π 11. Findings of the week
Actionable tips to get strategic on your UX career, UX career template, Agile in UX explained in a simple way...
Read time: 5 minutes.
Hello ! How did your week go?
This week's findings are a bit long, but we found the resources very interesting! Before we explore them:
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Actionable tips to get strategic on your UX career
If you are looking to be more strategic in your UX career, we may have something very interesting for you. If you want to know where you are now, where you want to be, and how to get there, this article shows us how to do it in 8 steps.
Good point: there's also a template to help you do it. Here are the key takeaways:
A career strategy will help you achieve your goals effectively.
Step 1. Identify your values: Your values guide you in your career choices. Let them be your North Star when things get tough, so you never forget why you started.
Step 2. Define your high-level career goal. Your career should be aligned with your values. Based on this, think about your high-level career goal.
Step 3. Find the right organization and role for you. You need to consider whether the organization or role matches your goals. Ask yourself, "What type of organization would you like to work in?". "What role would you like to play? What product would you like to work on?"
Step 4. Current skill level and desired skill level. What skills do you need to achieve your goal and thrive in your career? Take stock of where you are now, map your skills and develop the ones you are missing.
Step 5. Allocate the right time and energy. Now ask yourself how much energy you want to devote to developing your skills. This is about setting priorities.
Step 6. Engage in strategic activities. Think about what activities will help you build your skills or achieve your goals and commit to those activities.
Step 7. Remove or reduce what is not necessary.
Step 8. Turn your wishes into reality using the WOOP method.
This article is very interesting and we suggest that you put all the tips into practice with this template.
Also, hereβs the link of the article for more details.
A concept explained βοΈ
Agile in UX explained in a simple way
In this super interesting video, the author explains how, as a UX designer, we can adopt the Agile method.
This is a very important concept, and if you are not familiar with it yet, here are the main points to remember:
The main goal of companies that adopt Agile is to be able to move quickly through their process. Originally, when a company made a product, it took a long time because the process was very long.
Typically, they used the Waterfall method, which, in a nutshell, is taking product requirements β design β testing β development. But as you can guess, that takes a lot of time.
That's why companies are now adopting the Agile method and in particular, a framework called SCRUM. It allows you to work in small periods of time (for example: you work for 2 weeks, then you stop and present what you have done to your team and if everyone agrees, you move on and continue working for another small period of time).
These small periods of time are called sprint cycles in SCRUM. The time period can be 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 4 weeks.
Sprint planning: the product owner has what we call a backlog. Usually, he can see the list of things to do to develop a product. The product owner and the developer usually review this list together and choose what can be done in the next sprint. This is what we call sprint planning.
You also have a main concept: user stories. It helps visualize all the requirements so developers know what they need to code. (We'll make special findings about user stories).
UX designers should always work ahead of sprint cycles before developers start working on user stories. This is because your work should be designed and tested beforehand.
UX/UI is separate from SCRUM. We have our own process. We usually work weeks/months before a sprint starts. Then, when we have everything we need (specs, mockups, tests...), we attach them to user stories and hand them over to the product owner.
Once the sprints start, we need to make sure that the developers have all the resources they need to complete them.
Cool tools for you β¨
#1 A beautiful password manager
We were happy to discover this tool recently. We have the impression that most password managers are, of course, very useful, but not really beautiful. But here is Uno! We haven't tried it for a long time yet but so far we really like it.
#2 For those who missed the career strategy template
As we said before, it's worth taking the time to do this UX career model to clarify your career.
Weekly inspirations β‘οΈ
#1 Daveβs portfolio
As always, we are happy to have found an amazing portfolio. Hereβs Daveβs portfolio. You can explore his well-crafted case studies :)
#2 Product selection
We discovered a nice deck of cards related to UX. It helps your team and your clients to better understand the concepts of design.
Juniorβs jobs
Europe π
UX Designer (m/f/d), Hager Group, Obernai, France
UI/UX Designer - TPO Agency, Louvain, Belgium
America π
UI/UX Designer, ATD, Huntersville, NC - USA
UI/UX Designer -** The University of British Columbia - Vancouver - Canada
Asia π
UIγ»UXγγΆγ€γγΌ/ UI/UX Designer - Robert Walters - Tokyo, Japan
UI/UX Designer - Smart Axiata - Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Africa π
UI/UX Specialist - Palladium, Kenya
UI Designer - Arcab, remote, Congo
Thatβs all! Thank you for reading.
If you have a question, weβll answer it in the next newsletter. Feel free to ask it here.
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See you on the next news,
Mialy and Michel