Starting a Career in User Experience

by Marcus Haid

February 21, 2003

[Ed. note: People often ask us about ways to launch a career in user experience. The field has changed quite a bit since we got our start, so we turned to our friend Marcus Haid, who interned with us last year, for his perspective as a practitioner just getting established. Thanks Marcus!

P.S. You can check out some of Marcus’s work at Mahatio. We aren’t looking for any more interns right now, but when we do, we’ll let you know!]

This article is based upon my own experience transitioning from a career in corporate-world project management into the field of user experience design. With dedication, some talent, a few classes, and a healthy dose of self-promotion, the transition was fairly easy, very enjoyable, and took about two years. I have outlined a few key points to consider if you are planning to start a career in user experience design.

Course Work and Study

The online space has become a rather complex medium over the years. To meet current industry standards, you’ll need some training. There are many programs and courses offered that can teach you the skills necessary to start out in user experience design.

Whether you choose to go for a full degree program or courses within an extended learning program is a matter personal preferences and circumstances. I chose the latter route and earned a certificate at San Francisco State University’s Multimedia Studies Program. When you browse through the catalogs and curricula of programs, look out for courses in the disciplines of information architecture, interaction design, user interface design, and user research.

The current buzzword is “specialization,” and many industry insiders would have you believe that the “generalist” is a dying breed. While this holds true to a certain extent in any maturing industry, too much specialization can pigeonhole you and lead to professional narrow-mindedness.

As a user experience designer your work will touch and mold many aspects of a project, from scoping to design and implementation. The more you know about the other crafts involved in creating a system, the better you will be able to contribute to a streamlined production process, saving your client money and increasing your company’s profit margin in the long run.

While you most likely will not be doing the visual design or programming the backend system, your design work will be far more advanced if you at least understand the cornerstones of these areas. When you get your training, don’t just focus on courses that teach you about user experience — look beyond. I took visual design classes and learned about branding, and I can program HTML, JavaScript and Flash, just to name a few.

Learn to use the software tools needed to express and communicate your work as a user experience designer — your communication media will largely be architecture diagrams, system flows, and page comps. On a PC, Microsoft Visio is the standard tool, if you work on a Mac, look into OmniGraffle. You should also learn a standardized visual language to use in your work. Adaptive Path partner Jesse James Garrett’s Visual Vocabulary is a prime example of such a language.

And lastly, to complement your coursework and to keep up to date, you can choose from a large host of books, articles, and online resources on the topic of user centered design. Adaptive Path’s reading list offers a good starting point, and Jesse’s information architecture resources has an excellent cross section of various online resources.

Projects

You can only learn so much by attending courses and reading books, what ultimately counts is applying your skills to real world projects. As early as possible work on projects, ideally for a client. A client can be a member of your family, a friend, a non-profit organization, basically anybody other than yourself.

Treat every project as a portfolio piece — choose and work on projects that you would like and can showcase in your portfolio. Because you’ll most likely offer your services for free in the beginning, you at least want the benefit of being able to market yourself with them. And probably most important of all, learn to work as part of a team as early as possible. Assemble a team of friends or colleagues and concentrate on the user experience design part of the project. In any job situation you will almost always work in a team, and learning to be a team player will give you an edge on the job market.

Self Promotion

Once you’ve collected several projects as portfolio pieces, put together a strong portfolio to market yourself. The key to a successful portfolio is focus. Your portfolio should express that you want to work as a user experience designer and demonstrate through examples that you’re good at it.

Pick your best pieces and showcase them, ideally as case studies, so that the viewer can also see the process behind your work. For further insight, you can take a look at my portfolio, although I went one step further and also established a brand for myself.

Internship

Probably still the single best way to gain industry experience and get a head start on the job market is to do an internship. As soon as you feel comfortable with your newly acquired skills, look around for companies that interest you and approach them about an internship.

Make sure that the company either is a user experience design company or has an information architecture department in house. Apply for an internship in the same way you would apply for a job, send a cover letter and resumé and point to your online portfolio.

Always try to get paid for your work, no matter how basic it is, and only work for free if it’s the only way to get the internship you really want. And if you find yourself mostly making coffee for design meetings in an internship, it’s time to insist on doing actual work and possibly look for a new internship.

Jump In

In any career, the best way to establish yourself is to get some experience. Seek out training, do some pro-bono work, and find a company that will take you on as an apprentice. Employers will respect your efforts, and you’ll gain confidence in your abilities. Best of luck to you.

Marcus Haid is a former intern with Adaptive Path who now practices user experience at Mahatio.