Ask the UXperts: A Practical Approach to Getting A UX Education — with Mads Soegaard

everyone awesome to have you here joining us tonight maybe this morning this afternoon lunchtime ravenous for you in the world it's evening for me and it's early morning for my special guests are you except for this session maid saga menses joining us from the interaction design foundation we're really big fans of his work it's a nonprofit organization which specializes in education and career advancement for designers and tonight mentis joining me to answer the questions that I've solicited from you our community over the last couple of weeks specifically questions about getting a new accession a practical approach to getting a new it's education I'm excited to be joined by men's tonight I'm gonna throw it over to him to give us some context around the session yeah so with a good morning hawk it's early morning and a marketing idea I had to put up these lights here this is our one of our video studios that I had to put up lights cuz this time in the morning in ten markets it's completely yeah almost pitch dark outside so we don't really see the Sun like these four months in the winter and yeah so it's don't ever come here in the future if you want to visit Denmark come here in the summer then it's a magical place but in the winter it's just dark and gray and rainy okay yeah so on that note then my name is yeah thanks for the introduction Hawke a my name is mess and I found it the interaction design foundation they way back in 2002 and we are a nonprofit organization who specializes in a career advancement for user experience designers specifically our speciality is online user experience courses or basically courses revolving around the general theme of design so user experience design UI design thinking and so on so there's a bunch of related terms and that's our speciality we don't do anything else and then we've been doing this for yeah for since the 2002 a actually then I just like to give some context to that the reason I actually found out the interaction design foundation and the reason that on this Q& A so interesting is that the whole reason I founded it was that I felt it was built sort of the it was really unfair that dis expulsion design skills have traditionally been reserved for people who are fairly well-off and also people in the sort of you could say the Western intellectual hemisphere and you'd have to go to like a super expensive design school or you know these skills and the knowledge design knowledge was really hard to come by online and it still is and so our goal is to lower the cost of high-quality design education so that means up the quality and lower the cost and that's what we're sort of incessantly working on and our medium is the online medium because that's how we you know are able to lower the cost and up the quality because we don't have like big campuses and that's it so that's our take on UX education then we have local groups I think they all most all major cities around the world I can't remember how many hundred sub countries to get that sort of physical dimension into the learning user experience some of these local groups are absolutely fantastic and thriving some of them are going a bit slow so we're continually sort of trying to optimize that so what that's just to give a bit of context to yeah who I am and so in coming from where I do then of course I'll really try to not to be biased towards online courses and online learning I'll really try to be objective but just keep that in mind that I might be slightly biased I'll remind you whenever I feel I'm getting too biased because you know as you know online and most of the people listening other people listening to us right now people that know us via that medium so we you so are you ready to jump into some Christians absolutely up yeah so

yeah as I mentioned before we've got a combination of questions from an email that we sent out from our online forums which are a very valuable part of but about community and animals are from out Twitter audience so the first one is as from the email that we see not specifically about the session and it's a good open starting question and it is how can we effectively learn practical you eight skills it's so well actually first of all I should just mention that whenever I hear someone with a Kiwi accent and Australian accent I get like a really warm and fussy if feeling inside because I used to live in Tasmania and I found you know I found it absolutely fantastic I had a wonderful time there so yeah so okay so how can you learn practical UX skills so that's practical I think yeah emphasis on I'm practical so and I'd say doing doing so the doing dimension is what it's all about and then how do you go about doing so I would say that lets say that you buy a book then it's incredibly important that you just don't sit there and passively read the book but you actually you know put those things into like action and if you read a book about customer journey Maps or personas or something then it's absolutely essential that you know yeah you start to do it so even if you don't have a job as a UX designer then I'd find it incredibly important that you just start yeah just start doing and it could be do personas with your friends it could be usability testing with your friends that's really not relevant of course it's better if you have a Java sandy looks design already and then you can you know do this with clients and so on but often yeah if your new leader works then that you don't have that as a possibility so I'd say as long as you just start doing then that's the look at the key thing so for example when we construct courses in the interaction design foundation we put a lot of emphasis on exercises and templates and opening the questions and you'll also see people who answer those opening questions some of them will be just hey you know I'll just do whatever is necessary and other people will be like they really put a lot of effort into it so ever so that's the yeah and so of course you should be in the latter group you should really try to put a lot of effort into it what are the

unique scurry r or job options for those of us with really good people or interpersonal communication skills so good communicators who would prefer to work with progressive companies or nonprofits but aren't particularly strong at coding how do i guess the question there really is how do we match our own skills with the UX positions that are real yes super interesting that you mentioned coding because that's a question that often comes up I'd say that in some regions it's really if there's some tendency to look at a user experience designer someone who can also branch into coding and that and so I'd say that it's AI for me personally I love programming by the way I'd say that it's important for you as a UX designer to know coding and to sort of know the fundamentals of how code is constructed and this whole idea of this whole approach of formalism how do you actually take these ideas and and essentially write them in the code and make them come alive because one of my favorite sayings is ideas and worthless without execution and by extension you could say that ideas are worthless without implementation so all these you know wonderful plans that we make and they need to be written down to like super rigid and soup Church code in order to come alive and again yeah and and bring a smile on our users faces so it's really important to know I'd say the fundamentals of code and because otherwise you could fall into that trap of being that wonderful designer who psyche making post-it notes and all these wonderful plans and then they just never come alive so I'd say that's important on that note I don't think I think you should leave programming to the programmer so I would recommend that it's that you specialize in user experience design and UI design and just keep your knowledge of programming as sort of a at a level where you can interface with programmers and you have meaningful conversations about them with regard to implementation but no further than that and I would say that there's enough I mean there's a ton of up knowledge and skills that need to be acquired in that spectrum from user experience design over an UI design so you need to you know everything from usability testing to use to research to I mean there's a ton enough like skills that are needed for us as a UX designer in it and also a UI designer so I'd say focus on that make that your speciality yeah said that's what I'll do and then also on that note then I would also advise against becoming like oh I'm a reuse of researcher or so I'm like oh I'm a usability tester and that's only what I do I find that to be too narrow so I think there's always this definition of what is a specialization and what is generalization and some people say well and user experience is that like a generalization across multiple domains and so on and I'd say no that's actually speciality it's a very we'll sort of thought out the set of skills and and disciplines that are needed and that is the speciality in so that's not like a you're not like a generalist essay as a user experience designer and actually computer science start ow like way back in the 70s or 60s partially in the 80s can know in the 70s computer science was not considered like a special like a specialization it was like hey but you're basically just a hands-on mathematician because that's what is that was what it was considered to be so yeah so when you say that to a degree you think that you axes should know some code are you talking more than just markup here are

you talking deeper than just HTML and CSS to work to what do you believe that because that's what we get asked a lot and I think there needs to be a pretty clear definition put around what some coding means yeah I would say more than markup so that depends on your medium so if your medium are our apps I mean as a user experience designer or designer let's just say in a broad sense you know you could be working on products services apps or websites and so on so it depends on your medium so of course it would not be markup if you were like doing you know an iOS app and only doing that and I would just say that markup is not quite enough it has to be something with like you know if then it's just something like just some structured thing yeah so it's I just think you know take like an online course in programming it doesn't really matter what kind you do JavaScript or C or PHP or something yeah but just get that really frustrating and like get that sort of merger between frustration and joy when you're like why doesn't this stupid computer or compiler understand what I'm telling it and why doesn't like that button show up and then at the same time get that wonderful feeling or like wow I just created this thing and you can click it right so just get that basic understanding of programming that's all because then you'll exactly know why all these weird questions are coming from developers when you dis find this wonderful design and this you know groundbreaking you know thing that can save the world and the program it just looks at you like you just you know yeah just understand how to grow a plant without necessarily knowing why the club is growing it get some understanding of the basic concepts without being able to necessarily write the code yourself exactly that was that's the key all right I think that was there was them there was a good answer okay so um from out from our readers to make our

