The Interview…

As a contractor you probably spend more time interviewing for your next contract than you do onsite at your current one in the few weeks leading up to the end date!! Permanent candidates will be asked to move heaven and earth to attend interviews, and then be made to wait until things get signed off before we can even move forward. It is however the part of the process that can’t be missed!

I’ve had some great stories from clients and candidates about interviews, some have been done within 15 minutes and offers out, some have gone on for hours because the client wants the candidate to refer back the ‘user’ at least once!

As the designers and the interviewers you’re the guys that have the technical knowledge, but sometimes you can forget about the person/s that are in the interview room with you. Being a UX interview, I’ve spoken to a few of my clients and done some reading to see what I can muster up, here are a few points that can hopefully help..

• You’re interviewing for a User Experience role- so take yourself out of the interview for a second and think of the client as a user and you’re the product. Have an understanding of the needs of the client, and how you will get them to their goal.
• This leads on to the next point quite well, as controversial as this may sound, designers will get to the same end product/ deliverable as another (some by hook or crook and others by loving what they do and being darn good at it), but it’s the process and the methods that will make you stand out and fill clients with confidence
• When you’re asked to take your portfolio with you to go through it, it’s not just a matter of plugging it in and saying ‘I did that.. I did that.. I helped do this.. I drew that..’ take the client on a journey. It’s all about the user experience here, if the interviewer has been taken on a journey through your portfolio, they’ve understood how you approached the task, the problems you came up against, the methods you used, how you thought outside of the box when you came up against hurdles and how you got to the deliverables, the client is seeing the product in action. This is a good user experience for them, they’ll invest in the product..

For example..

Buying a car	Hiring a UX Designer
Do your research (internet)	Do your research (Linked, Xing)
Watch videos and screen (youtube, forums)	Go through online portfolio / PDF
Go to a showroom to have a look	Skype / telephone interview
Test drive	Face to Face interview and expanded portfolio review
Question the salesman	Ask the interviewer questions
Decision	Decision

Obviously this is quite watered down, but my point is you wouldn’t buy a car without going through the process, you’re putting your hard earned money into something and you want to be made to feel excited about what you’re doing. Be the Aston Martin in your interview, you’ve got to the interview stage because you’ve passed through the previous phases.

If you turn up, it’s your fourth interview of the week, you’ve got a Dominos on order, hoping the delivery man doesn’t turn up in the middle of Eastenders then it’s not worth you being there. If you are there, you’ve done the research and have a genuine interest, show the passion you have in your work, sell yourself as that top end vehicle and give them the best test drive they’ve had (bit cheesy, I just got really caught up in the writing).

Just a few pointers, I’m more than happy to go into more detail over phone or email if you have any questions or pains about interviews.  Please feel free to contact me at sukhi.kang@ic-creative.co.uk

 

Smarter Energy Controls – a Usability Perspective

Shorter days and colder nights, winter is upon us. Many of you may be fighting the temptation to stick the heating on, leave the lights on and run hour-long hot showers upon crawling in from work. Don’t even mention the mould spiralling out of control in the coldest and dampest rooms…  the wet towels which remain forever wet….at a time when it’s way too cold to even consider opening the windows,  cranking the heating up and tumble-drying EVERYTHING is the only way to combat the feeling that you’re living in a cave. On top of this, you’ve got to have the TV on constantly as you’re certainly not going to be venturing outside for the next three months.

Maybe this is why winter is the most pertinent time to put some real thought into energy saving behaviour, and where UX practises can help guide us all in saving the pennies and the environment.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) have recently commissioned a report on the Usability of Smarter Heating Controls; co-authored by Steven Wall and Filip Healy.

In the report, the specialists address the effectiveness of the technology users interact with to control energy flow throughout their homes. Taking into account demographics, impairments, education level and even smart-phone ownership, this report provides an interesting insight into the usability of heating control products currently on the market and provides recommendations for key requirements to keep in mind for future development.

With climate and economic change at the forefront of our minds, this proves to be an important piece of research which simultaneously provides insight, and emphasises the scope and relevance of the application of usability studies.

Please feel free to contact Sam Emmett to discuss all things UX.

New Year, New You: Find a New UX Job in 2014

What is it about the New Year which spurs people on to begin their job hunt afresh?

Certainly it has something to do with the idea of a “new year, new you” – a time when everyone around you is making resolutions to change one thing for the better. The past year has become a measurable increment of time which you can reflect back upon – languishing for weeks, or months in a less-than-ideal job is excusable, but when this period of stasis reaches a whole year you realise it’s time to do something about it!

Reasons for stagnating in a role which is comfortable – but not challenging – are myriad; proximity to home, a good enough pay packet, a friendly team wherein you have lots of friends. What people tend to realise come January is that you can always strive to achieve more. The New Year acts as a kick-start to move your life on and achieve something you can be proud of!

A lot of the time it’s not even the case that there’s anything amiss with the job or company you’re in. Over the last twelve months you will have changed; grown, learnt, and adapted – what suited you back when you started is not the best fit for the new, improved 2014 version of you.

