(upbeat music) - Welcome everyone. Thanks for taking the
time out of your evenings to join us tonight. My name is Chris Ventura
and I am the co-founder of Harness Projects. We deliver project based
learning courses in UX design product management, and digital marketing. And in tonight's webinar,
we will be lifting the hood on what hiring managers look for during UX design job interviews. So if any of you have
been rejected from a role that you've interviewed for,
you know that a lot of the time there is little explanation
of what went wrong. So in this webinar, we
are gonna be demonstrating the job interview process. We'll be conducting 15
minutes segments across four major interview themes. These are typical question
themes that you might expect in any UX job interview,
and they are career history and experience will be the first one. Then we'll go into UX methodology. The third would be project
experience and the final one will be situational and behavioral fit. So to help us understand
what works and what doesn't, I'm joined by our esteemed
panel of UX hiring managers. So I wanna welcome them now. Elizabeth Pej is the
head of UX at NewsCorp. Welcome Liz - Thank you. - Also, Nima Idel is a
former head of UX at IAG. So he'll join us for the
second part of this session. - Hey Nima - How you doing? - And finally, Andy Hiles
who's a senior UX manager at Vodafone. - Welcome Andy. - Hi everyone. - So between all of them they have interviewed probably
hundreds, if not thousands of UX job candidates over their careers. And what we'll be doing is they will be providing feedback
to three of our courageous graduates who will be
participating tonight. So I also wanna welcome
them. Welcoming Karla Muller Levy Tran, and Mahin Reza who have all recently
completed a UX design course with us here at Harness Projects. So welcome all of you guys. - Hi everyone. - Hi everyone, thanks for having me. - Thanks for having me. - Pleasure. I think it goes without saying
for everyone in attendance that doing an interview on
its own is daunting enough but to do it in front of a live audience is quite a courageous task. So I really just wanna take
my hat off to these three graduates for putting their hands up and being willing to do
this in front of everyone for all of our benefit. So please embrace them
in the spirit of learning and the spirit of understanding
that this is not an easy task but they're doing it
for all of our benefits. So thank you guys. And yeah, really appreciate it. Now, a few other little bits and pieces, given this is a mock job interview. So what we've done is we've
created a generic job ad to give the graduates
and the high managers just some context on the role
that they're applying for. So I'm gonna paste this in
the chat now for you all just so that you have
something to refer to if some key words come up. The company we've come up with
a very creative name of Acme. So that's gonna be, if you hear that you know what it's all about. So I'll post that in the chat in a moment. There you go. So yeah, feel free to check that out. It's a very generic job ad
one that you would typically expect from a UX design
role in a junior capacity. So we are talking about junior sort of level of experience here. Okay, so onto the first segment. If people do have questions
just before we jump in, feel free to use the Q and A button we don't necessarily have
a Q and A piece in this particular webinar, like
we've done in the past, for those of you who've been here before. We will have a lot of
feedback that the mentors will be giving each of the
graduates after each segment. So we're hoping that that
answers a lot of your questions. But still feel free to
put them in the chat and we'll get to them as I can while the interview process is underway. Okay, so first up we will. So that's our lovely panel
and we have first up is Karla. I'm gonna field the first question just to get the ball rolling. And then at the end of this
segment, we will hand over to the panel for feedback on
Karla's interview approach. This is basically generally
something that happens at the beginning of an interview
where we're trying to get an understanding of why this
person has applied for a role. So my question to Karla, as
the hiring manager would be, tell me about your career history and why is your experience relevant for this role that you've applied for? - Yeah, sure, thanks, Chris. I started off as a web
designer and I got picked up quite early on in the piece. I studied Communication
Design at university and I quickly got snapped
up with a web agency building intranets and moved
on to user interface design in terms of websites and worked with the department of housing
and built some websites with the Queensland Art
Gallery which was really great experience for some front end work. I then quickly moved on as a
team leader within an agency and led a group of web designers. And then jumped on further
again to be a national website manager for mid
tier accounting firm. So that was quite good
experience in the fact that that was the start of moving into more what you didn't call it back
user experience back then but more customer experience. So I had a direct contact with
a lot of heads of department. I rolled out the
international web standards and had to report on the analytics to continually improve that web presence for that mid tier accounting firm. And a major part of that role too was to develop engaging content. So working with each of
the heads of department to ensure their content was
relevant timely and continually up to date in terms of the content matter, which was accounting obviously. From there, I actually
went on to freelance and as a freelancer,
I had a major part in, taking projects for web design. People come to me
organically because they knew I was a web designer. And then from that clients
wanted flyers, they wanted logos. So I moved into a lot of
graphic design work as well which was really good in
terms of honing my skills for layout, color, typography
and that sort of thing. Because I moved a lot on to
graphic design side of things, I ended up in marketing
& design not long ago. And this is where I become
frustrated actually with marketing because it was
all about demographics and a lot less about funnily enough, the consumer or the user
at the end of the day. I was working alongside
a UX person at the time and she suggested, I
look at user experience. And last year I was super
fortunate enough to find Harness Projects and worked
on three really great user experience projects
with IKEA, Center of Hope and the Daily Addict. And because I learned
all these great skills with UX with them, I actually
employed that in my job at the time as a graphic
designer, web admin person at Ascent Footwear last year. So they were wanting to
improve their e-comm sales and their online user experience. So I set up with a hypothesis,
questionnaires, surveys. Set up Hotjar on their website. And basically we gathered
a whole heap of data and I reported back to them. And funnily enough some of
the stakeholders, the owners didn't like what I had to say. But fortunately enough we
ended up making changes to the navigation, to the home page and found out that there was a fair bit of technical information about the shoes which wasn't even getting looked at. So because of the extraordinary projects I work with, with Harness,
I was able to roll that out in a quick shorter amount
of time with my current job. Now I'm doing a lot of web builds. I've sent since moved it onto (mumbles) doing a lot of work as web (mumbles) And with that, I'm working with layouts, navigation, content management. And because it's agency there's no time for user centered design and methodology. So that's why I'm here
looking for a UX job. So that brings me to today. - Awesome. Thanks for the background
and context Karla really helpful to draw
that picture in my mind of, your history and while
you're looking at a UX role. Now, I just want to say to the attendees Karla did a great job there. I mean, that was super
articulate, very clear, engaging. She took me on that journey on that story. I actually was thinking I
had a few follow on questions that were coming to me
around certain areas, particularly some situational
behavioral questions that could have come up
when she mentioned that she started getting
frustrated with marketing and some of the consumer focus. But the lack of user experience focus. I'm not gonna go in there now
because we're gonna come back to situational behavioral
in another segment. But that's where you,
just wanna share that because that's where threads start to move into different
parts of the interview. So you're not always gonna
have a linear process in your interview where
it's career history job, UX, methodology, et cetera. You're gonna get, you're
gonna be moved around a lot. So you have to be able to flow with that as much as possible. But I think you did a
really good job Karla. And you also, I know you did well in that
part because there was a moment where I was gonna ask a follow on question and you began answering
it without me asking. And it was about why UX. So great history, but why the change? And you started answering
that without me asking. When you can nail that you're
establishing really strong rapport with your hiring manager. You're also establishing a
confidence that you're clear on why you're here and that's
also reassuring for myself. So with that said, I'll pass on to the other
panelists for further feedback. - Hey guys, I can jump in here. So Karla, I thought you
came across really well, really warm. And I think like echo what
Chris said, there was a lot of points that I was
kind of ready to jump in and dig into the different topics. So you're really kind of
provided quite a lot of information and interesting snippets of, what you've done in your career. I really liked the way you brought it back to the user as well. There was a couple of times
where he came back around to the user and you could
see just from the answer that it was really kind
of front and center of your thinking and the
direction that you want to go in. And I think just through
the breath of work that you discussed and
things that you've done it really just helped
me build a picture of I guess your UX toolbox and
not just that, but other things like stakeholder management
in their presentations. Obviously done a lot of, had
a lot of variety in your roles and lots of relevant digital
experiences especially with the graphic design, which as you said a lot of the principles, do flow into UI design and web design too. So yeah, it was a really good start and it left me wanting to
ask a lot more questions which is obviously a great thing. Okay, I'll handle it for now, okay. - I'll jump in if that's all right. Great explanation and
storytelling, Karla, that was like I could picture
your entire experience which is great and echoing
the previous feedback. But one of the things,
one of the stuff that I thought was interesting
was there's one part that, I would say you'd wanna be
aware and be cautious of as a designer is potentially,
it's saying that stakeholders didn't like what you had
to say and it's not you, it's the customer, it's the user. So you wanna detach yourself from the data and from what you find, because
you're not the instigator you're not the person
that is giving that data. You're uncovering it
and just make sure that you articulated that way
otherwise, you're gonna be seen as a thorn and someone who's
gonna cause a lot of strife in a company that might not be ready for the kind of stuff that you give. So one of the things to be very wary of is that the person who's hiring
you, is looking to hire someone for confidence and a
little bit of clarity. What you don't want is an opinion. You can give your recommendation but try not to potentially
come off that way that it's an opinion
versus another opinion and therefore you lost that battle. It's the fact that the
stakeholders weren't prioritizing the feedback
that came back from the users. It wasn't a business priority. So that's the only thing I'd say is that, if you refine that, you're
removing yourself from being in a bit of the spotlight. Other than that, I think
what hiring managers are looking for is not the
cookie cutter UX designer. We're looking for outside
experience that we could leverage to be able to take that
role and get more value. And the further you are from
from a typical UX, the better, because you're looking
for difference of opinion, difference of approach. Looking at different ways of looking at gender equality,
ethnicity like biases. And so you're telling that
story really removed me from going, you're just a cookie cutter. So it was a great way of
explaining your story. And I think you did a really great job. And my last small piece of
feedback is don't overestimate the changes you can do from best practice in your existing role to
prove the value of design. 'Cause hiring a junior you don't always get the
power to be able to show off. And you'll get to do a little
bit of small things here and there and get mentored. But Catherine Courage, who
is now the vice president of design and product at Google, she started off at Citrix
doing the smallest wins and trying to prove herself
and took her seven years. But now look at where she is
and she changed the way people understand UX from a product perspective. So like if you do find small
wins even in your current role try to do them because it's a
great portfolio piece anyway. Look at the statistics and show
the value that you were able to bring in that business
with that project. That's my 2 cents.
