This paragraph says it all (From Freelance Review):

Let’s face it: freelancing is pretty great. No more dealing with annoying coworkers or shoveling your car out of a snow drift to get to work. What could be better than being your own boss? Well, at times, not being your own boss! As with every job, there are pros and cons that make up your daily list of responsibilities and obligations. Here is a list of the most common problems freelancers face and how to deal with them.

Read on…

That was a question that came across one of the mailing lists — “do I have to learn how to program to be a good user experience designer?” A job posting was listed where the requirements could have been along the lines of smoking crack, and for new designers, they wouldn’t know any better because they are just trying to make a buck.

But should they?

That’s a hard question to answer, especially with the ever changing landscape of the industry.

The answer: it really depends on where you live and what you are looking to do. Many employers are looking for jack of all trades, while others are looking for specialists. Some are willing to give up deep skill sets in one area versus knowledge in all areas, or are looking for people of unique skill sets to build teams around.

A UX Designer in San Francisco is going to have a much different working experience than one in Columbus, Ohio because they will be much different companies.

I’m lucky to have worked in both generalist and specialist environments, and to be honest, I like getting my hands dirty sometimes. That includes building prototypes, doing my own guerrilla usability testing, and even throwing in some design to make it high fidelity. Other user experience designers like to focus on specific areas, like user research. It just depends.

If you know something about code, you’re less likely to design something that can’t be built.

The plus — there’s nothing worse than designing a solution that you think makes it really easy for the user, and then the programmers come back to you and say, “Well, that’s nice, but it’s going to take two months and we have only a month.” It’s like designing a car: if you design an engine that’s too big for the frame, the engine design has to be reworked.

The minus — that said, if you get too heads down in the code, you are going to be less effective as a user experience designer. Or, worse, you could limit your imagination and design a solution that would be more effective if you knew less about what was under the hood.

Specialists get paid more, but have fewer opportunities.

The plus — Everyone loves a big paycheck, and specialists are always going to have deeper knowledge of a particular topic. If you’re good, being a specialist means that you’re sought after. I have a lot of experience in e-commerce systems, for example, and somehow manage to improve those user experiences that lead to improved revenue. That’s a skill worth having that will make you valuable just about anytime of the day.

The minus — If they think you are too much of a specialist, it becomes really hard to get a job (“I didn’t know you could do that”), and in a bad economy, the last thing you want to do is fence yourself in. Those that were working in the field during the early 2000’s remember the day when being a project manager or a psuedo-programmer was a good thing. There’s nothing worse than being “just” a user researcher when they are looking for an Interaction Designer with research experience.

Sometimes it’s just about setting expectations.

Pros — Even if you don’t call yourself a specialist, putting a wider net out there for jobs is better because there may be a position that requires several different skills (Knowledge of JQuery, CSS, XHTML and some light design on top of doing the usual User Experience tasks like wireframes). This could translate into where you build functioning prototypes that the developers can use to build the finished product, but during the interview process. That said, I just recently started learning SketchFlow, a wonderful product that’s part of the Microsoft Expression Suite. There’s no way I could have picked it up as fast as I did without some knowledge of other prototyping tools like Flash, Axure and Visio.

Cons — Some skills required for the roles are so divergent that what they are looking for is a unicorn i.e. that one person that knows all of the above, plus ActionScript 3.0, plus .NET. The people that know all of those technologies either are a) getting paid much more than just being a User Experience Designers, b) do all of them poorly or c) are full of shit. You can only be good at so much.

The real answer? Look at the market and act accordingly.

Do what you have to do, and where you want to drive your career to, to succeed. Talk to other designers in the area to get an idea what they are doing. And remember, it’s a changing landscape — that requires some flexibility.

After talking to a bunch of recruiters and other managers, it looks like User Experience is going to making a comeback in hiring. We’re the leading indicator for a lot of things (you can’t start a website application project with proper user experience, right?), so this is a good thing for all technology workers.

However, if you have questions on what to look for, or how certain factors play into people’s interest level in your organization, here’s a few answers that I can think of.

What should I look for in hiring a user experience designer?

It’s a combination of deliverables and people skills.

Not only do they have to have the skills to design a solution, they have the skills to sell that solution to multiple stakeholders. Due to the salary levels available to skilled user experience professionals, it also has become a breeding ground to project managers, bad designers and other people with good sales skills and not much else. That not only creates the “well, I don’t have much money because the last guy screwed it up” situations, it creates a sense of mistrust of the next candidates, but when you meet a real user experience designer, you’ll know.

• Look at their wireframes — are they clear? Do they make sense? Can you walk through them?
• Ask to see personas — is there data backing it up?
• Have them give a presentation — is their thinking structured? Can they speak well.

They should be able to explain the reasoning behind their thinking i.e. we tested the solution, it’s best practices, statistics backed it up.