So, invest some time in reassessing your current needs. Would you like to climb up the career ladder? Would you like to manage a team? Would you like more experience designing for a specific platform? Would you like to try contracting? Do you think you should be earning more money to support your lifestyle? Would you like to relocate, have you always dreamt of working in Paris, Berlin, Hong Kong….?

From our clients’ point of view, January is the perfect time to go on a recruitment drive. With everyone nicely rested from the Christmas break – now’s the ideal time for hiring managers to invest some effort and reshuffle their schedules to incorporate interviews and meetings with potential new team members. New projects are on the horizon – and more pairs of hands will be needed. On top of this, new budgets are being released and hiring roadmaps are being drawn up for the coming months.

If you want to take the initial steps towards a new career move, feel free to pick up the phone and call Sukhi or Sam at IC Creative on +44 (0)1189 881150. Alternatively, have a look through our current jobs which we advertise here.  With a searchable function; you can easily find the type of role you’re looking for or register your interest with a few simple clicks.

Hope to hear from lots of new UX’ers in 2014!

The UX Portfolio – What makes the client tick..

I imagine it must be hard for an experienced designer to hear from a recruiter that you need to jazz up your portfolio, when you’re the ones who’ve actually done the work! I find it a little hard to say sometimes, but it is the client that tells us what they look for, we’re the ones that have these conversations and know what the client is looking for, so do our best to offer as much guidance as we can.

I did come across an article that was a really good read for me that comes direct from a client, it gives you an insight to what clients look for in a UX portfolio when they’re interviewing. We offer advice here on how to make your portfolio appealing to clients - different clients in different verticals like different things which doesn’t exactly help you as a candidate, but hopefully this article can provide a good starting point.

http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/wow-me-with-your-ux-portfolio.html

If you feel you need some guidance on putting together an updated portfolio, we’re more than happy to help. It would be great to hear from you as a candidate and find out what you find the biggest hurdles when putting together work examples. Equally, clients that can pass on any nuggets of information that you feel could help candidates would be much appreciated.

Please feel free to discuss further with Sukhi Kang

UX Recruitment - The candidate perspective

..Do to others as you would have them do to you..

I’m pretty sure we’ve all experienced it, you get calls at the most inconvenient time. You get a barrage of emails and messages when they are just not relevant!

In this week’s discussion, I’m really keen to try and tap into the market and see how UX candidates prefer to communicate best. Working in the UX space is different to other areas, you’re not always able to drop everything to answer the phone (sometimes you are, but you just don’t want to!). You may be in workshops all morning, so the last thing you want to do on your lunch break is speak to 15 different people asking you the same question whilst you tuck into your KFC.

As a UX professional, freelance or permanent, it would be brilliant to hear from you guys and let us know what the preference is for communication. I hate being bombarded when it’s not necessary, but when my car insurance or phone contract is up for renewal I like to use the internet and use online assistance, that’s my personal preference.

What works best for you the candidate when you want to know about the market activity? And equally, what annoys you most!!

Please contact Sukhi to discuss further.

UX Open Days - a good idea to embrace?

A certain software firm we work with in France have just had the genius idea of holding a ‘Usability Week’ – a series of open days for other company staff members to pop their heads into the UX department and learn a little more about what goes on in there. Kind of like a science department open day at school, for business students to marvel at.

As well as presentations, demonstrations, talks and titbits they focused on explaining elements of user experience such as responsive design across platforms, persona development and accessibility, and why they are integral to the success of the businesses’ internal and customer-facing digital output.

I wonder if something like this should be rolled out by more firms? It seems like a great idea to raise awareness and most of all, show off how important UX is!

Have you gone down the same route in your firm? Are you planning to? Would you try to do this on lunch times or would you prefer to have walk in sessions throughout the day so employees can see your team members hard at work? Keen to hear your thoughts on this topic!

 

Please contact Sam.Emmett@ic-creative.co.uk.

Card Sorting: A Deeper Look

For those of you who have spoken with us lot at IC Creative before, you will know that I look after the Usability / UX Research side of things. It’s always interesting for me to learn more about the field and I do like to find things out as I go along.

Coming from a very unmathematical / unscientific educational upbringing, my mind does boggle sometimes at the different methods and tools you guys use to elicit statistics and other user data.

Every now and then I’ll come across a really good article which gives me a bit more of an insight into what it is the professionals do on a day to day basis. This article has recently been written by Jessica Miller, Usability Tester at WalkMe in San Francisco, who writes extensively on usability topics.  In it, she discusses the pros and cons of card sorting – the troubles she has found with it, and a useful insight into how you could overcome the complexity and conundrums which can arise from this exercise.

This may be of use to anyone like me who just likes to learn about these things, or anyone out there who comes up against the same issues with reading card sorting data which she does.

She begins: I’ve mentioned usability card sorting in the past, briefly as one of the more popular prototyping and visualising approaches for designing UX. But, I’ve never really talked that deeply about it, and given its popularity, it’s time I remedied that…. read more here!

 

To discuss this or anything UX related, please contact Sam Emmett.