About these degrees in the arts…
Another round of recruitment with the firm.
I’m noticing a lot of people with degrees in fine arts, graphic design, etc. without portfolios
Automatic side eye from me.
Thing is, you can’t really be taught aesthetics. You either have it or you don’t.
I could see if you have a talent for something and just wanted to hone it a bit with different techniques if you wanted to specialize in a certain area (ie. fundamentals of animation, understanding apertures, writing for television, front end development classes) but in order to be good that has to be something you’re born with. All the classes in the world aren’t really going to help you.
I can generally look at people’s work and tell if they’ve taken classes vs if they just have “it”. Their stuff looks by the book, uncreative….just boring.
That’s not what we want.
I say if you want be a UI person and you know you you’re not that good at making stuff look good, be a UI Developer. Concentrate on working with frameworks like Bootstrap or Foundation. Make sure you’re up on all the latest Javascript libraries. Be an ace at whipping up quick prototypes. Lean more UI Developer than UI Designer.
If you’re all about the aesthetic, concentrate on being a UI Designer. Be familiar with the code, but know that it’s not your job to actually do that. Be awesome at prototype software. Be awesome at Photoshop/Illustrator. Be all about how stuff looks…and have moderate awareness about how it can be translated for different mediums.
If you know you’re not a coder or a designer, be about the UX Analysis. The most you’ll have to do visually is maybe wireframe, but even then, you could work with a UI Designer for that. Your job is to figure out who, what, and why? Who are the users of this product? What is this product for? Why is this product necessary? What needs does it meet? What does it need to do? How do the users think about things? How can we use the users’ mental models to make this an intuitive experience? How do we go about finding out what those mental models are? Figure all this out and provide context for the other previously mentioned people.
AND BEWARE OF JOB DESCRIPTIONS THAT REQUIRE ALL THREE OF THESE AREAS IN ONE JOB UNLESS IT’S A SENIOR/MANAGEMENT POSITION.
I’ve only very rarely come across someone who can do three or even two of these things WELL. They all really tap different skill areas…all are distinct talents.
It’s tough to communicate these needs to the sourcing people. They see a well spoken person with key words and wonder why I keep shooting them down.
Because I’m a UX manager, at the end of the day I want to know two things from all these people :
1. Are you PASSIONATE about providing an empathetic end user experience by putting THEIR needs before your ego?
2. Are you competent and confident enough about your skills to be able to perform your job autonomously?
I don’t expect people to work like me, I just need them to be EXCELLENT or at least 78% EXCELLENT in at least one of those areas. I can train them up on the rest.
I have TONS to do and more often than not, it’s because I don’t have the skills on my team to delegate down to.
Can’t innovate without first stabilizing the foundation. Trying to correct that asap…training can only do so much…have to hire the right people in the first place.