2017 reader survey one that is a personal favorite of mine what professional development would you recommend for UX professionals how can they progress once they're already perhaps an annuity role yeah so that's a particularly interesting question I would say that it's super important to keep learning I mean I'm an addict of learning and I keep learning all the time and I you know I continuous you I really try to look at myself well I mean I always remind race I done in a lot of respects because I always write think of wow you know I should learn this or I can don't know this and so on so personally I I'm addicted to learning and I would say that it's incredibly important to keep learning like for example in the interaction design foundation we have like some soup we cover the whole spectrum from like getting into getting your first job as a user experience designer it's like really advanced courses so we have like super specialized courses on example augmented reality virtual reality the your user experience for augmented reality and virtual reality the human was a lot of interviews from people so we have super specialized courses and that's how we that's our take on professional development is that it's important to the more you progress the more you learn to also remind yourself of how little you actually know and how that there's an infinite depth to learning and that's why I said that I remind myself that I'm but or and then I feel that I'm quite done because I always like I discover new areas where I'm like wow you know I didn't know this and so that's important to keep that that attitude like wow you know just by you know you what's management wow that's a whole sub-discipline and it's a merger between you know this wonderful thing called the user experience in this enormously challenging thing called management and people and how do they act in groups and oh my god so I would say it go into those specializations and then I would also issue sort of a warning and that is the evolution of learning so when you go on medium for example I'm not saying that medium is a bad thing by the way yes but when you go on media medium it can also be a bit like going on social media so you get this illusion of learning like wow this is interesting and okay and then they did this over at Dropbox or something and it's like yeah but you may feel good as you're reading it but like are you really like exercising your muscles yeah so it's a bit like going to the gym and you'll see some people hanging out at the gym and you know and talking and so on and you'll see other people yeah you'll see all other people it's completely focused without looking at their mobile phones and just looking horribly because they've just they're just working so hard and building up a sweat so I'd say just maybe actually don't read so many articles and don't focus so much on the news or what had just happened at Google I mean yeah focus more on timeless knowledge because if you look at the time that you're investing in that then timeless knowledge will just help you like for the next 20 years of 30 years or your hopefully for all eternity as opposed to some yeah something happened at Apple yeah you know do you really what can you really learn from that so that's another super important principle when we develop courses for it our editorial team is that timeless knowledge always timeless knowledge so something that's super valuable that can last for look like it that case that's for example why we never develop any courses on tools because it's a tool we'll get outdated and in a few years there's some tools like Photoshop for example when you talk UI design have been around for ages but I mean the user interface keeps changing every year of course but it's I employ us will not hire you because you can use a tool employers and it will hire you because you understand human motivations you understand you know people in groups what they do and and they'll hire you based on the design skills that you can use to create results to create business value to create you know smiles on people's faces and that's another type of knowledge and skills that's just not about like how to use tool so focus on on real life

not on gossip I guess is what you say focus on the news you know on the social media yeah and try to go for as timeless knowledge as possible so look at the sort of the best before date on your knowledge it's like okay so I learned a tool yeah but you know what about in two years so more as you know humans and human motivations and psychology and and our perceptual system for examples it's not really like that's fairly invariant and I mean the human perception system has remain constant over like it some 10,000 or 20,000 or however long so those would be you know that's a more stable as skill set and knowledge whereas if you learn some tool that's not going to be around in 10,000 years so from a listener I tap from YouTube

I'm a senior developer and I often interact with clients and I'd like to know how I should go about looking for improvement and my skills and how could I judge then I am improving so I guess practice senior practitioners yeah fantastic so a developers developer who's interested in us design or at least like you know interfacing with clients and customers absolutely wonderful there so I you know I'd say user experience design is the it's the Cure or it's the answer to your question because of course I mean I'm biased I love it and you do too and the audience probably they will agree with me and because it's such a fantastic like interface between development and the customers and the users out there and so the person who's asking this question that the developer that's the missing link to really understand customers users and so on that is user experience design because it provides that those structured you know it includes the knowledge and the work processes and the skills and the tools that will bridge that gap between the code and the thing going on out here among the users and customers so I find it absolutely fantastic that person yeah I think oh really wholeheartedly recommend that person to go full all in interview xdesign and the person will be so immensely valuable because like a developer who has you know people skills and user experience skills it's just a fantastic person to have on a team it's absolutely fantastic and then the developers does not have to become like the UX expert or something is just that that interface in that bridge between that you can bridging that gap fantastic so brilliant I mean another one from YouTube from testing who is a

