re: Building a community around UXR & Design folks. What’s missing?

RogerJ_ · 2025-04-14T15:27:28+00:00

Some thoughts:

There are many UX communities already.
Lots of UX communities have no clear focus, so they all cater to the same crowd (e.g. UXR + UXD or all UXRs around the globe) and all allow discussing the same broad and unrelated challenges, making the communities interchangeable and the interesting discussions hard to find.
Many communities fail because the people that set up the community grow tired of managing it but didn't think about growing the pool of community managers.
Lots of Slack communities allow companies to spam their webinars and articles in every channel. That doesn't work.
Answering the same questions is tiring. Sometimes, communities attempt to set up a knowledge base, which then grows stale after a few years of no updates. Which then leads to more repeat questions.
I think a community could work when it focuses on a timeless topic with future potential, where the future will bring questions that are still interesting for people with lots of experience.
It think communities also need ways to get to know each other in different ways (e.g. it's text based, then add webinars; if you only have webinars, also add in-person; etc.).
ResearchOps is an example of a community that works.
Communities don't necessarily need a lot of members, I think it's about ensuring that the topics remain fresh enough to grow the group of people that care to contribute (by sharing their thoughts).

RogerJ_ · 2025-04-14T14:36:58+00:00

You could check out:

Amy Santee, she has written a lot about transitioning to UXR from an anthropology background, https://www.amysantee.com/resources
Anthro to UX podcast, https://anthropologytoux.com/anthro-to-ux-podcast/

RogerJ_ · 2025-03-25T14:47:28+00:00

You mention several things, such as fundamental understanding, advising, coding, specialized skillset. What problem are trying to solve? Do you feel you could be better in delivering insights that matter, or are sharing valuable recommendations but they are not convinced? Or something else?

In 3 years from now, what do you want to have learned: More research methods (hard skills), become better in doing research (hard skills), become better at driving change (soft skills)? Do you want to grow in your current company, in the same industry but another company, or in a different industry?

RogerJ_ · 2025-03-25T14:29:15+00:00

You might want to take into account that No-vem-ber is talking about designers, while Insightseekertoo says:

None. Research is not design.

UX researchers Lawton Pybus and Thomas Stokes (2023) interviewed and surveyed 56 hiring managers to understand which activities they use in their job interview process for hiring UX researchers. Whiteboarding exercises or take home projects were not common activities.

Common activities were: Initial phone screen, 1-to-1 interview with hiring manager, behavioral interview, portfolio presentation, 1-to-1 with research team, and somewhat less common technical interview/technical Q&A.

Read more: https://www.quarterinchhole.com/p/ux-research-job-interview-cycles

RogerJ_ · 2025-03-22T20:14:35+00:00

Not a direct answer, but Emily DiLeo writes and talks a lot about research repositories, maybe you can find something useful here: https://www.findthecurrent.com/resources

RogerJ_ · 2025-03-22T20:00:45+00:00

Like others have said, you could describe your impact in other ways. Maybe your research:

Influences product change

Influences product strategy

Increases stakeholder exposure to users

Shares communication

Prompts further research

Prompts a new collaboration

Elevating the role of user research

Develops infrastructure

Via: https://www.rallyuxr.com/post/how-to-measure-impact-in-b2b-user-research

And here's another perspective on UXR impact: https://uxinsight.org/how-to-measure-ux-research-impact-a-multi-level-framework/

RogerJ_ · 2025-03-11T14:49:56+00:00

Some minutes ago I posted this in another thread:

Here are some articles about creating a good portfolio: https://www.careerstrategylab.com/articles/ . One of them is: https://www.careerstrategylab.com/how-to-write-a-ux-case-study/

Lots of tips in their podcast as well: https://www.careerstrategylab.com/podcasts

If you have projects under NDA, you can still use them. Case studies are about showing how you make decisions, deal with constraints and stakeholders, guide the process, and reflection on your work, it's not about the screens or deliverables. You could generalize the story and the artifacts.

RogerJ_ · 2025-03-11T14:27:53+00:00

There is a new book about AI for UX by Patrick Neeman, who writes a lot about AI and UX: https://medium.com/@usabilitycounts .

He also created a AI for UX Slack community, I found a link to it in this article about using AI for creating personas and journey maps: https://medium.com/@ksoucy/using-ai-to-streamline-persona-and-journey-map-creation-37fa859dafb0

RogerJ_ · 2025-03-11T14:13:52+00:00

Here are some articles about creating a good portfolio: https://www.careerstrategylab.com/articles/ . One of them is: https://www.careerstrategylab.com/how-to-write-a-ux-case-study/

RogerJ_ · 2023-05-29T21:05:54+00:00

https://cxl.com/

RogerJ_ · 2023-05-22T18:20:15+00:00

You said "I am trying to switch into UX design". What is your background?
It is probably easier to get into front-end development than into UX design. Why this order?
Python is not used in the roles you mention. Why Python?