What should I look for in hiring a user experience manager?

Hiring a manager is a much different task than hiring an individual contributor, and the roles require much different skill sets. I’ve seen situations where companies had manager positions open for months (or years), and this happens because there are a few internal team members that shoot down any decent candidates that come in.

Remember, you are hiring for a leader (read President William J. Clinton) versus someone that just maintains status quo or screws it worse (read President George W. Bush). Managing a set of wireframes is a much different tasks than managing a group of user experience professionals, all of whom are used to having their own way because that’s the way it’s been. Corporate culture affects how people manage (Joel On Software has a wonderful post about this), so factor this into the type of manager you hire.

I recommend having other managers in the organization interview versus the people that are going to be managed. A senior user experience architect may not realize that the skills to manage people are much different than the skills to build a wireframe, and usually don’t judge the candidate accordingly.

The level of candidate may differ depending on the size of the team. You’ll want more of a working manager if the team is four who’s more tactical versus managing a division of 25 because strategy is more important.

Why can’t I find good candidates?

As much as user experience professionals are motivated by pay, they aren’t necessarily motivated by pay. It could be a combination of several factors, like the type of work your organization does (one place I worked at, we did intranets — try attracting talent for that, and we were still able to grow the team to 25), the size of your company, or the project lacks integrity.

Outside of pay, most important is the environment because that’s where people are going to be spending 40 hours a week, at least. User experience professionals are in the industry of categorizing and judging people’s skill level, so they quickly detect whether or not they are to do well in an environment.

A few questions to ask yourself before moving forward:

• Do the interviewees get a sense the hiring manager is qualified? There’s nothing worse than interviewing with someone who isn’t qualified for the job you are interviewing with, much less being a manager. The hiring manager should be forced to go through questions that are not on a prepared list, because interviewees pick up on lack of experience. There’s nothing worse than the “we’ve had this business problem for six months, solve it in 15 minutes
• Are the company politics evident during the interview? In some agencies, the politics are so deep, it’s like having two jobs — dealing with the client, and dealing with the internal personalities. Some people like that. Or, if it’s a slow moving company with micro-managers galore, will it turn them off?
• Is your company a comfortable place to work at? If you are placed in the back corner, or have a cubicle that is the middle of everything, that’s not a place you probably want to work. Why expect a candidate to do the same?
• Are the projects interesting enough? Certain people are suited to certain environments, and while you might want to attract the best talent, you may not be able to keep them because the work isn’t fast-paced enough.

How much should I pay them?

That also depends on what you have to offer and which market you are in. At the end of the day, it’s what the market can bear, and as the economy recovers that will change.

If the job can be performed mostly offsite, they might be willing to trade some flexibility for pay. Same if the project is interesting and has a lot of upside. Boring, less glamorous projects may actually cost your organization more to attract talent because while it’s boring, it’s also very profitable.

The real answer:

• Look at the market. What costs you $100 per hour in the Bay Area might cost $40 per hour in Omaha. Talent that is also too cheap is a bad sign. Whomever you hire should have the track record to go with the pay.
• Talk to candidates that might be willing to do the onsite, offsite thing. It might not seem like a lot, but in certain metropolitan areas, that 2 hours of commute each day translates into 10 hours a week — which could be used doing other things.
• Most importantly, construct the job so it fits real world people. If you are trying to hire senior level people, and the pay doesn’t match, good luck. Also, if you have to overpay to get anyone in the door because decent candidates are avoiding you, read some of the tips in previous questions.

Constructing the right team is hard — take your time with it. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your team shouldn’t be either.

I love the overuse of the word “fuck”.

That’s about right.

Building a website is easy, right?

Uh, no. Most clients are prepared to really handle a website, and don’t limit themselves to what they are capable of within a budget.

Here’s the first 10 of 72 questions to ask web clients from bonfx.

1. How does your company handle email?
2. Do you need any password protected areas?
3. Do you have the Pantone numbers for your current company colors?
4. Did you take a look at our portfolio?
5. What is your time frame?
6. Is this a brochure site, or a blog?
7. Who is your audience?
8. Do you have any specifications?
9. What are the website addresses of your competitors?
10. How many other companies have you talked to?

Read the complete list here.

Over at IXDA, I came upon the following post:

Hello,

Someone I work for has a strange enhancement request which I do not agree with, but this person is the boss. I think in my gut, this is wrong.

Website: a user management system for secure student data. Clients are a little paranoid about passwords and user names getting out.

Behavior: when you select a user and want to reset his or her password, the resulting screen shows the user name, but then blanks out the password which you can only see by printing the page.

Blanking out the password seems silly since you can still see it if you print it out. Do people agree this is poor functionality? If so, is there any evidence to support my feeling that this is a bad idea?

