In todays class we looked at what it is actually like working in the UX industry, and what our role is in a company as a UX designer.
We started off the class by going onto LinkedIn and actually looking at jobs ourselves that are going at the minute. In our groups we noted down what qualifications, requirements, skills, qualities, and traits they are looking for in UX designers.
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When developing real life projects, it works a bit different than the way we do our projects here in university. We will be working under a project manager, who’s job it is to ensure that the project meets the deadline. A business analyst aims to meet the goals and targets of the business, whereas we as UX designers we focus more on the users who are actually using the product, so that the product designed around their need. Developers build the code for the product, and QA engineers will check the code and ensure that it can’t be hacked or bunked, and meets quality standards.
Agile methodology is an iterative approach to developing software, which focuses on flexibility and collaboration. It focuses on smaller areas and cycles, which are called sprints. This is different to the waterfall approach, where products are developed in a large, single delivery. Agile helps to get a MVP out, and able to be used for testing and iteration. Sprints normally last 2 weeks or 10 days, and focus on building each user story at a time. At the end of each sprint, the aim is to have a piece of code that is able to be tested. Agile is used a lot in the industry, as it known for getting things moving and designing iteratively and incrementally. UX designers will work ahead of the rest of the team, to allow time for research, ideation, wire-framing, and design.
Today’s class was really good. I enjoyed getting a closer look at UX roles and gaining a better understanding of the skills and qualities that are in demand in the industry. It was especially interesting to learn about the development process and the different people involved—knowing how teams collaborate is such an important part of working in UX. We also touched on agile methodology, which was super helpful since it's a common approach used by many companies to build and improve products. I feel like having a solid grasp of how agile works will be really useful, especially with placement coming up next year.