- Thank you. - All right, thanks Nima. Over to you Liz. - Oh, hi, Karla, it's been a while since Centre For Hope Project. So lovely to see you, and I'm glad that you brought that into
your storytelling as well. So I just, I don't have a lot to add in terms of what the feedback
that's been given already. I thought you did that really well. You really were quite direct in terms of answering the question
like you didn't waffle and you really told
your story really well. I could understand your whole entire career experience but you told
it in a really engaging way. And so congratulations,
because it might seem like you did it really effortlessly but I know a lot of people, a
lot of candidates that really just struggled with that story
and it can be a bit boring almost like the way they would
just repeat what's already in their resume, but you
really added a lot of sort of, I guess, your
motivation and a lot of color into the story, which really drew me in. So thank you. - Thanks Liz. - Awesome, thanks, Karla. We will move on to the next section now which is with Levy on UX methodology. Over to Nima for the question,
and then take it away. - Hi, Levy, how are you? - Hi Nima, I'm good thank you. How are you? - Good, good. So, part of the process that you are gonna experience is that a lot of
times I've gotten, there's gonna be some generic questions that
are gonna be asked of you. And generally those generic
questions are trying to understand where, how much
detail you know and how much of the core beliefs of your
industry do you understand? So one of the main
questions you're gonna get in front of you a lot of
times is, what is UX design? And that's one of the
questions that I'm putting in front of you first is,
how do you explain it? - Sure, so I can explain it in two ways. Maybe I will attempt the
first way that I explained to my parents when I told
them I want it to do a course with Harness Projects, first. 'Cause that's the simple
layman way of explaining it. So the way I explained
to them is that with UX, we try to design products and
services so that is so easy and intuitive to understand, and to use and solve the problems for
the users, the best we can. So I made an analogy to
a banana, for example. So a banana would have
a peal that is yellow when it's ripe and good to
eat, send signals to the user, very intuitively you know
when it's good to eat. The peel also protects the
banana from the environment and it also protects the
user's hands from being dirty when they're eating it. So it's a perfect case,
very easy to understand how to use a banana. So taking that analogy and
putting it into products and services such as websites, apps or even physical products. The job of the UX designer
is to do the same thing. To let users intuitively
understand how to use a product, to use it with a pleasant
experience, to return to using it and to basically and most
importantly is to solve what it is that they need the
product to solve for them. And that is how I would explain my understanding of UX design. - Great, we'll come to it. I've got two or three questions, we'll go. We'll continue rolling with
it and then at the end, we'll have the judges and give feedback on your answers. So the other part is, okay, great. So you've explained UX design,
I guess you've explained that it's to help products and
experiences to be intuitive. What is the process? How do you go about doing that? - So the process starts
with understanding the users and in order to do that,
we would do user research and this can be accomplished in many ways. But one of the most common ways
that we would do that is to interview users or do focus
groups and try to put ourselves in their shoes to understand
what it is that is giving them pain points in using the
products and services. And then after that we try to
synthesize these understanding and findings into concrete UX
deliverables, such as personas and user journeys or jobs to
be done so that the findings is easy to understand, easy to
communicate between different teams and even to the stakeholders
such as business owners. And then we go into the second
part of the double diamond process of design which
is to then open ourselves up to ideas to generate
as many ideas as possible to do brainstorming and
then doing prototypes and wireframes and mock-ups
of these ideas so that we can then bring these ideas to the
users and then test whether that these designs will achieve
what we want them to do. Is it understandable for the users? Is it good? Is it easy for the users to use? And then after that, we reiterate
on these designs based on the feedback from the users testing and then hand off to developers. So this is a basic process
that I usually use for my UX projects, but it is
not a linear process. So we would go back to
different steps and when needed. - Great, so you've talked
about the whole discovery side and talking to customers and stuff. So can you tell me the difference
between a user interview and let's say user testing? - Sure, so user interview
is often conducted at the beginning of the project
where we are not limiting users to specific task, but
really leaving the door open to all possibilities so that
we don't miss out on any unforeseen user scenario
that we didn't expect. And so these interviews are
often open-ended conducted with users, one-on-one, it
can be while the user is using it in the wild, even. So it can be for example,
contextual inquiry where we're seeing someone who
is, for example using a tax software for days and days,
or it can be quite structured where we will ask users
how they would go about using a software for tax purposes. In contrast where user testing, it is more conducted at the later
stage of the UX project where we already have some
sort of prototype or Y frame so that we can ask you to do
specific tasks and evaluate their answers on whether
the design choices help them with their experience. - Great, I'm gonna stop those
questions so we don't run out of time and we can have
some time for feedback. So judges, panel any feedback? - Who would like to go? - Yeah, I'll go. I thought you were really
answered that very well. Particularly, I liked the
analogy that you described around explaining UX
design to your parents and using the example of the banana. I have not heard that before. I might try to reuse that at
some stage when I have to try and explain it to my 90
year old parents as well 'cause to this day they
don't know what I do. So that's really great. I think you were obviously
very well-prepared for that. You would be surprised
to know how many people that I've interviewed
and they absolutely just, stuck with that first
question and they're stumbling and it's really great that
you've prepared for it and have something to talk about. I think, well, particularly
the piece that I picked up on when you were describing the difference between user interviews and user testing. For me it's also really
important that you talk about for me the user interface piece. It's about discovering user needs and discovering their
pain points rather than sort of almost describing
just what the technique was, which is what you described really well. But it was open-ended and
not limited and kind of, understanding how they
use things, but sort of try to explain what is the purpose? Like at the end of the day why do you do those user interviews? But yeah, I thought you answered
that really really well. That was my take on it. - Thanks Liz, Andy? - Awesome, so I thought you
articulated really well, echo what Liz said and
that you came across very confident and you give
really comprehensive answers. And it's sometimes it's quite
difficult to be quite easy to be caught off guard by
those kinds of questions that we have to define
something because obviously, it's what we do sometimes when
you have to explain formerly. It can be quite difficult. So I think you did really well there. Again, like the banana allergy analogy. I thought that was a really
interesting way to do it. One thing it may have
been let down is that it's always nice to kind
of talk to data as well. It's not always just
interviews but gathering data or you might have some
analytics that point you in the direction of a problem. So maybe just something
to cover in that area. In terms of yeah, defining user
testing and user interviews I thought your answer was really good. That was really spot on there. And I liked the way you
kind of, you spoke to the usability testing towards
further in the project when you already got some things
to test and you've already got an understanding of
what you're trying to solve. So overall, I thought it was really good really nicely articulated,
so well done, yeah. - Awesome. Thanks everyone. Any other final bits Nima,
or are you happy with that? - I was just gonna add
on to Liz's comment. I think with our work, a lot of times, my parents didn't even know what I do my brother and sister still don't get it. So it's like, it's normal and natural. And I think when you explain
what you do or it's very hard for them to understand but
if you give them context of why you're doing it you'll
always get the most out of, or they'll get the most out
of what the intent of design and user experiences. And the analogy I think
with research and usability, if you go back to the
banana, you could say that, research in general could
be that data's coming that people are not
digesting bananas properly. And then you start
looking at it and going, well I gotta go into a further. So you do some observational
and contextual inquiry, observational analysis. You go in and ask them, why
are you eating a banana? What's with a banana? Why is it not okay? And then you can go into
usability and assess if the bananas being
like digested properly, peeled properly and surprisingly enough, most people peel bananas wrong. Everyone says, it's a great
thought, it's actually not. The way we skin bananas is wrong. And that's a great
example of where usability contextual inquiry, user
interviews can be can be different. They all have their purposes. And that's why we have such a wide net to be able to catch problems
and try and fix any friction that a product or service may cause. - Awesome. Thanks everyone. That was great. Well done Levy, we'll come back to you for another section later on. - Thank you everyone for the feedback. - Cheers, no problem. So this is a dual section. So we're gonna go a little
bit longer over this. We're gonna give both Levy
and Mahin a chance to present or to answer questions around
their project experience. So typically in a UX job interview hire managers are gonna
wanna know or have you take them through a
full project experience that you've been on and what you learned from
in all different aspects. So, Andy's gonna fill these questions. Mahin, do you wanna go first? - Yeah, hi Andy, how are you?
