Q&As
help you to distinguish roles and keep
tasks on track.
In some ways, it’s almost perfect to be
the project owner as well as the project
manager. What you have to look out
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project goals and the plan you’ve devised
to meet them. With your project owner
hat on, you have to be aware of your
powers. Just because you like or dislike
something, should you change the course
of the work for your team? Quick! Put
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At the end of the day, no matter which
hat you are wearing, stay aware of – and
respect – your goals, scope and timeline
and you should be able to keep things
on track. But also be aware of how you
communicate and how the decisions you
make will impact your team because, in
your position, what you say will typically
be taken seriously. That leaves less
room for discourse – and that can be
problematic for team morale and their
investment, which could eventually lead
to project failure. It’s a lot to take on but
you can do it with the right amount of
time and focus.
UX writing
UX TALENT
What’s your advice on hiring a UX writer?
Libbie Sinclair, Christchurch, New Zealand
TP: First, I start with the people who
not only understand how to use words
but how to make the words dance to a
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business and user purposes. Hopefully
they can show me this in a portfolio of
real or student examples, where each
example comes with information about
its context.
Of those people, I want the subset
who want to make things and who can
empathise with the people who will read
those words. Hopefully I see this in their
portfolio examples, with explanations of
the goals, motivations and constraints
that the users would encounter.
Of that smaller subset, I want the
people who enjoy collaborating with
the other members of the creative,
engineering and business teams. I
would ideally see this in their resume,
work experience and interview,
when they talk about the parts they
contributed to the work they’ve done,
who they did it with and how those
collaborations went. Even if it’s student
work, they should be able to talk
realistically about the trials and joys
that group projects can bring.
To reach these people, I’d post jobs on
job boards and Slack groups like Content
+ UX. I’d also seek out meetup groups,
organisers and local schools. I’d expect
to have a lot of career and informational
conversations, which would help me
understand more about the available
talent and help them in turn understand
more about what I expect from the role.What books do you
recommend for a newbie
to user research?
Haniya Morley, Dallas, USOldies but goodies
DB: Some of the
old UX research
books really stand the
test of time. Observing
the User Experience: A
Practitioner’s Guide to
User Research by
Elizabeth Goodman
remains the absolute
bible for anyone
considering running user tests, whether
they’re lab-based or run remotely – a
little dry perhaps but certainly very
informative and practical.Broader picture
Beyond that, I
always think it’s
useful to see the
broader picture and
understand what
makes people tick.
Malcolm Gladwell’s
books are great, lazy
page-turners and have
really helped me pick
apart and contextualise all those
anomalies in user behaviour.Learn from the
masters
Also, Don
Norman’s
Emotional Design helps
us understand the
levels on which design
is perceived. In fact,
anything by Neilsen/
Norman (http://
nngroup.com) is
definitely worth a read
if you’re practising UX and want to learn
from the masters.Anyone can be a project manager, says Brett Harned
Image^ courtesyofPexels^(p
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