faithful ask you it's boots audience member say thanks testing for your question desi masks which of course would you suggest for someone who has already been in the UX industry for more than five years so someone that isn't really it to senior what course or I guess what path of training would you recommend for someone and their particular part of their career so I would advise against thinking against that or advise against thinking in like a singular course so I'd see this as a continuous journey and the reason for they'd be that example when people break into UX design they're very much I mean I see that online a lot we hear people asking so which course should I start with this course or that course from that provider and that provider in big yeah and that's because the prices are so we quite extremely inflated a which high because of the mission of interaction design provision of course I'm biased so it's like that's the whole thing we're battling against is that these prices should not be so high I mean which you wish use risky technology to to become so scalable and so affordable that this should not be now there which course should I you know should I choose because it's just a vast investment and then now be out of money after that so she usually should be able to so in this particular person's a situation I would say it's not about one course it's about it's sort of it's about strengthening your muscles in in different areas that's our whole editorial strategy in interaction design foundation in order to retain members over like five or seven years in our community is to like off for like I think we have like 30 plus courses that just are very specialized in each of their area because that's really how I think you should go about learning is to continuously train your muscles in different ways so if you go to the gym and just do the same thing over again you won't really like it progress but you need to train your mental muscles and in different ways so that I would say take lots of courses and but just fine that yeah find that the best one is look online in and integra a whole lot

of course is in very disparate and different kind of yep just little parts about discipline until you find something that really you can eat is that saying yeah that's exactly what I'm saying you know you can also go something like interesting and and wonderful books the thing about books is that it will require like a lot of self discipline in order to put that into action because it's this thing like if you're just passively absorbing a book and like oh there's a wonderful idea it can create that illusion that I've warned against earlier illusion of learning whereas you really need to like okay take your pen and your paper or go about let go into the world and try to really apply this knowledge that do you have from this wonderful book so it doesn't matter a lot of more discipline I'm course for example from the interaction inside information or other course providers you have a bit more structure because then they're like hey you need to enter these quizzes or like answer we have like a grading by instructors so you need to answer like opening the question sort of quizzes the instructor will then we move one to ten and that'll be part of like how you progressed to what your course acidic it so in an onion right hang create a bit more like you know a bit more structure around your learning so that you're so that we're know gently pushing you into like a structure and so you don't have to have as much self discipline as you do with a book I then say still you need quite a bit of discipline or self discipline it's do online learning but self discipline can be learned so that's it can be absolutely trained and learned and but still you know when you're on your mobile phone or on your desk it's easy to like just switch over let's just see what's cool what's going on here in social media and then you're distracted and whereas if you're in a physical classroom then you're locked inside the room you can't escape you didn't have to mold phone and can go in social media on that but you're locked in the room yeah and so that I guess is also the spectrum that you're in that the pros and cons spectrum of like books online courses and physical classroom based course is that the the you can see the degree to which you have a scaffold or structure around you know in a classroom you can actually have little self-discipline because you're locked in the room and the instructor will look at you would say wake up whereas you know online courses you have some structure but of course it's easy to just switch over to social media and in a book it's yeah it's also easy to get distracted so that comes back to them you need to know yourself and how you are with regards to self-discipline and so when you're choosing your education then of course you need to keep in mind not only yeah so you need to know yourself when you're choosing a particular style of learning with the added note that the self discipline can be learned so you know you don't need to say okay well hell I'm really easily distracted so I should pay like a forty thousand US dollars per year to go to the school because then I have a classroom based model where I'm like locked in a room and then they then that's better for me because then yeah that's a huge investment so shouldn't you perhaps then try to train your self discipline instead of and then you'll save the forty thousand US dollars and maybe that's yeah maybe that's better for you in the long term all right I've got another one to throw at you so again from YouTube in and asks I really want to transition into you weeks but I'm

