Published on <a href="https://blog.prototypr.io/anthropology-sociology-design-ux-d31f81622652?source=rss----eb297ea1161a---4">| Prototyping: From UX to Front End &mdash; Medium</a> Stephanie Kuo 
I studied in Sociology and Anthropology in my undergraduate. After graduated many years, I found UX can combine my social science background and design interest. As a result, I’m pursuing HCI degree in UM and taking internship as a UX designer in Bay Area.
I just received some questions about how to become a UX researcher/designer as a social science student. I want to share some insights that your social science knowledge may apply to UX.
<ol>
<li>The research methods are similar to UX research</li>
</ol>
In the beginning of product development, UX researchers have to interview users to understand users needs and expectations. They also conduct surveys to get bigger data. Based on these findings, they will build up persona and user journey. Researchers also will conduct usability testing to observe users behaviors and emotions, and provide relevant findings and suggested solutions. Sometimes, researchers are leading the product, because they can find out the pain points to improve the product, and designers and engineers will follow.
Some UX research methodologies are exactly same as Sociology and Anthropology’s. As a student studies in social science, we are familiar with interview, survey and participant observation. We have abundant experiences in conducting interviews and surveys in undergraduate. Students with social science background know how to design the questions and options on questionnaire, and use software or R or Python to analyze data. We’ve conducted numerous personal interviews and focus group interviews. We are sensitive to users’ tones and facial expressions. We are familiar with most UX research methodologies, and we know when to use which method to get the information that we need.
In UX research, students with social science background have more experiences and sensitiveness than others. Regrettably, Sociology ideals may not be realized on every product.
2. Ability of Empathy
Empathy is the core of UX. We stand in users shoes and design friendly products to them. UX cares about context, it’s same as the “context” that we mentioned thousands times in Sociology research. While designing, we have to consider the using flow and users profile at the same time. Are they tech-savvy? They use the product in what situation? UX designers have to throw “my opinions” away and purely stand with users.
For instance, I’m currently designing an app for engineers and teach them how to install servers. Based on the research report, I surprisingly found our target users are not tech-savvy. They are not proficient in swiping left to delete, or long tapping to select contents. They will watch the videos and install servers at the same time, so the interface has to be extremely simple. Even it looks not so “beautiful” from designer’s aspect, it’s still a good product.
This video shows how empathy is powerful.
<iframe src="https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FcDDWvj_q-o8%3Ffeature%3Doembed&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DcDDWvj_q-o8&#038;image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FcDDWvj_q-o8%2Fhqdefault.jpg&amp;key=a19fcc184b9711e1b4764040d3dc5c07&amp;type=text%2Fhtml&amp;schema=youtube" width="854" height="480" frameborder="0"><a href="https://medium.com/media/67438bdea8b36b7740af6da082641bcc/href">https://medium.com/media/67438bdea8b36b7740af6da082641bcc/href</a></iframe>
OK, what are the benefits for social science students? We have empathy toward people. In Sociology research, we have the chances to approach people in different social classes, or with diverse background. We try to understand their life and provide a theory to explain their behaviors and attitudes. In Anthropology research, we have the chances to approach people in divergent cultures, or join participant observation in the community that we familiar with. The training makes us get used to understand others, and try to give reasons to explain why they behavior like this. It helps us to analyze human behaviors, explain to others, and defend our own design ideas.
Moreover, we are learning this knowledge not only from research but also from our life. These trivial observations become our intuitions and make the design better.
3. Social science will not make you become UX people, but you do.
Social science is highly related to UX, nonetheless the abilities that we learned from social science are not directly applied to UX. Although they have similar research methodologies, the research purposes, study objects, and the questions need to be answered are totally different.
If you’re still not so sure whether you like in UX or not, you may want to attend some workshops, camps or online courses. They will help you better understand what UX is. What more important is you’ll have some projects in your portfolio. If you want to become a UI designer, it’s necessary to cultivate the sense of beauty and learn to use design tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, Sketch, Axure or XD.
Lastly, hope UX will become a more and more popular career choice for social science students. Hope we can realize the ideals in social science through UX.
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<a href="https://blog.prototypr.io/anthropology-sociology-design-ux-d31f81622652">Anthropology + Sociology + Design = UX?!</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.prototypr.io">prototypr</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Anthropology + Sociology + Design = UX?!

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