[ibimage==29670==Original==none==self==ibimage_align-center]
Jerad Harbaugh, the Senior Manager for User Expierence at Starz, has been in the user expierence game for nearly 10 years. He has experience going from an engineer role to managing the entire UX team, which consists of UX designers, UI developers, and requirements analysts. Harbaugh details the hiring and managing process of User Expierence teams:
UX is simple, yet complicated. Jony Ive, Apple SVP of Design, perhaps captures the sentiment best stating, “It’s about bringing order to complexity.” The best UX professionals have solid intuition, a keen eye for design, diverse platform expertise, mastery of their craft, a willingness to always be learning, and an appreciation for iteration. If you’re considering a new role in UX, here is an insider’s view into how the hiring process works and how to stand out from the other applicants.
Making yourself noticed
Whether hiring for UX Designers or UI Developers, I always look for the same thing, a strong appreciation for design. I always ask the recruiter to gather a design portfolio with plenty of links to relevant work, websites, AppStore links, bios, etc. I’m a big fan of seeing the potential candidate’s professional work history (having a bunch of six month jobs is a red-flag), education, and extracurricular highlights (important for creating the desired team culture). In the world of UX a creative photo or avatar illustrates the candidates appreciation for presentation and detail. Some of the best UX Designers have their own logo, their avatar is their brand. When sorting through a dozen or more resumes or LinkedIn profiles, it’s not quantity, it’s quality. With respect to projects, less is more, don’t include unimpressive work.
*Note to candidate, have one high quality eye catching project. This will be your token.
What to expect in an interview
All interviews are different, but here are some of my favorite tactics. Interviews commence with the standard introduction spiel. I then ask candidates to identify why they’d be a good fit. Candidates are asked about their favorite websites or apps - and then asked to critique it/them. The candidate is then challenged to form valid opinions and to speak generally acceptable industry language a terms. I ask them to identify their strongest skill. I keep my fingers crossed that the answer for a Designer is Illustrator, Omnigraffle, InDesign, or Photoshop (I’ve found that Illustrator is a far more efficient tool for UI design than Photoshop).
A UI Developer should be a master of CSS and JavaScript. Having CSS background isn’t enough, frameworks are really required tools for most UI environments, i.e. knowing about SASS, LESS, Font Awesome, FramerJS, and AngularJS is a must. I’ll then press them on a particular feature as a litmus test. I’ll identify the bounds of their knowledge by asking a series of questions. If all checks out and the candidate is a great communicator, then I’ll usually invite them in for an onsite interview.
Onsite interviews ensure that rapport can be established with the candidate. It’s important to get the candidate in front of respected colleagues and to make sure that the candidate presents themself in respectful manner. I expect all candidates to dress nicely, arrive early or on time, have good manners, and be prepared. Preparation entails having multiple resume copies, bringing a device ready to highlight their portfolio, and having some insight from reading the corporate website. I expect all candidates to be able to confidently present their own work. I’ll also try to get a sense of how they respect physical boundaries...perhaps it’s a pet peeve of mine, but I cannot stand it when someone smudges their monitor with greasy fingers when presenting their designs.
Key Deliverables of an Effective UX Designer
Wireframes: Most projects start with basic wireframes that evolve into a fully annotated IA (Information Architecture) deck. This IA deck includes low fidelity, black and white interface concepts with annotations to further clarify and define the experience. OmniGraffle and Adobe Illustrator are fantastic tools to use for wireframing since they support stencil kits and symbol libraries respectively (both allow you to rapidly drag-and-drop interface elements that would otherwise take hours to create and manage).
Visual Design: Upon gaining approvals from the customer, we move into ViD (Visual Design) and preparing a ViD deck. This deck is a pixel perfect, visually rich presentation of the experience contained in a ordered deck. A ViD deck is usually a PDF created in InDesign leveraging exported PNGs from Illustrator or Photoshop. These decks have page numbers and can be printed or presented using an overhead projector.
Keynote Presentation: Certain projects require UX animation in which case Keynote is a fantastic tool. Keynote has basic animation capability and can also embed animation files.
Blog Posts: Having an archival strategy for UX designs and design assets is essential for larger teams. It is common for legacy projects to be requested months or even years after the creation. Having a blog post with links to the source files is invaluable.
Requirements & Jira Tickets: After all designs have been finalized the next step is to provide guidance for the development team by creating a ticket in an issue tracking system like Jira. A developer will need clearly written requirements, comps, sliced assets, and any backend service dependencies attached to the ticket. QA Testers will need steps to validate the task.
In Summary:
Hiring and managing a UX team is tricky, but with the right culture, tools, and processes in place, a team will grow strong together.
