Category Archives: user experience

user experience, VMware

Q&A: why should I work for VMware?

During interviews, I often get asked by candidates why they should work for VMware.  There are lots of reasons to do so, but here’s one of my favorite ones: VMware CEO Paul Maritz was just ranked in the top ten CEOs by Glassdoor.com.  Their ranking is based on employee reviews.  Having trust in your CEO is a great thing, and is definitely a great reason to work here.

The user experience team at VMware is still growing.  Here’s a job description for a senior interaction designer; we’ve got other positions in interaction design and research, for both new college hires and experienced hires.  Ping me if you’d like to learn more or would like to apply.

user experience

Q&A: what applications should I know for a career in user experience?

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This week, I got asked a couple of questions about applications for user experience people.  One was from a researcher asking which applications they should know how to use, another was from a designer worried that they don’t know how to use Flash.

Three minutes on the internet will reveal plenty of UX people who have very strong opinions about the applications that you should know.  Sometimes they’re advancing the idea that you don’t need to use a heavy-duty application, but rather that a (relatively) lightweight application can do the job.  For an example of that, check out the power of Keynote by Paul Woods.  Sometimes they’re putting a stake in the ground and advancing that there is only one true way, such as this reference to someone who won’t hire designers who can’t code.

I generally don’t care about specific applications.  Job ads often list a  bunch of applications, and I know that I’ve written job ads myself with a list of apps, but I don’t think that anyone needs to know every single app on that list.  A candidate should probably know at least a couple (and I’ll get to why in a minute), but knowing the whole list isn’t necessary (or even necessarily useful).

What matters for user experience is communicating with your team. Using the right application is a method of communication.  If you’re working closely with a development team that tracks everything in Bugzilla, you need to use Bugzilla too.  If you’re working with a design team that loves OmniGraffle, you should learn how to use OmniGraffle.  If you’re working with a PM who never seems to have any application other than PowerPoint open, you’d better make sure that everything you send to them is a .ppt file.  If you don’t use their application of choice, then you’re decreasing the chances that they’ll open your file or pay attention to your work.  You’re negatively impacting your communication.

For researchers, I rarely care about specific applications.  They’re nice-to-have, but they’re not need-to-have.  Email, a word processor, and a presentation app are absolute requirements.

For designers, I think that you should be a wizard in at least one design application, and you should be proficient in another couple.  Knowing more than just one application shows me that you’re flexible and adaptable.  I especially like it when you can tell me that one application is great in this case, but another application is great in this case.  And I want to know how you’ll get up-to-speed doing designs in a new application too, since it’s all but guaranteed that you’re going to have to learn a new one.

For researchers, I don’t think that you need to be a wizard in a design application, but you should have at least a reasonable knowledge of a couple.  You’re going to be communicating with designers, so just as you need to be able to communicate with that PowerPoint-lovin’ PM, you’re also going to have to be able to communicate with your team who loves OmniGraffle.  When you get a mockup from a designer that doesn’t quite work for your usability study that starts in 10 minutes, you can tweak it yourself.  It makes your life as a researcher that much better to be able to use the design app(s) that your team prefers.

Leaving aside the basics of email, word processing, and presenting, I don’t think that there is any application that I think that every single UX person should know.  The application is the tool.  I care about what the outcome of using that tool is, but — so long as you’re willing to use other tools when necessary or appropriate — I don’t care what tools you use to do the job.

user experience, VMware

research contractor needed

My team has a very large research project coming up, and we’re looking for a contractor to come in and help us for at least three months.  In this research project, we’ll be doing a lot of studies in the usability lab.

For this position, we need someone who will own the complete research project.  Working with my team, they’ll define the scope of the project and how we will go about answering the questions that we have.  They will create the research plan and all usability test materials, including (but certainly not limited to) creating a screener to find participants for the study, setting up the environment for testing, and creating the task list and script.  They will conduct the research and analyze the results (which we anticipate will be a mix of qualitative and quantitative).

Candidates should have at least an undergraduate degree in HCI or a related field and 2-3 years of experience in conducting UX research.  A stellar candidate will have experience in conducting research on highly-technical enterprise software.

Interested?  Have questions?  Email me.

user experience

communication is how I get stuff done

Earlier today, I read an interview with Karina van Schaardenburg, a user experience researcher at Twitter, in which she discusses what she uses to get her job done.  In essence, she’s got a laptop for her own use, and she’s got some tools that she uses for data collection and analysis, and she’s got some hardware and software that she uses when she’s conducting her research.  As I read it, it was all familiar to me.  Specifics aside, Karina’s setup is pretty similar to my own.  But I felt like something was missing.

The interview focuses on applications and hardware, and all of the interviews on the usesthis.com site focus on that.  Which is fine, in term of the mechanics of what I do as a researcher.  But the question that the site is trying to answer is “What do people use to get stuff done?”  The tools that I use aren’t what I do to get stuff done.