- Okay, over to you. - Hey, how are you doing? So, yeah, as Chris said
this is always a question that'll come up in a UX interview. And I guess it's one that often you'll spend a bit of time on. So essentially what I'd like
you to do is pick a piece from your portfolio and
just talk us through it. So, tell us about the project,
tell us what your role was and what your responsibilities were. What was the problem you
were trying to solve? And if you can just kind of take us on the journey of that project. - I'm gonna start a bit
about my background. I'm Mahin Reza. I have completed a UX certificate course with Harness Project
recently, where I collaborated on different UX project
with high profile companies like IKEA, The Swag and Communiteer. Before that, I worked with
customers and for customers benefit in my previous position in Origin as an outbound sales consultant. and in Coles as a customer representative. So, today I will walk you
through the Communiteer or mobile website UX design
project, which is intended for volunteers who are looking
for virtual volunteering. In this project, I performed
UX research, created outwear frame and prototype and to
conducted usability test with target customers. So these are the topics
I will discuss today. So Communiteer is a web-based
virtual volunteering platform which connects user
skill-based volunteers to seek volunteering opportunities and
charities for social board. Communiteer mobile website
supplement the existing desktop site to increase
engagement with those who seek online volunteering opportunity on the go. Communiteer site helps
volunteer to browse and join project events, to join
volunteering communities, to communicate activities. My approach towards solving
the problem was performing research to identify company
objectives and user needs. Defining and identifying
necessary features and creating wireframe and prototype
for presenting the design. And conducting is usability test, with target customers for validation. For research, I started
with stakeholders interviews to understand company objectives and needs for the mobile site. Then I performed user
research with the target user to understand their needs
and pain point while using an online volunteering platform. Then I analyzed and
synthesized research data using affinity map,
empathy map, and persona. So this is the journey
map showing the process Tamara needs to go through on the Communiteer's mobile website
to become a volunteer. So these steps are showing
her activities on the site and her feelings at different stage of her experience with the site. For example, she feels frustrated when she is asked to
sign up before deciding on the project she wants to join. Also she feels happy when she finds the
project, desired project. This is from the research
data and journey map, I created some user
story to refined features and then created maps to organize content and maintain information hierarchy. And of all of the research
and content organization, I started drawing different
designs of the application on paper and I created
the digital version of the best design and made the
prototype using the sketch tool. So these are some, is pre
informed, the final project which is showing user instruction between different interfaces
at different stages. So here we can see a volunteer
can browse project or event, browse project or learn about
different projects or events. They can also choose
project using filters. Once the choose a project they can apply to volunteer by signing up. So upon usability tests a
90% of a user found that a new design of Communiteer
on mobile website, mobile site was very easy to navigate and to find the suitable
volunteering opportunity. Also user can view all a
project details, cause, events before signing in the
volunteering platform which they thought was very helpful and easy to helpful to make decision. So this is when, and here is
showing the final outcome of, sorry, just a moment here. Outcome of the prototype,
a refined prototype of Communiteer mobile website,
which helps with browse and join project events to
join volunteering communities. The communication activities
between volunteers and admins. So this project and the
design help the client to learn about the user
needs and pain point of using the mobile site. Also, it helps them to improve design to increase user engagement. Because they are 30% to 50% user actually operating Communiteer
website through mobile, yeah. So, yeah, that's the
wrap of my presentation. Thank you all. Any question? - Awesome, thank you very much for that. So I'll put it out to the panel again, for feedback and then
I'll come in afterwards. - I'll jump in this time first. So me and Liz tag teaming. Great presentation Mahin,
it was great to see how you've highlighted the
processes and the structure that you went through. Some feedback I'd say, some
of the things that stood out that you'd want to probably
explain a little further is that, when you're
creating those personas, how did you come up with the frustrations and you know lights and
delights and moments of pain? Is that an assumption? Did you ever validate it? Was it just you going in and
using it and then empathizing and creating those personas? Or was that after you had spoken to eight, 10, 12 users and so forth? So that would help clarify that it's not a waterfall
kind of approach. And we wanna make sure
that we're always careful that we're not forcing our
own opinions on solutions in that situation. So, I'm sure you did a great job. Just clarifying those
little bits would help to take us along that journey. And the other one was
like, you did some amazing wireframe or hand sketches and
you went for the best design. What made that best design? How did you choose what
that designs kind of, which one came at first and why? What were the triggers
to make that number one? So that would be useful as well. Those little bits take
us along that journey to understanding how you're
making those decisions. Is it subjective? Is it objective? And there's a quite important
for us to know that, as UX designers, we're
hoping that everyone comes in with a very objective approach. We empathize but you never
try to force your own views on things. And that you're trying to look
at what our customers want and what best practices
but never something that we wanna do ourselves. And lastly, when you gave
feedback 90% of users recorded that it was great, how many people? Even if it's six, even if
it's four, that's fine, but give us that end so that
we know what those factors were and what the parameters
were of that testing phase. But you did a fantastic job
articulating your approach and your designs look great. So, great job. - Thank you. - Yeah, I'll jump in. I'll add to Nima's and my
feedback's very much echoing what Nima's mentioned as well. I think congratulations
for putting together this presentation, because
I think a lot of candidates who are putting themselves
out there in the market sometimes feel like, "Oh I
have to have my portfolio in as a website or something
really amazing and fancy." But I think just even
structuring it into Google slides in a very quiet kind of structured
way, as you've done here, that really reflects you and your style and the project as well,
really can just help you as a presenter to come
across more confidently and to tell your story more confidently. And the reason why I'm giving
this feedback is I've noticed in the Q and A, there were
some questions around, what's the right format
for your portfolio. Should that be a website or
should that be a PowerPoint or should that be a PDF? It really doesn't matter. At the end of the day it needs to help you as a presenter to tell your story. To kind of really engage with the person that you're trying to speak to. So well done for putting this together. - Thank you. - Awesome, so yeah, I can jump in now. So, look very similar feedback. I thought it was a really great
way to display your project in the deck that you've created. Kinda thought it was cool the way you've got the gif as well. That's just a bit more
than a static image, help bring it to life a bit. And I really liked the
way you've structured it. So, even looking at this I can see what you're gonna talk about. It's easy to follow as
you're going through. I noticed you also packaged up exactly what you did on the
project at the very start. So it as well articulated there. In terms of the detail that you gave on the different sections,
there's some areas that you could have really
dived deeper into it. For example, when I saw
your customer journey map I thought that was awesome. I'd have really loved to have
learned how you created that who you spoke to, what were the insights that you took from that? So I guess, in a one-on-one interview, maybe we would have delve
into those things most. So those are the things you
could expect questions on. I guess it's slightly
different in a format when you're on a panel. And then, yeah, I think
it would've just been nice to have gone a little bit
deeper into each section and just give us a bit more of a flavor of I guess we got a really
good view of the whats but it's more the how and the why, and what informed those decisions
and what were the stats? And also, I think we mentioned it before, but talking about any
challenges you came across, like how did the solution
evolve as you were testing it as you got to know more about the customer and the insights you have? Because one thing you're
always looking for as a hiring manager, as
well as the ability to adapt and be pragmatic. You know some things
something's really surprised you and you have to change tacks and sometimes you're up
against the timeline. So it's good to understand
and know that the candidates can work outside of
the comfort zone almost and they're able to think on
the feet and switch directions when it needs to be. And even if it goes against
your kind of UX belief if the numbers or the
data that you're getting assign you to go into the other direction not being afraid to do that,
being able to execute that. But overall, I thought it was really good. I love the structure, I love how you flowed information through. And yeah, just I guess a little
bit more detail in sections which if it was in a one-on-one interview, I would've probed further,
so well done, great. - Thank you Andy, thank you. - Great, thanks guys. I just wanna add a couple bits
at the end of this as well because there has been
a few Q and A questions around the same theme, which is do you bring
in a website portfolio? Do you bring in slides? What is the expectation? Now it's different, depending on what you've been asked to do
beforehand, that you may be prompted to come in to
present in the specifically know you're going in to
present a portfolio piece. That's not always the case. And so, you need to be able to
speak to your portfolio piece without the scaffolding
and safety of slides, just in case you need
to be able to do both and be able to adapt to that situation. However, if you do bring in slides, the slides need to
elevate the explanation. And then as Mahin was showing,
have those visual treats that really helped to drive
that focus and engagement. Try and avoid to read off the slides. You absolutely need to
avoid reading off the slides because it comes across as
a scaffolding of safety. It's something that's making it easier because you're nervous and
you wanna just get through and say the exact right thing. The problem is, is that come
up that comes across that perhaps without the slides,
the level of confidence in the source material isn't as strong. And I don't know if it is or
not, but that's an assumption I might make as a hiring manager. So you just need to be careful
of slides hindering you rather than elevating you. But if with good visuals
and with one of the tricks with slides is not to put
too much text on them. So you're forced to, to have to speak off your own gut
knowledge or instinct. And that will only come from
an experience that you've had. So if you've had project experience it will naturally rise to the surface because it's a tangible thing
that you've done in the past. And so I just wanna share that because there is no right or wrong
answer about bringing slides or a website or just talking off the cuff. It really depends, but just
be aware of those glitches that can happen, where you
might fall into the trap of reading off the slides. But I think you did a really great job. Anyway, Mahin it was
really well structured and helped to just tell the
story from start to finish. And I think the major bit
of feedback there where Andy and Liz mentioned is,
where possible look for those opportunities to highlight the
actual detailed nuanced work that you did to learn
something about the user, to make a decision on why you
took a certain design choice or why you took a certain
this journey mapping approach. That sort of stuff will
help to show your depth in the critical thinking
space of UX design. So awesome. - Thank you, Chris, thank you.
