Ascend UX

UX Education - Part 2

Episode Summary

We continue our discussion with special guest Angela Schmeidel Randall on the state of UX education. Is getting a certification enough to get your first UX job? Why is it so confusing to get a decent education in user experience? How does one grow learn and grow beyond just UX design? We explore these topics and more. This is part two of a two-part episode.

Episode Notes

Helpful Links 

The Rise of (UX) Educational Programs – an article by Lee Okan with more details on the state of UX education.

International Usability and UX Qualification Board – there have been efforts by several European UXPA chapters to create a standard, recognized UX certification.

Understanding the Impact of Unpaid Internships– a report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers on the risks of unpaid internships. You’re taking a huge risk, likely won’t learn as much as you hope, andit often doesn’t lead to a job!

 

More Ascend UX Content

Visit the Ascend UX podcast’s website for more episodes.

 

Contact Us

We love your questions and feedback! Please send them to ascendux@pros.com. We read every message and may use your question in a future show.

Ayan Bihi or Evan Sunwall are always happy to connect with listeners on LinkedIn. Just add a note mentioning the show in your invitation.

 

Credits

Thanks to Ultravice and Lakey Inspired for the use of their music.

Thanks to our producer and editor Brandon Robinson.

This show is created by PROS and the PROS UX Team.

 

Copyright 2020 Ascend UX. All rights reserved.

Episode Transcription

Angela: [00:00:00] You know, I feel like in UX sometimes have our own blind spot, which is we fail to understand our user and our user is the business. And if we better understood our user, then we would all get behind this idea of a universal certification in UX.

Evan: [00:00:40] So Angela, I have a quick question for you. This is something that I even personally wrestled with. We know, as I was mentioning that the way the maturity of UX is today, it's not like I want to be a chemist. Okay, cool. Well, you have go get a degree in chemistry. You can literally pick any university.

There's probably a chemistry program. So it's kind straight forward. UX is not, and it may not be that way for a decade or more. And so I hear a lot of people with career switching aspirations, they ask me like, is this certification enough? Do I need a certification? And should I pursue one? Because it's financially more practical, time-wise more practical.

And I wrestle with: would you hire someone who has a minimum bachelor's in some field and they don't have any kind of like formalized certification or any, any kind of more advanced degree in UX or human factors or human computer interaction, but they have a stellar portfolio. Really amazing portfolio work and they're using like terminology and they have it's concise, straightforward. It shows value. Would you consider hiring that person? 

Angela: [00:01:45] Gosh, I think it really depends on where they got the certification from. And then anytime we have somebody that's switching careers, we were looking for a segue and it is probably going to be a multistep segue. Like you're a PhD level chemist. How do you go from that to being a UX person?

It is not going to be a one step. You're going to have steps in between. And the certification is just a piece of that puzzle. You're going to need to find in your existing organization, an opportunity to work on a UX project, probably as a stakeholder, that would be the best thing to do. And then maybe move into that UX team.

So you're switching your roles, but you're still subject matter expert then after you had in your experience that company maybe want to stay at that company. Great. But probably what's going to happen is. They're still going to see you as the subject matter expert. This person came from this other background.

If you want to move purely into a UX role and start working on non chemistry projects, you're going to have to switch companies and do what I call trading up. So you're, you're just going to keep trading up to new jobs until you get to the job that you want to be in, but it's going to be a multistep process.

One of my beefs with the UX industry as a whole is that we do not have a universally recognized sscertification that is cultivated by a neutral kind of association like UXPA. And so in a lot of industries in order to professionalize the industry, standardize the knowledge and get people to a point where they can move into the industry and move into jobs, which there are plenty UX jobs available.

There just aren't qualified people, quote, unquote. Who are available to fill those chops because the employers don't know how to hire for them because they don't know what a UX person is. And so when I think one of our failures as an industry is to codify our knowledge into some sort of universally accepted standard of what a UX person is in a testable sort of way.

The analogy that I always like to use is the PMP, the project management professional project manager. It used to be this kind of nebulous concept, but it could be a project manager, but when the PMP came along, it forced people to take their education about project management seriously.