As a researcher, what I actually do to get stuff done is communicate.  I communicate with the design team, the program management team, the development team, and anyone else who I can get to talk tome.  That communication is about deciding our goals and priorities.  Then I communicate with our users to learn about what they do.  Sometimes that communication is conducted via survey, sometimes by interview, sometimes by contextual inquiry, sometimes by usability study.  After I’ve completed my research and conducted my analysis of the data, I then circle back with everyone at my company and communicate with them again: what I learned, what steps we should take next.  I keep up this communication to ensure that actions are taken, based on my recommendations.

In my opinion, the tools themselves don’t matter that much.  Yes, I’m a Mac user, and I use Morae to record my studies, and I use SlideRocket to give presentations to my team, and I use Apple Mail to communicate with everyone involved throughout the process.  But those tools isn’t what makes me a good user experience researcher.  If you took my Mac and my SlideRocket account away from me, I would still produce good research.  The tools are all but orthogonal to the discussion of how I get stuff done.  The thing that I actually use to get stuff done is communication.

This isn’t a complaint about the idea behind usesthis.com, and it’s certainly not a commentary on Karina.  I think that we understand intrinsically that copying someone else’s setup won’t magically imbue you with their traits and talents.  It’s pretty clear that using BBEdit and jailbreaking my iPhone won’t make me a novelist like Charlie Strouss.  The tool is only the tool.  Answering “what tools do you use to get stuff done” is very different from answering “what do you use to get stuff done”.  Communication is what I use to get stuff done.  Everything else is just a tool that supports that communication.

user experience, VMware

how to prepare for a UX on-campus interview with VMware

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Today, the VMware Careers blog has a great post about how to prepare for a technical on-campus interview with VMware.  It’s a great post about technical interviews, and reminded me that I should post about how interviews for our user experience team differ from those interviews.

What types of questions do we ask?

We want to learn about your user experience skills.  We’ll ask about projects that you’ve done, and ask about the design and research process that you went through during that project.  If you’re doing a design interview, you can expect to do some sketching as we ask you to solve a design problem.  If you’re doing a research interview, you can expect to devise a quick research plan to answer a question.

Practice your UX skills

You can expect to flex your design and research skills during our interview.  As you’re working through your design or your research approach, make sure to explain your thought process, and ask questions if you need clarification.  Be comfortable in front of a white board as you sketch your designs.

Your resume is not a standalone document

Your resume doesn’t stand by itself.  Tell us about what isn’t captured on your resume.  If you’ve got portfolio pieces that are related to items on your resume, be prepared to show them and explain them.

Don’t be afraid to tell us about what worked and what didn’t work.  For example, if you had a research project where no changes were made based on your results, talk about what happened, why it happened, and how you might approach it differently to get a better outcome.  If your design didn’t work, tell us what didn’t work about it and what you learned from it.

Ask questions

We want to know that you’re going to fit into our team, and we want you to be happy here.  Ask us questions.  Is work/life balance important to you?  Do you want to attend conferences and publish papers?  In what areas do you want to grow in your career?  Is working for a green company important to you?  In other words, think about what you want in your first job out of college, and ask questions to make sure that you’re going to get that with us.

An interview is not, and should not be, a one-way street.  It’s not just about the employer determining if you would be a good employee.  It is just as important for you to decide if this is the right company and right team for you.  If you’re not happy, your job performance will suffer, and ultimately your career will suffer.  Take advantage of the time that you have with us to gather information that will help you decide whether this is the right fit for you.

Speaking of questions: if you’ve got ’em, ask away in the comments, or email me.

user experience, VMware

summer internship opportunities for user experience researchers and designers

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I mentioned earlier that summer intern season is coming, and that my team has intern openings.  The job openings are listed on our website:

  • user experience research intern — This position reports to me, and is on a project where I really want to see some awesome research.  Read the job description carefully, because there’s some discussion in there of what the project is about, and a great candidate will be able to tell me how they’d go about executing on this project.
  • user experience designer intern — We’ve got several openings, so there are several different summer projects where we’d like an awesome intern to come in.  Here, a great candidate will have a good portfolio and will be able to tell us how they think that they would apply their design skills to the types of problems that we see at VMware.

Interested?  Email me with your cover letter, resume, and portfolio (required for design candidates, not required but still useful for research candidates).

We’ve got other jobs available as well, not just summer interns.  We’re especially interested in hearing from senior interaction designers, such as for this opening.

user experience

the difference between good user research and great user research

This morning, my team discussed the benefits and drawbacks of large-scale A/B testing.  Websites like Google and Amazon often use A/B testing where they randomly show some of their users a new version of a webpage, and measure whether the outcomes are different: a better click-through rate, for example.  There’s a lot be learned in this kind of testing.  It’s a powerful method for websites to learn about how design changes, both major and minor, can impact how users complete their task.

However, it doesn’t give you a complete picture.  It tells you what happened, but it doesn’t tell you why it happened.  One of the differences between good user research and great user research is in what you learn and how you can apply that information in the future.

In good user research, you learn that something happened.  Maybe you’ve learned that a user is completely blocked from finishing a task.  Maybe you’ve learned that users can complete their task 20% faster.  Maybe you’ve learned that, while they’re not doing anything faster, their satisfaction ratings are higher than usual.  Each and every one of these findings is important.

