Chances are, if you’re interested in user experience design, you’re probably some type of hybrid. A hybrid in the way you think – equal parts creatively and intellectually. A hybrid in the way that you don’t want to be given a brief, but you want to help design the brief. And a hybrid in the way that you’re interested in far too many things to tie yourself down to being purely a designer, developer, researcher, and so on. This feeling of being pulled in so many directions has led me to interaction design.

Before I continue, I should probably explain what I mean by “interaction designer” (or IxD for short). The term is somewhat arbitrary, as are most role titles under the UX design umbrella. In short, it refers to a designer who focuses on interactive mediums such as digital devices, websites and apps. An interaction designer does this by using UX skills to create a design that puts functionality and usability at its core. From there, they might either pass the creative design onto a digital designer to craft, or in a more entry level job they will more likely do the design themselves as well.

An interaction design role is sometimes mistakenly referred to as a UX/UI Designer. This is often used in job ads a little too liberally, in the same way that companies sometimes unknowingly ask for a designer/developer. UX and UI are different skills, and to be experts in both areas takes many years of diligent experience.

Are you still interested? Want to know more about becoming an IxD designer? Excellent! Read on for my top 5 tips on how to transition into this type of role.

Seek out the skills you’re missing and fill those gaps on your own

I often hear people complain that they can’t get a job in interaction design because all jobs require a minimum level of experience. There’s a simple way around this: start to incorporate UX processes into your current graphic or digital design work. Then, when you see a job ad that requires the experience, you’ll already have that talking point and folio.

In a later article I will talk about how to unpack job ads to find your missing skills. But in the meantime, I highly recommend reading UX Mastery’s Get started in UX ebook. In particular, the sections on peers and mentorship echo a lot of my own experiences.

In addition, I recommend doing online courses with the Interaction Design Foundation, for a small yearly fee you can do as many online courses as you like.

Use instinct and a fine-toothed comb

New designers often find that they get to a point with their design where they can’t progress any further. It’s a special skill to learn how to keep moving and iterate your designs for the better. This might include conducting rapid prototyping to find the flaws, followed by user testing in the later stages of design. Ask your boss to build in research, prototyping and testing into the project.

You may need to work some overtime initially until the experience pays off and you can get to a better solution faster.

Meet as many people in the industry as possible

Get over your insecurities and reach out to people via email or Linkedin for a coffee and a chat. Be mindful that if you decide to do this, it’s important to do your research first. Have a good understanding of their role and where they work before you meet with them. That way, you’re able to demonstrate your understanding of the industry and their particular place within that industry.

Make sure you prepare some questions so they don’t feel like they have to lead the whole conversation.

Another way to meet people is to sign up to email newsletters for UX or other related groups in your city. Make a pact with yourself to go to any talk or meetup that they hold.

Some good ones I go to are the UX Book Club, Ladies That UX, Carlton Connect (Melbourne) and General Assembly.

Learn to verbalise your thoughts on the subject

Learn how to talk confidently about UX. User experience designers are known for their communication skills. Practise verbalising your thoughts on the journey you took to create your work and why you have designed something in a specific way.

It’s very natural to start off by standing back and allowing your boss or client to interpret your work for themselves. For instance, you may think that it doesn’t need any explanation to be able to understand it. But as an interaction designer, your role is to combine research, thought, design and intuition into a functional solution that answers the core problem. It’s important that you can explain your process so that others can understand why your solution is the best possible solution.

This is a skill that can take years, so start working on this as early as possible.

Take criticism openly and humbly

This one is incredibly important, but doesn’t come naturally to a lot of people. If you are lucky enough to find a mentor, allow them to speak frankly with you about your work and take on board everything they say, at least until you have given their recommendations a try. You may find their suggestions don’t work for you, but more times than not you’ll learn something from the process. Remember, IxD design is a specialty that comes with experience.

If this resonated with you, let me know in the comments! I’ll aim to answer any questions about how to utilise these skills in your own career.

The post 5 tips on moving from graphic design to interaction design (from someone doing just that) appeared first on UX Mastery.

earnest: adj. 1. showing sincere and serious feeling or intention: two girls were in earnest conversation. 2. with strength and solidity amidst a struggle or fight.