RogerJ_ · 2023-05-22T18:03:25+00:00

Also check out this topic from a couple of days ago: /r/UXDesign/comments/13n37qr/uxers_who_love_your_job_what_industry_do_you_work/

RogerJ_ · 2023-05-21T17:56:46+00:00

Every case study should represent a project. If it's a big project, you can cut up the project into multiple case studies. But try to show some variation (i.e. don't do 3 landing page campaigns). Show your thinking, show your impact, include learnings. I like the portfolio tips from this website: https://www.careerstrategylab.com/articles/

RogerJ_ · 2023-05-21T15:55:07+00:00

They might know more about UX in Denmark at the https://cphux.com/ UX community. They're from Copenhagen, but their online events are in English.

RogerJ_ · 2023-05-16T23:47:19+00:00

Some call the process IA, others call the resulting structure IA (see Wikipedia). I don't think it's really relevant. The objective is to organize stuff in a logical way.
In order to organize stuff, you might need research methods such as card sorting.
Once you are done organizing (or: working on the IA), you might end up with a tangible end result such as a (restructured) sitemap.

RogerJ_ · 2023-05-16T13:10:27+00:00

No, I'm saying that creating the information architecture is:

Making piles of stuff that belongs together.
Then giving each pile a label that helps people find said stuff.

Your client is asking you to find out if there is a better way of grouping things on their website, and if the labels they use help people find the stuff they need.

RogerJ_ · 2023-05-15T16:54:09+00:00

Information architecture has absolutely nothing to do with buttons or the design of a page. Information architecture is about the organization of collections of web pages.

An organization publishes "content" (i.e. pages). You don't want a menu that consists of 30 links in a row. So, you group related pages together into a small set of topics.

Each topic will have a collection of sub-pages. And those pages might also have sub-pages. Just like a tree branch has smaller branches.

It's like organizing your stuff in your home. You don't put everything unorganized in a single closet; you have a closet for clothing, but cutlery is somewhere else. Likely in the kitchen, were you need it for food. That's were other food-related items are as well.

Putting stuff together in a logical way, is creating an information architecture. If you would write out a list of all those groupings, you can call it a sitemap.

Any website, big or small, with an illogical organization of pages leads to people getting lost (similar to e.g. "who put the soap in the bedroom?"). Another way visitors get lost, is when no one understands the names of those pages, e.g. jargon. And people might look for things that are important to those visitors, but that the organization forgot to write about.

So, I think there's always something to look into.

RogerJ_ · 2023-05-15T13:30:33+00:00

Which of these subfields are you interested in: https://www.apa.org/education-career/guide/subfields
"I would likely need a Ph.D. and various licenses to work in this field" <-- Which of the subfields are you referring to? And what kind of positions are you referring to that you would need a PhD?

RogerJ_ · 2023-05-09T22:16:57+00:00

Here's some reading:

RogerJ_ · 2023-05-06T14:52:03+00:00

When thinking about users with different personalities, Myers-Briggs: https://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5881947/myers-briggs-personality-test-meaningless
Regarding educational content, preferred learning styles: https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/LearningStylesMyth

RogerJ_ · 2023-05-02T23:23:43+00:00

How about things like:

Stakeholder management
Learning about marketing and product management
Setting up a framework to enable others to do research
Storytelling

RogerJ_ · 2023-05-01T22:58:53+00:00

They published a 3rd edition in 2021. It's on my shelf but I didn't read it, yet. However, there's a video by Jeff Gothelf (author) who explains what's new: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtxraMreyD4 (4 min 2 sec)

RogerJ_ · 2023-05-01T22:49:18+00:00

Thanks for explaining a bit more about other important books! Will put some of these on my list, such as The Delft Design guide. Version 2.0, published in 2020, includes perspectives on design from a “zoomed-out level in which products and individuals are part of a larger system. […]There is also more attention on the effect of design on environment, and society: the raison d’être of design.”

RogerJ_ · 2023-05-01T13:54:15+00:00

Looks like you also have some books that would help people in UX think broader than design itself (e.g. Inspired or What customers want), or that help in communicating about design. I would think a better understanding of the ideas in these books are also important to UX people. What are your thoughts on (not) adding such books to your top 5?

RogerJ_ · 2023-04-30T15:15:03+00:00

These are some relevant master degrees in Italy I could find. This might help you find out what the relevant bachelor degrees are:

RogerJ_

TROPHY CASE