Video of the talk: https://youtu.be/xWpJMEsqHMM UX must be one of the most confusing professions – the roles and job descriptions seem to follow the buzzword of the moment. We’re a discipline that bangs the drum for consistency, yet we can’t keep to the same acronyms and titles (CHI or HCI? UX or CX or HX...?). Amongst this has emerged the demand of the UX unicorn. That uber-human who can strategise, investigate, research, market, structure, architect, write copy, conceptualise, design, code... This talk is a light-hearted introduction to UX teams and the existence of these - and other - mythical animals. Who they are, what they do, and some of my thoughts and experience with specialists vs. generalists, identifying them, who you need for your business at a point in time and hiring them.

1. legend or fable?
Unicorns

2. Head of UX, Argos

3. • the Design Economy
• who are the designers?
• Unicorns – the stuff of legends or fables?
• the value of design

4. The Design Economy
£71.7bn to the UK economy
Adding jobs at 3 times the national
average

5. (Courtesy of David Gray)
there are conundrums...

6. who are they?
designers

7. USER EXPERIENCE TEAM*
previously /also known as HF, UCD, CCD, HCD….
INFORMATION
ARCHITECT
RESEARCH /
INSIGHT
FRONTEND
DEV
COPY
WRITER
VISUAL
DESIGNER
*completely and utterly my preference, you use
whatever you like & clearly not exhaustive but
purely for discussion purposes….

8. INFORMATION
ARCHITECT
RESEARCH /
INSIGHT
FRONTEND
DEV
COPY
WRITER
VISUAL
DESIGNER
USER EXPERIENCE TEAM*
human factors engineer
usability tester
tech designer
author
graphic designer
ALSO KNOWN AS
user centred designer
interaction designer
UI dev designer
digital designer editoruser centred researcher
interaction designer
UX designer
UX designer
frontend coder
ethnographer
librarians
content writer
interaction coder
tech dev
XD (experience designer)
XD (experience designer)
they’re just labels…

9. confusion reigns
the right skills

11. The Seller1.

12. Step 1: Learn Everything You Can About a New Skill
Step 2: Practice, Practice Practice
Step 3: Deconstruct What Others Have Done
Step 4: Solicit Feedback (And Listen To It)
Step 5: Teach the Skill To Someone Else
Becoming a UX Unicorn in 5 Easy Steps
Where do you begin to develop these skills? Well, one resource is UIE’s All
You Can Learn, a library of all things UX. Just create your account, and
over 160 seminars will be at your fingertips.
$23 a month……….

13. The Evangelist2.

14. Fred Beecher, UX apprenticeship

15. Learn psychology

16. The Theorist3.

17. Soft skills….
Hunting Unicorns - What makes an effective UX Professional
Patrick Neeman, usabiitycounts.com

18. The Automator4.

19. “Design isn't hard to learn.
That's because most of us are
already building products and
are familiar with what design
means. What used to be
complex and confusing is now
simple and effective, thanks
to Sketch, an app that is entirely
focused on user interface
design.”

20. where have they come from?
evolution

21. 1960
1970
Xerox PARC
oNLine System (NLS)
Mouse driven cursor
Windows
Hypertext
Eye hand coordination
1973
Xerox Alto then Star
First PC
WIMP
Window, Icon,
Menu, Pointing
device
1600’s
Infographics to
demonstrate the sun’s
rotation patterns.
Dieter Rams: ten
principles for good
design
Document centric
1943
Ikea founded
“Information is a source of learning. But
unless it is organized, processed, and
available to the right people in a format
for decision making, it is a burden, not a
benefit.”
– William Pollard
1800’s
1940

22. 1980
AT&T release Unix
to outside parties
1980
Software Psychology & Human
Factors in Computing & IS
DOS
1983
GOMS Model
Visual Display of Quant Information
1983
The Lisa
1984
The Macintosh
1986
Designing the User Interface –
Object Action Interface model
1985 Windows
released
1980
TBL built ENQUIRE
Mobile (portable) phones
Sony Walkman
Program centric
Shell scripting
Macro procedures
1986
Challenger disaster
TUFTE: Powerpoint
persuades – it doesn’t
inform
1984
Apple ad during
superbowl. Computers
are personal
1980
IDEO(?) work on
Apple’s first mouse
“Interaction design” phrase coined
by Moggridge & Verplank
1979
GRiD Compass designed – first laptop

23. 1990
1985
Free Software
Foundation (FSF)
1986
BBC GUI
Netscape is free
1998
‘Open source’ coined
Google founded
1991
‘LINUX released
1988
The Way Things Work
The Design of everyday things
ISO 9241
1994
W3C Founded
1995
Alertbox starts
1999
Designing Web Usability
1994
MS Award for inventing Visual basic
1988
Apple sues MS
1989
World Wide Web proposed
1990
WWW
1993
Mosaic
1995
Amazon
Founded
1996
Cascading style sheets
UGC begins with
Amazon book reviews
User profiling
= ‘personas’1998
The inmates are running the asylum

24. 2000
2010
2006
Tufte invents sparklines
2000
Don’t make me think
ISO 9240 revised to ISO 13407,
Human-centred design for
interactive systems
2001
Dotcom bust
Smartphones
2001
iPod released
2003
iTunes launched
2007
iPhone
2005
Youtube founded
2004
Facebook founded
2008
AirBNB launched
2000
Ballot paper in Florida with
hanging Chad alignment
2009
Visual arts graduate
student Deborah Adler
redesigns Target’s RX
Drug bottle
2005
JJG coins AJAX to help non-
techs
2000
Google adwords

25. SOFTWARE
FLOWS, TASKS
& GOALS
GUI WWW
1.0
WWW
2.0
WIMP ADVERTISING….
GLAMOUR…
SMALLER PROJECTS…
BANNERS….
REVENUE…
INTERNATIONAL
DISTRIBUTED
ASSETS
ENVIRONMENTS…
WIDGETS…
CHANNELS….
DEVICES…
MARKETING….
DISRUPTION…
ITERATIVE
PRODUCTION

26. Is it any wonder
Left brain vs right brain
Qwerty keyboard….
25

27. 26
“While we do spend literally
billions of pounds on advertising
our products, our best place to
catch the attention of our …
shopper or consumer is right at
the initial stage, which is the bottle
design and the label design.”
General Manager, Innovation, Diageo.

28. for differentiation
designing for experiences

29. context, mobility, social, channels…
the ‘norms’ constantly shift

30. influencing behaviours
digital tools are

31. IT, Telco, consumer electronics & entertainment
digital convergence -

32. distributed assets, tribes, simplicity,
crowdsourcing, omni…
collaborative consumption

33. anything and everything is connected & saleable…
Internet of Things

34. design led thinking, the design economy, lean
ux…
influencing traditions

35. Do we need
unicorns?Q.

36. You get what you
ask for…
Draw a vase….

37. 36
“But solving problems isn’t enough.
Understanding what’s possible in HTML, CSS,
JS will help designers create practical web
designs—products that developers can
actually build, and that clients can maintain.
Products that work well in the wild. Products
that users use.”
– Interaction Design Best Practices: Mastering the Tangibles

38. Site map [sahyt map] noun
Epic [ep-ik] adjective
User Journey [yoo-zer jur-nee] adjective
Lofi proto, Hifi proto
[lo fi-del-i-tee, fahy proh-tuh-tahyp] noun
Information Architect
[in-fer-mey-shuh’n ahr-ki-tek-cher ] noun
Architecture diag
ERD
Fancy flow chart
Um. Prototype.
Chap who wireframes
(NOT who builds the
database schema)
speak the <ahem> user’s language
unite the left and right brainers

39. “A photographer went to a
socialite party in New York.
As he entered the front door, the
host said ‘I love your pictures –
they’re wonderful; you must have
a fantastic camera.’
He said nothing until dinner was
finished, then: ‘That was a
wonderful dinner; you must have a
terrific stove.”
– Sam Haskins

40. experience is currency
the value of design

41. Guerrilla
Silverback
Remote testing
Flight simulators
British rail
Multi- touch testing
Commercial Labs -
PCs
Menus & colours
Task flows/goals
Mouse
Windows
HTML single page
loading
Sell/cross sell
Typography
Colours
Banners
Advertising
CSS
Parallax scrolling
Data visualisation
Hypertext
HTML
Accessibility
CSS
Parallax scrolling
Multi interaction
page
AJAX
iOS, Android . . .
SOFTWAREGUI
WWW
1.0
WWW
2.0 Research IA VD Code
Jedi masters; jugglers; teams
we’ve been busy

42. Experience
(Internet of [every]thing)
Wearables, watches
Desktop
Mobile
Tablet
Thermostats
POS
Kiosks
And, and, and. . .
A.R.
Attention to detail
Every consequence
Wall layout
Exceptional blue
tacking skills
Science
Memory
Attention span
Instant gratification
Logic
Why people buy
Why people click
Context
Previous
Scenarios
Consequences
Unhappy paths
Join the
dots
Internet
CMS
Gateways
Batteries
Cameras/tracking
RFID
NFC
Feedback loops
areas to grow; knowledge to inhale; dots to join
become a living legend, not a fable

43. new generations, new psychology
& a bit of fortune telling…

44. “Design is everything, because
without it we have no business.
… There is intense competition,
and anybody can design a
decent product. They can’t all
design outstanding products.
So, design is the differentiator.”
CEO, Pentland Brands plc

45. Thanks for
listening!
I’m sorry if I swore too much during this presentation – I try not to but then
get sidetracked in the moment.
Caveat: all of this is very commercially focused - there’s a huge part of UX that
goes unrecognised which is for the greater good of humankind. Audio for the
blind; visuals for the deaf; tools for those with physical challenges. Secretly all
UXers want to be part of that world. We want to contribute.