UX jobs boring as shit
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- sublocked0
^ Startup 30ish employees, real revenue, top tier VC interest, huge marketplace. Web + tablet app design. Conduct user research, do testing, design critiques, build a design culture.
- Sounds BORING AS SHIT.
jk, good luck filling the role.cannonball1978
- Sounds BORING AS SHIT.
- zarkonite0
@mg33 I have a different take on what's going. I don't think it's a growing pains type of scenario, I think we're really being taken over by cost reduction and we need to start showing value to the bean counters or we're all fucked.
Let's compare the type of creativity on the web to TV advertising. Most TV ads end up being marketing more than advertising, it's not very convincing or well done but it gets the information across. Just like a data driven, UX standardized website. The goal is to have your target audience "activate" and "convert"... There is however some room for more attention grabbing TV, it's rarely done because getting good creative out is like running in a minefield (unless you have the rare opportunity of having a client come to you just for that) but I think that we could still do the same with the web, we just need to sell it better (re: bonseff's post about getting shotdown over the phone, that shit doesn't happen with a real creative director in the room)... especially now that the general population is way more saavy, the cost of production is down and there are tonnes of new ways (media) to drive to a microsite or any other kind of creative execution.
- cannonball19780
What I've noticed, is that a lot of work exists in places where there actually isn't much "experience" to be had. And then, as a practitioner, you are either manufacturing experience thats not needed, or more commonly reducing the amount of experience to zero because "easy".
I'll pick on insurance again- it's a really good example of this.
I feel like industry heads say "we need to capture these millennials, it's all about the experience for them" and then conflate our practice with their need to tick off "experience" on their list.
Heres an example below.What the hell does the this association need with a "Creative and UX Director" other than making sure their "find a dentist" function scales properly on mobile?
https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Calif…
I'm assuming a lot here, but can any of you imagine what nontrivial work would be done here? Maybe I'm just unimaginative.
- Pay: 90k. They ask for a Creative and UX Director but what they want is a production designer. (No slight to production designers)kona
- I'm in your boat cannonball. I'm 42, have been doing this for 18 years. Was defined as a UX designer for TV interfaces back in 2005.kona
- Most recently have been producing others ideas who's pay is larger than mine. No testing. No research. Present ideas. We'll pick thank you.kona
- see_thru0
Speaking for myself, my previous 2 gigs sucked...my current job is pretty awesome.
- sothere1
that's why they have started to put UX UI jobs together. Chalk always is better with some cheese.
- jtb260
I don't think UX is boring if you have the right mindset and interests. I gravitated towards UX because I got sick of listening to CEO's pontificate on color choice and being critiqued on kerning and leading by in-house pixel pushers.
Design is a super non-homogenous profession. You have different kinds of practitioners all across the spectrum from skilled graphic artists and front-end developers to purely academic user experience designers with minimal technical or creative skills. The folks dreaming up Geiko commercials and doing campaigns for Nike share a common vernacular with the folks designing the interface for paying your cable bills and you're doing your online banking; the two are worlds apart regarding the kind of value they deliver to their patrons. They're a different service and a different type of career. The later is super boring from a graphic design perspective but can be interesting and satisfying form another angle.
- studderine0
I can't tell you how many times I've talked to companies and "UX Designers" that have never conducted user research.
- since19790
ANd most UIs still suck. When Im in a crunch they rarely come through. Im looking at you Google.
- cannonball19780
No, I mean looking at all of the listings for UX positions nationwide...
- sublocked0
I'm working a pretty challenging, interesting UX job and need to help hire another UX professional in either the Bay Area or Portland (no remote work). If that's one of you guys, hit my email.
- BonSeff0
gdammit
- mg330
Continuity,
Can't fit all this in a sidebar comment but I think it's interesting that you mention "early noughties with all of that glorious experimentation, Flash, three-oh, etc, etc, etc."
I loved that stuff. Vir2l was like God status at the time. But that stuff was not sustainable. That was the Internet in it's infancy, tools in their infancy, and a wild-west approach to web design at the time. I remember countless conversations around 1999-2001 with people on Flashkit.com who thought they were going to get clutch jobs out of high school because they learned some of Josh Davis' Flash tutorials and could make stuff bounce at random on the screen. It was fun, I loved it too, but it was new media in it's infancy. Flash's coming of age moment was when they integrated XML and database connections into whatever release was new at the time. People started fusing creativity with actual purpose, things they could sell that weren't just eye candy.
That experimentation evolved as it needed to, for better or worse, but that era was not going to last forever.
- imbecile-2
if you're bored, you're not concerned enough with the X of the U
- omg-9
Maybe its the company.