Advice on how to balance breadth and depth of skill within the many different subdisciplines of the user experience profession. You can't be great at everything, so how do you choose where to specialize in your UX career?
At the Virtual UX Conference, Jakob Nielsen was asked whether it's best for a UX professional's career to seek a management role or to pursue deeper and stronger levels of expertise.
Will the UX field value people who change careers from another field and want to become user experience professionals? Will the field still value them if they're a bit older, and how do they compete with fresh graduates?
We asked over 200 hiring managers who hire for UX jobs what they look for in candidates' portfolios. The expectations are different for people looking to be hired as designers vs. as researchers, and also different for junior vs. senior positions.
Your portfolio must play two roles when you apply for a UX job: first, persuade the hiring manager to bring you in for an interview (or even a first screening call) and then support you during the interview itself.
At the Virtual UX Conference, Jakob Nielsen answered audience questions on how to advance through various career stages: before getting your first job, and being successful as you grow your user experience skills and expertise.
At the first Virtual UX Conference, Jakob Nielsen answered participant questions about topics ranging from user-experience careers and skill development to foldable smartphones and the future of user interfaces.
Anybody who's already a good UI designer and can make great screens, has a big head start to becoming a good UX designer, but more is required to excel in this expanded role.
As you learn design thinking, you progress through stages: being a beginner, an intermediate practitioner, and possessing advanced expertise. This progression is like learning to cook: you won't be a master chef on day 1, but there are appropriate skills to aim for at each level.
Yunnuo "Yuno" Cheng (程云诺) interned with Nielsen Norman Group 3 years ago. Jakob Nielsen caught up with her to ask how the internship experience relates to her current job and what advice she has for current students on what to look for in a UX internship.
The portfolio of UX professionals (whether experienced, entry-level, or career-changers) should present both projects and deliverables. Tell a story for your user (the hiring manager).
How to find a mentor, based on empirical research into mentorship in the UX field. A mentor can be a peer, supervisor, or someone in a role that you admire, inside or outside of your current workplace.
UX practitioners who feel inept at their job usually face far greater challenges than improving their design, craft or research prowess. Rather, addressing development schedules, Agile, Scrum, Lean, and team members’ roles can create the greatest challenges.
The field of user experience requires skills from many different areas. Because of this, there are many unique journeys into UX. Hear stories from NN/g conference attendees about how they got into the field.
What do successful user experience professionals have in common? Empathy. It’s the ability to understand the perspective and motivations of other people.
