UXmatters has published 33 articles on the topic Careers in UX.
Over the last 15 years, I’ve had a recurring conversation with senior UX professionals: “I want to progress in UX, but I’m not sure I really want to manage teams.” It seems to many that the one way up is the management track—and in many organizations, this is the only upward path for UX professionals.
In my long and varied career working on staff within companies and for clients in agencies and consultancies, I have seen many roles in User Experience that need a senior, mature person—some with people-management responsibilities; others that continue to focus on product design. These roles include the following:
Each of these UX professionals plays a specific role within an organization. For senior UX professionals, their quandary is to work out which role is required when and what role suits them best. Read More
In Part 1 of this two-part series, I presented a strategy for multidisciplinary UX designers who want to grow their career in enterprise environments—where User Experience is often immature. This immaturity frequently results in designers’ having to take on activities and responsibilities that do not support their long-term growth. After describing the importance of understanding why you want to grow your career in User Experience, I provided some tips for determining how you should grow your career, including the definition of what T-shaped growth means for you.
Now, in Part 2, I’ll discuss some specific tactics for achieving that growth, as follows:
There are countless articles on the Web whose purpose is to help UX designers write stellar resumes or craft compelling portfolios. But through my decades-long career as a UX professional and leader, I’ve discovered other ways of helping candidates stand out. Although some of them get less fanfare, they are no less important. The observations that I’ll share in this column come from experience—not only from my own failures, successes, and learnings as a job applicant, but also as a manager who has reviewed hundreds of resumes and portfolios and interviewed dozens of candidates for UX design jobs.
Therefore, in this column, I’ll go beyond the usual advice about creating your resume and portfolio. Instead, I’ll touch upon some other ways in which UX design candidates can stand out from other job applicants. Think of the following tips as additional arrows in your quiver that, if you use them right, can better arm you for success. These tips include the following: