Finding the Rare Souls: Hunting for UX Talent
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Organizations are having challenges finding the appropriate UX talent. This webinar explores regional trends and discusses how organizations need to approach the digital talent gap.
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Finding the Rare Souls: Hunting for UX Talent
- 1. Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap Presented by Steve Walker and Allison Joyce Experis Global Content Solutions
- 2. Experis | August 6, 2015 2 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap The User Experience Talent Gap Difficult to find an individual who… • Understands usability • Understands content management • Is a graphic designer • Is an effective writer • Is creative • Is business-minded, pragmatic Photo: Gargoyle at Linlithgow Castle, Scotland. Source: iStockPhoto
- 3. Experis | August 6, 2015 3 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap Hunting for Unicorns What we’ll cover today: • How to find the rare souls who know how to design and build a good user experience • Can these skills be taught? • Where do you find quality resources? • When do you hire, contract, or use consultants? • How do you evaluate their abilities? • How do you nurture and keep good talent?
- 4. Experis | August 6, 2015 4 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap Your Guides Steve Walker Senior Director, Global Content Solutions @_SteveWalker Allison Joyce Marketing & Communications Specialist @allisonyjoyce
- 5. Experis | August 6, 2015 5 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap Experis Global Content Solutions – Holistic Approach to Content Good user experience considers all aspects of content creation, management, and delivery. Globalization Strategy Authoring User Experience Enterprise Content Management
- 6. Experis | June 26, 2014 6 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap Customer Experience/User Experience Talent Management Sample Roles – North America & global: • Digital Marketing Experts • Content Strategists • Web Designers • Information Architects • Multilingual talent • Usability designers/testers • Analytics Recruiting Consulting Community Management Job Assistance Talent Management
- 7. Experis | August 6, 2015 7 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap What is User Experience Exactly?
- 8. Experis | August 6, 2015 8 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap What Isn’t User Experience? Just about “making things pretty” • Meeting users’, business, and technical goals The role of one person or department • User experience designers are liaisons, listeners • Ultimately up to all members of the business to make UX a success A single discipline • Different people specialize in different parts of the process About technology • User experience designers use technology to help people accomplish their goals Just about the user • Finding the sweet spot between the user’s needs and business goals • Ensure that the design is on brand
- 9. Experis | August 6, 2015 9 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap Poll Question One • In the past 12 months, my biggest need has been for: – Content strategists – User experience designers – Web developers – Information architects – We’re pretty well covered right now 9
- 10. Experis | August 6, 2015 10 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap Who is a Unicorn? Anyone who can do several of these roles… User Experience Director User Experience Architect User Interface Developer User Interface Designer Graphic Designer Information Architect Taxonomist Project Manager Content Strategist Copywriter
- 11. Experis | August 6, 2015 11 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap Where are all the Unicorns? Geographies – Generally big cities where design and technology thrive • NYC, San Francisco/Silicon Valley, Austin • Don’t want to relocate Enjoy interaction with others, shared learning and community • Meetups • Word of mouth
- 12. Experis | June 26, 2014 12 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap Content Strategists Unwilling to Relocate: 92.1 Willing to Relocate: 7.9 Source: CareerBuilder
- 13. Experis | August 6, 2015 13 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap Content Strategists Male: 49.4% Female: 50.6% What is their gender? Source: CareerBuilder
- 14. Experis | June 26, 2014 14 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap User Experience Designers Source: CareerBuilder Unwilling to Relocate: 87% Willing to Relocate: 13%
- 15. Experis | June 26, 2014 15 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap Male: 100% What is their gender? User Experience Designers Source: CareerBuilder
- 16. Experis | June 26, 2014 16 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap Source: CareerBuilder Unwilling to Relocate: 87% Willing to Relocate: 13% User Interface Designers
- 17. Experis | June 26, 2014 17 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap Male: 75% Female: 25%What is their gender? Source: CareerBuilder User Interface Designers
