Five questions UX employers should be asking 💬

5 questions UX employers should be asking

If you’re in UX like me, you know the struggle. People ask us for examples of our work and we’re stuck. We can’t just show them private project communications or designs and we can’t just point them to a final project and say,“I did this.” The more I thought about it, the more I believe it’s due to us not being asked the right questions.

This week I put together a few questions that could change the way we communicate about UX design with interviewers, colleagues, or even friends and family!

Five questions UX employers should be asking

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What I'm reading this week:

Rands Information Practices
by Rands
"Your most precious asset is your time. You can start and adopt the following set of habits right now to give yourself hours of your life back. Equally important, these habits will substantively increase the quality of your time by reducing stress, increasing focus, and ultimately improving the quality of the things you build with your hands."

58 years ago
by Seth Godin
"The world was a twitch away from total nuclear destruction. White bread was a health food. Diabetes and obesity were relatively rare. The newspaper was the way most people heard about the news. We thought things were moving very fast, frighteningly fast. UPS never came to your house. A long-distance phone call was a big deal.

And 58 years from now, when, actuarially, most of us will still be around, what will things be like then?"

The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea
by DHH
"Not because there aren’t people who actually enjoy working in an open office, there are. Quite a few, actually. But they’re in the distinct minority. The vast majority of people either dislike the open office or downright hate it. So how is that going to work, exactly?
By force, of course!"

This week's favorite:

In a recent study called The impact of the ‘open’ workspace on human collaboration, a pair of researchers tracked the digital and real-life interactions of workers at a company that shifted to an open office plan before and after the shift.

"Contrary to what’s predicted by the sociological literature, the 52 participants studied spent 72% less time interacting face-to-face after the shift to an open office layout. To make these numbers concrete: In the 15 days before the office redesign, participants accumulated an average of around 5.8 hours of face-to-face interaction per person per day. After the switch to the open layout, the same participants dropped to around 1.7 hours of face-to-face interaction per day.

At the same time, the shift to an open office significantly increased digital communication. After the redesign, participants sent 56% more emails (and were cc’d 41% more times), and the number of IM messages sent increased by 67%.”

Open offices result in less collaboration among employees

Care to share?

I love sharing my thoughts and interesting things I've found online with you. In order for me to keep doing it, please share it with someone you think would appreciate it. Thanks!

Until next time, all the best

Anton