[Delivered at the Communitech After School event on November 9, 2015] -- User experience (UX) is one of the hottest and fastest-growing career tracks today. It’s an exciting path that puts you at the intersection of technology and people, making it a great choice for anyone whose interests span both “hard” and “soft” disciplines such as engineering and social sciences. With a career in UX, you’ll help to design products and services that people love. It’s a field that welcomes both generalists and specialists across sub-disciplines such as research, information architecture, interaction design, and visual design. In this session, find out what a career in UX can look like and why businesses are hiring like crazy. Get a taste of the profession through real-world stories and hands-on exercises.

1. Robert Barlow-Busch
VP User Experience, Boltmade
@becubed
Designing the future
with a career in user experience

2. Icon by B Barrett

3. technology + people

4. UX
Research
Interaction
Design
Information
Architecture
Visual
Design
Coding

5. UX
Research
Interaction
Design
Information
Architecture
Visual
Design
Coding
Study of human behaviour
Psychology, Anthropology

6. UX
Research
Interaction
Design
Information
Architecture
Visual
Design
Coding
Design of system behaviour
Engineering, Design

7. UX
Research
Interaction
Design
Information
Architecture
Visual
Design
Coding
Structure of information
Library/Information Science, English

8. UX
Research
Interaction
Design
Information
Architecture
Visual
Design
Coding
Appearance
Graphic/Visual Design, Fine Arts

9. UX
Research
Interaction
Design
Information
Architecture
Visual
Design
Coding
Build the thing
Computer Science

10. Become a T-shaped
person
Research IxD IA Visual Coding

11. Research IxD IA Visual Coding
Become a T-shaped
person
Research IxD IA Visual CodingIxdResearch Visual Coding

12. Research IxD IA Visual Coding
Become a T-shaped
person
Research IxD IA Visual CodingIxdResearch Visual Coding

13. UX skills are highly
transferable

14. Designing a mass
spectrometer
CASE STUDY OF UX IN ACTION

15. Discovery research

16. Discovery research

17. Design > Test > Learn > Repeat

18. The result?
Saved $500,000
Got to market faster
Customers loved it

19. In UX, we design for
emotion
Speaking of love…

20. If this was a family, what role would each play?

21. It’s a hot career path

22. 77,000 job listings online at
11:00 am today

23. So go read some books

24. And attend more events
uxWaterloo.org fluxible.ca

25. Robert Barlow-Busch
@becubed