My first interview as a UX Designer

If by any chance you have read the About section in my portfolio, you might know that I studied Advertising and Public Relations at Universidad de Sevilla in Spain.

One of my favorite teachers (and for most of the students) was David Selva with no doubt. His methodology and way of teaching was completely different, explaining his subjects in a fun (and funny) way to keep the class engaged.

How did everything start?

Thanks to the social media and a crazy road trip that we both did through Romania, I still have a good relationship with David after so many years.

Some months ago David reached me to ask me for a favor. He was writing a book about the different roles in Advertising in order to help recent graduates know more about what they could do after finishing their studies. So, he based his book on the different points of views from current workers whose role is related to Advertising.

He considered that being a UX Designer is something kind of new and maybe unknown for the graduates, so he wanted to interview me in order to know more about my career as a UX Designer and my professional expertise.

David Selva and myself during our road trip through Romania. It was really cold as you can see.

The interview

He sent me some questions by email. I had to take into account that the audience of the book might not know anything about User Experience and therefore I tried to keep my vocabulary as simple as possible.

Here it is:

What does a UX Designer do?

A UX Designer is responsible for defining the functionality of a product/service in order to make the goal of the users easy to achieve. I mean, that their interaction that these users have with the product/service it has to be the best and optimal as possible.

To have a better idea, I want to give you the most common example that we can face in our daily life: a supermarket (since all of us are users of a supermarket, if not, be grateful to your mother, you lazy person). Me, as a user of a supermarket, I am looking for a shampoo and, thanks to the signs that I can see on each hall, they guide me through the category or section (eg, “Personal care”). This, translated to the digital world, would be the main menu and the categories of a website that guides me through the content to find what I am looking for.

A good User Experience is when the user has not had to walk through all the supermarket, getting lost, to find the damn shampoo.

When I have to explain to my parents or cousins what I am doing in life, I always tell them the same: “I design products for dummies”.

Would you be able to describe a UX Designer? Which knowledge, attitude and skills should have?

In my opinion, and this could sound a bit weird, a UX should have a lot of common sense, be an observer and a pay lot of attention to detail.

When you are designing a product in a functional way, you have to be very careful and see how people interact with similar products in order to find common patterns, weaknesses and propose improvements, new ideas and solutions.

A UX Designer should be a curious person and ask what if…? why? what would happen if...? This kind of questions will help to iterate faster.

He/She should be, of course, a bit nerdy for new technologies and should also be at the forefront about new trends, new apps and how the human being interacts with the technology (nowadays the voice interfaces are super trendy, have a look to Alexa from Amazon).

Could you tell me about your professional path and, afterward, until your current position? 

In my case, User Experience came up to me unexpectedly. Back then, I was working in a small company located in Alicante (Spain) where I was doing some app design since I have design knowledge. So, I was doing User Interface design (UI).

One of the colleagues from R&D started to tell me about UX and how I could apply it to my designs. At that moment I started to feel really curious about this world hence, I started to read articles, buy books and do online courses. I became a passionate person about UX and I found out the professional path that I wanted to follow in my life.

In Alicante, I could not have the chance to work full time as a UX so, for that reason, I decided to move to Madrid where there was high demand and where I could start to shape my career in the biggest consultancy company of Spain doing this job.

Nowadays I can say that I'm still working as a UX Designer in one of the best global creative production companies in the world (located in The Netherlands) where I am really happy.

For those who are still studying and they are interested in User Experience Design, what kind of training/education would you recommend to them? What they should do to end up working as a UX Designer?

To be honest with you, when I started there were just a few courses in Spain. Nowadays you can find Masters and degrees.

Psychology and User Experience fit together pretty well, take into account that we have to conduct some research to know our users and “walk in their shoes”. As I mentioned before, I studied Advertisement that it is somehow related to, but, honestly, there’s no pattern to follow.

Online you can find a thousand resources and a lot of them are for beginners. Let’s say that within User Experience there are two main branches: User Experience Research and User Experience Design. I am more focused on the last one. My tip for you is to be able to cover both of them but to be stronger in one of them.

What do the companies usually ask for when it comes to hiring?

Easy, a portfolio. It is where you can showcase your skills. This is an essential thing to have. Otherwise, you might have some issues to be hired by a company, especially if you don't have any previous work experience. 

So your next question would be: But how can I build a portfolio if I don't have any experience? Just as simple as this: choose an app/web that gets on your nerves every time that you are using it, that you think it is not “user-friendly” enough, try to make improvements and suggest solutions for that specific problem. Record everything in a scrapbook, all the process that you are following, every step that you are taking, the reasons why and...voila! You already have your first UX Case Study.

And keep going. Do more. Be brave enough and design the app of your dreams! There are no limits when it comes to designing your own product.

Why do you think there are some roles in high demand and others with low demand that they are also important?

We are living in a digital world where most of us are spending almost 24h stuck to a screen. We have become more demanding and less patient. We want it all, we want it beautiful and we want it now. For that reason I think that our job as UX Designers is having so much attention, to satisfy those needs that the human beings have regarding their relationship with products/services.

About the author of the book

David Selva, former teacher at Universidad de Sevilla, he is currently working at Universidad de Cadiz as a professor within Marketing and Communications Department.

Apart from being one of the best teachers I ever had in my life, he has been presenter (twice) for TED talks in Cadiz (where you can discover how awesome a singer he is).

You can buy his book called “Especies publicitarias: perfiles profesionales en las agencias” in Amazon where you can find this interview and many others related to Advertising and Design (available only in Spanish).