coming from a non design or a non tech background do I need a proper qualification eg university degree or a boot camp like general assembly or career foundry what's the best way and they're coming from it you're completely non design logic background to break into yeah that's the yeah interesting question yeah exactly and so I'd return to my first in this Q& A and it's about the doing doing and because there aren't really like a sort of sure-fire way of like getting a job or like doing the right thing because then of course you know you would have written that article so here's the recipe for success and step 1 step 2 so and it really depends on a lot of factors for example as I just mentioned them in the my previous answer your learning style so how do you actually learn you really need to be in a classroom or can you have that sort of self assurance then you can sort of learn by yourself through self discipline and going out there and doing doing so that that's one consideration in that big puzzle and yeah so I would say again it's about doing so taking courses where we can do practical exercises and then doing these things and not being shy so let's say that you know this person obviously hits this conundrum again that in order to break into UX design or in order to get a job you need experience order I get he's like how do i how do how does the person do that and I would say the way I would do it is simply start doing so I'll do a usability test with my friends I would do customer journey Maps on some like a made-up project I would offer my help completely chips to like any type of company we're willing to take me on but still have interesting colleagues and ambitious colleagues and then I would work my butt off just to create results at the same time in my spare time I would yeah take online courses and and try to take all those practical exercises into my might perhaps unpaid job at the same time I would start building a portfolio and then you don't need to be like you shouldn't be like shy about this then because you can build a portfolio without having a job so you can do like a usability test on some of your friend list and then you can like include like a snippet of that one minute or 30 seconds off that ability study or tests and you can say here you know I try to do I've done like a usability test and so you can actually build a portfolio without having a job and I'm not saying that you should then lie and then say hey I'm a usability test expert and what you reality did is you did like a some tests your onions yeah so it's all you of course shouldn't lie I mean any type of healthy relationship is based on an honor on a you know a truthful calibration of expectations but what you are showing in your portfolio then is that you show initiative and you show like a tendency toward action is that hey I'm passionate about this I'm doing it I'm doing something I'm just trying to I'm trying and the employers or you know future colleagues will recognize that sort of joy of that passion because you know that even if the person has only done a usability test on three of his or her friends then that you know drive and passions like I want to do this if you release that into like a company then of course then in two years one year two months that knowledge and that skill set will have progressed and and all something that person will in a few years have become the usability expert and so that drive and that passion and so to answer the question answered more sort of directly this question from your reader and I would say it's about so if you X design and design it's your passion then just start doing and then ya doing concrete things and then I'm sure it will work out hey don't worry about if you come from like a you know some other ground you know people have come from like accounting and then found out that oh my god you know I went into accounting because my parents thought it'd be like I really you know good things do and like oh you know I can work with a big brand and become like an accountant but then I've just found out that it made me die slowly and then I found this wonderful thing called design and Wow you know and then you know so that person should not be apologetic for you know I'm a trained accountant yeah then that person should say wow you know I'm a trained accountant so I have like a you know I I'm trained and I'm good at sort of rigid you know thinking patterns so because that's also essential for when you get into like implementation and programming but then I found this passion and now I'm just working my butt off in order to acquire more and more skills and more knowledge within design and people will see that and recognize that and it's completely hireable the despite not having like a I've got a design degree from this super fancy and very expensive University so on I would say don't be apologetic about it don't be shy just dududu and just yeah following your path I like it okay I'm gonna secretly slightly the

next Christian is another one from a reader survey and it is how can we interest again between boot camps and real life industry expectations yeah super interesting question also hey I'd say that gap is perhaps actually like a healthy sign because it's so the gap is all about you know you know may go into this boot camp maybe it takes a couple of weeks or a couple of months and perhaps it's even actually quite costly perhaps even very costly and then you were then they may work on your portfolio and you know then pitch to like an employer after that and then they're like yeah but and you don't like you may have problems getting a job and so I think it's a the problem here perhaps like a healthy sign of employers being critical of boot camps and I think it's a it's a matter of like the calibration of expectations not being well adequate because you can't expect to you know become a user experience designer from scratch we'll take you through a ten week course and then you'll end up like you know completely hireable and so on if you know if you think of it in terms of just imagine if we you set that to like people who wanted to come doctors you know just take this course and then after that you'll be ready like your patients yeah but you know are you really sure that you're ready to take on that you know do we really want this person to work on like a product used by millions and millions of people after 10 weeks and take be like be really influential in key business decisions because that is what a user experience will be doing it's all about users and the customers and how we interact with them I mean if this is like business critical things so that you can't gain that knowledge in ten weeks at the other sort of so right after saying that I should also say that does not mean that you should then be scared if you're like listening to this and you're like hey but I'm the marketing person and I just want to break into U of sign and have no knowledge and those skills and user experience whatever you shouldn't be afraid and then think okay well it does require extinct this expensive school or something so that's not what I'm saying either I'm just saying that it's a calibration of expectations the person who asked the question just before if that person has you know that drive and passion and so on you know I would absolutely definitely hire that person to become a user experience designer a with a note that the person needs you know to gain more muscle and to be more training so so the person would not be released into life you know business critical decisions right away so I think it's just a matter of a cat yeah so I just thought I was I think I thought I had another point I can't remember just boob heads and calibration expectations yeah let's go to the next question

