Door64 recently hosted the Painpoint Job Fair for companies at the “pain point” where they couldn’t move forward with vital projects until they hired new coders. They focused on four skills: Java, .NET, UI/UX, and software QA.
Back in the 1990’s, UI and UX (short for "user interface design" and "user experience") was mostly done by graphic artists. We talked to three local recruiters about what Austin companies want when hiring for today’s hot job title and how people can learn those skills.
“User experience is huge. Every software company out there is looking for people who can make websites easy to use and easy to navigate,” said Johnny Chang, a recruiter with Lifesize Communications. “UX is a great career choice if you’re an artist and feel pressure from your parents to get a real job. UX would be a very interesting skill set for you. You can combine your passion for art and layout with user experience, which is what art is all about. That with some technical skills will make you money.”
Traci Hughes, Principal Founder at Third Coast Search, agreed. “It’s becoming more valuable to have employees that aren’t so siloed. They can do and understand multiple things. In UI, they want someone who can look at a project from the perspective of a marketer and artist then execute it as the technical coder person that they are."
Combining art and technology is a vague demand. Renee Diaz, a recruiter with Vitamin T, a division of Aquent, said one of her greatest challenges is helping companies define what they want from the role and setting realistic expectations for what they can expect from a single employee. “Companies want to increase the overall usability of their sites, and to do that they think they need a user experience person, but they don’t know what that means.”
Diaz defined four main skill sets employers may be interested in when they say they’re looking for someone to do user design:
- User research focus groups and surveys
- Information architecture, taxonomy, layout, navigation
- Interaction design in the form of wireframing and prototyping
- Visual design in the form of mockups, layouts, overall attractiveness and site-wide visual integrity
“People will come to us and say they want a UX person. Then we have to help them narrow it down. It’s rare to find one person who does both visual design and user research,” said Diaz. “We have to work with employers to figure out the real expectations of the role.”
On the coding side, Diaz said the most commonly requested UX skills included JQuery, JavaScript, HTML (including HTML5), CSS and testing plugins.
Chang added that older languages such as PHP (also known as the "P" in LAMP) and AJAX were also helpful. Since PHP is open source, it’s both inexpensive and accessible. AJAX is the use of JavaScript to bring information back from a server without reloading a webpage, the way that Google Maps, for example, creates a dynamic popup when a user mouses over an object.
To get a feel whether you’d have a knack for UX, Chang recommends building a website using nothing but Notepad. “Don’t use Dreamweaver or Frontpage. That’s a screening question I’ll ask people - do they know how to code a website from scratch in Notepad.” If the answer is yes and they have a good visual and aesthetic sense, they probably have the skills necessary to succeed in UX.
Chang, Diaz and Hughes agreed UX positions are hard to fill because it’s hard to find people who are simultaniously passionate artists and passionate coders.
“Beyond technical skills, you need someone who can think in terms of the experience your user is going to have. Is it going to be easy, fun, interesting or valuable? All of those things are about real emotions that people have when they’re interacting with your software,” said Hughes.
Chang said the best UX designers wanted to be artists when they were young but discovered a love of technology along the way. “The best designers are naturally artsy and have an eye for that sort of stuff. That’s not something I think you can teach. Smart employers want someone who started in an artistic fashion and picked up technical skills.”
Diaz said those people are hard to come by because most people who get into coding do it because they enjoy interacting with a system and discovering what they can make it do. UX designers can’t put on headphones and go into a coding fugue because they need to constantly collaborate and interact with the development team, QA and management.
“UX is misunderstood, but companies know it’s absolutely vital to their success. Sites no longer just give out information. Now, they react and are responsive to users, and to do that well you have to understand what the end user needs from your site,” said Diaz.
While Chang recommended artists interested in UX start by trying to create a website in Notepad, Diaz suggested coders interested in UX start by taking a photography class, which can introduce them to the basic elements of design. From there, attend panels at SXSW about art rather than just the ones about tech, take art history classes, and try to expose yourself to as many diverse types of art as possible so you don’t fall into a niche of making everything look like an infographic circa 2010 or whatever single art style you forced yourself to learn.
