How do you evaluate UX / Interaction Designers?
My co-founder and I are building a consumer-facing mobile product that needs to be simple and engaging to use. We're both aesthetically-challenged tech geeks, so we're looking for illustrators, interaction designers, and game mechanics gurus for help. We've reached out to several people in our network, but are not sure how to evaluate their skills and portfolios. Other than gauging passion for and understanding of our product vision, what questions should we ask and what measures of success should we look at?
Being a UX designer myself, my perspective is probably biased, but here it is--
Every decent UX designer is ultimately a native problem solver capable to understand the technical complexity of the application while craving to translate it into visual appeal and simplicity of operation.
So when looking at the portfolios, ask designers about the challenges in each relevant project there. What approaches did they try before finding the final solution? What led them to this decision? How and when do they iterate their designs? Based on what metrics? Do they look at metrics at all when designing? At what stages of the design process do they involve users? Why then?
Basically you'll be evaluating the candidates' thought process, whether they are just capable of producing aesthetically pleasing layouts (assuming they are) or do they also strive - and have a know how - to understand the users.
As for measures of success, here is an interesting read from HBR http://bit.ly/94QlQl
Every decent UX designer is ultimately a native problem solver capable to understand the technical complexity of the application while craving to translate it into visual appeal and simplicity of operation.
So when looking at the portfolios, ask designers about the challenges in each relevant project there. What approaches did they try before finding the final solution? What led them to this decision? How and when do they iterate their designs? Based on what metrics? Do they look at metrics at all when designing? At what stages of the design process do they involve users? Why then?
Basically you'll be evaluating the candidates' thought process, whether they are just capable of producing aesthetically pleasing layouts (assuming they are) or do they also strive - and have a know how - to understand the users.
As for measures of success, here is an interesting read from HBR http://bit.ly/94QlQl
Thanks for your very thoughtful answer, Marina. Can you delve more into user involvement and some of the more common metrics UX designers use? I realize this is highly dependent on the nature of the product, but for a web or mobile consumer-facing product, what are relevant ways to measure usability, conversion, engagement, delight? Also, for a new product with a small (or 0) number of existing users, how does a good UX designer make sure he/she is not getting biased opinions?
Hi Mariya, in the end, the UX optimization process is all about
research, experimentation and user testing: earliest paper sketches,
testing, iterative photoshop mockups, testing, first simple prototype,
testing, more dynamic prototype, testing ... you get the idea.
The participants for consumer-facing web/mobile products are relatively easy to come by: friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, twitter followers, FB friends, etc. It is very educational for the entire team to watch users (or even potential users) to find their way around the product even at its earliest stages.
Of course, it's always great to have a chance to see the testing process live in person, but even posting some early screenshots online and setting up a testing session using Usabilla, fivesecondtest or any other similar tool might do a lot of good. On a rainy day, just setting up a simple survey with SurveyMonkey, Survey.io or PollDaddy about the early product screehshot(s) is better than nothing and may pick up on some confusions missed by the team.
Very important, no matter what testing methods are selected, but particularly in live interviews, a good UX designer would always ask open-ended questions and separate him/herself from owning the design (even if s/he was the one who actually produced it ;) as any interviewees would have an obvious tendency to be a lot more cautious in expressing their opinions knowing that there are feelings in play that may be hurt.
Once there is a functioning prototype to test, the whole enchilada of web analytics tools can come into a play: setting up A/B tests with Google's website optimizer (to see which of the design iterations and/or language variations converts better), studying usage patterns and search logs to see what keywords people are searching for most frequently and how to optimize the site for them, etc.etc. Any good UX designer will be well versed in all of the above.
Hope this helps. Feel free to email me anytime if you have more questions.
The participants for consumer-facing web/mobile products are relatively easy to come by: friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, twitter followers, FB friends, etc. It is very educational for the entire team to watch users (or even potential users) to find their way around the product even at its earliest stages.
Of course, it's always great to have a chance to see the testing process live in person, but even posting some early screenshots online and setting up a testing session using Usabilla, fivesecondtest or any other similar tool might do a lot of good. On a rainy day, just setting up a simple survey with SurveyMonkey, Survey.io or PollDaddy about the early product screehshot(s) is better than nothing and may pick up on some confusions missed by the team.
Very important, no matter what testing methods are selected, but particularly in live interviews, a good UX designer would always ask open-ended questions and separate him/herself from owning the design (even if s/he was the one who actually produced it ;) as any interviewees would have an obvious tendency to be a lot more cautious in expressing their opinions knowing that there are feelings in play that may be hurt.
Once there is a functioning prototype to test, the whole enchilada of web analytics tools can come into a play: setting up A/B tests with Google's website optimizer (to see which of the design iterations and/or language variations converts better), studying usage patterns and search logs to see what keywords people are searching for most frequently and how to optimize the site for them, etc.etc. Any good UX designer will be well versed in all of the above.
Hope this helps. Feel free to email me anytime if you have more questions.
