UX Mastery Podcast

We chat with Tom Greever—designer and UX Director at Bitovi, and author of the latest O’Reilly title Articulating Design Decisions: Communicate with Stakeholders, Keep Your Sanity, and Deliver the Best User Experience. 

Tom answers some questions submitted by the UX Mastery community, and discusses how defending your design decisions can sometimes be more important that the design itself.

Last week we caught up with Joe Natoli, known as the instructor of the very popular UX Fundamentals online course.  We spoke about UX strategy, careers, success, and the value of making mistakes.

We chat with Marcel Van Hove, a  Bikablo-certified visual facilitator, about graphic recording, visual  thinking, and how honing your drawing skills can give you a competitive advantage as a professional designing digital products.

Naturally we got talking about drawing,  sketchnoting, graphic recording and the rise of visual thinking in the  workplace.

In this episode we're joined by Patrick Neeman, Director of  Product Design at Apptio and creator of the popular Usability Counts blog and the infamous UX Drinking Game.

Readers asked questions about how to break into UX, create a  portfolio, and manage your career.

In this episode, we talk with David Travis, founder of UK-based UX agency User Focus, and creator of the popular online course, User Experience: The Ultimate Guide To Usability.

During  the interview, we discuss why the field of user experience  is in such demand, the pros and cons of training that is delivered in an  online format, how newcomers to the field can gain the experience they  need to break into the user experience industry, and the most important  quality of a good user experience designer.

In this episode, we speak with a reader who is in the process of transitioning to a career in User Experience.

Christine,  an HR Administrator from Toronto, is looking to change careers and  become a UX Designer. What she may lack in experience, she makes up for  with enthusiasm, communication skills, and a good understanding of  theory. She has a portfolio, built up from time she has volunteered to  various projects, has found a mentor, and is actively networking to find  suitable roles—including unpaid internships—but is still hitting  hurdles. Christine opens up to us about the job application process,  reflects on how the term “user experience” is often misunderstood by  employers, and shares some of the frustrations she’s encountered.

Somebody give this girl a job. Seriously.

The first episode of the UX Mastery podcast is a recording of the recent webinar that Matt and Luke hosted.

Topics covered include how to get started as a UX Designer, what to put in a portfolio, and how to operate in a UX team of one.

While we couldn’t answer every question that was asked, we did cover a lot of ground during the one-hour session. It was a lot of fun, and we’ll definitely do it again in the future. In the meantime, here’s a recording and transcript of the audio from the webinar.