How to get a job in user interface design?

December 18, 2007 4:23 PM

How does one get into the field of user interface design?

If there is one job that I can identify as something I would love to do 40+ hours a week it would be user interface design. I am getting my bachelors degree in philosophy in under a year and have zero idea how I would get my foot in the door of this field. What direction should I head in?

posted by pwally to society & culture (16 comments total)

Human Factors would be a good idea if you're looking to continue your education by getting a masters degree. Bentley College's HFID program might be a good place to start!
posted by trokair at 4:31 PM on December 18, 2007

Lots of great info here.
posted by ReiToei at 4:36 PM on December 18, 2007

Take courses in interaction design, usability, cognitive science, iterative system development, digital prototyping techniques, etc.

Get involved in /open source/small scale/ projects. These are almost always understaffed and tend to have their fair share of usability issues. Even if they decline your help, you can use their software as cases to analyze and redesign and maybe even publish of your blog to get the word out. As an bonus, future employers will find out that you've actually done some useful and related stuff when they google you.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 4:39 PM on December 18, 2007

Yeah... the best thing to do is get involved with open source. It's a great place to get started -- the barrier for entry is low, the feedback loop is constant, and the amount of difference you can make in the world can be remarkable. And... once you're done, you have work you can share with anyone -- it's not like you just worked on some internal project for someone that you can never truly demo.
posted by ph00dz at 5:16 PM on December 18, 2007

Unless you have a relatively strong computing or psychology background that your philosophy degree does not reflect, you might find it difficult to break into UI/UX. Many of the people I know who work in UX either came in from the psychology + user studies + statistics angle or from the software angle. Many UI designers began as UI programmers (basically implementing what the designers came up with) and worked their way up. Some folks I know have also gone the human kinetics/ergonomics route, but that has some caveats (see below).

"User interface design" can be a little ambiguous. Do you want to work solely in software or do something that incorporates both software and hardware (e.g. mobile phones)? If it's the former, then going the human kinetics/ergonomics route isn't going to do you much good. Either way, a basic programming background would be good, even if it's very lightweight. Knowing how to create mock-ups in Flash or Director is a real asset.

What I'd suggest is seeing if your school offers any HCI/UX courses. If you meet the requirements, check them out. If you don't. you can always audit them. The assignments might be beyond your ken, but at least some of the lectures might be digestible. If you're interested in going to graduate school (which I would also suggest), SIG CHI hosts the largest HCI conference around. Check out some of the recent work in that area and try to find that appeals to you.

If you want books, check out Bill Moggridge's Designing Interactions. It is an excellent book for those who want to be inspired and get a general understanding of what UX is like. Don't Make Me Think! is also quite good, but all the examples are specific to the web. If you can distill the principles, however, those carry across pretty much all of UX.

My Masters thesis at UBC was a bit of Ubicomp and a bit of HCI, so if have more specific questions, feel free to hit up my MeFiMail.
posted by Nelsormensch at 5:38 PM on December 18, 2007

I'm going to have to contradict most of the advice offered so far.

You don't need an advanced degree. Getting a Ph.D. in human factors in order to become an interface designer is overkill, and a profound waste of money and time.

Also, stay far away from open source projects. Open source development processes have no place for the role of interface designer. That's why so many open source products are so unpleasant to use. Even if you do fight your way into a position on an open source project where you can do some real design work, the experience you've gained won't transfer to commercial work at all -- it will only qualify you for more open source work.

What you do need to get a job is a demonstrable understanding of the issues involved, which you can get from the handful of books considered canonical in the field (Norman, Cooper, etc.), and some work that you can show and talk about. Getting involved in a small project, or starting your own and recruiting a coder to work with you, is a great way to do that.
posted by jjg at 5:47 PM on December 18, 2007 [6 favorites has favorites]

Nthing the "get involved" aspect. A good starting place would be your local ACM SIGCHI chapter. Your profile says you're in Boston. You should definitely attend some meetings of BostonCHI.
posted by zsazsa at 6:03 PM on December 18, 2007

jjg nails it, especially regarding commerically viable work.

Experience trumps an advanced degree in human factors, and you can wiggle your way into UI/UX from a variety of angles. I have an English degree, and started out writing for the web and moving into usability and information architecture by way of print design. Other UI pros I've worked with have come from education, art, and other liberal arts backgrounds in addition to the more science-y, application-oriented areas.