Early one morning last week I saw a video of Elliot Jay Stocks interviewing Erik Spiekermann, the well known designer and typographer. In the comments, right off the bat, an interaction designer took blunt issue with several of Erik’s points, including his prediction that “In two years time we won’t have a distinction between web design and print design… that we will design for the issue at hand, not the medium.”

Web design vs Visual design

“Web designers are not visual designers,” said John the interaction designer.“We are interactive [sic] designers… while paper doesn’t talk back, websites do.”

At first I agreed. There is a lot of complexity to designing for a cross-platform, deeply interactive medium. But then I started realising that I’d fallen into John’s view that this debate was between graphic designers and web designers – as if they were two very different breeds. But this view is getting very old. It was a problem fifteen or more years ago when graphic design and programming worked together to build the visual web, but I don’t think it’s such a problem anymore, and it certainly wasn’t what Erik was talking about.

It’s not about the medium

Erik’s key point was that good design is not just about the tools and deliverables, it is applied problem solving that is unrestrained by a single context. Erik described it in the video thus:

“the way to design is the same – you give content form. To solve it you think about the users – you think about the issue at hand: how much information, how do they read, when do they read, why do they read, do they have to read? Can they read?”

Although the video was posted a year after it was shot, Erik found his way to the comments and promptly replied to John:

“I often sense a certain arrogance with interaction designers, like they [think they] are inventing a totally new way of designing”.

This was ironically reinforced by John’s next comment, and was when I stopped taking his arguments seriously.

Oops!

It was also unfortunate that right after John claimed that that Erik Spiekermann has no idea about digital design, someone pointed to  John’s latest web project which seems to be described with large, static images to display text content, and claimed it is a layout ripped from the .Mail website.  If this is true, it’s not exactly what you’d expect from an expert in interaction design working with some of the world’s biggest brands.

Thinking about all this has made me examine my own behaviour. Our tenacity and unwillingness to swallow senior opinions at face value may help us defend the things we believe in, but does this cause confusion and cost us design integrity when exploring a problem space? And how does it affect the people we work with?

Being professional

Being earnest is not wrinkling our brow as we ask a condescending question or force a personal opinion. It involves an open mind, due diligence to a task and practising what we preach.  I think conducting ourselves with earnestness, in our work and discussions, is an essential trait for user experience designers and interaction designers alike. It allows us to:

1. Listen – When listening we engage in empathy and understanding.
   
2. Be honest – Essential if we’re going to (tactfully) call research findings like they are, and without bias.
3. Lose the ego – So we can work collaboratively with our colleagues, and listen to the users and design for what they need, not what we want.
4. Learn and innovate – If we think we already have the answers, we’re less likely to experiment when a new solution is needed.
5. Give the benefit of the doubt – Optimistically reserve judgement in the absence of full evidence, and instead use the opportunity to do more research and learning.
6. Add delight – Engaging deeply with a design problem can also allow us to add those little bits of delight that make an experience fulfilling and sincere.
7. Solve the real problem – and perhaps also several related or smaller ones.

Good and earnest design thinking is imperative for UX as a set of problem-solving practices. As noted in our newsletter tip last week “If we’re willing to make mistakes (and allow others to do so too), and can take the time to identify and acknowledge these mistakes, we can then use what we learn to make a better product.”

Thank you John for helping me see the bigger picture of who I do, and don’t, want to be as a professional designer.

What are you thinking? Please do let me know in the comments!

Related links:

• http://elliotjaystocks.com/blog/a-conversation-with-erik-spiekermann/
• http://kruzeniski.com/2011/how-print-design-is-the-future-of-interaction/ from SXSW 2011

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Matt: You joined Simple as creative director a couple of years ago, and I know a lot of people are eagerly waiting to see what your “reinvented view of banking” looks like (aside: I love the Simple one-pager!). What can you tell me about your team’s product, and your view for the future of banking?

Bill: The product coming out of Simple is going to amaze people. It’s taking such an old concept, banking, and showing what you can do with design and technology. It provides more information about your transactions and also adds tools like search and visualisation location that help you understand your financial activity better. It’s taken a long time to develop because integration with partners has been intense. It’s been slow for web speed but fast for banking speed. However, I left Simple a few months ago (after being there for 18 months). It was a bittersweet end, but it was the right life decision.

