When I grow up I want to be a UX Designer

Hello fellow savvy UXers and jobseekers!

JobAdvisor has recently posted an interesting blog featuring a few UX Designers from around the globe giving insights into what it’s really like to be a UX Designer. It’s a great read for someone who might not know much about UX Design, but would like to get into it, and also pretty valuable to get other insights from fellow UX-ers.

You can find it here.

Feel free to share it if you think it may be useful to jobseekers out there, I know it helped me understand the nitty gritty aspects into a day in the life of a UX Designer!

Hey @emma – thanks for sharing your article, I’m looking forward to checking it out.

We’re really cool with people sharing their own work – in fact we encourage it – but the caveat is that they take part in other topics as well, otherwise this place will end up a hotbed of spam. :slight_smile:

Since you’ve recently done research into the topic, we’d love to get your insights into a few of the threads here from people thinking about getting into a UX career. Here’s a great example.

Hey Hawk!
Sure thing, not here to spam (promise!)
Just felt it may be of value to fellow UXers to gain other insights into the role.
Looking forward to seeing similar articles like the one you’ve mentioned :slight_smile:
Cheers!

Yay, that’s cool. I look forward to seeing you round the place. :slight_smile:

The first skill you need to encompass is empathy. You need to be able to
put yourself in other peoples’ shoes to understand their needs, even
the ones that don’t make sense to you. The second skill that UX
Designers need to obtain is curiosity. I find myself asking, why and
needing explanations countless times each day to further understand our
customers’ habits and our business issues at hand.

I really liked this section. In my experience, empathy is what sets apart the good from the great in our profession. If I were to look for one non-tangible skill in someone I was hiring, empathy might be it.

While empathy itself is something that is primarily innate, how you display it during an interview is crucial. You can be the most empathetic person in the world, but if you don’t spend some time learning how to express that empathy in interpersonal communications, it’s one of those skills that can be easy for a potential employer to overlook.

I’d recommend that anyone looking for a gig in the UX world spend some time reading up on empathetic listening. It will pay dividends in the interview process. Additionally, empathetic listening is critical during user testing and requirements gathering as it helps you tune into the needs of your audience.

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Indi Young is a good person to follow. We did an Ask the UXperts session with Indi on empathy and active listening.

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