I think the writer is smart to be asking for ways to back up his gut feelings about this particular client request. I would agree that the printing of passwords is not best practice, but I’m curious as to why this specific approach is being requested.

I’ve worked with clients who have made suggestions for solutions which didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but upon a deeper dive of their company culture and/or process, I was able to understand why that particular approach made sense to the client. As a consultant, I’m often brought in to solve or address a problem that the client can’t address completely on their own.

So while an outsider’s point of view can be valuable, it’s also important for consultants to listen carefully to requests and understand the underlying reasons for some of those requests. It’s pretty easy to walk into a situation and cite “best practices are xyz,” but sometimes best practices do not make sense for a particular organization. In fact, sometimes the “crazy” approach is the right one, for the right situation and the right company.

But then again, sometimes “crazy” really is just “crazy!”

I live in Los Angeles, and we have a very vibrant and active User Experience community. The meetup group numbers over 800, and professionals of all levels show up to events.

Just like any profession that’s out there where the people that are being sold to don’t know exactly what they are buying (other than their website or web application is screwed up and they don’t why), there are always rouges selling snake oil, talking about mental models, dancing about personas who know nothing about them, or wouldn’t know how to do one to save their life.

Sometimes it’s hard distinguishing someone who know what an annotation is, and one who knows how to do it right. Rebranding yourself as a User Experience professional after three meetup meetings and an project management talk is a dangerous thing, and I’m sure we all think we are better at what we do than we actually are.

What’s a client to do when vetting firms and consultants?

Since there is no certification process, it just all depends.

Remember this: Selling User Experience is not the same as doing User Experience, and as the field matures, the pretenders will be sorted out.

Ask for the process

If they don’t have example deliverables or some kind of document that shows all the elements they could use in the User Experience process during working with their clients. Remember that not all processes are created equal, but there should be some similarity to the processes of other companies. If there’s no research portion, worry out loud.

If they can’t come back with some kind of list or adequately explain it, especially if you ask some questions like, “So what is the benefit of personas?” or “Should we do wireframes or prototypes?” Either or should provoke some kind of answer that shows they stand for something. If they waffle or give an answer that doesn’t make sense, if might be time to check out.

Ask for case studies

In the end, most User Experience projects should lend themselves well to some kind of case study where the consultant or the agency can show definate results of a product, and how their skills improved the User Experience, either stastically or from better customer satisfaction.

The case studies don’t have to be overly formal, but there should be some kind of walkthrough of cause and effect i.e. agency or consultant did this, and the results increased X percent. Most User Experience firms have several of these with clients, large and small.

Ask for reference clients

Any good User Experience consultant should be a few reference projects that they can show off as something they are very proud of. The pitfalls of software development means that a lof of projects they may have done aren’t as polished, professional or complete was they were set out to be, because either there are development issues, or the client makes a bunch of changes because other business needs, or the site has changed eight times since the User Experience consultant or agency has worked on it.

There should be at least one or two projects that they can point and say, “this is really, really close to what we did, and the client played along,” and that their involvement is more than just selecting a certain color. A lot of consulting firms I know of list all kinds of clients they did work, even if they did work in a completely different field than User Experience. They should be able to list URLs of projects that included significant effort.

Ask for results

The only deliverable that counts is the final product, in most cases or personals are great, but you can’t use them on a website. In the very end there should be some kind of guarantee that what they are going to deliver is going to be a high quality product, but that means giving over a fair amount of control over to them. But remember that they should be paid for their time and services, because there’s a value to their skills.

Seriously, though, that’s what you are hiring them for, right, to use their skills? Specify exactly what you’re going to get as a final deliverable, and what the results should be. That firm should be able to stand behind it. Period.

I was tempted to publish this for Silly Saturdays, but this so accurately describes the Vendor Client relationship I moved it to this category.

It’s been a while (sorry, it’s been a busy month).

Here’s an article that I spotted over at Freelance Switch about landing more gigs. The concise list is:

1. Keep a Polished Resume & Portfolio
2. Write Effective Emails
3. Use Gmail’s “Canned Responses” Feature
4. Personalize and Tailor Your Message for Each Job
5. The Importance of Email Subject Lines
6. Maximize Your Job Search With RSS
7. Extend Your Reach Beyond Local Jobs
8. Persistent, but Respectful Follow-up Emails
9. Don’t Stop Hunting For Your Next Gig
10. Professionalism, Honesty, and Confidence

I can personally vouch for 4 — I had a chance at an interview for a good agency, and the indication I got was I hadn’t included a formal cover letter (a previous email to them had come up with blank content, and I didn’t resend with that note). In times of more applicants with greater experience, clients and companies look for reasons not to look at candidates who aren’t the best fits, and good communication skills are required of any employee or contractor.

Read on…