I was reading about how you got started, and discovered that we’ve walked similar paths – I’ve also worked in coding, writing, product marketing and laying out computer books, and these days am focussed on interaction design. We’re practically twins! So … do you think you’ve found your calling, or is this another stepping stone across the lake of life?

Hello twin! I think a lot of us around a similar age have followed a similar path. But is this my calling? Yes and no! I do think I’ve found my happy place in tackling a problem and devising a solution that works for customers, business and technology. But I assume that my role in that process will continually change. The ‘how’ aspect of it continually changes as the available technology evolves. If anybody these days assumes that they’re working with the same technologies throughout their career, they’re nuts. So no, I don’t think I’ve found my calling yet, but isn’t finding it part of the fun?

From your writing it’s clear that you think a lot – about language, typography, history, buttons and humanity. What have you been thinking about lately? (aside from specific work problems to be solved)

Yeah, I do like to jump around. It’s been an interesting time lately; a transition phase. It’s been not so much about thinking about a topic, as it has been getting life settled into an unfettered place to where I can think freely and discover the next phase of my career. Moving so that my wife and I can live in the same city again (a long story). Leaving a job that wasn’t a perfect fit for me. Selling a house. Getting rid of stuff. Consolidating storage units. In short, it’s been months of boxes. Grueling work, but it’s been refreshing to shed responsibilities that weren’t working for us. In doing so, my goal has been to shed logistics and worries so that I can think freely again.

What’s next? It’s always hard to say, but one theme that keeps bubbling up is the need to do good. In the design field, we make so much stuff, and so much of it is completely pointless and unnecessary. There are so many real problems in the world in which design can help. That’s where I’d like to be. Stay tuned, it’s still evolving.

You co-chaired the Interaction10 conference a couple of years ago. What was that experience like for you, and what drove you to get involved? Would you do it again?

I like to say that chairing a conference is an amazing thing that you do exactly once in your career. Interaction10 was an adventure, a second job, a labor of love, and a ton of work. I was driven to be involved by the experience of Interaction08. I had an amazing time there and just wanted to partake in creating an event like that. I was Greg Petroff’s sidekick for Interaction09 and then was given responsibility for Interaction10. There was a magical challenge in designing an event for designers, and having the freedom to do it the way you want to.

The experience of the conference itself was frankly surreal. After spending a year ‘after hours’, working with your team on the details, the insane push of final two months, and then everybody shows up and has an amazing time…. it’s quite a satisfying feeling. Many people compare it to a wedding and that sounds right.

You mentioned in another interview once that you find your parents inspiring. What else in life inspires your designs?

As I get older, I simply get inspired by anybody who has the guts to try something new, whether that’s make a rough life decision, attempt some crazy new art idea, go into business for themselves, take up a new hobby, build something from scratch, and so on. I love to see people tackle difficult things. To see that courage, perseverance, and tenacity inspires the hell out of me. It encourages me to do the exact same thing.

Tell me about the toughest client project you ever worked on, why it was challenging, and what you learned from it.

Wow. I’m thinking about a client during my time at Ziba. They were challenging because they would make decisions that we couldn’t understand. We always pitched designs that made sense for how their users perceived the subject, but they were often shot down. The challenge was of course that their technology and infrastructure made certain changes financially prohibitive, and their business model pushed things in other directions. This taught me the obvious lesson that agencies can only push clients so far and that you have to design to their constraints. Sometimes it’s painful, but sometimes you have to accept that you can only take your clients so far. Sometimes to achieve success, clients have to change how they run their business, and that’s something near impossible for an agency to completely help with. It has to come from inside, for better or for worse.

What advice would you have for a print designer who is tasked with designing interactions for the first time?

The biggest difference between print and interaction is the sense of time and sequence, so I’d recommend training your designer eye to notice, dissect and understand sequences. Every time you use a product, notice all the steps along the way, in as minute detail as possible. Notice the inputs, results and feedback. It’s just another form of design exercise. You’ll begin to notice steps that are stupid and steps that are genius. You’ll begin to think in terms of flow, which is key to interaction design.

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