Looking Someone to Talk Over Transition Into UX

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[TD=“colspan: 1”] My background is in program management, marketing operations, and customer experience consulting where I’ve been passionate about making things easier for customers. I’m looking to translate that passion into the UX field.
Over the last year, I’ve taken UX, HCI & Design Thinking courses, but I’m still having trouble understanding the different types of UX roles and where I might fit in.
So, I’m looking for advice on how to position my transition into UX and get my first position.
Do I need to learn how to code? How can I get my foot in the door?
I’d love any advice I can get.

		Thanks!
		 
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I guess one of the questions that I would ask is, is there anything in UX that you think you like or would like to explore more?
For instance, do you really want to know what makes people tick, how they work through things, and get into the nitty gritty of the user. If you really like the thought of that, then more of a research centred approach might be for you. If you like to work through content, how users get to different places, mapping out the path that the users take through a product or website, then information architecture may be more your thing. But then if all/a lot of the areas that UX covers appeal, then you may be looking at being more of what is called a “UX Unicorn”.
I don’t currently have a particular area that I’m interested in, so I’m dipping my toes in a lot of areas, and waiting to see if anything pops out :).

There are a lot of helpful resources on the UX mastery site, and taking courses in those topics is definitely a good place to start! And there are some other helpful tips throughout this forum, including internships or offering your work for free to organisations, to gain experience and work up a portfolio.

My personal opinion is that no you do not necessarily need to learn to code. It really does depend on what area you want to look at though. For instance my last work place had the problem that our clients wanted higher fidelity prototypes that demonstrated transitions and concepts so that they could get a better understanding, and this wasn’t really possible in Axure (prototyping software). It would have been easier to code up an example in HTML, CSS and Javascript. But if you are really not interested in learning to code, you can manage things so that your clients know what level of output they will receive. But then saying that, a lot of jobs now do expect some kind of proficiency in HTML and CSS, and it can be good to know the technology to have an understanding of its constraints, things that can or can’t be done using it for when you ideate on designs.

Hope this helps :).

Your insight ALWAYS helps Natalie!

Natalie -

Thanks for responding. Your questions and comments are helpful.

I have interest in both research and information architecture. I enjoy need finding, developing personas, and customer journey mapping as well as developing tasks and functionality and prototyping

I’m not opposed to learning to code just trying to figure out what’s the best use of my time. I took a HTML class several years ago, but never did anything with it. So, I would need a refresher along with learning CSS and Javascript.

I’ve been reading all I can & have taken UX, HCI & Design Thinking courses. Understanding where I fix in UX is a bit like building a jigsaw puzzle one piece at a time without knowing the final shape :slight_smile:

Let me know if you want a free trial month at an online coding school. I work for one and would be happy to hook you up.

RVAelle it sounds like your CX background would hold you in good stead for a UX role (see this article and [URL=“http://uxmas.com/2013/ux-vs-cx”]this infographic).

Personally I wouldn’t get too hung up on looking for “the perfect role” or pitching yourself as a specific role under the UX umbrella. Every project is different and the best UX designers are generalists, so even if you get hired as an information architect or an interaction designer or a user researcher, there’s a good chance you’ll be doing different tasks on each project anyway.

I would look into understanding some of the channels and touchpoints that are unique to UX that you may not have experience in from a CX world, like web analytics. There are probably a world of deductions and insights that you could infer from web analytics data that others cannot. Google Analytics is the mother of all analytics programs (it’s free) and Google offer loads of free online training about how to drive it.

The other advice I’d offer is the stuff I preach in our Get Started article—find a project that you can get experience interviewing and observing users, creating some prototypes, and running some usability tests.

Love all the content and personal experiences shared here. It helps with the various and interesting roles of UX and how different they come across to many. Thank you for sharing.

Sorry, I missed your comment above. If you’d still like a trial month, PM me the email address that you’d like to use, and your full name. :slight_smile: