Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Florence Dairo

Happy International Women’s Day, ladies 🥂

Amazing developers at the meetup. The lady in black jumpsuit with glasses — is me. 😏 I’m a designer! 😎

Can Ladies be UX designers?

The short answer is, Yes! Why not!

Anyone can be a great User Experience designer. Careers in Tech are not gender based.

Here’s the long answer —

Years ago, men dominated the Tech industry while women were subjected to domestic chores. During that period, a great number of engineering students, architects, developers, designers and analysts were men. Today we have quite a number of women in Tech doing amazingly well.

A major advantage of being in Tech is being able to work from anywhere in the world, literally. Women in tech can still take care of their kids and family while changing the world at the comfort of their homes.

Last year, I had the opportunity to speak at Fempower Initiative Africa meetup in Nigeria on User Experience Design and how ladies can benefit from being in Tech. I hope this post enlightens you about User Experience Design and how to get started.

Fempower Initiative Africa focuses on teaching technology, leadership and entrepreneurship to women in Africa. The brain behind this amazing initiative, Sandra Ajaja, is a Tech Entrepreneur who is passionate about making technology the mainstay in Africa by educating and encouraging women to explore various opportunities in Tech.

What Is UX?

UX is an acronym which stands for User Experience. It was first coined by Donald Norman in the mid 1990s.

NOTE: In the course of this article, I will replace “User Experience” with “UX” and “User Interface” with “UI” .

UX is the emotion a user feels when interacting with a particular product, company, the world and any area of human activities.

Let me break it down, a little

For digital products, UX is how the user or customer feels when they download a mobile or web app from the app store and are fully on-boarded into using the app for the desired purpose.

For industrial products, UX is how the user or customer feels when they walk into the physical store to buy their desired mobile device and are fully satisfied with the company’s services — from the moment they stepped into the store till they were persuaded into making the right choice till they made payments till they “unboxed” the product till they started using the product.

Basically, the experience!

UX is not just limited to software or digital products (that is, web or mobile app). It can be applied to practically everything that involves a user, even hardware products and how you position your business to your target audience in the midst of your competitors.

So, what is UX design?

UX design is the process of enhancing a user’s satisfaction by improving the usability, accessibility and pleasure experienced while the user interacts with the product.

As a UX designer, your job is to design how the product works and feels by studying the users of the product and how they interact with it. If the product fails to satisfy the user’s needs, then the UX design is poor. You need to understand how users think, what motivates them and why they do what they do.

Your job is to strike a balance between the users’ needs, your client’s business (which is usually a solution to the users’ needs) and the available technology to bring the idea to life. In other words, you advocate on behalf of the users bearing in mind the business goal(s) of your client and the available technology. You solve various problems by creating seamless and comprehensible user flows. In one sentence, you basically design experiences for users.

UX design is how it works than how it looks

UX design is the key to a successful UI design and vice versa. They are essential ingredients for creating usable and beautiful digital products.

Let’s talk about UI

UI is an acronym which stands for User Interface. It focuses on the visual attributes of the product paying close attention to colours, icons and animations.

For instance, if the UX design of a product is good and the UI design, bad; the product turns out bad. Also if the UI design is good and the UX design, bad; the product turns out bad.

In summary, a UX designer focuses on making the product usable while a UI designer focuses on the appearance of the product. The UX designer can also take up the role of a UI designer.

Career Opportunities for Ladies in UX

When it comes to tech, there are a lot of career opportunities to be explored by everyone, especially ladies. I have highlighted a few career opportunities in UX below:

User Experience Researcher — focuses on having a deep understanding of the behaviour of users, their needs and motivations. We have quite a number of female UX researcher in Nigeria.
Usability Analyst — identifies usability problems by ensuring that the goals are met by applying usability principles and user research.
Information Architect — focuses on how information will be presented to users of a product. They do this by creating wireframes, site maps, prototypes and any other artifacts that describe the user experience.
Interaction designer — generates seamless, relevant, fluid and engaging interaction experience for users.
Visual designer — turns wireframes and prototypes into user friendly visual designs. This designer is also a UI designer.
UX designer is a jack of all trades in a user centered design process. They focus on creating seamless and easily comprehensible user experience through research, user testing and other best practices. They are sometimes involved in UI designs too.

There are some personality traits that fit the work UX designers do daily.

Problem solving: Generally, a designer should posses this skill; same goes for UX designers. We think of a way to solve problems, daily. We think of a way to make the product easy to use for users.
Great attitude to learn: The world is constantly evolving and as a result, there are new tools and new techniques constantly on the rise to make work easier for UX designers. There is need to be a fast learner and move with the pace.
Good communication and great listening: It’s okay to have a good communication skill but it’s extremely important to have a great listening skill. UX designers advocate and empathise for users. There is need for you, as a UX designer, to pay close attention to your users’ needs. In other words, you need to listen more to your users and at the same time be able to perfectly communicate it to your team members – the product managers and the developers.
Detail oriented: You need to be observant and pay close attention to details. You need to understand the “why”, “how” and “what” of a user’s behaviour.
Passion for the skill: This can never be overemphasised. It is crucial when you’re about to venture into any career in life. You need to be extremely passionate about UX design.
Curious about people and tech: As UX designers, we’re thinking of a way to make life easier for the users, we need to be aware of the latest technology that can easily make users use the products.
Willingness to accept constructive criticism: Nobody is perfect. It’s okay to listen and take corrections. We learn everyday.

How to Learn UX

There are a lot of materials online that teach UX to anyone for free. You can easily find articles here on medium by learning how UX designers work on a project (that is, their design process).

Design Better is a great place to learn all you need to know about Product Design, Udacity is not left out. There are also a lot of great and helpful resources on YouTube and Lynda.

Look for design meetups in your neighbourhood. Design meetups allow designers socialise and learn new interesting design trends. There are a number of Design communities (online and offline) in Lagos, Nigeria — we have Usable NG (UXLagos == usable.) and a slack group for Developers and Designers called Dev Center.

How did you learn UX design, as a UX designer? Kindly write about your experience while transitioning from your previous job to UX design in the comment below 👇 👇. I will love to read all about it.

Thanks for reading. 😊😊

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