Guerrilla research, life design & rapid prototyping in San Francisco
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This document discusses guerrilla research and rapid prototyping approaches in San Francisco. It recommends doing research, using contacts, and choosing a courage level that fits. It also stresses having a design process and demonstrating research and thinking through final designs. Quotes emphasize the importance of creating work worth discussing and having a broad understanding of human experiences to create better designs.
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Guerrilla research, life design & rapid prototyping in San Francisco
- 1. Guerrilla research, life design & rapid prototyping in San Francisco Alice Howard-Vyse @alicehv
- 3. (adventures of a digital optimist)
- 8. Choose your courage level.
- 10. “There are a lot of jobs here and a huge shortage of truly talented people.” Y —PATRICK NEEMAN @usabilitycounts
- 11. @alicehv #UXaustralia Credit: http://www.edlea.com/design-process/ Have a process. Demonstrate it.
- 12. “Create something worth talking about, then show your depth of thinking and ability to communicate your ideas.” Pauly Ting, User Experience Designer www.whoispaulyting.com
- 14. @alicehv #UXaustralia “The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better designs we will have.” Y -- STEVE JOBS
- 15. @alicehv #UXaustralia [rewind…] Have a process. Demonstrate it. Do your research. [rehearse…]
- 16. @alicehv #UXaustralia Thank you CONNECT w: www.alicehv.com t: @alicehv e: hello@alicehv.com.au
Editor's Notes
- Guerrilla research, life design & rapid prototyping in San Francisco A year ago today, I was in middle of the Nevada Desert,surrounded by 65,000 strangers in the dusty insanity that is Burning Man.
- I hadn’t planned for this when I’d landed in SF less than a week earlier. It became the first chapter in what my new-found friends called: Alice’s Adventures in San Francisco Land. Today I’d like to share a little of my adventure, in the hope that if, like me, you’ve ever dreamed of moving to SF, you can go armed with a few hacks to soften your landing.
- Like my fictional namesake, I have an insatiable curiosity that not only leads to adventure - and on occasion, lands me trouble - but thankfully, also helps me to do my job. As a researcher and experience designer, I get to play ‘Alice’ everyday, inhabiting other ‘worlds' to help my clients get out of their own heads and see things differently, prototyping creative solutions to persistent problems. So it seems only reasonable, that I would apply the same approach to the redesign of my own LIFE. Last year, prompted by a perfect storm of life circumstances (some good, some not so good), I quit my job, moved my stuff into storage and departed Melbourne to conduct guerrilla research and prototype a new life in SF. I should make it clear at this point, that I had no set agenda, except to check it out and decide if my working prototype was worth moving into build phase. Like all the best projects it overran a bit. What started off as a 5-week trip, turned into 3 months or precisely 90 days, the maximum time allowed on a holiday visa. and on that note: my first tip is to get a flexible return airfare!
- DO YOUR RESEARCH At the start of the year, I’d investigated my visa situation and found out about the E3 visa. Turns out Aussies are attractive to US companies as we circumvent the whole migration quota nightmare most other nationals have to go through, which can put us ahead of the pack. I also made a hit list of agencies I wanted to meet. Top of my list were IDEO and AP. I was clear that I wanted to move away from purely digital roles and move into wider experience and service design, but wasn’t sure how best to articulate my skills to get my foot in the door. I was uncomfortable calling myself a UX *designer*, as I thought it might mean I'd get pigeon-holed in UI - whereas my strengths and experience lie in research, strategy, facilitation and product development. But over 3 months, I played with different labels, researcher, strategist, designer, product manager. I later learned through experience, it’s not what you label yourself that counts, as much as the combination of your skills and how they might fit in a team environment. If you’re the right person, the job title doesn’t matter.
- Happily during my research phase, I discovered UX Week, hosted by Adaptive Path, was taking place a couple of weeks after I arrived. But at $3000 a ticket and being freshly unemployed, I needed to apply creative problem solving to fund myself. So, I contacted AP before I left Australia to see if they might have any openings for a ‘social media correspondent'. I heard back a month or so later, and was asked to set up a Skype interview - which is pretty hard when you’re somewhere between Sri Lanka, Singapore and the UK as I was - I ended up being interviewed via Skype from an airport, and thankfully I got the gig. It was perfect, given my background and interests, I got to assist in experience and service-design workshops with Chris Risdon and Andy Polaine, as well as being part of the AP crew. In new contexts, you have greater opportunity to redefine yourself. The more people I talked to, the more I opportunities I had to sound out my new direction, ask advice and see what connected. It also gave me a whole bunch of new contacts early on in my stay. Which leads me to my 2nd learning.
- USE YOUR CONTACTS In SF almost more than anywhere else I’ve lived, your network is everything. You need to build a good one. And fast. I knew precisely ONE friend in SF before I arrived, but I used Linkedin & Twitter, went along to meetups, and was given introductions by friends back in Australia, which each of which sparked whole chains of events.