- 18. Experis | June 26, 2014 18 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap Source: CareerBuilder Unwilling to Relocate: 85% Willing to Relocate: 15% Information Architects
- 19. Experis | June 26, 2014 19 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap Male: 70.3% Female: 29.7%What is their gender? Source: CareerBuilder Information Architects
- 20. Experis | August 6, 2015 20 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap Poll Question Two • My challenges right now are: – Constrained budget for resources – Lack of qualified talent – Finding the right fit for our company culture – Assessing our team’s skills to determine where to fill gaps 20
- 21. Experis | June 26, 2014 21 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap Source: CareerBuilder Unwilling to Relocate: 84.1% Willing to Relocate: 14.9% Web Designer
- 22. Experis | June 26, 2014 22 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap Male: 69.3% Female: 30.7%What is their gender? Source: CareerBuilder Web Designer
- 23. Experis | June 26, 2014 23 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap Can I Train Staff to Become Unicorns? Assess willingness to learn, plus natural aptitudes Organized Loves efficiency Esthetic sense or talent Drawn toward process improvement Technical aptitude Ongoing learning in technologies Creative Curious Multidisciplinary
- 24. Experis | August 6, 2015 24 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap How Should I Bring in UX Talent? Hire Long-term, ongoing needs Define requirements thoroughly Dedicated resource available Contract Short- or longer-term engagement Try on the fit for talent Good for focused projects or related projects Professional Services Choose an agency to do the work • No hiring necessary • Good for project work
- 25. Experis | August 6, 2015 25 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap How Should I Evaluate Their Skills? The portfolio is key. • Candidates should have several clear examples of their work – Live websites – Wireframes for projects underway – Sitemaps – Webpage layouts Patterns Palette Buttons, fonts, photo usage
- 26. Experis | June 26, 2014 26 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap In Portfolio Review, Look for… Esthetics Design • Color palette • Clear focal point Appeal • Overall pleasing display Pattern usage • Menus, navigation make sense Functionality Ease of use • Tasks or calls to action are clear Logical flow of content • Structure or architecture makes sense • Don’t feel lost using the site Content Tone is consistent • Body copy • Display copy Copy is easy to understand • Clear messages • Readability
- 27. Experis | August 6, 2015 27 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap Poll Question Three • What type of talent serves your current UX needs? – Staff/employees – Consultants – part time, full time, contract – An agency – completely outsourced – We don’t do any UX work now. 27
- 28. Experis | August 6, 2015 28 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap How Can I Keep My Unicorn Happy? Competitive compensation Telecommute Flexible PTO Clear goals Timelines Empowered to act Room to be creative Opportunity to define solutions Open communication Flexibility Structure Pay Quality of life
- 29. Experis | June 26, 2014 29 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap Talent Gap Solutions Pay Hard Skills, Experience Personality, Intelligence Sector Acumen Work Conditions Perception of job, company, place Continuous branding/differentiation/ visibility • • Reevaluate talent ecosystem/reach, explore passive candidates • • • • Hire for general competency, train, mentor • • • Reconfigure start-up packages • • Add virtual work options • • • • Outsource/Hyperspecialize • • • • • Select technology to optimize staff contribution • • • • Refocus tech education, academic alliances • • • • • Existing staff: develop, knowledge management, engagement • • • • •
- 30. Experis | June 26, 2014 30 Experis Webinar – Hunting for Unicorns: The User Experience Talent Gap Top Drivers of Engagement Engagement: “…a heightened emotional connection that an employee feels for his or her organization, that influences him or her to exert greater discretionary effort to his or her work.” - The Conference Board Work processes – ability to apply skills Learning and development opportunities Culture Senior leaders Communication Structure, roles and capability Recognition and reward Customer focus Strategy Immediate manager
- 31. Questions
- 32. Thank You! Allison Joyce Allison.Joyce@Experis.com (805) 252-6039 @Experis_GCS Steve Walker Steve.Walker@Experis.com (804) 521-5255 @_SteveWalker ExperisSpark.com • www.Experis.us/GCS
Editor's Notes
- Mashable has a good article on what User Experience Design is not. The 10 Most Common Misconceptions about User Experience Design lists the following examples: http://mashable.com/2009/01/09/user-experience-design/ User Interface design - It’s not uncommon to confuse “user experience” with “user interface” — after all it’s a big part of what users interact with while experiencing digital products and services. But the UI is just one piece of the puzzle. A step in the process - It is the process. In order to create a great experience for your users, not just design something that we’d like to use, we need to keep listening and iterating. It doesn’t have to be a rigid process, but it does need to exist About technology - User experience isn’t even about technology, says Mario Bourque, manager of information architecture and content management at Trapeze Group. “It’s about how we live. It’s about everything we do; it surrounds us.” Like a painter uses paint to communicate concepts and emotions, user experience designers use technology to help people accomplish their goals. But the primary objective is to help people, not to make great technology. Just about usability - “People often think that [UX design] is a way to make products that suck into products that don’t suck by dedicating resources to the product’s design,” says Chris Fahey, founding partner and principal of Behavior. Making stuff easy and intuitive is far from our only goal. In order to get people to change their behavior, we need to create stuff they want to use, too. Just about the user - As user experience designers we have to find the sweet spot between the user’s needs and the business goals, and furthermore ensure that the design is on brand. Expensive - Every project requires a custom-tailored approach based on the business’s available resources, capabilities, timeline, and budget, and a whole slew of real-world constraints. But that doesn’t always mean that it needs to be costly or take forever. Easy - Just because we know how to conduct some cool and useful activities and you know your business really well doesn’t mean that this whole process is a breeze. And cutting corners on some important steps is a recipe for disaster. The role of one person or department - User experience designers are liaisons, not subject matter experts, doctors or any type of magical beings. We don’t have a set of best practices that we can robotically implement, nor do we have all of the answers. Our greatest skill is that we know how to listen. While we can help evangelize the most effective process within your organization, it’s ultimately up to all members of the business to make it a success. A single discipline - Different people specialize in different parts of the process. Some UX practitioners focus on a specific technique, like Indi Young and mental models, or a single challenge, like Luke Wroblewski and web forms, or a focused activity, like Steve Krug and usability testing. Just like you wouldn’t go to a cardiologist to heal your broken foot, don’t expect any professional in the realm of user experience to accomplish everything you need. A choice - For those of you who think you don’t really need a user experience designer, keep this in mind: “Nobody wants to believe that what they are offering is of poor-quality or deficient,” says Kaleem Khan, an independent UX consultant, “because nobody sets out to achieve a bad design as a goal. It’s always a risk. Bad designs and bad experiences happen.”
- Lead: Dana Discuss the question and answers, then launch it. Explain the differences in employment counsel that’s generalist vs. specialist. Food for thought on policy and policy changes, how frequent and what’s the medium for enforcement, back to carrots and sticks. Apologize to Procurement, discuss the hot potato affect, and challenge this thinking where Procurement is the lead, however, HR must be at the table.
- Lead: Dana Discuss the question and answers, then launch it. Explain the differences in employment counsel that’s generalist vs. specialist. Food for thought on policy and policy changes, how frequent and what’s the medium for enforcement, back to carrots and sticks. Apologize to Procurement, discuss the hot potato affect, and challenge this thinking where Procurement is the lead, however, HR must be at the table.
- Lead: Dana Discuss the question and answers, then launch it. Explain the differences in employment counsel that’s generalist vs. specialist. Food for thought on policy and policy changes, how frequent and what’s the medium for enforcement, back to carrots and sticks. Apologize to Procurement, discuss the hot potato affect, and challenge this thinking where Procurement is the lead, however, HR must be at the table.
- So, one of the ways that we address productivity is through engagement. In that Right Management study, they looked at the top drivers of engagement. Aside from what people actually get to do, their opportunities to develop and grow leapt to the top. In fact research has shown that companies with detailed employee development plans are: 6x more likely to engage their employees than organizations that do not. > 4x less likely to lose talent in the next year than organizations that do not. 2.5x more likely to be productive than organizations that do not.