Information that will change our lives. ;)

Where in the world are you?
From the UK. Glasgow, Scotland to be exact.

What stage of your career are you at?
In Year 3/4 in university. Just started my summer break and looking for an opportunity to expand and develop my skills

What are you current challenges?
Trying to figure out what to learn next. I have created a prototype for an app, received very positive feedback. Would be glad if you guys could give me some feedback too, here is the link for those that dare venture beyond familiar territory -
https://umarkhokhar.proto.io/share/?id=7f6ff533-94fb-460c-aed2-85930772a9e3&v=16
Question : Learn Adobe CC and become adept at using it or are there other avenues to get the UX job where i can have an impact?

What aspect/s of UX are passionate about?
Love seeing how users interact with apps and websites and how usability testing can unearth a userā€™s perspective. Also love design and the look on the persons face when you solve a problem through a very simple and elegant design.

Cats or dogs?
Cats ftw!!! :wink:

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Yay ā€“ two cat people in a row!

My cat approves:

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1/ Where in the world are you? I live in the Northern Rivers region in NSW Australia.

2/ What stage of your career are you at? Just starting out in UX consultancy following a career pivot (after 30 years) in early 2016.

3/ What are you current challenges? Putting all the pieces together and finding clients (solo operator).

4/ What aspect/s of UX are passionate about? Helping people keep ahead of the curve with the latest web developments and assisting them to use the right elements on their sites while avoiding the ā€˜everything but the kitchen-sinkā€™ syndrome.

5/ Cats or dogs? Donā€™t hate me but I have no affinity for pets at all.

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Weā€™re not haters. :wink: Welcome on board.

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Hi HAWK,

Thanks for a warm welcome. To start with the answers,

I reside in INDIA
I am an experienced Manual Tester
To switch my job profile, preferably as UX/UI designer
Story Boards fascinate me

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Definitely DOGS

Welcome, glad you found us. :slight_smile:

(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. Iā€™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, Iā€™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. Thereā€™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. Thereā€™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 donā€™t think Iā€™ve ever met another professional group thatā€™s more approachable, even at the higher levels. Apart from getting started here, youā€™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 youā€™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. Itā€™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. UXMasteryā€™s forums is a great place to start, but donā€™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 donā€™t have to post your answer to the question if you donā€™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, Iā€™ve never met a UXā€™er with their salt who wasnā€™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 donā€™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?

  • Iā€™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 :fearful:

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. Itā€™s a circle of happiness.

Cats or dogs?

  • Dogs. No lap dogs either. Iā€™m talking Huskies, Retrievers, the BIG dogs :slight_smile:

Iā€™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 donā€™t have a job yet, but I am in schoolā€¦ 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. Iā€™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! :slight_smile:

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That made me smile, although it probably shouldnā€™t have!

Youā€™re at an exciting point and you can make this work. If we can help, we will. :slight_smile:

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3 posts were merged into an existing topic: The relationship between PM and UX

It also makes you valuable. :slight_smile:

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Hi everybody!

  • Iā€™m Alessia from Pesaro, Italy.

My colleague shares me a link of this community and I immediately fall in love with this community!

Iā€™m sorry for my bad english; however I try to explain myself.

  • Now Iā€™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. Iā€™m really at the start of career, but Iā€™m optimist.

  • Now my challenge is to show my quality at my colleagues so I could work in my company over the end of employment contract.

  • I really love the analysis of usability of product: I think itā€™s the best moment of all work process! Then I love also design new product.

  • Andā€¦well, I love both (cats and dogs), but I love even more my boyfriend that loves cats! :joy:

Nice to meet you :smile:

Hello and Iā€™m glad that I found this place

  1. My home is in Austell, Georgia USA, but Iā€™m currently outside of the country in Madagascar doing volunteer work.

  2. Iā€™ve been an independent iOS developer for just a few years now. Iā€™m always striving to improve and expand upon my last project. At this point in my career, Iā€™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 Iā€™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.

  3. My current challenge is making functionality transparent, if that makes any sense. As a developer, I focus so much on checking off the functionsā€™ bullet list. Once it works, I often find myself stagnant because I want the app to be engaging and Iā€™m at a loss.

  4. Sorry, I donā€™t know what aspect of UX to be passionate about yet. I just jumped right in here and signed up. When Iā€™m done here, Iā€™m going to educate myself a lot more.

  5. 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. :slight_smile:

Madagascar! Amazing! What kind of volunteer work are you doing?

Thanks! My wife and I serve as volunteer missionaries here.

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