Each and every one of those findings can be made better if you know the reason behind it.  Sometimes it’s reasonably obvious, but oftentimes it’s not1.  When you know the reason why a change has improved or degraded the user’s experience, you have a better opportunity to innovate in the future.  You only have data.  You don’t have insight.

Good user research allows you to react.  It allows you to evolve your designs.  With good user research, you will make improvements.  Your application will be better.

Great user research allows you to learn more about your users.  It gives you insight into how they think and what they’re trying to accomplish.  It allows you to make intuitive leaps and to truly innovate.  With great user research, your greater understanding of your users will allow you to make improvements to your whole business, not just your application.  Your business will be better.

  1. And sometimes you think that the answer is obvious, but it turns out that the obvious answer isn’t the correct answer. ↩
Q&A, user experience

Q&A: what are the best courses to take in a user experience curriculum?

Last week, I spoke at a networking breakfast at the University of Michigan’s School of Information.  One of the questions that I was asked there was from someone who is in her first year of the program.  She wanted to know what UX courses were the most useful.

Your user experience coursework is the table stakes.  They’re necessary, but not sufficient, to be a good UX professional.  I won’t point to any of those courses as more or less useful.  Instead, it’s about what you get out of those courses: clear and concise communication, the ability to give constructive design criticism, the ability to take feedback (which won’t always be constructive criticism, but you still have to take it), the ability to juggle a changing schedule, the ability to handle multiple projects and deadlines.  An individual course isn’t make or break — and curricula change all the time, so a course that was useful to me when I got my degrees might not even be offered any longer.  Rather, the gestalt of what you learn during the process of getting your degrees is what will make you a great UX professional.

In many respects, the course that I use the most out of my three degrees is public speaking.  A lot of what I spend my time on isn’t really user experience work.  Instead, it’s communicating about user experience.  I communicate with my UX peers, program management, and application teams to understand what their research questions are.  I formulate a research plan, and then have to communicate that research plan to the stakeholders: why I’ve elected to do this kind of research, what results we can expect to get from this research.  Then there’s actually conducting the research, which isn’t so much about the tools that are used to collect the data (Morae, Excel, Camtasia, etc), but rather how my communication with the research participants as I collect that data.  A good user researcher guides, but does not bias, the participant as the researcher collects data to answer their questions.  After I’ve conducted the research, analyzed the results, and formulated my recommendations, my job is next to communicate the results and recommendations.  And throughout the software development lifecycle, aside from specific research that I have conducted, it’s my job to continue to communicate about previous user research that might be applicable to a given question, as well as general principles of good user experience.

Another unexpectedly useful course, this one from my undergrad, was a course called “statistics and society”.  It was about consuming data.  That course taught me a lot about how to think about data.  How does the method for collection impact the results?  How does the presentation of the data impact its analysis?  Neither this course nor my public speaking courses were required for my degrees, but I think that the skills that I learned in those courses are ones that help me be a great researcher.  I’m able to apply those skills very broadly, and they help me every single day.

Your UX coursework is the beginning.  If you don’t have good UX skills, you’re not going to get very far.  But your UX skills are not enough.  To grow in UX, you need to be great at more than just user experience.

Q&A, user experience, VMware

Q&A: how can I find user experience jobs in the Bay Area?

I’m spending today at the University of Michigan, participating in some campus recruiting.  The morning started off with a networking breakfast with the School of Information, which was great: lots of people who are interested in UX jobs at VMware.  We’re hiring for both summer internships and full-time positions, so this kind of thing is exactly what we need to do to get great hires.

During my talk, I took a lot of questions from the students about working at VMware, what UX is like here, and so on.  Which is great: it gives me fodder for future blog posts.  I’m going to quickly answer one of the questions that I got during that session: how to find UX jobs in the Bay Area.

Working in UX in the Bay Area is truly awesome.  There’s so many tech companies, and lots of them are hiring.  Finding UX jobs can be somewhat of a challenge within tech, because UX jobs can get lost in the general tech hiring that happens.  One great resource for finding UX jobs is BayCHI.  Paid members have access to their Job Bank.  Lots of employers post their UX openings there.  It’s mostly Bay Area, although there are jobs posted elsewhere in California and the US there too.  Many of the jobs are for interaction designers, but researchers and visual designers aren’t left out in the cold.

It’s awesome to see one list of UX opportunities in one place.  It gives you an idea of where the job market is going and what skills are in demand.  For me, although I’m not looking for a job, I still glance over them to make sure that I’m growing my skills in the right ways.  I don’t want my career to stall.  I want to keep improving and moving my career in the right direction.

If you’re in the Bay Area, going to the BayCHI meetings is a great way to network with your fellow UX professionals.  They’re held directly across the street from VMware campus, so it’s pretty easy for me to pop over.  I watch to see what the monthly topic is, and go to the ones that I find interesting.  Most BayCHI talks are excellent, and the networking is icing on the cake.

UX folks: what other resources do you point college students towards if they’re looking for a job?  Other than your own company’s career page, of course.