FAQs about user experience and product management
I encountered this writer talked about her FAQs in UX interviews so I think it’s a good idea for me to post my FAQs based on my experience in UX and product management as well.
What’s your strength coming from technical background?
I have experience working with senior UX designers and product strategists. On some projects, I was allocated as UX designer in design phase and later as software engineer in development phase with the role of closing the transition gap from design to build. With my technical knowledge, I place more importance on product feasibility based on project timeframe as a product can be polished subsequently. Having a technical background does not hinder my creativity in problem solving but enhances me to do deep research and brainstorm for even more solutions.
Prioritization
Whether it’s coming from a design or development perspective, under my current company, I am practicing “high impact, high value first” approach. We split our design features into modules and prioritize them with the product owner. The development team, they pick up user stories of each epic horizontally instead of vertically. Clients are able to provide firsthand feedbacks and risks can be evaluated along the way rather than building a whole feature(vertically) and then realising that’s not what they want.
The core objective here is to ensure the product is feasible within limited timeline.
The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. — Hans Hofmann
What’s the most interesting project you’ve worked on? What made it interesting?
I’m running a side project in my current company to improve our on-boarding process for our development team. I have written some articles under some UX mentorship within this company:
What tools do you use? Why have you chosen them over their alternatives?
Paper, LOTS of pens and sticky notes for ideation: I usually carry around a notebook as my source of paper for the low fidelity wireframe and ideation. It’s also convenient draw user flow and layout to ease the thinking process. Sticky notes can ensure users aware of meeting agenda and topics(Example can be seen here). As it’s portable and small hence only important text is written on it, I use it to conduct interactive user testing as well.
Sketch for wireframe and design: Sketch is getting powerful. With its other products like Sketch Mirror and Sketch Cloud, it presents itself as a platform that encourage collaboration. They open up their APIs to third parties, providing opportunities for developers to create Sketch plugins which further enhance the tool.
Invision for prototype: The free plan enables me to user Invision to test low fidelity prototype at an early stage.This product lets users able to connect and experience the look and feel before development begins. This is crucial as they can then provide early feedback on the functionality based on their expertise in domain.
Google Sheets for information: I mainly use Google Spreadsheets for my information architecture, workshop agenda planning, tracking user testing session with feedback, and sometimes wireframe drafts for table-form solutions.
Gamestorming Website: A website that I use when I plan for workshop activities. Based on the objectives and output that I want to achieve, I find the suitable activities to provide interactive workshops or user interviews.
What are some websites and apps whose design you love? Why do you like them?
Medium Website: I tried my hands on many platforms for my blogging practices. Compared to the competitors, Medium’s features are not cluttered and implement high user value functionality that fulfils the core purpose of the product. Overall design is more restrictive to provide clean look and feel, which let’s the user to focus more in your content without being distracted. The community and hashtags gives a platform to like-minded people discover your articles beside normal searches. I read company’s design blog from time to time to understand their visions and Medium team proves to provide viable and feasible solutions.
Others:
Amy is a software engineer at Tigerspike, a chili-loving-person and an avid coffee drinker. She likes to attend many UX and product meet-ups and conferences. Here are her twitter and LinkedIn.
