The UX Energy Podcast

Intro: 0:17 06:48: Work Ethic 13:00 How does a new designer know “what is good content?” 20:00 What advice do you give to people … so they don’t give up on UX? 22.32 - General Assembly rant 26:00 What is the solution to salvage the career? 28:00 Print Designers wanting to earn more money 30:00 UX Is tool agnostic 32.00 Summary: How to get good quality. 35:30 How does someone get more practical experience? Juniors 39:00 Hiring Seniors 41:00 - Disqualifer: follow instructions 42.30 Summary & Wrap Up 44:00 - Taking the discipline forward: Oversimplifying ux, with no accountability. 50:04 - Gatekeeping

Emma introduces UX as a way simplifying services that you use every day. Her previous experience has. Emma explains why digital transformation projects often fail. She argues that focusing purely on “digital” isn’t helpful. Since departments are run by people, it’s important that transformation is with people and processes, not just digitising their existing workflows. Digital innovation must be driven by your users. Getting stakeholders onboard is through effective communication. Emma explains how you can learn the soft skills to have those conversations. Emma then explained the importance of hand-drawn ideas and problem solving. People feel that they can collaborate and give feedback when there’s “messy” sketches. On Dribbble alot of people redesign apps, but 90% of the time this is the make up on the surface. But this doesn’t solve the problem! You can follow her on Twitter & LinkedIn

UX Designer at Puppet and Female Founder & CEO of Insurin. Building an app to engage with teens with Diabetes. 1st Class Honours from Ulster University. Placements Education vs Experience Insurin: Your own journey with Diabetes. Engaging with teens How did you conduct your research? Gamification: motivation Well worth looking at your Figma prototypeInteractive bot Gluco provides guidances. Guides the user through logging food & administering insulin Maze Testing. What’s your progress with the app? What was your challenges with this, whilst juggling other work / studies? Integration with FreeStyle glucose monitoring? Catalyst, funding Puppet: Design system redesignAccessibility Gov.uk style documentation To Share: www.insurin.app LinkedIn: Emma Corbett Email: [email protected]

Debbie Levitt shares some excellent tips for starting out as a freelancer, and reasons why you shouldn't become a UX designer.  You can follow her great resources on YouTube. 

The uxcheer community is for women and non-binary junior UX and product designers. It's a place to share, make friends, vent, access resources, and get your portfolios reviewed by Tanya Junell and special guest design leaders. Their aim is to nurture and strengthen the pipeline of global female ux and product designers on a pathway to leadership and financial success.

Hemanshu Narsana gives us a solid overview of the career landscape, from junior to principle. He reveals the core skills required to level up and to thrive at the top: moving away from transactional research into strategic research. It's a solid episode, enjoy the listen.  Connect with Hermanshu via LinkedIn

Tom Scott: Entrepreneur Design studio owner Fitness & spirituality Q: Alot of folks are getting burnt out during the job hunt. You mentioned about making the most of the rest of 2022 and getting that work life balance. How can folks stay motivated? 5 months left in 2022, you can still: Aim for better work/life harmony Rest more Spend more time with your kids Strive for greater equanimity Get better at your current job Q: I always love when recruiters get in touch, they’re great connections. How to engage well with recruiters? Q: What is job ready mean? Q: You’ve previously written tips for creating a good UX portfolio, and you mention about injecting it with your personality. What are other important things to include? You say a portfolio is more important than your CV Show you can do the graft and hard work that comes before the pretty pictures. Q: AUDIENCE QUESTION Samuel asks: 1- “I love to know why most companies don't fancy the idea of junior UX Designers.” 2- "Would like to know what ways Lead Designers or Head of Design in companies could be advocates for bringing one or two juniors on board."

Alan shares his journey into becoming a Senior UX Consultant at Deloitte Digital. We discuss delivering value through outcomes rather than outputs. It's really important to define success metrics rather than just focus on outputs.  "Where's the research?" is a really critical question to answer the question "Why?" Avoiding waste in your portfolio.  You can connect with Alan Lavery on LinkedIn.

Supporting disabilities should never be an after thought.  Our guest Sheri Byrne-Haber joins the podcast to tell her story. She holds a director-level position at VMware and shares her expertise about accessibility.  About Sheri:  Over 3 years at VMWare Senior Staff Architect (senior director level) Computer science degrees, law-school. Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies Certified - PACCG Author of “Giving a damn about accessibility” Resources mentioned in this article:  The Curb Cut Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curb_cut_effect Sheri's Blog: https://sheribyrnehaber.medium.com Free Newsletter Access Ability: https://accessability.substack.com/