question so the Nate's crystal yeah okay so what one point so far said like in the interaction to Santo nation we have at one course called become a user experience designer from scratch and it probably takes a couple of months and the point is that after those couple of months you will not have become the user experience designer because one of the key points of the course is to take you through like a helicopter ride you know above the landscape of user experience and expose you to the various of sub disciplines and components and so on so and they'll have lots of links to other courses and some material from other courses also so that you sort of get that sort of breadth and understanding of wow there's a lot here going on and I need to like strengthen my muscles within this these areas before fully around that user experience designers so that is again yeah it just touches upon this point of calibration of expectations is that yeah this it's a matter of the you not being like a fully fledged doctor able to cure patients after ten weeks or two months or and but that you have a path set out ahead of you yeah all right I've got

two related questions both from YouTube one from Katherine which says that there's obviously new technologies every day intelligence virtual reality how can courses help keep designer students or design students up to date with these technologies and dilip at the same time is how do we study for technologies like AI future technologies so how can we stay constant relevant how can we stay up-to-date with these really fast changing technologies yeah so I would say that the it's a matter of aiming for timeless knowledge because there are certain constants that are for example the sexual system a certain cognitive the sort of patterns so there are certain things that are timeless and stable across millennia and then of course there are some fast paced changes in technology and then you have AI the virtual reality and so on so technology changes very fast but that's actually ok because for example storytelling I mean that how to tell a story how to like narrative thread in a story that hasn't really fundamentally changed over like a huge span time so and when you design like augmented reality virtual reality it's you know it's also about storytelling so just like when you make like a wireframe for a website it's you know you're you know constructing some paths and you're trying to like mold some behavior before you up you're trying to mold or shape the behavior of users or customers along some sort of you know path or storyline and you're trying to like make them take the left here or right there based on you know a certain choice and so on and so that those storytelling structures are a you know are not irrespective of the medium but they still I mean you can do that knowledge that you have around storytelling narrative threats you know wireframes will also be applicable in virtual reality augmented reality so but that's a key thing just go for this sort of the more stable and timeless knowledge because otherwise you you'll get like stressed and confused like oh wow we have this new like AI coming out you know what does that do you exam I prepared for that is my knowledge getting outdated and then you hit the classic fear of missing out the foam roll and then you're you'll find yourself like scrambling across medium articles and all sorts of other you know and then you're wasting your time all of a sudden instead of like just taking deep breath taking student two steps back and this is okay what's at play here what's going on all right there's some common themes here like storytelling okay then better to learn that those fundamental things I suppose like yeah having that fear of missing out and there yeah so that's and again that's I'm biased because that's our editorial principle and the exact information is like you know time with knowledge so yeah that's where I've got