And now employers know like I want to be PMP certified project management professional to fill this job. They know what they're hiring for. And the beautiful part about it is there are ongoing education requirements, continuing education requirements, so that you're not getting stale, that your people are cultivating this as a career and as a discipline.

And they're communicating, we don't that in UX, we have like this like rogue wild west of training. And, you know, the thing with the PMP is, or an order for you to be able to count it as a continuing education credit. It has to be certified by this accrediting party. And so, you know, that. You have a good sense of what the standards of the education are and it refreshes too.

Evan: [00:05:17] There's an expectation that you are remaining current on the skills. So I want to dispel this right now. I think one, it's a disgrace that it's like that too.

Angela: [00:05:27] Absolutely.

Evan: [00:05:28] Good people, probably within the UXPA, have tried to do something like this. But they have not come to fruition. It's not happened. And so there's a lot of those training courses out there that maybe brand or otherwise communicate themselves as we are the gold standard. Like we are like you're describing Angela. That's not true. There's good ones out there. They're good. They're solid.

They're not in the same level, the echelon you were describing, like the PMP, which is like, "Oh yeah, I know exactly what that means." That is not the case. So be cautious about that.

Angela: [00:06:02] You know, and I don't know. I feel like in UX, sometimes we have our own blind spot, which is we fail to understand our user and our user is the business.

And if we better understood our user. Then we would all get behind this idea of a universal certification in UX, but. We have these personal biases against these things for reasons. I do not understand, like, I, I cannot make sense of it other than it's a cultural thing. People who become UX people tend to have some similar cultural attributes.

And so they. They eschew it and look down on it to their own detriment, to the profession's own detriment, to business's own detriment. And so they have effectively become their own worst enemy. I wish like mad that there could be a movement toward a universally accepted standard for a UX professional certification, a multilevel certification.

So you have like the novices and something to do with that. And like the apprentices, like early on, you have the journeyman professional and you have this master level that would change the job market that would change how much we're able to command and salaries. It would change even how people market training.

It would just be so much better. Yeah. 

Evan: [00:07:32] Yeah. So remember that. Remember the struggle that maybe you're going through or had gone through before and how miserable it was, like, how do I break into this industry? How do I do this job? Remember that pain? And maybe, maybe more people that kind of reflect on that.

Maybe they can galvanize a push to actually formalize this fully so that it is as maybe a simple some day as "I want to be a chemist", Okay, cool. You know, so that it's clear... 

Angela: [00:07:56] Here's what you need to do. 

Evan: [00:07:57] Yeah, so Angela, let's talk about junior designers, let's talk about people who have been doing this job a little bit, you know, a few years. What other educational paths or options should they consider to further their career or get more skills?

Angela: [00:08:11] So it depends on what they want to do. Some UX people want to stay in UX. I see a lot of researchers who just want to stay researchers. They just like research. I think that when you're selecting programs, you need to decide what you want to do next. Like what's your next move. You need to have an understanding of what your career path is.

And so if you're like a BA a business analyst or your project manager, or you have some work in UX and you want to formalize that education. Like you already have some exposure, getting masters in UX was wonderful. If you were like me, which is I can't do just one thing. I'm like an uber generalist. Um, and you see like, not just always staying in UX career, but doing other things like.

I don't know why more UX people don't go, go get MBAs that outside of having a universal certification and it's more UX people going to yeah. At MBAs would be so valuable because you, right. People often, you know, get this kind of rightly or wrongly labeled that they don't understand business. But if you have an MBA, like that just cuts that off right there, and it helps you empathize more with the business.

So, you know, in those cases I say, yeah, go ahead and get in that, to get that master's degree. 

Evan: [00:09:31] So, but for MBAs though, is that for people who are like, I'm trying to make a sort of a shift into more product management type or like more business oriented roles in an organization to leverage those skills, that those additional skills that they're gaining through an MBA?

Angela: [00:09:46] I think that that would be a good way to look at it. Or if you wanted to move up in the management ranks to be like the VP of UX or the, you have to be able to demonstrate elegantly in some way that you have business knowledge and, and that you were talking the same language as the business. That's one of the world just real quick ways to do that.

