Day three: Don’t Feed the Board Monkeys by Matt Walsh (of Crispin Porter + Bogusky)
What makes a great UX (User Experience) designer? (i.e. How not to be a board monkey)
1) Passion
- Love what you do
- What gets you up in the morning?
- Do you have pursuits outside of the office?
2) Mental Quickness
- Speed chess (sometimes in interviews!)
- Manipulating interactions to create opportunities to act
- 3 steps ahead
3) Creative Vision
- Don’t hide or make excuses
4) Strategic Acumen
- Understanding business realities
- Defending design choices
- Client-facing readiness
- Be able to sum things up in a sentence
5) The Fundamentals
- Communicating vision
- ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’ challenge
- Portfolio
- Not having to think about the basics
6) Attention to Detail
- Visual polish
- Spelling mistakes?
- Giving more than is asked for
7) Zoom Control
- Being able to see both the worm’s eye AND the bird’s eye view
- No tunnel vision
8 ) Comfort in Numbers
- Knowledge of analytics
- Knowledge of past clients, project performance
- Education
9) Translation Skills
- Talking to designers, developers, marketers, etc…
- Keeping a reading list / blogroll (good idea to make this public)
- Having a background in other fields
10) Awareness and Inspiration
- Ability to abstract ideas
- Ability to communicate
11) Platform Jumping
- Understanding nuances
- Pushing platforms’ capabilities
- No dead ends
12) Lessons Learned
- Know biggest failures and what the response was
- Intangible knowledge
- Learn from mistakes
13) People Skills
- Would you want to go drinking with this person?
- Know the line
- Making other people look good
Check out:
- epicmix.com