the next question is one that that's important to me because it's one that I get asked a lot and out in the ux mastery community and it's a difficult one for me to answer because it's really people so and then as one into the spectrum James from YouTube is asking do companies in general still prefer what do they still like to hire junior designers and what's the market looking for new guys but the thing that I'm passionate about is the other end of the spectrum I'm a fifty two-year-old xtrade technician with no degree or formal training and I've been told it's unrealistic for me to try and switch careers at this late stage to you know so what are your thoughts where is the market lying as far as agent experience goes is there room for everybody or or is there not what are you thoughts yes so way so my thought I mean first of all of course it really depends on the individual employer so but some people will not like people who have red hair and thus they won't hire people or black skin or whatever it is or a certain age level so the until you'll always bump into those things it's like oh wow you've got like a Houston tough like gray hair oh that's really bad so we won't hire you so you know or the vice versa the owner know you're you know I'm 40 yet you look for you then you're not very smart yeah so but yeah just ignoring all of that then I'd say it's about passion and it's about doing so I know people who are have been really really old at the age of 21 and and I know people who are like 60 or 70 who are not like old so it really did like I know the cliche that age is just a number but I really really believe that and so if this particular person what your reader is 52 I'd say that it's completely irrelevant and it was the passion it's his or her passion and his or her self-discipline and sort of that forward motion that that really counts so I just say go for it when you ask an employer if I mean if yeah if you're saying is perhaps not the right word but I mean if you're as an employer see someone with passion and drive I mean you know you'd be crazy not to try to leverage that because when you have a person who's like truly passionate about what he or she is doing has self-discipline self-reliance and it wants to work his or her butt off not in terms of the absolute number of hours but really like just work intensely because of that passion then of course you know you should align you know your business objectives with that person's passion and then magic happens and love and rainbows and everything else so yeah and similarly I'd say as your junior then it's about again a passion and at doing and an energy because so these two people let's say the 21 a year old a junior person and the 52 year old person a they both feel a bit like you know it's secure perhaps but what's the it also I compensate and and that is what will get you the job or make you more happy in life in general and all sorts of other personal and professional goals yeah exactly and just you know work hard be nice to people and just go for your passions I mean it sounds so simple but it that's really sure I agree with you all right a bit of

a philosophical segue now perhaps maybe not do you think we need an accreditation system this is from Ari on our forums do you think we have an accreditation system we do it becomes an accredited profession and that we work under a code of ethics or code of conduct do you think that it needs to be more formalized I guess is what he's asking yeah super interesting and very complex and very yeah can get into the philosophical yeah it can become like a philosophical a segue a I would say do we meet like act like some sort of presentation or certification okay so if we compare yourself to doctors so doctors have this you know they have the human body psyche and it's remained fairly stable over the past by ten thousand years so have like a more like stable and fixed object of study or object of practice and of course you know our knowledge and skills around the human bond they changes all the time and it gets expanded and so I'm not saying that it's just you know that a doctor now worse is 200 years ago what it's exactly the same thing and but still you have something that's more stable on the other side let's look at your user experience that is constantly changing to like due to a number of reasons and I'm not actually talking about technology so of course there's AI and VR and yeah bigger more processing power whatever is changing on the technological side but there's also other things at play here so there's the actual you know the definition of what we are as disciplines so if you google the definition of UX design you will probably find two trillion you know search results and it's because the these terms are changing all the time so for example this design anything in a term because there's some institutions some companies some individuals who have like an interest in promoting that term and then they're very successful doing that so then it suddenly pops up maybe go away again maybe it'll you know replace some of the meanings of user experience and so what the fancy word is social constructionism so that reality the social reality is continually constructed and reconstructed all the time based on all the conversations we're having the books that are being produced and so on so we user experience like any other term well actually like most other terms its inherently unstable over time and so the question on certification or accreditation is it's a sort of a symptom of that is that Oh Mike this is like so unstable and what is it like you know can we please have some stability there people questions is that type of symptom and so I really don't know what to answer because yes it'd be really nice with some stability but then on the other hand then we were trying to make something that's inherently unstable because of this social constructionism in action we're trying to make something that's inherently in stable so I'd say and it also depends for example you to go to certain places globally you'll find sort of local definitions of things so if you go to like in San Francisco Bay Area interaction design as you know is oh that's this and then you know at the same time I'm at a conference and you know in Berlin and and then there's a completely different perception of that and like who's right and who's wrong that's really it difficult to answer so okay so case in point when I founded the interaction design foundation in 2002 interaction design as a term it was in my opinion actually more appropriate than user experience and it was getting more popular also so if I were to rebound the interaction sound provision today I probably would call it the user experience foundation so these things are which is quite annoying because like how can we please have some stability around these terms the mela story so I this was like an incredibly vague answer to that question yeah and as also another case in point is that for example in your interactions and tradition we say that our course certificates are industry recognized because more and more employees will recognize them because we've been around for so long and are like you know OCD about the quality of our courses so but we never use the word certification and of course this and that's the reason for this is that you know it's a dangerous word because certification what does that actually mean and isn't that you know it brings up this whole sort of discussion which is a wonderful discussion but may also yeah lead down to confusion and a wrong calibration of expectations and we don't want that so possibly to I've got two related ones

