I was recently asked to share some thoughts on characteristics that make a great employee. It made sense to me to start by noting behaviors seen in those that set themselves apart and excel.

The Journey
I decided to liken the journey of a developer or tester (I am a tester) to that of an outdoor activity that I relate to. I love hiking and taking part in remote outdoor adventures, including backpacking and canyoneering. Some very beautiful sights can be had, and they usually come at several costs. Besides the physical toil required, there is – in many cases – a preparation phase of readying tools, devices, and all manner of provisions to make the journey safer, more comfortable, and in some cases, doable at all. There is the mental preparation of understanding the terrain and physical barriers you will be up against, as well as a grasp of what conditions to prepare for weather wise. Bottom line is, you pay the price up front; you examine charts and maps, you have a plan, and you take with you what you will need. These all lead to a safe and enjoyable journey and minimize the scenarios you are not prepared for. I would liken our finished product in software to the beauty that nature has to offer.

Just as proper foresight and careful planning in hiking can lead to a rewarding outing in nature, similar preparation in development can lead to more robust, quality, and beautiful software products.

“If I had 6 hours to cut down a tree…I would spend 4 hours sharpening the axe.”
- Abraham Lincoln

Creating Value
What are you doing to create value for yourself and your employer, now and in the future? How do you stay current? How hungry are you?

Here are some tips for keeping yourself sharp and valuable:

• Make yourself accessible to your coworkers
• Get yourself in the loop
• Communicate and be responsive
• Make your product look good
• Make your producer (project manager) look good
• Ask those around you what you can do to be more helpful

Followed by tips for staying current:

• Follow blogs (RSS, etc.)
• Participate with user groups
• Twitter
• Books
• Explore new technology

Robert C. Martin, in The Clean Coder, suggests developers spend 60 hours per week at their profession. The first 40 for their employer, and the remaining 20 for themselves by means of practice, working with new technology, learning a new language, etc. I would offer that those who sufficiently prepare will reap the most satisfying rewards.

Recently, we had some graphic design students from a local college in for a presentation on what we do here at Rain. I was able to speak to them for just a few minutes on our UX design process and how we work closely with graphic design in an agency setting. They seemed confused on the difference between UX design and graphic design. One question, in particular, was what sort of skills does a UX designer possess that might be different than a traditional graphic designer.

At Rain, this might be different than at other places. I know there are many product companies, for example, who separate their graphic designers and UX designers in completely different divisions of the company (marketing and product development, respectively). But in an agency that sort of separation doesn’t work very well. It also becomes haphazard having one designer (graphic or UX) making all the decisions relating to the presentation of functionality on a client’s product. Depending on the size of the application or digital experience, it can be a pretty large undertaking to have one person do it all. And often-times, when it’s all done by the same dude, it’s often either beautiful looking with UI problems, or very thought-through UI-wise, but nothing special to look at.

At Rain, it works well to have our UX folks build requirements, conduct the research and analysis, write the stories, build the information architecture, build wireframes and prototypes, and otherwise make life easy on a graphic designers and developers who can focus, collaboratively, on adding a layer of beauty, creativity, and functionality on that infrastructure we’ve laid for them.

In an effort to answer that original question though (what does a UX professional do, and how does that relate to what a graphic designer does?) I started naming all the skills a good UX professional has to have at least some competency in to be effective in an agency setting. Since a UX professional has to be a “Jack of all trades” it ended up being a large list. Below you will find the info-graphic (click to enlarge) of what I deem to be the balance of skills the ideal UX candidate at Rain would have. This won’t be the same everywhere. I think the list of skills might, but the level of competency in each area is going to be different depending on the company and its priorities. Click here to download the PDF version.