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What are factors in choosing a job?

Choosing my first UX / Human Factors Job?

  • I will be graduating in a few months with a Masters in Human Factors Psychology and did my undergrad in Cognitive Science with an HCI focus. I've had two internships, one doing UX Design (wireframes in Visio) and one doing some UX  assistance on a business team. My masters degree is more theoretical and cognitive psychology / research methods focused. When I look at various job posting I see a wide range of requirements. Ranging from companies that want UX Designers who just create wireframes to companies who want their designers to code or even do visual design and are unicorns. I would like to be a UX Designer but still tackle all stages of the design process (incl. research) but I feel that my visual design and front end coding skills are fairly non existent. This makes me worried that I would be behind the curve and have to learn all the relevant tools, which is why I feel more of a better fit for a User Researcher role or even a Human Factors Engineer at a defense firm. Additionally, it seems that UX Designer jobs are much more abundant than the other two I mentioned as only larger companies have the resources for *dedicated* researchers. I don't want to suffocate myself from various specializations in the field by never picking up certain skills. Any advice would be appreciated.

  • Answer:

    I would look more at interaction design postings and go after jobs where you aren't tasked with designing an iPhone app or web site but tasked with designing an interaction system. Without searching around, a couple companies to consider are Tesla or IDEO

Henry Modisett at Quora Visit the source

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Look around for UX research-focused positions and then mention that you'd like to be involved in the design stages as well. I reckon this'll yield better results than starting with a design-focused position since "UX design" is such a overloaded term now and many companies using the term in such an ambiguous might not even be research-aware at all.

Chris Lee

Choose based on the amount you will actually be able to design. Not test, not study, not assist.  Make sure the designs you make will be used by engineering and not just hacked up by others. BTW, Im hiring UX designers at Marketo. :) http://marketo.jobs/careers.php?t=ux-designer&id=otkDXfw7

Glen Lipka

I strongly suggest that you sit down and spend a few weekends building mockups. The ability to take a sketch and make something interactive (regardless of the technology) is a good skill to have. It doesn't matter what software you use (seriously, start with PowerPoint, then make a basic HTML page with a few elements and a button that changes colors/text on something else on the page). That's a level of familiarity that I would expect from a user experience professional. The "relevant tools" change every day. Basic web prototypes and PowerPoint will never go out of style. Beyond that, it's perfectly acceptable to make it clear that you don't consider yourself a software engineer or graphic designer... so long as you're willing to take a first pass at those things when required. It may eliminate a few jobs, but it's definitely not a requirement, and you'll be glad you didn't end up in a position where someone thought you were going to do those things. I would take a candidate who said that any day over a candidate who stayed silent on the point.

Paul W. Quimby

Most probably you found your first UX/Human Factors job by the time I answered this question. I will anyways share my answer as it may help others. With your academic background you will bring an entirely new set of skills rooted more in psychology and theories that will make you a wonderful UX designer who can tackle almost all the stages in the design process of a product/service. But most designers with your background move into dedicated research roles as they worry about the curve in learning tools and technologies for a design role that requires them to design/build actual products. I started my UX career without even an academic background in design, leave alone the coding skills and knowledge of tools. It didn't take long for me to adapt, learn and design experiences by tackling every stage of the design process.

Aswin Yogesh R

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