yep most of my forums the first question is how does one get around this issue of having to already have worked in UX in order to work in UX so that hot chicken Annie I need experienced them to get a job I mean Chris asked a similar question but maybe with the answer involved he sees a lot of talk about formal internships or apprenticeships is that the best way to get experience so I guess yeah what would you recommend was the best way to get experience partly to build a portfolio partly to have that sniffing the door party to say I know what I'm doing yeah what's your thoughts being a good question because let's say that I'm at sort of you know I'm a square one and I want to you know really become like a great fantastic user experience designers so and I have limited funds like everyone else on this planet and then where should I invest my funds what should I do with my time and so on and so I'd say yes you could you know pay $40,000 dollars per year to like an expensive the design II program at university or you could also say hey you know I'm investing my own time so I'm taking like online courses I'm reading books and I'm offering my help for free so trying to like it get like yeah an internship and it doesn't you don't need like an internship at some brand name like hey you know I've been an intern at Google or IBM or something because that's not really what I mean yeah sure then you know you have their brand name to put on your year see it really comes down to its if you can find some talented people who are ambitious in a small agency or in a you know company who's doing something that does is unrelated to you a UX design but they know they have a need for UX design and they're also ambitious then I would go there and offer my help s like an unpaid intern and to see this and that's like an investment because you know you can pay 40,000 per year or you can just pay with your own time well I'd go for the unpaid it doesn't really matter if it's paid or unpaid internship it's not it's what you want to get out of the internship is not the money it's about the more you can work the better the more yeah you can work your muscles the better right so just we lost quality and the video need for a little bit so we lost a few of your words but I think can I just summarize by saying that you're saying it's internships great it's not about the brand it's about whatever experience you can get so that maybe with a well-known brand but if you can project for the school up the road that that's equal value it's more just about getting is flexing your muscles a little bit as there see absolutely yeah so you just work yeah pick up a project for your school up the road and just work really hard with them and just get a lot of like a lot of experience under your belt that's what it's all about you could also try to go for an internship at Google but then you know it's not really that it's just a matter of like how hard you've been working how much you can work on something that will build your knowledge and skills do you want to take it maybe to tell people how they can get in touch with Al can I find out more about your endurance how they can get in touch with you maybe we could connect on the forums yeah absolutely so well first of all thanks to you Hawk and so Luke for having me it's been an absolute pleasure and you know it's super early morning in Denmark and I'm full of energy now well after all these questions so I'm full of positivity so that's really a fantastic sign and I just really hope for all the people who are listening that they hopefully become more and more interested in user experience and that don't just follow that passion and just really go all-in on it because I mean user experience design or design in general just has an enormous potential not only for your professional lives because it's a fantastic career so that's the sort of a more egocentric perspective but also simply for the you know the sake of the human race so that's the altruistic like perspective it design can really change the world I mean if you just think of like all your frustration with ticket vending machines on a busy train station or something I mean come just imagine if like there were more like user experience designers usability people pull in with designers I mean cool plus I've lost your video all together mints graceful so a better place we lost you familiar with you with less quality video but um so probably maybe I should think I think my quality is getting prepared yeah I'll take the opportunity to wrap up perhaps and just to say thank you so much for your time I know it's early morning you're energized it's getting pretty late for me but I'm also energized it a lot of the questions you've addressed tonight Christians that this morning sorry a questions that I get asked an awful lot at our community so it's really awesome to hear to attain your thoughts and someone that spins their day a most in this world so we really appreciate a time for everyone that's listening please check out the interaction design foundation fermentis contact details please check out ux mastery community express recom if you've got questions yeah I will make sure that they get answered either by the community or by myself or by luck or by ments but yeah huge thank you for your time events and them it's been a real pleasure to have you Tim your company tonight likewise thanks so much for having me and have a wonderful rest three days thanks there's not much