- I met with people from more than 30 companies and didn’t apply for a single job from an online ad or recruiter. Next piece of advice: In SF there is no OFF button so BE PREPARED! I literally felt like I was down the rabbit hole at times, being sent from this person, then that person. The day after I came out of the desert, I received a phone call from a friend of a friend, over from New York for Burning Man and only in town for 1 afternoon. He suggested we meet for coffee, at his office downtown. In 30 MINUTES!! I had barely washed the playa dust off my feet, yet the next thing I knew I donned my Converse, jumped in an Uber and 30 minutes later, unwittingly found myself being ushered into a swish meeting room and being interviewed by 3 people, including the Operations Director, happened to be over from Singapore. I had no idea what job I was being interviewed for or really what the company did - It turns out my friend’s friend heads up a mobile-focussed digital agency with 7 international offices - so I freestyled. FOR ALMOST 2 HOURS. Having little idea if anything I was saying was relevant to the role they were looking for! In the end I was invited back for a 2nd ‘formal’ interview, then a morning’s shadow placement and later I was offered a job. But despite everything, I turned it down. Something in my gut told me it wasn’t right for me. Single-best piece of advice... <SLIDE>
- CHOOSE YOUR COURAGE LEVEL Decide on what grounds you’re prepared to make the move. Are you happy ticking along being an employee, or someone wanting to make a dent in the universe? Both are fine but for me to make the move, mine had to be the latter. And although I was clear about my direction, I discovered that landing a consulting role would be hard. The shifting design landscape has seen many teams being ‘in-housed’, so the kind of consultancy role I gig I wanted was getting rarer. The vast majority of jobs are in startups or large corporates, AP got bought by a bank at precisely the moment I was in discussion with them. It was a lesson that I needed to be open to exploring both options. In SF, people really, really want to help. But it makes it really, really hard if you’re not clear about what you want. The first step is to recognise your courage.
- YOU ARE YOUR DIFFERENCE. In a city full of UX unicorns, personal branding is everything. You need to know your point of difference. Define your superpowers. What things do you love? Communicate who are you outside of 9-5. The diversity of my experience that I thought made me confusing to prospective employers, I realised, if articulated well, was what made me stand out. Weave your story and learn how to tell it well. Be prepared to prove that you are more than what my friend Pauly Ting calls a ‘strategic strategist’. The startup world values hard skills and constant output. Demonstrate you’ve got what it takes.
- "There are a lot of jobs here and a huge shortage of truly talented people.” Patrick Neeman. that is, designers and engineers who can communicate, lead, and set new standards. The best way to do this is…
- HAVE A PROCESS DOCUMENT IT No matter how good a communicator you are: whatever job title you choose to put on your resume: people can only know your gold when they see it. At the end of every coffee meeting, people would say, “Send me through your portfolio” It sounds naive now, but I didn’t have one. Not being a Interaction Designer or UI person, the thought of showing my rudimentary wireframes brought me out in a cold sweat. But this is exactly what you need to do.
- Show how you solve problems. It’s not the solution or WHO you've worked for, it’s your thought-process they’re interested in what’s important for them is to see strong examples of where you used your process to solve problems & what you’d do differently next time.
- It turns out being in a new environment and constantly putting yourself out there can be as emotionally gruelling as it is energising. By the end of my 3 months of ‘life prototyping’, I was completely spent. Like my heroine, at times I felt 10 ft tall, and other times so teeny tiny that I wondered if I might disappear altogether. This adventure is not for the faint-hearted. [I stayed in 8 different locations (not including the Nevada desert!), had countless cups of coffee, met with over 40 people for ‘chats’, went to 5 UX meetups, had 4 formal interviews and ended up with 2 offers, 4 if you count the 2 I’ve had since I got home. They’re still coming. Last week it was Uber. A couple of months ago, Adobe. But as you may have realised, I’m now back in Australia! As we DESIGNERS know. Not all prototypes make it to build. Sometimes they help you work through problems to achieve better focus.
- As Steve Jobs put it, it’s the broadening of your experience that leads to better design. In life as much as in work. As a serial nomad, I know my work benefits from my travel in all kinds of ways. It not only gives me a wider, fresher perspective but also increases my ability to adapt to changing circumstances and helps me connect and relate to others from different walks of life. I would urge all design-thinkers to climb down the rabbit hole and get a different take on life, if and when circumstances allow. Since climbing out of my rabbit hole last November, I have a renewed sense of direction, I’ve set up my own experience design consultancy, HumanizeThis, and am working with Australia’s top UX and behavioural design experts at Tobias & Tobias. It was certainly one helluva trip but I wouldn’t change a thing.
- Recap
- THANK YOU & GOOD LUCK