Ayan: [00:10:14] Angela, sometimes I like that you really brought up the subject of business. Do you sometimes feel that as designers, there's somewhat of a fear to take that path towards business? Cause we're often in the creative aspect and maybe business can be considered a bad thing. 

Angela: [00:10:28] This is like one of the blind spots I think UX people have is that, you know, they get very much on the side of the user, right.

And advocating for the user with forgetting that they work for the organization. I think the same dynamic is responsible for the lack of universal UX certification, um, is if they see he consciously or subconsciously as some sort of adversarial relationship with the business. And so they don't see their, their values being aligned with the business, or they're confused about how their values are aligned with the business and that business has a bad name.

Some of that is because businesses ask UX designers all the time to do super unethical things that give UX designers the heebie-jeebies, right?

Evan: [00:11:18] "Dark patterns?" 

Angela: [00:11:19] "Dark patterns", you know, that sort of thing. So totally understand on that. But business school covers ethics and how to deal with that. But I think that for whatever reason, they don't feel like they can wear the label being a UX professional and a business person and somebody who's interested in business. And I don't think that's true. I think that that's the fundamental understanding misunderstanding of what businesses and UX his role in business. Cause there's actually just a tremendous amount of overlap.

Evan: [00:11:54] You know, I recommend for junior folks to get more of that business knowledge. If you're already working a job and you're in a company to kind of cultivate some relationships with people who do product management or business analysis and cultivate relationship with those folks, and maybe kind of try to develop a mentorship, a mentoring relationship with them to get a little more empathy, a little more awareness of.  What kind of considerations are they under? What are they kind of deliberating and not to fall into the trap of bill villainizing them or thinking like, Oh man, they're just out to squeeze every nickel and dime or, or trying to unethically force me to design something for users.

That could happen. And this probably does happen to some extent, not to the fullest extent that you may be thinking and try to get a little more, more perspective from someone else. And that could be really a very cheap, easy, fast way of getting a more of that kind of business context that maybe you may be lacking if you just started out a new job or working for a few years in one place to step up your game. 

Angela: [00:12:59] Absolutely. You know, cultivating those relationships with the product managers and having a positive relationship with the product managers and the other folks on the product team is excellent way to do that. It's also an excellent way to move up the ladder in terms of getting more UX or responsibility and stuff, because those product managers know that they can feel heard by this UX person.

That gives that us person more influence over the outcome and then also of their career. And as a junior person, you know, what you want to be doing is learning from everybody. You want to be absorbing everything that you can from everyone, not just your immediate boss, but other leaders in the company and, and other groups in the company.

Evan: [00:13:46] Yeah. And that's hard for people, I think in this day and age where people typically bounce after like two years of doing a job. I think there's a hidden cost to that. Like, yeah. Maybe you'll get a little more money. Maybe you can kind of juice your job title a little bit more.

Just some of the downsides of that is now you don't know where the copies are made. You don't know who does what and you have to rebuild your relationship network when you start at a new place. It's not all about just like getting a senior after your title or maybe working on different projects or different areas that you find more compelling, personally interesting. That's cool. But understand the cost to that. When you bounce a lot, when you kind of float around, you do have to kind of reinvest in the relationships. How does this company work and what kind of business stresses or considerations are they under to help you operate in this manner and build up your either your reputation or the trust that people have in you as a designer. And so that that's something that people kind of discount, or maybe I see, they don't really fully grasp until they're in it for many years. And like, why did I, I don't know what's going on. I don't, I don't have the table, you know, that kind of thing.

It's like, well, you just started working here six months ago. Like, what do you, what do you know? Right. How do you know what this company is going through? What they're working through?

Angela: [00:15:07] Yeah. Well, and if you come in and you spend all your time trying to push your agenda again, going back to that, listening, pushing your agenda of how you think needs to be done, then you haven't done enough listening in order to be able to understand and make those recommendations.

Ayan: [00:15:23] Angela, let's talk about you for a bit. How did you transition from being just a practitioner of UX into your education? Like becoming a teacher? 