- No worries. - Can everyone see my screen? - Yeah I've got it. - Okay, all right, so thank you, Andy. And the project that I'd
like to talk about is Mind The Bump. And it is one of the
projects that I did recently with Harness Projects. The situation for this project
that came about is that it is a mobile app that teaches meditation and mindfulness for
expectant Australian mums. And it comes from this
nonprofit called Smiling Mind. And they actually are the market leader in terms of meditation app in Australia. However, Mind The Bump is
one of their older product in the portfolio and with a
much need to focus on just pregnant women or people
who are trying to conceive or just recently delivered a baby. Now, the reason why Smiling
Mind's product designer came to us in Harness
Projects for help with UX is because it was, the content
of the app is really good because it's really backed by science. They have psychologist working tirelessly to create really good content. However, the users are
quite frustrated by the UX the really outdated UX. For example they really are not
onboarded well to understand why they should be
meditating and being mindful of their mental health
state to begin with. And the app is not very
successful at trying to help them build a habit, sorry,
meditation into a daily habit. So, the task is given to
us, is to improve the app UX and the client specifically
focused on wanting up to fix the timeline and navigation and the user retention of the app. And I'll skip over the
solution for a little bit, I'll come back that. But what I did during this
project is essentially to employ the four double
diamond design process starting with empathizing with the users, trying to understand what
is their pain points. So I interviewed six of my friends who are either pregnant
or recently pregnant. And then the insights that is
gained from these interviews with them is that they
all want to be physically and mentally healthy, and
they also recognize that meditation can help to a degree. However, they all
struggled to build a habit. It's very difficult for
beginners to basically sit down and try to meditate even for five minutes. So together with the rest of the team, I moved on with this
understanding of the users I then defined the jobs
to be done for the users, user journey and also
come up with personas of three different types of pregnant users. I'm sorry, three different
types of users for the app and decided to focus on Emily, who is our working pregnant mom to
focus my ideation efforts on. And afterwards I created
brain writing exercise to try to answer a couple
of how might we questions that can bring about
opportunities for design. So those would be, how do we onboard Emily this busy working pregnant mom
to the mindfulness concept. To convince her that yes meditation helps her baby's development, helps
her health and concretely why. And also from listening
to the user interviews understand that for them,
what is very important for this app to do aside
from having a generic daily meditation is to have these
SOS options to help them solve very pregnancy specific emotions. Like when they ask stress
because they get a bad scan results from the doctor what can they do to calm down? And then lastly, most
importantly for them is that to help them build a very
regular daily routine 'cause they are quite busy. So with those ideations, I
then come up with opportunities how these other nine
different opportunities of how to address those,
how my ways in the app. And then I tied that back to
what the client was asking at the beginning. How does that affect the timeline, the navigation and the
user retention of the app? I went on to do some prototypes on paper, tested out with these interviews that I have interviewed before and then did a high fidelity prototype. I'm sorry, the link is not available. But I'll show that in Figma later. And it also did a very short
voice flow demo to illustrate one of the recommendation
that the easiest way to help integrate meditation
into a user daily routine is to help them get
access to it a lot faster. For example, a lot of these moms are cooking meals for themselves. And so they want to be able
to say, "Hey Google assistant, play me my next meditation." So I summarize all
these UX recommendations into 10 recommendations that then the organization can consider. And the top three were to
personalize the meditation program recommended to each user by the trimester because they have different
needs in each of the trimester. To try to handhold these users
through the step of using, opening the app all the
way till they sign up. And they try out the first few meditation because that's where a
lot of the users drop out. And lastly, to organize
meditation by topics that is relevant to their daily routine. So for example, different
topics for the mornings and different topics for the evening. So the result of this
project is very positive. We had a final presentation
to the client and you can see here this is the quote, verbatim
from the client himself. He was really impressed
with the recommendations I came up with and told me that I have hit the nail on the head
on a lot of the findings and especially like the
recommendation about different topics of meditation
by different times of day in order to fit into the
user's daily routine. And so maybe I can quickly
roll back to the solution to show these other final deliverables. Some of the apps screenshots,
onboarding the users and searching for emotion specific or using Google assistant
voice control to quickly get a meditation that is specifically targeted to the user's need. So that is my answer. - Awesome, thank you for sharing that. That's great. Did the panel have any feedback? And then I'll jump in afterwards? - Yeah, I might just jump in, just gave my first impressions. Levy, I thought you did that really well. The fact that have have a
website or something visual to share and present your case study, it really puts you in a great position. Because there has been
a number of interviews that I've conducted where
people do struggle with, they know that they
need to kind of provide an example or a case study
or talk through a case study and they're not prepared at all. And the fact that you've
got one and ready to go is really put you in really great stead. So I'm well done for that. Just, in terms of the way you
laid out that the structure of that case study the
way you presented it, I really liked that you
actually gave context about whose Smiling Mind is or
what this Mind The Bump is all about. 'Cause I've also interviewed
a number of candidates where they're kind of just assumed that you know the businesses. And some of them might be small businesses and that we've not always heard of before. And also what you've wrote,
you explain who the company is and what the product is but
also like what was the goal that they were trying to
achieve when they came to you to help solve the
problem was really great. I really liked how you
position that front and center. And then the way you were
describing your process and kind of took me on a
journey around sort of how you went about doing that was great too. I would've liked to have
heard a little bit more around maybe some of the challenges
or some of the key learnings that you had from doing this project. 'Cause it was a good
articulation of the process and you know, what you did, the tasks that you did
and the fantastic outcome. But for me, when I'm hiring
someone, It's really, we know when we're in our
roles, there will come the time when we're coming across
something a problem, an issue, a challenge. And that's really important
to kind of hear it upfront around how you handle
those types of situations. So yeah, I think that
was my first impression. So well done. - Levy, great storytelling. I'm just gonna a latch on
the back of Liz's feedback. I think your articulation was phenomenal. I think one thing you gotta
be, might be a consideration as you told that story with
context of the business brief what the situation was and then
you went down to the bottom, the problem, then you
went back up to the top of the solution. Now, if you're giving
your portfolio potentially to other UX managers,
that will be reading it as context solution problem, and that's fine. But I think the way you
spoke was far greater. That, that process was much better. My recommendation will
be changed that structure to give context of brief the
problem and your solutions. And if you have anything
and this is the hardest thing to get even in my position is to try and show value
or feedback or results. If you have any results, if
you have things that the user said like they loved it,
it actually helped them. They felt like any kind of confirmation not just that their
client was happy but that the users would happy
would be very useful. And lastly, wow, six
friends that were pregnant or had kids like damn, that's a lot of people are
on network at that time. So that was a good brief, good timing. - Awesome, so I can jump in here. So it was a love the
way you articulated it really nice clean looking
portfolio that you were able to scroll through and talk through. I do agree with Nima around
the order and the way you kind of jumped to the
bottom and came back up. I guess it's always nice
to be taken on the journey and so I guess it's all part of your story of how you went from the
problem to the solution. One thing that I noted down is, I often am very interested
in knowing exactly I guess, the responsibilities
of the of the candidate in that particular project. So, we're you doing the research? I mean, in this, I'm guessing
you did the whole thing. You did UI, you did
research, you did interviews. So sometimes it's just to summarize hey at the start of this I was responsible for the research. I was responsible for the UI design. And I also conducted some usability testing and presentation. So just, I guess, to
package that up at the start to give the context and then
as you are running through the portfolio I can understand, "Hey sir, you know, Levy's
done all of this work and these are the the tasks
she's completed through it." In terms of the usability
testing and interviews. I thought it was great. I would've looked into it a
little bit more just around some of the questions you'd
have or some of the setup and how you actually went about
conducting those interviews. And did the users use the
app while they were doing it? Were you more kind of focused on, was it more of a focus group
style where you were just asking general questions around, "Hey, what do you expect
or what do you need?" But overall, I think you did really well, really well articulated, and it was great. I actually really liked
your quotes at the end, from the client. I thought that was really
powerful because it showed that, a really positive outcome. And then I guess verbatim
and like Nima said, any kind of stats or
quotes or things like, that can really help
tell the story as well. So well done, that was great. - Awesome, thanks Levy, thanks
Andy for going through that. So I will move on to Karla's section. Now, we're gonna be going into probably perhaps, I don't know maybe
this is my own experience with it, but behavioral
and situational questions can be some of the most challenging. But there's a lot of bit,
but there's a large range of situational questions
that you might be asked and really the best way that to get better at answering these
questions is to practice and to just be asked
many different questions in many different situations
to do a lot of interviews. That sort of stuff
always helps and it comes with experience as well. So I'm gonna hand over to Liz and Karla for behavioral and situational questions. - Great, hi Karla. Hi, so, well, naturally
if we were doing this as a one-on-one interview,
some of these questions would probably have come
out or even come out from probing further, whether,
talking through the portfolio or a case study and give you a
chance to sort of talk through. And I think these are the, for
me, the soft skills questions or the behavioral
questions are a real chance for everyone to shine,
because it's not just about the kind of specific knowledge
that you know about UX, but there you can draw upon
sort of experience from non UX sort of roles as well. So, and as we know, what makes a great UX is someone new who not only
has the technical skills or this knowledge, but also
the soft skills as well. So I tend to really focus
a lot about soft skills in my interview alongside, so
not just about the kind of, what it is and the process,
but kind of really probe deeper around the soft skills elements too. So just for the kind of our webinar today, could you just tell me
a time when you dealt with a really challenging stakeholder? It'd be great if you
could sort of just paint the picture for us a little bit around. What was the project? Who was the stakeholder? And so on. - That's definitely a tough one Liz. But obviously there's
always tough situations. So, look really I'll try and draw on my most recent experience. And it's thanks to Nima has helped me work through better language to use. So obviously really
excited to be able to draw on my UX experience
which I got from yourself and the other mentors. So in a real life situation,
it was really exciting. And I honestly thought
everyone would be on board but the stakeholder who was
the owner of the business actually come in and said, "We don't listen to customers here. They don't know anything." So I'd done all this
planning, I'd done interviews, I had all this great stuff to deliver. Well, the research had all
this, these great insights and then I felt really
anxious then about, well, how do I actually let them
know that this is really valid? So I had the support of a
director in the company, so we fleshed it out and I
actually went into the owner and approached it like
