UX Career Development

I am giving a talk on Thursday (3/26) at the Mad Ave Collective, part of their Shop Talk series. My topic is "User experience concepts, skills and methods for strategic creatives".

My basic agenda:

• My life as a User Experience Freelance Consultant
• Who we are: Strategic Creatives
• UX Concepts, Skills & Methods that you can use to do your current job better
• How to "learn me some of that UX"

Links to things I plan to mention:

• Example customer experience map
• The Creative Professional
• Core activities: Sketching, Storytelling, Critiquing, Presenting, Facilitating
• Core UX & enterprise skills
• User research methods
• Rosenfeld Media books, esp. The User Experience Team of One
• All You Can Learn
• Online reading: Putting People First, Boxes and Arrows, UX Booth, UXmatters
• Toledo's local UX community

I will be presenting "Visual literacy: Expanding how we practice UX" at UX Thursday in Detroit on June 26th. The official blurb about the talk:

Visual literacy, traditionally applied to educational settings, has become important for users to make sense of digital media. Keith Instone will share the how and why behind his research and the ways he applies what he’s learning about visual literacy to UX. You'll hear how this exploration is making him a better UX practitioner.

Keith hopes to inspire UX practitioners to embark on their own discipline-crashing journeys to help strengthen the future value of UX.

Leave Keith’s session with:

• A process for expanding your UX expertise by "crashing" other disciplines
• Examples from visual literacy that apply to UX
• An invitation to participate in the next virtual literacy conference

I will add the slides and other information here as I make progress.

I volunteered to be a part of the UXPA 2014 conference organizing team. I am helping Alberta Soranzo with the "Career development" topic, which means I will be part of a team that encourages submissions, manages reviews, and helps form this part of the program.

I need your help!

1. Read over the Career Development topic description and consider submitting something. The deadline is January 31st. Note that there are many types to choose from, such as presentations, panel, posters, and tutorials.
2. Help spread the word to others. Look for the UXCareerDev tag on social media and pass on things of interest. Contact people who you would like to hear talk about career development, and encourage them to submit.
3. Sign up to be a reviewer. We always need more good reviewers. Deadline to sign up to review is January 24th, with reviews done from February 10th - 24th. You need to have an account in the Conference Management System to review: be sure the check "Career Development" in your profile.

Also, I have been tracking down and reading what has been written and presented over the years about User Experience Career Development, both to help me be a better reviewer and to help me find people to encourage to submit. Here is a small sample of the things I have found:

• UXPA Magazine, April 2013, special topic on UX Careers
• Learn to Drive Your UX Career (A Language for Enabling Career Conversations)
• Creating Career Paths for UX Professionals
• Paths for Designers
• These Are My People: The Value in UX Organizations
• Career Choices for Designers
• How Important Are UX Degrees and Certifications?
• Beyond UX Design: Finding your Path
• User Experience Careers Guide: Top Markets, Job Titles, Salary Info, Jobs and more
• Managing UX Teams: Career Development
• How Did I Get Here? A composite story of UX VP's
• UX Circuit Training

I'd love to hear about your favorites on the topic. Leave a comment here with pointers to more articles and presentations. Or send me email [keith2014 at instone dot org]. Or tweet with #UXCareerDev.

And feel free to tell me what you WANT to be a part of this topic at the UXPA 2014 conference, what UX Career Development issues and challenges you are facing today. Thanks in advance.