roles which is why I was attracted to UX. My top 5 interests are UX & design, business & innovation, and psychology. The ability to see the big picture and all the pieces needed is something I excel at. I enjoy this field.
Cats or dogs? Dogs, if I could only pick one. I am a huge fan of animals in general; I get a zoo pass every year.
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