Vapi’s Post

For our masters in UX and Service Deaign or SPA in Designing Innivative Services group the below could be interesting

As employees, we all have dreams of landing our dream job, but what happens when it turns into a nightmare? This post by a designer shares a similar experience and provides valuable insights on how to navigate such situations. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/gt-M6s5Q.

Does your heart sink a little when your designer tells you they're leaving for 3 months? or worse forever! Especially when you have a roadmap to follow and a finish line to crush. What if you didn't have to worry about that at all? What if you had something to rely on when a situation like that arises? What if you had a remote extension of your very own team ready to take control exactly from where your designer left off?

As promised, here’s a more detailed article on “Getting Hired as a Designer,” which I shared during my 5-minute lightning talk at Design Disco V3 last week. This article offers insights from my perspective as a hiring manager. Read here 👉 https://lnkd.in/dTRg6jWv

I wish we could chat, John Cutler. Because there must be some fundamental difference in what you have witnessed and how I have worked on SaaS apps for 30 years. I have issues with the entire premise of Felix's and the team's way of working at the outset. I am assuming a long-running, Saas web app, with plenty of (boring) features across a rich problem domain (say insurance, manufacturing, banking). My approach is to do >> just enough design up front << with Felix to create a common UX pattern for the bulk of the app. I want the app to feel consistent when they are doing similar things (creating, editing, deleting, viewing lists of domain objects). Yes, some UIs need more deep UX research than others, but they are a minority in the apps I have worked to create. Then all of the developers follow along with this beautiful UX design and UI templates of sorts, making it super easy to make progress with more developers, by design -- not accident. I only need Felix when we hit new areas that need novel designs. Or if we discover some tweak is needed to the existing UI pattern. And that tweak is easily accomplished because we made it super easy to change via configuration, not hard coding. If I needed Felix on every run-of-the-mill feature, I would be doing it wrong. Call me old-fashioned, but that is how I have successfully built dozens of multi-tenant SaaS apps since the mid-90s (my most recent one has mostly 9 and 10 NPS scores).

100%, but. . . demonstrate how that equals ROI! As design leaders, we need to articulate better how the designer will deliver tangible outcomes for the business.

At Humanoids we have been investing in the new generation of designers through our traineeships for 7+ years now. We’ve happily trained 100+ specialists over the years: it’s our mission. What we’ve learned: - What is a “senior”? Experience is over-valued in a fast-changing sector as tech. Many experienced specialists haven’t adapted. Priorities change when you grown older. Seniors lose their hunger. What we need is passionate, eager and flexible specialists. We happily supply those with all the tools they need. - Golden triangle What we’re looking for is the golden triangle of drive - talent - interpersonal skills. This market demands more than just the hard skills nowadays. What we’ve noticed is these are ”intrinsic” talents, more than skills developed over time. We’re perfectly able to find these among the younger generation. - Full-spectrum Often, when you’re working with IT specialists they have their own history of tools and stacks. Working with a “blank sheet” enables us infuse a skillset mirroring the current state of the market. From design thinking methodology to research to execution and everything in between. This way, a designer can bring true value to the table. Then: who cares about the “number of years”?

I couldn’t have said it better. Design and UX are often seen as nice-to-have resources, leading to their undervaluation and insufficient staffing on Product teams. As a result, we frequently find ourselves stretched thin, doing our best to keep up with demands. Instead of being recognized for our contributions, we’re often labeled as bottlenecks, with teams opting to go around us. Worse yet, we’re sometimes told to spend less time on solving problems and merely focus on making things "look pretty". To my fellow UXers: seek out organizations that genuinely value your work and the contributions you make. I understand that times are tough, and we’re all doing the best we can with limited budgets. However, if a company claims to prioritize user experience, they need to back that up with real investment.

It’s easy to get caught up in functional ratios and its often a losing battle stuck in idealisms. With that said there’s a real business risk when design and supporting teams aren’t invested in. This video does a great job explaining how efficacy and efficiency across product and development teams drop when this happens.