Business: UX Skills

In this first installment of my series “Rows and Columns,” I’ll describe how to use some very powerful tools of spreadsheets that can make analyzing your UX research data much easier. For those who have been reluctant to use spreadsheets during analysis, this series is for you, and you’ll hopefully find this information useful. For those of you who have expertise in using spreadsheets, some of this information might be review.

The central part of any UX research project is the analysis of data. This task can be both satisfying and cumbersome at the same time. As you go through your data, you might become excited as you recognize emerging patterns or see great variations across participants. However, getting to the point at which you can easily see such trends can be quite difficult. Your data must be in a format that affords easy filtering, so you can decipher the various rows and columns across participants.

Part 1 of this series covers the following features of spreadsheets, which can facilitate your understanding of the data you’ve gathered:

• filters
• form elements such as checkboxes and drop-down lists Read More

In this edition of Ask UXmatters, our experts discuss what skills are essential and desirable for a UX Designer.

Each month in Ask UXmatters, our panel of UX experts answers our readers’ questions about a broad range of user experience matters. To get answers to your own questions about UX strategy, design, user research, or any other topic of interest to UX professionals in an upcoming edition of Ask UXmatters, please send your question to us at: [email protected].

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Whether you work directly in the field of UX design or you just have a passing interest, it’s fair to say that, in 2013, the focus on all things user experience definitely stepped up a gear. Over the last 11 months at Bubble, the UK digital jobs board for whom I work, we’ve seen a huge increase in the demand for talented UX designers right across the UK—and not just from specialist niche agencies, but from major brands like comparethemarket.com, ITV, Sainsbury’s, and The Telegraph Media Group, too.

What’s the reason for this increased demand? It’s hard to say. Perhaps brands have now got more money to spend on their online offering, and it’s finally dawned on them that a great user experience really can make a difference to their bottom line and provide a healthy return on investment (ROI). Or perhaps it’s because brands are now more willing—and able!—to reallocate their existing budget from other digital areas like social media, where it can be difficult to quantify ROI and determine their strategy’s success. Either way, it’s great news for the user experience industry—both in the UK and the US—as more and more positions, especially senior-level positions, become available. Read More