UXwanabe

Learn the softskill of UX and grow your design career

About me (2016 version)

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Hi, I am Tim Chan.

Currently, I work as an Product Design Lead in HSBC leading a team of product designers. I have designed interactive experience on Tablet that is used by branch staff, and also wealth and insurance products on both mobile and browser.

In my previous role, I spent 4 years in a startup working on a web-app that lets people create videos through drag and drop.

How I got into UX

In my pre-designer life, I had a corporate job in a phone company. While I was there, I learned a great deal about how to apply empathy to customers and see things from their perspectives. This lead to how I became an UX designer later.

I became interested into UX when the company wanted to create an app to help customer pay their bills and track their internet usage. It was a very fun project and I was exposed to the term UX for the first time. I became curious and began to dig in more about it. Soon, I became attracted to the work UX designer does and thought it would be cool if I’d become one.

I self-taught myself about UX by reading tons of books, and also joined a part-time UX course from General Assembly. I applied the things I learned in that project and created a portfolio based on it that helps me land my first UX job in a startup.

Why I love UX

It goes all the way back in high school where I did Design & Technology for my A-level. I was taught the term “Ergonomics” which in simple term means:

The process of designing products so that they fit the people who use them.

For example, if we were to design handrails in a train, what should be the handrail’s diameter? A rail that is too thick or too thin will make it difficult to grab, and this will cause problem to people. Oh, and what kind of texture should we use to increase the gripping power? You get the idea.

Learning about ergonomic changed the way I see design. I think it just make so much sense to think about who will use your product and how they will use it before you get onto the drawing board. This is the reason why I get frustrated when I see a website or any product that is poorly designed because it is clear whoever designed it didn’t put in any effort to think about who will be using it.

For years, I thought I was the only one on earth that cares about these so called “minor issues”. It frustrates me when designers are not considerate and can’t design things properly. Well, not anymore, there are people out there that are just like me and are getting paid to make other people’s life easier. It is AWESOME, I really think there isn’t a job out there that has the following descriptions:

UX designers are on a mission to create products that are functional, reliable, usable and pleasurable.

Wow, isn’t that SEXY? I want to be part of them!

Hobbies

Outside my professional life, computer and card games occupies most of my free-time. Hiking with my dog on weekends and hitting the gym twice a week is about as sporty as I can get. On my creative side, writing, cooking, and drawing comics is how I find my inner peace.

Books I read

I am a big fan of books, here is a list of books I have read since I started documenting my book collections, this list is not just limited to UX related books.

Design

  • The Design of Everyday Things — Don Norman
  • Don’t Make Me Think — Steve Krug
  • Rocket Surgery Made Easy — Steve Krug
  • Information Architecture for the World Wide Web — Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville
  • Forms that work — Caroline Jarret, Gerry Gaffney
  • The User Experience Team of one — Leah Buley
  • The Elements of User Experience 2nd Edition — Jesse Garrett
  • Lean UX — Eric Ries
  • Responsive Web Design — Ethan Marcotte
  • Mobile first — Luke Wroblewski
  • Designing for Emotion — Aarron Walter
  • The elements of content strategy — Erin Kissane
  • Design is a job — Mike Monteiro
  • Content strategy for mobile — Karen McGrane
  • Letting go of words — Janice Redish
  • Quantifying the user experience — Jeff Sauro, James R Lewis
  • Designing social interfaces — Christian Crumlish, Erin Malone
  • The principles of beautiful web design — Jason Beaird
  • The visual display of quantitative information — Edward R. Tufte
  • User interface for programmers — Joel Spolsky

Software design

  • Joel on software — Joel Spolsky
  • Smart and get things done — Joel Spolsky
  • The art of readable code — Dustin Boswell

Copy writing

  • Book 1 — Where Stellar Messages Come From — Joanna Wiebe
  • Book 2 — Formatting and the Essentials of Web Writing — Joanna Wiebe
  • Book 3 — Headlines Subheads and Value Propositions — Joanna Wiebe
  • Book 4 — Buttons and Click Worthy Calls to Action — Joanna Wiebe
  • Bonus Ebook — 6 Persuasion Strategies — Joanna Wiebe
  • Free Ebook — Using Psychology to boost conversion — Joanna Wiebe
  • Technical Writing Guidelines — Techprose. Ltd

Game design

Game designers has long been solving the problem of how to keep players engaged and keep coming back for more. The principles of game design is universal and timeless. Here are some of the books I read:

  • The art of game design — Jesse Schell
  • Game design workshop — Tracy Fullerton
  • Challenge for game designers — Brenda Brathwaite, Ian Schreiber

