I recently suggested to an anthropology and sociology student that they consider UX as a potential career industry. Here’s how it has played out.

Back in January, I noticed this student on my LinkedIn “who you might know” feed and wanted to connect with the intention of inquiry where he plans to go in his career, simply out of curiosity. I honestly thought that anthropology and sociology were very strong backgrounds from which to build a career in user experience. So, I did connect.

I sent a message to my new LinkedIn friend to inquire about his plans. I was very clear that I was curious how he planned to use his degree. Surprisingly, he replied. His response was impressive — it was clear he had really thought about what he wanted to do. For him, his years in customer service made sociology a natural fit, stating that he excelled at identifying needs and helping people discover things they may need in the future. His plans, overall, were to become a customer service consultant or a recruiter.

I was really impressed. His response was solid, with just the right amount of aspiration, ambition, and room for evolution. Someone like that could benefit the UX industry in so many ways, because they have users [customers] at heart and allow that to drive their direction. He was goal oriented, focused, and approaching his career with directed agility. I wanted to reveal an industry he hadn’t considered, because it could potentially change his entire career path.

In response, I wrote the following:

“I work in an industry called User Experience. I personally don’t have psychology or sociology training, but I find those fascinating, for similar reasons to what you’ve listed.

I think you should consider branding your skills, knowledge, and passion to include user experience. I’m personally finding that the UX industry is huge in certain parts of the country, and it’s only growing.

I’m also seeing a merge from the digital design and development realm into more of the business intelligence, customer service focused realm. You don’t have to be a designer or developer to be in UX, you just have to love making things right for customers.

In the case of website design and development, UX practitioners are responsible for making sure the customer is central to the design process; the user always comes first. And, when things have already been built or implemented (websites, IVR call systems, etc), UX gets to troubleshoot and optimize those channels to increase customer satisfaction, which is obviously tied to business goals and revenue.”

I hadn’t heard from my new friend till I received another LinkedIn message yesterday. It was refreshing to know that this guy had not dismissed the idea of UX, and actually continued to pursue more understanding of UX as it relates to where he had planned to go.

His response was prefaced with the desire to understand better how UX and sociology can work together. His research has lead him to understand the technical side of things, progressing from front-end and back-end to the final result. He is right, in that much of the user experience optimizing may involve the technical and creative side of things. However, there are people who identify and plan ways to optimize that increase business ROI before the site or project is handed to designers and developers.

In closing, he asked:

“So would you say UX is a form of customer service or is it customer service?”

Man. What a great question. This has been one of my favorite conversations regarding UX yet. I thought about it over the last day or so and finally replied. Here’s what I said:

“Great question! I’d say UX is a form of customer service. In UX, the users of something are key to goals of the project, product, service, or task. That means that you could cover the gamut of customer experience, from before they encounter the product or service (when it is being designed for them) all the way to after they’ve tried it and formed an opinion based on their experience. You could fit in anywhere in that process if you have users (customers) at heart.

I believe UX can be addressed everywhere you look. And I also believe that UX is in direct support of customer satisfaction.

If a customer walks up to the Kmart service desk, some aspect of their shopping, buying, and searching tasks will be revealed in their request for assistance. Where UX is probably different [from in store customer service] is in the scope of things that can be addressed, which includes a more creative process than [traditional] customer service typically covers. Trying to fix the interactions online, for instance, is more than likely out of a customer service associate’s hands. Or even the ease of reaching items on the shelf (though that probably encroaches into the merchandising field).

I’m really glad you’ve been curious enough to look into UX in relation to customer service. The more you understand about UX, the better you can think through creative solutions to customer service problems…. and the more of an asset you could become to a company.”

I wanted to share this experience with my readers because it has inspired me. I appreciate genuine interest and curiosity in user experience and love to understand how UX intertwines into things we are already familiar with. I also hope to possibly make a small impact in what should be an amazing career for this future graduate. Sharing information, and the passion that allows the discovery of information, is core to my purpose.

There are some really great salary calculator tools across the web. Whether you are happily employed in a job or just beginning your job search, rest assured there are plenty of tools to cover the gamut of the task at hand.

On occasion, I will casually search for salary information in my industry, namely, user experience. After a recent search, I happened upon the Indeed salary tool. Now, I had previously visited this site in searches before. But, Indeed seems to have made some minor enhancements to their salary search tool that include a salary comparison function. I thought that to be quite helpful.

In my case, I was curious to see how my job title compared to related titles that I see across LinkedIn posts and other reference sites. So, I added the titles and this is what I got:

Now, I don’t know about you, but that’s not too shabby. This is me comparing closely related positions for the same location. If you could move anywhere, well, I could see you using this search tool to compare one job title in different locations. I imagine that’s what most people use it for.

Here, I have demonstrated for you what results one might see in comparing one title against different locations:

As you can see, it’s kind of fun to do this kind of searching. Maybe you have aspirations to have an amazing kind of title, in an amazing place, that pays relatively well. Hopefully, this tool will help you decide where that amazing place will be.

Good luck in your searching!

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmih

I just read Sell More on Your Website by Understanding a Bit About Entropy

I first discovered the word entropy in the book Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Mental (or psychic) entropy is this crazy thing we all deal with when we’re not enjoying an optimal experience. Now, apply that to the online experience, as a customer trying to complete a task on a website such as order your favorite book, subscribe to your coffee-of-the-month club, or apply for a financial service online.

In that article above, the author uses entropy as a model of thinking about web design. He mentions Steve Jobs, and his ability to fight entropy, which is how he made such a huge footprint in the world’s ability to access information. I knew there was something about Steve Jobs. It was that he could recognize entropy and design with it in mind, resulting in an efficient and enjoyable product.

“Fighting entropy on a website means giving form to and then reducing the resistance of the critical path.”

This may seem like an obvious model to design by, but I think we lose sight of this and possibly forget how to be passionate about designing to reduce friction for the end user.

I enjoyed the article – figured you might also find it interesting.

I also highly recommend you read the book Flow to understand in simple terms why you should care about this idea of “flow”.

In common with Jeremy Hixon

While I don’t watch LinkedIn updates as closely as a user experience professional might be curious enough to do, I do notice the improvements while using the service. I like where they’ve gone with look and feel as well as some of the sidebar features like metrics and how you’re connected.

LinkedIn has always had a hierarchical labeling for connection depth, but they’ve taken it visual, and I believe it to be a great addition. Now, in additional to the “1st”, “2nd”, and so on, degrees of connection, I can see in a simple graphic who fills the  gap between a potential connection and myself.

Another great feature is the commonalities graph. This allows me to see what I have in common with a potential connection. Take my peer Jeremy Hixon for example. He and I have worked together for going on several years. I honestly already know what we have in common. But, say we weren’t yet connected and I was visiting his profile to determine if we should connect, if we know each other, etc. I’d see this graphic that shows a strong commonality in the area of Skills & Expertise. Similarly, LinkedIn shows that we share a few groups, and we share a company and location as well. The size of the bubble is in direct relation to how much commonality there is.

It’s a very simple thing, this graphical representation of commonality. But, like with several of the other LinkedIn UI updates, this graphic makes reading through profiles even more interesting. While it’s not fun to the extent of a bouncy house at a carnival, it is a fun and attractive element that gives good information to a LinkedIn user.

I’m sure there are skeptics, but I appreciate the effort LinkedIn has given in improving my experience as a regular (an paying) member of their network.