Nicole Marion has 17 years of experience in UX and has grown her career alongside the field before pivoting into the public sector to work with one of California's state government's larger departments. (She is under review for that project and cannot disclose which department it is.)
Techwire: What is your title?
Marion: I generally go by Senior User Experience Designer, though depending on my role on a product, it has been UX Architect, Interaction Designer. UX Design can include research, strategy, interaction design, content strategy, visual design, even front-end coding. My skill sets covers the first four.
Techwire: What is UX design and why is it important with public-facing applications/services/tech?
Marion: I always tell people that my job is to make it so that when you have to use your phone or computer, you don't want to throw yourself or your device out of a window. I joke that I save lives.
UX is a design discipline that makes sure we are choosing the right problems to solve, in the most elegant way, for the right people. We represent users as their advocates at all stages of product development, making sure their user requirements have a seat at the negotiating table alongside engineering capabilities and business goals.
A lot of people still think UX is just about usability. But it's also about addressing organizations' assumptions, validating business goals and priorities, reducing personal bias, and communicating product functionality so that the entire team, from C-levels to interns, is on the same page before we build anything. It's far more cost-effective to make changes in the design phase of any technology — the industry consensus is that changes are 10 times more expensive to solve in build.
Techwire: What kind of background did you need for this position?
Marion: One of the my favorite things about UX is that folks can come into it from many different directions: visual design, engineering, marketing, product design, industrial design, research, behavioral science. Things we have in common: compassion for users to accomplish their tasks, a love of logic and puzzles, a respect for data, no matter what it tells you, and an observant eye for detail.
I had a very nontraditional path into the work:
— I had no college degree, no big career goals. I had at one time been a market researcher, and was disgusted by our advertising clients who would have us put together focus groups just to capture the five seconds of video where one person "validated" their campaign, instead of actually listening to their real feelings, frustrations and needs.
— Then I was a benefits manager, and saw firsthand how a poorly designed form could create a bureaucratic mess that was actively harmful to people. All you need is to spend five minutes on the phone with a sobbing eight-month-pregnant woman whose health insurance has been canceled because she entered the wrong info on one line of a very confusing form to see why this matters. It literally changed my life, seeing such avoidable harm.
— I took a couple of semesters with SFSU's Multimedia Studies Program in lieu of a pay raise because the only thing I truly enjoyed about my job was my clients, who were all small tech companies. They had something figured out that I needed to be a part of — a collaborative spirit and enthusiasm for the future that I'd not seen before. And they seemed to be getting well-paid while having fun, which I was not. By fun I mean project work, not foosball.
— I got my first UX position with a brilliant boutique agency where I was not just allowed, but encouraged to learn on the job. Back in 2000, "hire for culture, train for skill" wasn't code for "white guys only." It was a sincere ethos that meant they were looking for people who brought more brains and less ego to problem-solving, who were excited to learn new things, and would enjoy the journey of discovery. I lucked into the interview because an engineer friend liked the way I looked at and explained ideas to others. I got the job because I became an instant user experience devotee after the VP of Experience, an amazing woman named Kristee Rosendahl, explained her mission. I think she saw the bell go off in my brain.
— I've been doing UX for 17 years. When I got started during the first dot-com boom, we still called it "UE," almost no one had heard of it, and there were barely any relevant certifications available outside of either hardcore computer science or graphic design. It's a very different landscape now. Younger folks won't get hired without solid design and research training, a strong portfolio and a well-articulated love for the work.
Techwire: What kind of projects include UX considerations?
Marion: ALL OF THEM. No one should try to create a product or service without knowing who their users are, what they really need right now, what they are going to need soon, where it sits in their competitive market landscape, and how they are going to make sure they did it right. All products and services and even processes are designed. UX is required to ensure that they are designed well. The process is flexible — some projects need deep research, others need to focus on rapid prototyping — but every product or service requires user validation and adjustment, in concept or execution or both.
Techwire: Can you name projects you’ve worked on in the past?
Marion: I've been a freelancer for most of my career and have worked on a ton of projects. The ones I'm most proud of weren't necessarily with my biggest clients (Best Buy, Safeway, Salesforce, T-Mobile, Hyundai). I worked on a terrific tele-health service called Virtuwell, which allows patients to get online diagnoses and prescriptions for common health ailments without having to go to the doctor's office. And I did the strategy and redesign for the Women's Foundation of California website. I got to play a small part in Dave Eggers' TED prize site, Once Upon a School. I volunteered and oversaw the UX for the Burning Man website, a community I love. I've recently shifted my career to public service, and will soon be helping one of California's most vital and challenged state organizations.
Techwire: What is the most challenging part of UX work?
Marion: Evangelizing it to execs and dev leaders who are unfamiliar with the process, and who still think great products are the brainchild of some innate genius. I blame the Steve Jobs mythos. Most people think he was a genius designer — he was actually a genius product manager and salesman who knew how to apply the work of a metric ton of design exploration and research by multiple design teams at multiple points in the design and dev process.
Learning to embrace failure and constantly revise your expectations. I always say user testing breaks your heart, because no matter how much research you do beforehand, nothing shows you what really works until people are using it and not grasping what you've tried to convey, or coming up with a totally different scenario that you hadn't prepared for. It's a fantastic process, but you have to practice non-attachment in order to learn everything you can from user feedback. It takes ongoing effort.
Techwire: What is the most rewarding?
Marion: Knowing that I've prevented harm, frustration and worry. We have so many awful things to contend with in life. Our tools should help us, not increase our burdens, even in small ways.
That moment where the solutions click into place, and you end up with something simple that makes sense. It's always feels like a long road because of how nimble your mind needs to be and how many requirements will change on the way, even on short projects. When you finally get there, you think, "How did we not see this before?" The answer is, you couldn't. The outcome of all the complex, messy, prior work is the simple solution.
Mentoring junior designers. It's really rewarding to see other people embrace the work, to be conscious of a positive ripple effect they will have. And to encourage non-coders into technology. I know it is very popular to say that everyone should code. I wholly disagree.
The paycheck, UX is a very well-compensated field, at least in first-tier cities. The Sacramento tech scene has a bit of catching up to do, but we'll get there.