a normal conversation. So if he asked me into
talk about another project, I would actually just slipped
in for when we were both comfortable in that situation. Oh, by the way, did you know our customers actually
liked this about that? If we needed to roll out, I helped do both was doing banner designs and helping do EDMs and touchpoints, digital touchpoints. So from the insights from the
customer experience surveys, I'd done and from the
heat maps and everything I was able to nicely tell
the owner of the business how we could actually improve. 'Cause we had a couple of websites, his website and the the
main website as well. So I guess that wasn't a
direct way of delivering the content, but we got around
it through a softer method. - Okay, and was there a
situation where you had to kind of like, maybe if you
could draw on another project perhaps, where you had to
really kind of approach it rather than a softer method. Come up with, okay, these
were the tasks or the actions that I have to take in order to bring the stakeholders around. Can you think of another example - Yeah, probably
timeframes are also tough. A lot of instances stakeholders want
everything done yesterday. And then you actually
have to be quite direct and actually outlined the
deliverables and the tasks and how long they take. Having said that some
are quite intense with, no it actually has to be done. And that puts a lot of pressure. So in that instance,
I've just knuckled down got into the work and
worked the best as I could under that pressure to
deliver on the day date to the best of my ability. And actually when I delivered the work I've actually said, well,
it could have been better in this instance, in that
instance but because of the timeframe that was left out. I could only just say the web build. I could only get it to this stage but really it should have
been here, here and here. So in that instance, if
the major stakeholder wants the work done and if they've
got the deadline, you meet it and you explain to them exactly
why it's at the level it is. More often than not,
they're actually happy because they just want something. So, yeah. - And so generally when you
take, it sounds like you've when you take on this
sort of pragmatic approach which is just get it done,
and then also explain and being able to play back
around what could have been done better if you had more
time or the softer approach what are some of the outcomes
and results that you would get from kind of approaching it in that way? - Usually people quite
they're okay about it. I've found 99.9% do want to be a person who
just won't tolerate anything? And I guess that is the
most difficult situation. And in that instance, I guess
I devoid my emotional state and just get along with the job. Because if you look at
your emotions get in then you've lost that battle
with that tough stakeholder, client, boss, whatever. So I guess I've learned to
take the emotion out of my work and just keep heading
in the right direction. And these situations
again, hardly ever happen but when they do it's pretty tough. And it's like, well
I've gotta be confident that I can do the job. And I've got to let that
person know that I'm doing it. And this is as good as
you're gonna get it. And maybe go and ask someone else if you don't think I'm good enough I guess that's really
coming to the crunch. - And then just finally, as a practitioner what learnings do you draw on
from these sort of situations, from dealing with difficult,
challenging stakeholders - Probably actually had
him work within a team a whole lot better. How do you like to be spoken to? Sometimes it's even just the
delivery of how you would like something done in a workplace. It's all in the way you
ask in, in your words. So I try and choose my language very aptly and show that empathy. And in an agile environment as you know, things get pretty tight like
there's tight schedules, everyone's stressed you're
working with developers. They sometimes run on totally
different time schedules and project managers,
like they're not easy. They want their bonus. We want as a designer, we
wanna make a beautiful product. Yeah, so it's learning
how to talk to people in the right way to get
the best possible outcome at the end of the day from
and that's day in, day out, really going to work, yeah. - Great, thanks so much Karla. I'll open up to the
panel for some feedback. - Hey guys, I can jump in. So it sounds like you've had
some difficult stakeholders over the time. (Andy laughing) So some really good answers there. I noticed that you detach yourself from, you took the emotional, you kind of, you pointed to the data
when you were talking about, when you were talking about
the presenting the results instead of saying I presented the drills, you said, I presented the data. The customers were saying
this, which was really good. It's always good to know. I think it should a lot of
pragmatism in your answer there and kind of, a can do attitude. Like, even the situations that you were in were not the best, it was a case of, hey I'm just gonna pull
the sleeves up and do it. So that's always something
that you're looking for because it can be very
difficult in a lot of businesses. As you pointed out, there's
always time pressures and budgets and things to work towards. So to be able to have
the attitude, you know, hey I can only work within a certain remit and I'll do the best job I can
in the restrictions I've got is a really good skill to have. I think it's often something
you find especially in junior designers, you find
that, you quite often get a UX who wants to come in and change the world and change the entire business. And sometimes that's just,
it's just not gonna happen. There's not enough results
or there's not enough budget. And sometimes there's not that
desire to our understanding. So I think, the ability to kind of go, okay, this is what I've got,
this is what I need to do. And being able to do
it in that direct way. So it's been really good. And so I thought, yeah, you were very good that you took the emotion out of it and you looked at it quite objectively. And it also spoke to
how you work in a team and how you act with other people. I thought it was a really positive answer. So yeah, great stuff. - I'll jump in, thanks, Andrew. I think Andrew said a lot
of my feedback as well. It's interesting that the way
you were telling the story knowing that you come from web development and coming to this, I
could feel your pain. The whole world is very
different back then. I guess one important thing
was that, yeah, Andrew's right. Like one of the things we're looking for is not someone who's
preaching best practice and is preaching about changing
the world, but it's the best that we can get done at
that time with what we have. It's never about the ultimate goal. And a lot of times we see
juniors that who basically all that preaching and we're gonna do this and it's gotta be that. And it's great, but it shows
how green of a thumb you have. And so the more you talk
about your willingness to compromise and trying to at
least get a win on the board it shows that you're a willing participant and you're not gonna be causing friction. I mean, that's one of the
things that we're very wary of is that when we hire people,
it's hard enough getting design in the boardrooms and in those levels. So, we don't want friction,
we want enablement and we want the company to feel
empowered by your skillsets, not restricted or confronted by it. So it was a great way of explaining that. And I didn't feel at any
point hesitant to go, "Oh she's gonna cause trouble." So a great way of articulating it. Well done. - Awesome, Liz over to you. - Yeah, just to add to
both Andy's and Nima's really well done. I think they're always some
of the toughest questions as Chris alluded to in the interviews because you can't really,
it's not a script. You can't kind of come up with
a script for that in a way. It's not like your portfolio
or your career experience where you sort of can sort of really prepare for it with these. It sometimes depends on
the types of questions that they put in front of you. So I think you did that
really well in terms of being able to just think on
your feet and being able to add, draw on your memory and your experience, and being able to explain that and articulate that really well. And really the way, the
story that you chose as well really helped not just sort of to paint, kind of your approach and your techniques to dealing with that difficult stakeholder but it really gave me a sense
of your attitude as well, which is that the feedback
around the pragmatism, the can do attitude and
that's really important in terms of their soft skills. That's what a hiring
manager is looking for. It's not just about, do you
have the kind of soft skills of communication and
techniques to be able to handle these difficult situations. But what are what are your
own attitudes and mindsets towards, sort of those things and really showing your resilience too. Don't underestimate the
resilience and the need for that in the work that we do. So, yeah, well done. Thanks, Karla. - Awesome, thanks, Karla. Thank you everyone for
just being a part of that all the three graduates that joined us. we have a bit of time. So I wanted to pass on to
the Q and A side of things. And if anyone has questions,
feel free to submit them now. We'll just go through them bit by bit over the next period of time. And equally for you,
graduates, Mahin, Levy, Karla, feel free to ask your questions as well. If you have some followups
based on that experience that you went through, this
is a great chance to just get some further information if you need it. Okay, so I'm just gonna
jump to the Q and A panel. This was a question that came
up earlier today from Bai Pai. So, I'm just gonna click that. So Bai Pai is also a web design freelancer who practices UX product design. "I used to be asked how
many years of experience did this person have as
a UX product designer? And ask them, wanting to
know what is the best way to answer this question? What do the interviewers wanna learn? Just quickly, my initial
thought with this is one of the bits of context
around this question is, what is the job requirement of the role that you've applied for? Was it a required three
to five years experience? Did it require one year
experience, et cetera? I would base your answer closely to that, if you have obviously
evidence of experience up to whatever that amount is. So if it's three to five years
experience and you've had product design experience
and UX experience and graphic design experience,
you can say that you've had five years of design experience. And then you can go into detail
about some of the specifics of the type of design work that you did. I wouldn't hesitate if
you've got a graphic design background or a traditional
web design background, but not necessarily as much UX that you would avoid from applying from jobs where you need a few
more years experience. My experience has been that
traditional graphic designers a lot of them that I used to work with are now UX/UI designers. And when I look at their history profile, it's all UX/UI design. But when I worked with
them, it was graphic design. And I remember seeing
it in their job history. So people have changed the terminology to accommodate what the market's looking for. Just be aware of that,
people tend to pad that out. So yeah, anything else you guys wanna add? - I was gonna say, sorry, Liz. I think I jumped a little quicker sorry. It's like clicking wars. I think one of the things you probably wanna critically think Is if that question is coming up a lot is it the type of job you're applying for? Or is it potentially your portfolio that is causing that question
to reoccur a lot of time? So there might be a
mismatch in expectations or understanding of your skillset for the jobs that you're applying for. So if you're applying for
a specific type of job and this question keeps coming up, take a step back and go
well, what is my portfolio? What is my CV saying that this question keeps
getting raised in and asked? Because sometimes you gotta
understand that this question is coming up because
there's a level of confusion that might be there. Because they're looking at
your portfolio and going, I don't really know, like
is it all web design? And it's not your fault
as Chris just mentioned, like we've gotta go
through and sift the shit because the reality is most
people lie about how much experience they've got when
it comes to junior and mids. Every junior is a mid for some reason because all of a sudden
their illustration skills are now head of product somewhere else. And so we have to be able to
ask what the realities are 'cause LinkedIn is not really truthful. It's a bit of a, it's got
a bit of a blurry lens to the reality of people's careers. So that's probably why that
question is being asked. So don't take it too
personal, it might be that, they're having to sift through
that because everyone's calling themselves a mid and your skillset having these skills
might not highlight that as much as they have by
changing their entire history. So you just wanna probably
articulate that a little bit and say, I have three
years of web experience but in that three years of web
experience, two years of it I focused on doing these activities which are part of the UX kind of spectrum. - Yeah, absolutely. It really hit the nail on
the head in terms of LinkedIn and kind of what do you
can sell yourself as. I think, it's really good trait to be open and honest and just talk
about the relevant experience. You've got really sell it
on, this is what I can do. This is what I've done in the past. I'm really strong in these
areas because as well, in the instance that you were
hired as a more senior level, like it doesn't take long to
find out once you get into the world hey, is this person
