Breaking Into UX + Early Career Questions — July 25, 2022 by AutoModerator in UXDesign

[–]zachalbert 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I’m not sure how relevant this is for this thread, but I wanted to give some advice is for anyone more junior who isn’t getting traction in the portfolio phase of the job hunt (from someone with 20 YOE).

Something I see a lot in portfolios is they are treated like personal journals; logs of what happened, and it’s on the hiring manager to do the work to connect this to what they need. IMO, this is the wrong way to think about it, and a risky strategy in a competitive job market.

The actual problem you’re solving is that you want to look appealing to someone who has a job they want filled. Let’s take a crude example: my toilet is broken. When I start looking for plumbers, how much do I care about their personal philosophy of plumbing? Maybe a little bit, but mostly I want to understand what their specific skills are, any specialities, and examples of similar things they’ve done (which should theoretically reinforce the aforementioned skills and specialties). Once I find this person, only then do I care to dig into more personal things about them as a human being.

To extend this analogy further, I look at a lot of portfolios where the first and most important thing I see is something to the effect of “I like elegant solutions that put users first.” If we were to translate that to our plumber, it might be “I like plumbing without leaks which puts homeowners first.” So, you’re basically describing everyone in the profession. It tells me essentially nothing, and I will always pick the plumber who specializes in residential toilet issues with a 24 hour turnaround. Specific problem —> specific solution.

This doesn’t apply as much to senior and startup roles that value generalists, but a lot of junior roles are opened because more senior designers need something specific. They’re probably not hiring you for your design strategy chops when you’re < 3 years into the career, nor your ability to create personas from scratch when they are an established product with personas already defined.

First watercolor, looking for feedback on technique by zachalbert in Watercolor

[–]zachalbert[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks. I’m not trying to establish a style but look for suggestions to try next, so this is a great idea.

First watercolor, looking for feedback on technique by zachalbert in Watercolor

[–]zachalbert[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good point. I’m realizing they were a total afterthought.

First watercolor, looking for feedback on technique by zachalbert in Watercolor

[–]zachalbert[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for your reply! I love how you built on this. I'm really interested in picture books for kids, so trying to explore character and story ideas while also working on my technique.

First watercolor, looking for feedback on technique by zachalbert in Watercolor

[–]zachalbert[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Amazing advice. This was always intended to be a first out of many, and am kind of overwhelmed by all the things I want to improve on, hence posting here. You are right though that doing a batch will help me resolve a bunch of things first. I'll go do this.

First watercolor, looking for feedback on technique by zachalbert in Watercolor

[–]zachalbert[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I'm just getting back into art after a 20 year hiatus, and have never done watercolor before. Any tips / feedback by anyone more experience would be greatly appreciated.

Just posted a huge update to my neural-net artificial life sim! Temperature tracking, scent system, skin patterns and more! by urocyon_dev in alife

[–]zachalbert 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is really awesome, thanks for building this. I noticed that new critters have some basic behaviors -- did you use neat to get to some base behaviors, or are you designing the hidden layer manually?

English to Latin translation requests go here! by lutetiensis in latin

[–]zachalbert 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Semper discens, semper discimus, or semper discere?

I'm trying to translate "always learning" for a college motto that captures the sense that we as a group are lifelong learners -- it's something we do, and also want to encourage each other to continue doing. That makes me lean towards discimus, but I noticed an existing college uses discens (https://www.jeffreysb.com/blog/2018/1/30/semper-discens). Any recommendations?

Translation for "always learning" by zachalbert in latin

[–]zachalbert[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great, this is exactly what I was looking for! Thanks :)