Step off of the design portfolio assembly line with some critical thinking.
The way designers build their case studies is broken. If you’re a design school or bootcamp graduate, odds are that your portfolio will look the same as everyone else’s. It’s not your fault, it’s a product of the system. Following case study templates doesn’t require critical thinking, but it’s what you’re taught to do, right?
And if we’re being completely honest with ourselves, the things case studies focus on aren’t impressive. If you’re selling yourself as a designer I’m going to assume you can make something as simple as wireframes.
As someone who’s previously hired a designer, I can tell…
Six things nobody warned me about working in the UX industry
I love my job. As a UX Designer, I get to help teams build wonderful digital products that have an impact on people’s lives. It’s a fun and rewarding role, so it’s no wonder the number of designers like me is set to grow by a factor of 100 over the next thirty years. UX design is also an in-demand skill, which is bringing loads of new talent to the field.
It can be easy to get caught up in the hype around UX design. It seems too good to be true, right? However, there are downsides which I feel…
Practice your presentation skills in a safe and comfortable way
I’ve always assumed that public speaking events are for experts. Professionals who’ve already got 15+ years of real experience under their belts. But really, anyone can do it. The infamous Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park is a space where anyone with an opinion can have their voice heard. And with the growing popularity of online spaces like Clubhouse, you can set up your own virtual soap box anywhere.
Brown bags are a great way to dip your toes into public speaking. They’re essentially a group lunch but one of you gives a brief talk on a topic you’re interested in…
My advice for taking your first steps into creating articles
Like everyone on Medium, my account was empty when I first created it. Over the past couple of years, I’ve grown and learned how to write articles through reading and writing. I’ve taken no shortcuts. Everything I have now is the result of practice and dedication, and I want to give you some advice on how you can do the same.
You can already find plenty of articles both here on Medium and through Google about the practical sides of getting started. But this one is about my experience. …
Why a process page is so effective and how you can build one
As a freelancer, I need to know which pages on my website are being seen and how people are finding me. I have an analytics tool call Splitbee on my design portfolio so I can keep track of these insights. The other day, something caught my eye; the majority of people coming to my site never look at my case studies.
Like many other designers, I’ve put a lot of time and effort into my case studies, so it’s disheartening to see them neglected like this. But I understand why. …
Advice for making the best of this controversial interview step
Being asked to work for a company for free is a sour thought, but it’s the reality of many job-seeking designers in 2021. A design task (or exercise) is a common step in the hiring process, used to see how someone tackles a problem. The person hiring gives the candidate a brief to complete at home. They’ll then present their solution in a later interview.
Design tasks are a hot topic in the design community. From what I’ve seen in my network, designers at all levels recognise that they’re a flawed way to test someone’s thinking skills. Tasks are too…
Four common questions you should avoid to improve the quality of your user interviews
If you’re making and selling a product, you need to know your customers. After all, they’re the people you’re trying to make happy, so it pays to know what’ll be good for them. User interviews are a method user researchers use to learn more about their customer base. You talk to someone one-to-one about their wants and needs. Sometimes you’ll show them things like prototypes to gain further insights.
Interviews are simple to run, but it can be easy to mess them up and ask the wrong questions. A common mistake is to ask your interviewee to come up with…
A perspective from someone on the other side of the process
The market for junior designers is ruthless right now. Competition is fierce and there are not enough roles to go around. It’s also a tough time for people hiring. I recently recruited for a junior UX/UI designer and thought I could share my experience to shed some light on the process.
I was working as the sole designer on our product team. There were a lot of jobs I was doing that my team thought we could give to another designer to free up my time. …
How you can collect and share your insights using the project management tool Monday.com
When a researcher runs user research tasks, they need a way to share insights with others in their team. There are dedicated tools for doing this like Dovetail and Airtable. They make the data from research reports easy to find and understand. Having tools like this empowers product teams to make design updates with confidence.
Sometimes you’ll work with a team that doesn’t have access to enterprise tools. This could be because they’re expensive, or your team isn’t big enough to justify having one. In these situations, you’ll need to get a bit creative and build one using whatever tools…
When I first began my freelancing career this spring, I realised how much admin there is. Invoices, timesheets, contracts, knowledge banks, meeting notes. I started stressing, wondering how I would manage everything alongside doing all of my new freelancer tasks. Then I remembered that Notion exists, and my anxiety vanished.
Notion is a powerful productivity tool. In a nutshell, you use ‘blocks’ to piece together your own pages. Blocks come in a range of types, from text-only to imported files from tools like Figma and Miro. …
Amy Rogers
UX Designer and Researcher · Writing about pushing our design boundaries · Passionately curious 🐱🚀 · amyrogers.design