actually right for the job? So it really pays to be open and honest. And I think having a positive
can-do attitude especially at a junior level, it goes a long way. And if you're willing to
learn and you're willing to put in the work and
understand the processes and just continuously learn, that's a really good trait to have. - Awesome, thank you guys. Okay, so onto the next
one, this is from Ananda. "So if your interviewer has
already read your online portfolio and you have to
give a portfolio presentation how much detail would you go
into for that presentation? Would you go into the
level of detailed covered in the last presentations
that we saw tonight? Or could you cover everything
on a more high level? Assuming the designer/interviewer has already read your website?" - Okay, I can jump in here. Hi Ananda. So Ananda was in one of
the courses I've taught. So it's nice to see here. So in terms of, as a hiring manager, quite often you're very time poor. Recruitment can sometimes
be one of the things that you don't really have time for, and you're just doing it on the side. So it's not always, you
don't always have the time that you'd like to have
to really go in depth into somebody's portfolio. Quite often, you're on your lunch break, you'll open the portfolio,
you look at the CV, you'll have a scan through you. You look for some key elements. It sounds awful, but it's true. So having that dedicated
time with the candidate is, that's time in your diary
where you've actually got the head space and
the time to think and go actually now I can really take the time to look at this person's portfolio, understand what they're doing. Understand the rationale
behind the decisions, how they work, what they've done. So, yeah, absolutely from my perspective, I would say to give, as
much detail as you can and end up in conversation. Because yeah the reality
is as a hiring manager, you're quite often you're very time poor when it comes to reviewing candidates CVs. - Great, anyone, anything
else or we're good? - Okay, all right. So the next question. "If you come from another
design background, such as architecture, do
you think it is relevant to bring their portfolio
of that design background?" - I'm just gonna jump in,
cause best UX researchers I've ever met are architects 'cause they know how to do anthropology. They know how to look at
context and deep dive. So 100% and they're the best hand drawers hand writers like get them
writing on walls everywhere you can like 100% those
skillsets that are required. And that's what I was saying before. And we've all kind of emphasize this your outside skills will
add a lot more value than just having a design cookie
cutter kind of experience. Like the best literally,
I've had a cartoonist become best story mapper
and user journey designers because they've been
able to do it in a way, articulate, exaggerates and emphasize the specific parts of the story. And that's a special skill they have. So architecture is actually
the way I've seen it, is a natural kind of progression
because the architecture industry in Australia sucks, I'll be real. It's badly paid and it's very egocentric. And so your skill sets are
quite ripe for the taking. So I've seen people just fall
in place and do phenomenal because there's a lot of
similarities in disciplines. So I think it's, don't be afraid to
highlight those skillsets. - Awesome, thanks Nima. So the next question is, "When answering the soft skills question," so for people who aren't
familiar with that term, it's probably the behavioral
situational type questions. "What if you have never
experienced that situation? How should you answer?" Just quickly on that. You likely have it just may
not be in a work context if you're at the beginning of your career. So if you haven't had a
manager who you've had a challenging situation with,
if that's the type of question you're being asked, maybe it's a relative, maybe it's a sports coach. These are all not about the content or the the environment that it was in. It was about how you responded to it. And that's the same if
it's a work context or not. - Liz? - Yeah, I thought I might
just add to that agreed Chris. I think, usually there's
behavioral questions it's something, it's generally draws upon our human experience. So not just sort of work
contexts, so draw upon that. As a hiring manager, I would
appreciate the honesty, like could say, "Look I've not experienced
this in a work context but here's an example of
how it's happened to me." And kind of draw on that. Or the other way after
sort of being honest that you've not experienced it before. Sort of imagine if you have sort of, if you have been in that situation. So usually the hiring
manager, I could potentially reposition the question
so that if you were coming across a very challenging
stakeholder and they were, and then, I might sort of
explain a bit more about what the context might be. How would you deal with that? Then that means you should
be able to just answer that in all honesty around
how you would approach that situation as well. - Great, thank you. Okay, next question. "What are some of the
good example questions to understand the design
maturity of the company that I'm interviewing for?" That's from Bora. - I generally, going into a job ask them what success looks like in my role and what the success
looks like in the projects that they're considering. 'Cause that shows their maturity of, "Oh I just need a website done, or I just need to look pretty." You can understand that. And the other part that's natural question is feeding that back on them and go what methodologies do you use
that you're comfortable with that I could start looking
at and aligning myself with. So throwing it back on them and saying, "Well, what do you use? I know this methodology and this framework which are the frameworks
that you prefer and why?" And that helps both of you
try and relate on that, I guess, theoretical manner. - Great, thanks Nima. Okay, "So this is for
perhaps the second stage of an interview process. Do you have any tips for
preparing for the next stage? Ie. a design challenge?" - I don't mind jumping in here. So design challenge knows to be tricky one because obviously it doesn't know come in. But I think as a hiring manager
who sets a design challenge, you're essentially looking for certain skills in the candidate. So you're looking to see, or really for me when
I set design challenge, it's all about understanding
how the candidate approaches the problem and then
goes about solving it. So it's kind of similar to that process. Sometimes, if it's a design
challenge and you've got half an hour or 20 minutes to
do it, it's more about saying, Hey so this is the problem and here's how I'd go about solving it. Half an hour is not a realistic amount of time to solve a problem. It's more about outlining the
steps that you'd take to do it and documenting those. If you had longer to
do it, if it was a few, you'd been given a week's
notice and may be a case of going into a bit more
detail and actually doing some of the whole design
process and I guess structure it into a mini presentation,
like a stakeholder walkthrough where you can walk through
your customer problem, business problem, research
designs iterations and results. So that's where it got to that. - Anyone else, so, okay. All right, so next
question is from Rashma. "How do we showcase project
results in our portfolio for which we have not been
able to get the final ROI or feedback from the customer?" Good question. Anyone wanna have a go at that? - I might just sort of add
what comes to mind there. What I would do is at least
put together some learnings around what you've learned
through that portfolio, through that project. Because to me, that's a
type of result or outcome for working on that project. That's really important
in being able to see from it from a candidate. So yeah, don't be scared
about including some projects where you might not have got the what the final outcome
or the final feedback. And obviously we're all hoping for really positive outcomes and feedback. It's better to just be
honest around sort of, what are some of the learnings. And also if it hasn't been great feedback, actually be honest and include that. And potentially then showing, well how would you improve
on that feedback as well? So, yeah. - Yeah, great, thanks Liz. Nima? - I think that's one of the
hardest things in a portfolio. Even up until the level you're
a senior is showing the value of your work because it's
one thing to design it or to come discover it and
ideate and put it together. It's another that it's implemented and there's a couple of restrictions. The higher you go off you've
got NDAs or I've got stuff in my portfolio that's five years old. I still can't show it like
the results are hidden. And so you're naturally
gonna get those things. But if you can at least show, what was the internal feedback? What was the changes? What did the client like
and how did they change? Did it open up their eyes? Because as a project, it's
a duality you're maturing the company and helping educate
the customer and you also design a better product or
service for the customer. Any side of those is useful. And if there is none,
you can actually say, I'm still waiting or I'm
still acquiring to look at what those results may be. But you've done user testing you've done some usability
testing, that's still a result. So make sure that that's at least there. You've tested it with six people and 50%, three people love this about that product and thought that it was quite useful. That's still great feedback. - Awesome, yeah. And hire managers will
understand that you don't have all the results particularly
if they're at a mid to quite senior immaturity
company, in terms of UX they understand that there are
so many barriers to projects going on that have nothing
to do with the UX part. So it's not gonna be the end of the world if you can't show it. Bai asking another question "I just finished a
design review interview. I wonder if the design review interviews the same as the app
critique design interview. Is there any difference
between review and critique And what's the interviewer
wanting to learn from it?" Okay, so I think it's a semantics one but anyone wanna grab that? At first glance, I don't
think there's any difference unless anyone disagrees
generally it's the same thing. So depending who you speak
to, who the job is for they might describe it
slightly differently if you see it in an email
exchange or communication. So yeah and it's just,
go ahead Nima, yeah. - I was just gonna say
it might be semantics but sometimes a critique
is an opinion based on the review or looking at it
whereas our review could be the outcome, reviewing outcome
rather than the design. So sometimes you're critiquing
a design or a product but reviewing our design
product is also related to some of the processes
and stuff like that. So sometimes those little changes in words have different meanings. But generally your process, it
should be that it's a review. It's looking at the end
to end kind of approach of what the brief was what you did and what you put out there
and what the results were. - Great, thank you. So next question. "If someone wanted to get into a UX career but they haven't done any
design jobs for six years how would you recommend going
about using other experience as a positive in the interview? For example, if someone took six years to travel around the world
as an English teacher," I'm jealous, "then how do
they position themselves?" - I can jump in here. So look, you can always
draw on your experiences, your softer skills, problem solving and just general articulation. But I guess if you're portfolio
hasn't seen any action for six years, it might be a good idea just to do a few personal projects. And then look for things that interest you or emerging technologies, or
set yourself a design challenge and just work through the process. And then even at least starting to build some more modern work that
you can then talk about and kind of explain your
process and understand. I think it's really
important to have something to hang your skills off and
to show that you are able to work through the process. And six years in UX is a long time. There's lots of new processes,
tools, methodologies thinking that comes around in that time. So I think it's very advisable
to freshen up your portfolio with a few personal projects
and I guess take it from there and obviously look for
what the interests you that you can apply any of
the relevant experience to that you may have from the career or the career paths that you've been down. - Great, thanks Andy. Okay, I'm gonna just hand over to Mahin who has a question. So feel free to go ahead. - Thanks Chris. I have one question. Beyond great portfolio
and technical skill, what advice would you give
me about how to best prepare for a job interview? - Who would like to take that? I can give a few initial
thoughts if you like, Mahin. So, firstly practice makes
perfect for specific types of questions that you know
you're gonna be asked. So this whole webinar
tonight was about some very common themes that tend to come up. So get someone who's in
your family or friends to formulate a few
different ways of asking very similar type of questions
so that you can tackle them over and over again. We tell all of our
students when they're about to present to a client,
present in front of a mirror do it and get, make it
become a muscle response rather than a thought process. Because the thought
process is always jarred, it's never as fluid,
it's never as engaging. So the more it can
become a muscle response and you're feeling confident
and relaxed the better. So practice makes perfect for sure. Aside from the other
general things around, presentable, be on time,