Read the Big Guys (Norman, Cooper, Nielsen, etc) and know why they have so many followers even when they're being blowhards. Attend SIG CHI meetings regularly.

Most of all? Don't be that user-interface asshole, full of disdain for people who don't want to do the "right" or "best-practice" thing when it comes to their sites, applications, and software. Learn to listen. Learn to communicate up, down, and laterally with respect, and to appreciate that clients have their own pressures that may make them reject your good ideas in favor of worse solutions.

Good luck!
posted by mdiskin at 6:35 PM on December 18, 2007

Lots of graphic design and industrial design programs allow the opportunity to study usability and interface design.
posted by loiseau at 6:54 PM on December 18, 2007

As someone who has interviewed hundreds of people for UI designer positions over the years, the number one factor that goes into my initial evaluation of a candidate is your portfolio. For me, a collection of well thought out and executed designs trumps formal education and is the best way to make it past my first level screen. Seek out any opportunities that will result in things that you can share with a potential employer to demonstrate your ability as a designer. Show examples of how your design evolved from one iteration to the next to give insight into how you tackle design problems.

During the interview process I look for candidates to articulate their design process and give specific examples of how they handle tradeoffs. I'm not impressed by someone who can recite best practices from a book. I am impressed by someone, however, who can explain how they have dealt with real world constraints to produce designs that are effective for their target user population. Results matter more than theory.

Some of the best UI designers that I have hired and worked with have come from non-traditional backgrounds, so it is definitely possible to get a foot in the door.
posted by gilgamesh at 8:01 PM on December 18, 2007

I used to hire user interface designers. Heck, I used to be a user interface designer. When hiring junior designers, the first thing I would look for is practical experience. I needed to see the work they had done, and I needed them to be able to discuss the decisions they made in designing the page (I would ask about page layout, functional flow, process that went into the design, issues and problems they resolved). I needed to see evidence that they knew some subset of standard tools, and some evidence of design documentation, even if it was a creative brief, a usability study, or recommendations for the future. I wanted people who could be adaptable and fit into most if not all of the design process.

I never hired anyone who didn't have some practical UI experience. Ever. I only interviewed people who didn't have UI experience when I was forced to by a boss. Didn't hire them, either.

After the junior designer candidate demonstrated the practical experience, I would look for 1 of three things: coursework in Information Science, Human Factors, Usability, Design, or a related field; industry or domain knowledge for whatever software/web-based application or site I was hiring for; or (more trickily and rarely) significant experience in a related role in the software engineering lifecycle. I've hired one or more former testers, tech writers, developers, and product managers as part of the team with varying results (More successfully if I hired them in-house from another group, then hiring cold because I could weed out all of the ones wouldn't make it before hiring)

Your portfolio should emphasize your skills (if you are good with documentation, bring it. I've hired people on the basis of their documentation - and I've dinged senior designers who should know better for the same reason), and demonstrate your versatility. Different types of clients, different types of audiences, different levels of complexity or types of problems solved - these are all things that I would look for. Your portfolio is both your foot in the door and your best tool while interviewing. Your portfolio should really express who you are as a designer, and be distinctive in its content.

I could have cared less if it was in flash - but I'd have put your resume in the reject pile if you online portfolio consisted of 34 versions of the same layout rebranded with color variations. Sometimes - for new UI folks - it's a better bet to not create an online portfolio and instead bring samples of what you have done to the interview (and indicate you will do so in your cover letter). This way you can demonstrate through discussion of the designs you've done that you really did design the user experience, and didn't simply decorate a page. It gives you an opportunity to explain the audience, constraints, wacky client shenanigans, and demonstrate that you think like a designer.

When interviewing as a recent graduate, you'll need to talk about how philosophy will inform your work. You almost certainly will be asked about it. (I was an Ancient Studies major - I was always asked about it a decade and another degree later.) Also, don't say you hate documentation. As a newbie, you'll end up doing some of the scut work (from which you will learn a lot), and nothing ticks off a hiring manager like someone who is too good or unwilling to do something key in your design process. Highlight any bonus skills you can bring to the table (Good writer? Good interviewer? Know HTML, CSS, scripting languages, bug tracking tools, software programs? Have you super-customized your WordPress or Movable Type installation? Organization skills? Speaking skills?)
posted by julen at 8:18 PM on December 18, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

I'm an in-house interaction/user interface developer/designer for a large organization. I got there from a general engineering/programming background, via requirements analysis, a bit of graphic design picked up along the way and a couple of courses in cognitive psychology and HCI.