Business & Leadership

  • The effective executive — Peter F. Drucker
  • Work the system — Sam Carpenter
  • Start with why — Simon Sinek
  • Zero to One — Peter Thiel
  • The rules of management — Richard Templar
  • Competing against luck — Clayton M. Christensen
  • The innovation dilemma — Clayton M. Christensen
  • Turn the ship around! — L. David Marquet
  • The score takes care of itself — Bill Walsh
  • Project Management Book Of Knowledge — PMI (Originally I wanted to be a PMP, but then I realized I needed 3 years of project management experience in order to be qualified to take the exam. I have only read half of the book, but I have benefit greatly from the knowledge it provided.
  • Rework — 37signals
  • Getting real — 37signals
  • The 4 hour workweek — Timothy Ferris

Self development & others

  • Finding flow — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
  • Quiet — Susan cain
  • Thinking, fast and slow — Daniel Kahneman
  • Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? —Michael J. Sandel
  • The war of art — Steven Pressfield
  • The art of thinking clearly — Rolf Dobelli
  • The 10x rule — Grant Cardone
  • Bird by bird — Anne Lamott
  • How not to be wrong — Jordan Ellenberg
  • Talk like TED — Carmine Gallo
  • The story teller’s secret — Carmine Gallo

10 steps to become an UX designer, guaranteed

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April’s fool special

Let’s face it, nowadays anyone can become an UX designer, even your grandma. For those that hasn’t make it yet, no offence, but you just need to try harder. Alternatively, you can learn from pros who made it (that’s me btw). If you are fresh out and want to become an UX designer quickly, this guide is for you.

1.Stop reading “UX books”. Most website says there a few must reads if you want to become an UX designer, I say screw that, books are for old people and losers. We want to become an UX designer fast and we ain’t got no time to learn these crap. We are looking for quick wins here. That’s why we should…

2. Join any UX course. The beauty of UX courses is that it covers a lot of keywords, such as Wireframe, Persona, User journey…etc. Those keywords are exactly what our future employers are looking for. It doesn’t matter whether the course is well recognized or not. The UX field is too new to be judged by anyone, simply joining a course sends the message to our potential hire that we are serious about this shit.

3.Create a portfolio out of thin-air. Another great thing of joining an UX course is that you always end up creating a portfolio as a deliverable. In terms of what kind of project you should do, a simple rule of thumb is to pick a well recognized website and do a redesign for it. Whether the current website has any problem or not is irrelevant, just redesign it anyway.

4. Create a visually appealing portfolio. Some so-called UX guru said that UX ≠UI. Don’t listen to that nonsense. We all know UX and UI are the same thing. That’s why we are going to spend a lot of time making the portfolio look as graphically appealing as possible. If you are stuck on how to make it look great, here is a tip: Change the fonts to Helvetica Neue. You can thank me later.

5. Use fake persona. Since all our time were spent on making the portfolio look pretty, we don’t really have time to talk to users and do this Persona thing. To get around this, we use one of the greatest tool mankind has ever invented — Imagination. All you need to do is to imagine your user’s needs and goals, and voila! You just made yourself a Persona, it is that easy.

6. Print a name card and call yourself Freelance UX designer. Believe it or not — by definition — anyone who has a portfolio that contains a wireframe is regarded as an UX designer. Which means you are legit now. This is the part where you need to start printing name cards and let everyone know that the big boy(or girl) is in town.

7. Update your LinkedIn title into Freelance UX designer. This is a no-brainer. Just like any romantic relationships, you are not official until you are “Facebook official”. You are not a real freelance UX designer until you have updated your LinkedIn profile.

8. Go to meetups. Everyone knows that networking is important. Ignore the fact that half of the people there whines about their jobs all the time while the other half are unemployed. This is the price to pay to become part of the cool and vibrant design community. Plus, it gives you a great opportunity to expand your network by handing out the 500 name cards you printed earlier to anyone you meet.

9. Apply to any jobs with the word UX attached to it. Since our goal is to become an UX designer quickly. What the company does or whether they understand UX is irrelevant. Some company are obviously looking for UI designers when they said they are looking for UX designers. Because we know that UX and UI is the same thing, this makes us a perfect fit.

10. Throw keywords out during the interview. This is the easy part, as mentioned, UX is a very new field. The hiring manager probably has no idea what your job duty is, so all you have to do is to tell him how much you care about the user. If he is not impressed yet, toss keywords such as: User centric design, Wireframes, User Research, Persona…etc. The hiring manager will be amazed on how knowledgeable you are. After that, it is just a matter of time they will call you for an offer.

So class, this concludes our 10 simple steps to become an UX designer, hope that helps and good luck!