have some portfolio work if you are going in face-to-face, it's just some visuals if you need it. And yeah, obviously
understand who you're meeting what their roles are and do
a bit of background research, know the company. Know what they do and why
you can help what they do and why you'd be an asset for them. These are things that might be tweaked for every different types
of interview that you go to. If you go in with the same
response for every company, it will come across that you haven't really
considered their needs. They wanna be your only client in the sense of who you're
seeking the job from. I know it's not the case but
if you can make that company, if that comes across, it's gonna make you, it's gonna put you in good stead. So, that how's it goes. - And there's one little
psychological tip. The number one thing that
you can do to make anyone lower their defenses and relate
to you is ask for advice. Even if they know that's your intent. It's been proven, psychologically
that asking for advice lowers both levels, both people
to have a very transparent and very humble experience
between two parties. So if you ask for feedback,
even at end of it, that Is very helpful. Because it only makes your next interview, if you have to go to our
next interview, even better. And the other part is,
never ever sound like you're repeating the same thing
in your head 100 times. Make sure it sounds energetic,
exciting and just yourself. 'Cause if you don't shine through then you're probably gonna
look like the rest of them that are cookie cutters. I always call them cookie cutters because they say the same thing
over and over again. 'Cause I've gone through
like 10 interviews, they're kind of just like
robotically answering it. They're not actually listening. So when you ask the question,
they go to what they thought you said rather than
what you actually asked. And so just be present
that is very helpful. And your personality as a
junior is, your attitude your soft skills, your
personality and your ability to understand theoretically
what needs to be done are the things that we're looking for. We're not looking for
the output at the end, that can be mastered and
we can help mold that, but it's that attitude, you can't change someone's attitude. If they come in thinking
that the best UX designer that's been around, but they've been, they're only 19 years old,
they've never had anything. They didn't have anything
in their portfolio then you're gonna go, well I'm not gonna, my guard is up. I'm not gonna really
take what you have to say as deep as I should, because
you've already put yourself in that attack position. So be natural and just tell that story. 'Cause that's the one thing that designers are really good at is, we try to get everyone to
empathize with the customer. And so make sure that
you let the person that's interviewing you, empathize with you. - Yeah, that can't underestimate the value of just a positive attitude
and being personable. Like as a junior, we know
that you've got a lot to learn and chances are you learn
lots in every company you go to anyway, there's new
processes, new stakeholders. So we know there's a lot to learn. And the more you can show us that, you're up for the challenge
and you're willing to learn, and you want to push forward,
it's gonna work in your favor. And I think, at the end of
the day, as a hiring manager you're gonna be working with this person. You're gonna be having
one-on-ones with them. You want somebody that's
gonna be easy to work with and easy to get along with. And that does play a big part in your
decision making as well. We have, I guess I have a
policy which is, no big egos in the team 'cause that come
off will disruptive as well. So like Nima said you know someone comes in claiming
their the best designer since Steve Jobs and they're only 19 and they've got no experience. - Thank you for this. - Thanks everyone. Okay, next question is from Mimi. "What are some good
questions you would recommend asking the interviewers at
the end of the interview?" - Yeah, I might take this one. It's a really good question to me. The types of questions
that a candidate ask at the end of the interview
is as telling about about them as a candidate as their
answers to the questions that a hiring manager would ask. So sort of echoing what Nima
had said earlier as well. I really like it when
candidates ask, like, what are some of the, what the success look like for this role? What are your expectations of me if I was to take on this role and also the challenges as well. 'Cause I think you'd
want someone who is able who wants to come in
knowing the full picture of the whole organization,
not just sort of, what can the organization do for me, but also what can what value
can I do for the organization. And understanding about the successes and the challenges would tell me that what is the person's
motivation behind that? - Right, thanks Liz. I think it also Nima
mentioned something earlier, to another question was just about asking about the
company's design processes and what they actually do in their team. What's the day-to-day look like? Getting that information
shows you're curious. It shows that you're
interested in figuring out how you would fit in. That sort of stuff can help
establish some confidence in the hiring manager. Okay, next question is from Valeria. "What about when you have
a different professional background that is not
directly related to UX?" So we sort of touched on
this, but we'll keep going. "What sort of questions
do we need to be ready for that allows you to
interviewer to check the candidate has certain soft skills
required for the position?" So I guess there's two parts there. It's, what if you don't have a background that's directly related to UX. So might start with that one. - I don't mind jumping in here. So I think in terms of having a background that's not directly related
to UX, there's always a lot other careers and a lot
of crafts have crossover, especially around the soft skills. It's how you articulate
your ideas or concepts. It's how you deal with
difficult stakeholders. Those are the things that
come up in every job. It's not necessarily UX related. How you present yourself and how confident you
are with presentations. Like, is there anything you can draw on where you've had to talk to stakeholders about a subject or topic. Maybe there's things that
you do in outside of work in a hobby capacity or a extracurricular that would also have crossover. So I guess it's looking the
role that you're going for and really just kind of saying, well you know what things
that are common across not just a design job, but
across a lot of things. And you'll really often find this around the soft skills
and dealing with different situations, working as part of a team, being compatible with the people. - Great, thanks Andy. The second parts of that
question was just about what type of questions can we expect? What do we need to be ready
for when an interviewer is probing soft skills? And this relates to that
last segment of the webinar where we ask Karla some questions on how she'd handle difficult situations. Other types of questions
or the classic one is. "Tell me one of your weaknesses." How do you respond to that? How do you sort of show an
ability of self-reflection and also your ability to
communicate effectively. Self-reflection is a big
one and or me personally, when I'm hiring, I'm looking for someone who is able to see themselves
outside of their own biases, as much as possible. Because it allows them to
then grow at a faster rate than someone else who can't. If someone isn't able
to see their own areas for development, it becomes
more challenging to develop that person as an individual staff member. And so particularly for a
junior role, if you come in with that open mind and
that ability to self-reflect and you can demonstrate
that in the answers to these questions, that
can be a really helpful. And that's why sometimes it's okay to speak about your weaknesses. It's okay to speak about your
things that you're working on. We're not all perfect,
we're all works in progress. And so keeping that in mind
when you're in the interview, that authenticity will help
establish confidence again with the hire manager. - And please don't say your
weakness is perfectionist, being a perfectionist. That's so overrated, please,
come up with something new. - Yeah, there's lots on Google. If you need to jog your
mind of how to answer it but then eventually you
need to bring it back to saying that's really authentic for you. Okay, next question is, "Do you think a science degree could be leveraged as a strength?" - I'll jump in here? Absolutely, I think in a science
degree that you would have a lot of experience in research,
you'd be very methodical. You would understand a lot
about, I guess, how to structure a project and have a process in itself and like a design process. So I think absolutely a
science degree could definitely be leveraged as a strength. What I would be interested
in as part of that is, how you perform your research and how your methodology and methods. In all honesty, I think
someone with the science degree could probably teach some UX
people, a lot about research and how to research properly. Because I feel like
science is much more of a, I guess a defined approach because it's I guess, part of
science is researching. And whereas I think to a lot of new UXers research is just something
that falls into that remit when they get into it. Maybe they started as UI designer and they started doing research. So I absolutely think
that's a great strength that can be leveraged for sure. - Oh my God,
- Great thanks Andy. - we learned off you. So we're trying to apply your practice into like product and services. So science and it's a
methodology is more proven than our even approach. Our approach is 30 years old. Science is thousands of years old. So if anything, you
could say that your rigor and your candor is
probably far more refined than even myself. So it's a great skillset. And don't forget that,
with a science background, UX is one path but it's
so as data scientists. They have great rigor as well
and great methodology as well. So having that background you're
probably gonna be looked at with someone who's very
process driven and methodical. So there are some specific roles even within the UX spectrum
and product spectrum that you would you would
probably fit in quite well. - Awesome, thanks Nima. And it's quite common
for UX designers to come from so many different backgrounds. It's one of those new modern
skills like product managers like UX designers where
no two UX designers have the same background. It's, it's really incredible. So absolutely can be a strength. Andrea asks, "How many
possibilities can realistically someone have to get a junior position with six months of experience
a big gap and zigzag choices in their career history. Do multidisciplinary
skills pay off in any case? What soft and hard skills are the best to show in this case?" I guess that's three questions. But the first one I think we'll
start with is what do you do if you've got a big gap
in your career history? And if you've had maybe a lot
of different types of roles and you're looking for a junior position? - I might start us off on this one. I think for me that's
where having a portfolio to supplement with your
resume is gonna set you up for greater success than just,
sending through a resume with sort of like the gaps and the choice, the various sort of large choices that they've had in their career history. Because as you say, Chris, having someone, a well-rounded UXer or
actually having come from different backgrounds
is really super useful but as a hiring manager, I'd want to know that they have at least
the foundational aspects of what the process
and the methodology is. So the portfolio will
showcase that for me. So yeah, I would tackle
that by making sure that there is a good
couple of case studies or a portfolio that sort of
really showcase my process in that instance. - And just one thing we
don't expect history, you're a junior. We don't expect you to come
from 20 years of experience. You could have nothing. That's the whole point
of the role as a junior. Don't expect everyone, don't
have that pressure on yourself that you've gotta have
this long history of design and UX and product and web
development, you don't need that. As a junior the gates are open, you're coming in fresh. So that's what we expect. So don't think we expect a lot from you from a from an experience
perspective or Liz said like, we want to know that you
have the fundamentals, that's really it and that
you have a great attitude. The rest is just nice to have. So just take the pressure off
and just go in with a smile. - Awesome, yeah, absolutely. Thanks Nima, thanks Liz. Okay, so next question is from Eva. "Hello panelists, I plan to
create transition into UX design bringing with me tons of
transferable soft skills but close to zero relevant UX experience. Should I acquire some formal
learning training qualification before applying for any junior UX roles? or apply anyway and see what
kind of feedback I receive from the hiring managers?" I'm biased, so I can't answer this one. (laughing) - I'll jump in. So like, was there a
relevant UX experience? You might be surprised
what may be relevant, so or they may think, I've
got no relevant UX experience. Maybe, there are things you could draw on. I think we mentioned it before, but it's similar to of having a large gap. Like it's always a great starting point is to have a portfolio tying things off. And there's lots of
ways that you can help. You can start to build a portfolio. Look for Harness, there are
some great training in companies that will offer you
experience at a live project or you could set yourself
a design challenge. There's tons of dribble and
