**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.
- DOGS ALL THE WAY! I have “Frenchie Fever” as I love French Bulldogs particularly.
(It wasn’t appropriate to make an Aussie joke so I went for the next best.)