A few thoughts in agreement with some others in this thread:

* The only way to start is to do. Theory is great, and important, but hiring for UI design positions is based on prior experience. In the current climate you generally get prior experience by being hired to do something else which you can engineer to have a UI/HCI/interaction design slant, whilst gaining a general understanding of product and project design and implementation. Documentation, technical communication, programming, requirements analysis, business analysis, graphic design, etc.

* Portfolio is everything.

* Being there and doing the job is immensely important, it doesn't matter how you start. I originally started in design documentation, unrelated to software, years ago.

* Organizations only really 'get' the benefits of careful UI/interaction design when they see the benefits of a particular methodology or technique in practice. Everyone talks it up, few follow through. You have to be a gentle champion of user-driven development and not expect miracles overnight.

* Hence, client-side programming in some form is not optional. You have to be able to show people ideas and prototypes. Talking, drawing and writing is never enough - UIs are dynamic.

* Open source projects are generally for engineers and programmers by engineers and programmers. Engineers and programmers are generally unsympathetic to users and therefore so are OSS projects (yes, I'm generalizing, and yes, there are a few exceptions). Open source is a hostile environment for worthwhile UI development.

* There's lots of people who think they're good UI developers because they've read Carroll, Norman, Cooper, Nielson, Raskin, Johnson, et al, done a couple of courses, formed a few opinions, and are all fired up. Recognize that's just a start. More than almost any task I can imagine, UI development is about context. Environment, business domain, user capabilities, stakeholder expectations, institutional cultures, development resources, and plenty besides have a far greater influence on design outcomes than all the fundamentalist theory and idealism. Learning strategies to navigate the project context in order to deliver an optimal (never ideal) product is the real meat of the job. Compromise is everywhere and success happens slowly, especially in larger and more viscous organizations.

* Development methodologies, philosophies and frameworks are slowly maturing and beginning to absorb some approaches and ideas that have independently evolved in the IA and HCI communities. There's still something of a chasm between the software engineering and IA/HCI industry camps, but there's at least some acknowledgment between each. People who can talk both languages will be valuable in future. A knowledge of UML, agile methodologies, iterative project management, RUP and so on will do a UI specialist no harm.
posted by normy at 9:14 PM on December 18, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Mostly seconding normy, with these notable exceptions:

You have to be a gentle champion of user-driven development and not expect miracles overnight.

True enough, but I don't think anyone starting out in the field ought to be signing up for Lone Champion of the User. This is a fight that's chewed up and spit out more hardened veterans than you, boyo.

Talking, drawing and writing is never enough

"Talking, drawing and writing" would summarize 98% of my company's annual output to clients, and we seem to be doing alright by most measures.
posted by jjg at 9:31 PM on December 18, 2007

In reply to jjg...

I agree. I should perhaps have placed greater emphasis upon gentle, which I hoped to be read in the sense of appropriately promoting what experience and learning suggests to be good practice convivially, and not becoming the user-interface asshole. Pragmatism and collaboration, not fundamentalist zeal. This boyo also doesn't think it's possible to be a veteran of a discipline that still struggles even to achieve consensus on its own vocabulary.
posted by normy at 10:37 PM on December 18, 2007

Completely agree -- "pragmatism and collaboration" are how you tell the difference between someone who's read some books and someone who knows what it takes to get the work done.
posted by jjg at 11:21 PM on December 18, 2007

I came into it from a technical (non-formal HCI) background as well.

Get some practice creating websites for your school student/academic/social groups. This will give you a little bit of a portfolio to start with, but better yet would be if you can get experience in web apps or software (though not sure how much technical ability you have if you're currently a philosophy major).

Look for HCI/interactive media classes you can take. Traditional graphic design classes also help in terms of understanding layout, color, typography. Maybe some anthropology/ethnography classes to help you understand the mindset of the people that will be using the things you design.

It'll be tough to get hired at a large software company or at a design firm without formal background or an extensive portfolio. You might shoot for a small company that needs a person that can put on different hats, then expand your work in the UI design area until you have enough of a real-life portfolio to go elsewhere.
posted by bumpybear at 11:39 PM on December 19, 2007