behind systems of challenges that people set on there that you can start to get into and dabble. But I think that the big
thing is just to start off by making yourself a
portfolio, learning the process and try it out and experiments
and you know getting a body of work that you can then talk to and say, "Hey, sir, I'm applying for this UX job. And I feel like I've got
the required skill set because this is my work
and this is my process. These are the sets of tech and this is how I solve problems." And showing that passion for it I think it would be
difficult without any kind of portfolio or any kind of work to show to get into the interview space. But as soon as you can
start building that up and getting experience, the sooner you'll be
able to step into that. - Yeah, thanks Andy. And I think we have to
remember that you're out there in a market place with other people also seeking the same role. So there is gonna be
that comparison point of what kind of way, when
I view your presentation of your UX ability and
experience versus the next person how do I make my own determination? So that's why portfolios are so critical in the design space. They really help to get underneath the surface of your ability. And the one minute plug without
going into too much details that's effectively why we
designed Harness Projects is to help people like yourself
have access to training but also to get experience
at the same time. So, we deliver project based learning, where you're doing a project
while you're learning and that's meant to help bridge
that gap for those of you who are looking for avenues
to build a portfolio and experience as well as
that fundamental training. So that's the last plug for the night. - And I think like the process. Let's not underestimate the process. So you send your CV, but generally that's what's gonna happen. We don't expect much experience from you. So we're gonna look at
your portfolio to see do you understand the fundamentals to come through to the next round? And we interview you
and we get to know you we may give you a
challenge to make sure we test the fundamentals,
and then we go from there. So, your CV is trying to give
us context of who you are and what your background is. And your portfolio is
giving us an understanding of if you know the base understanding of the processes involved
as Liz and Andy expressed. So don't worry about your CV
and your previous history. And I think there's a lot
of questions about that. That's not what we're looking for. It's what we're looking,
when we look at a CV, it's context, we look at
the portfolio for process. - Right, thank you. Okay, next question. We've got about a handful left. You guys okay if we just
go ten minutes over? Okay, so next question. "In the job description they
ask about Adobe XD or Figma. Do you prefer people who do have them or are willing to learn?" So I'm assuming that question
just around tool choice and what ability you have. - I don't mind jumping in here. And look, it may differ with companies, but myself, my personal
view on that is that, there's so many tools out there, and new tools are popping up all the time. Like part of being a UX designer is always learning new tools and continuing. So personally I don't think
it's an issue if the tool that the company uses,
isn't your tool of choice. Because quite a lot of
them are very similar. It's more about understanding the process and the design principles. The tool is something that you can learn. It's just something that you're gonna use to execute your design process. So really it's the fundamentals that the more important
thing, rather than the tools. But I understand as well,
how it's gonna be daunting as a junior also we're looking for work. When I was many moons
ago, a print designer, I knew Adobe InDesign
and would never apply for jobs that required QuarkXPress because I was like, I'm never
gonna get it, they need Quark. But if I didn't learned
that now, it's just a tool. It's just a way of executing your work. - Yeah, especially for junior role don't be put off by the tool. Every company has a different tool. There are some market
leading ones start with those and then it's pretty straightforward
to make the transition over time in the middle time. Okay. Also I think I close one by accident. Sorry, if I missed one. Leah says, "Thank you, panelists. I was wondering, how
do you answer questions about pay expectations,
especially when transitioning from a different field
where you may might've been at a higher earning threshold and now going through junior roles." Good question - I'm a bit passionate about this. I hate jobs who don't have a
job, kind of a salary posted on the job because it kind
of puts wrong expectations on both sides and it becomes awkward. So I think the more
transparent we are as managers to put that salary expectation the better it is for everyone. But generally speaking,
we know that it's gonna be a natural sacrifice. You're not gonna get a
doctrine kind of salary for a junior UX role. But if you use things like Glassdoor and some other services,
where you can look at what comparatively the
price range is for a junior. And know your expectations
going in that role, you're willing to make that
sacrifice to get into a field that you're passionate about. - Awesome, thanks Nima. So next is, "What are some of the most
memorable questions candidates have thrown back at you at
the end of an interview? So we've touched on this a bit but does anything come to mind guys? - Oh, I think I had one recently. I'm just trying to remember it. I remember it caught me off guard. - One of them I got was why
would I fit in this role? And I was like, "Oh, okay, snap. Throwing it back on me. Now I've gotta think about
why you fit in this role." But it was, I mean, you
normally think about it. It was quite witty though. So I found that kind
of fun that it was like their throwing it back and
going, "why do you want me here?" And it was in a nice way,
it wasn't being egotistical but I thought that was a bit fun. But I don't want every
job I look for like every job description or interview I come in, I come with that line, please. - Yeah, on a similar vein,
I had a question that was, "How did I do?" And it's actually, it was the first time I ever had that specific
question comes to me in the middle of interview. I was like, now what was
important about the question was that this was not a UX
role that I was recruiting for. It was a sales role. And one of the aspects of
being a strong salesperson is being able to ask for the sale, to be able to have the confidence
to ask the hard questions. And so it was a little bit
of a demonstration of that. So in that context, it was well received. And typically you're
not gonna get an answer that is either here nor there
at, in the moment generally. Unless the hiring manager
is really caught off guard but my response was quite neutral. And so it doesn't give them any sense of what my decision is,
because to be honest, usually we haven't made
a decision straight away. We need a bit of time to
speak to other people, reflect on the session,
interview other candidates before a decision is made. So don't expect that question
to get you a sort of, yes, no. Okay, so next question is, "Should you include discuss
a project part of the project in the portfolio that failed completely but you learn from it?" Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, failure is a part of any
product development process, of any agile process of
any UX design process. You'll never get it
perfect in the first go. What you took from the failure is where your behavioral
qualities come through, right? We've talked about this before. Can you take on a situation
that is deemed failure and turn it into a growth opportunity? So Arun asks, "Design review might be about
reviewing your designs app." Ah, is this just a comment. "App critique design review
about some popular app, your thoughts on its design?" I'm not entirely sure it's anyone super clear on what's being asked there? Okay, we might skip over that Arun. - I think it's more
about someone might say, what are your critique
about the new TikTok app? What can be improved, blah,
blah, blah which is a critique versus a review which is
more about the process of how you did it. I think that's what the comment is about.
- Yeah exactly, my apologies. So yeah any other thoughts on that topic? Okay. - I guess, okay I can
maybe jump in and just, I guess relate it. It's to be asked to critique an app, "Hey what do you think of this app? How would you make it better?" I think something that hiring
managers are looking for is not I change the font
and update the colors, I'd redo the branding. It's more about I'd look for
data, I'd interview people I'd find out what people, where the customer
problems are with the app where the pain points with people are. And I would use that
data to improve on this. I guess if you've been
asked to critique an app, it's the hiring manager
is most likely looking for your approach to solving the problem. And they're probably looking
for you to talk about data and gathering insights. - Great.
- Kind of a trap question actually 'cause you can get
called out by having an opinion of doing the process. It's a natural way of saying,
"Oh I think it's sucks and you can fix this, but
you're right, it's good call." - Totally, yeah absolutely. Great point to always fall
back on the UX process for those questions. Now the next question is, "How honest would you should
you be about your weaknesses if you're less strong
in some areas in UX/UI, would you call that out and say what you're doing to grow in these areas?" - Yeah, I might kick us off on that one. For me as a hiring
manager, it's so important if the candidate is super
honest and obviously not to a point where you're
positioning yourself so that you're not, you
don't know anything about it. So I think showing that
where you're honest about your own weaknesses
it sort of reflects on what you were saying, Chris,
that ability to self reflect and have some self-awareness
and that kind of emotional intelligence
to be able to call out where your areas of growth are. And even better to be
able to then also show, some of the things that you
are doing in those areas too. So, it sort of shows that maturity too. - Awesome, thanks Liz. Next question, just a couple left. "Is it possible to apply for a UX position without a portfolio when you
come from a design background or would that be a very
unfavorable approach?" Unfavorable? - I would say you probably
wanna get promoted internally because if don't have a
lot of work to show off, it's gonna kinda come back with, you can theoretically say stuff but what do you refer back to? It's very hard as a manager
to look back at your work and understand that you were
able to apply your learnings rather than just regurgitating
what you've seen on YouTube or in an interview, et cetera. - Yeah, it just, sorry, Andy, go ahead. - Sorry, I was just gonna
jump on that as well. And like, just go into the
process of when you're in as a manager, you're hiring. The first thing you look for
is the CV and the portfolio. Like we've had candidates
that didn't share a portfolio and it was kind of end of the line because you've got no idea
of what the process is, what they're capable of
other than the words the CV. So for me and I think for like
colleagues I've worked with it's a really important
part of the interview. With that said I have seen,
I have seen portfolios from more researchers
that are not UI heavy or graphically heavy, and that's fine. As long as you've got a case study and things to talk about that again, just go back to that process and outline the steps of how you
do things, that's fine. So it doesn't have to be,
if you're not strong in UI it doesn't have to be that way minded. It just has to detail your process and what you're about and what you do. - Awesome, thanks Andy. Last question. "How many projects for a portfolio?" Simple one. Minimum three (chuckles) minimum. - Yeah and I would say,
I guess you don't want to just put the ones that high
quality in there that really explain your process and the ones that you're really proud of. And the ones that have, I guess, if you have got a lot of projects, maybe tailor those to the
role that you going for. And if you've got ones that
are that you think are more relevant for the particular
job you're going for, adapt your portfolio to show those ones. I guess, again going back
to the process of hiring like you probably as a hiring manager, you're not gonna get past the
first four or five anyway. When you scrolling
through, you'll take a look at the first three and you're like, "Yep, this is cool, let's get them in." So I think yeah, less is
more sometimes as well. So minimum three. - Awesome, thanks Andy. Well, that's all the
questions for tonight. I just wanna say another big thank you to our panel Andy, Liz, Nima. And to our grads Mahin, Karla, Levy. Awesome effort, courageous effort to be interviewed in front of all these people. We hope it's been valuable for you all. We will be posting a recording
on our YouTube channel early next week and we
will email out the link. So you'll be able to look back on it take down any notes that you might need to for your interviews and
best of luck to everyone. We hope you land the job of
your dreams and that this has helped you in some way
prepare for those interviews. If you wanna get in touch with us at Harness Projects, hit our website at harnessprojects.com.au. You can also book a call with me if you wanna discuss
our upcoming UX courses. We have some courses commencing in April. Our February intake has filled up but we have April intake starting around the first week of April. So feel free to get in
touch, happy to have a chat and just talk about UX stuff with you. It's been fun. Thanks for staying a bit
later everyone as well. And we will see you at the next one. (upbeat music)