Angela: [00:15:33] So I had, even when, as a subject matter expert, I had, um, taught some classes and the subject, the subject matter area that I was in. So I was always interested in it.

When I started my consulting company, I started getting a lot of requests for advice and training and education. And so I held some training classes and I liked it. And then it wasn't really sustainable with my project load. At that time. In 2013, I had two kids in one year. I adopted a child while I was pregnant and had a child.

And so while I don't recommend that, well, both of my kids, but wow. 2014 was tough. What is sustainable for me? And I decided I was going to focus more on teaching and research because first of all, um, at that time period, and this is something I agree with, a lot of UX design has been moving in house for the past 10 years as it should, because there's a tremendous amount of design, institutional knowledge and design that is not easily recouped from a consultant.

So that has started happening. I was like, I really just want to focus on research and, and training. And about the time I feel like it's one of those things you put into the universe and the universe responds back. And so a colleague of mine approached me about teaching at Kent State teaching kind of an intro class at Kent State.

And so I did that and I went in with kind of my own preconceived notions of what teaching in a master's program would look like. And I liked it. I had a lot of fun doing it, but then what I got really excited about is like, I had these problems with my class and my students. 

So I teach an online master's program. And so one of the challenges with an online master's program is engagement and related to that engagement issue is depression and students. They get so socially isolated in an online master's program. Because usually like you're going to go get a master's degree. You go on site to a university and you have people to talk to at night or on the weekends or whatever else.

Well, this isn't happening. They were basically going to their jobs and then they were going home and sitting in their rooms, doing their work with no human interaction. Cause it's asynchronous. And so. What I started doing is again how I did to my life, applying human centered design methodology. I started applying it to my classes and my students.

And then I got really interested in like, okay, what can I do to make this situation better? And so each class became at how can I iterate this into something more interesting. And it just. Grew. And because I did that, um, I developed this following of students that follow me from class to class to class because I care about the student experience and I do specific things designed to grow them as professionals while providing a safety net from that online master's program. Um, so that there isn't the direct depression. So what I do is I put my students in teams, for example, and I give them a prompt every week and I have them meet. And a lot of my prompts are around emotional intelligence and growing as a professional.

But what that does is it allows them to evaluate how personally some things about their education and their life and their profession. And at the same time, it gives them not only human interaction, but connections potentially that they can use after graduate school. And a lot of them are using those connections, which makes me very happy.

Evan: [00:19:18] Wow. What's the most rewarding part, maybe that you didn't expect, about this teaching experience?

Angela: [00:19:27] So I love it when students email me afterwards and say, Oh, I got this job. Or I got this promotion because of this class, or, um, I've had several students, who've done case studies for class that then they brought to their boss or whoever else. And they loved. Um, and so I had this guy one time who did this research in class for class, got a good grade on it, but then he took it back to his employer and employee his employers, like, no one's done this kind of research before we've always needed it. And basically it created a whole job for him out of it.

And so, you know, those kinds of success stories make me very happy. 

Ayan: [00:20:08] Do you have any advice for experienced designers who want to go also transition to teaching?

Angela: [00:20:13] Sure. I mean, a lot of it's going to be like, teach what, you know, start giving talks, start, start thinking about. So I had to go back and when I first started training and teaching, I did a lot of PowerPoint presentations and just chat, chat, chat, chat at the front of the room.

And I went one time to teach a client. It was like a four day training. And on day one, I lost my voice. And it was really bad. Cause I had like three more days of training. And after the second day I had like drove from the training to the emergency room because I was seeing stars and I was like light bulb.

Like there has to be another way, not everybody gets up and talks in front of the room this much. And so it kind of forced me to like, how can I improve this situation? I always improving, always be improving. And so I went out and got additional training and certification around training and that helped me a lot.

And so I would say that as a person, as a UX person who wants to get into training or wants to get into teaching, really play some interest in what education looks like. Um, and then also put it out there in the universe that you want to teach. I know that there are some boot camps that hire instructors that might be a good first entry path network with, with people who are teaching when I am looking to pull.

So I sometimes have guest speakers in my classes. So when I'm looking to pull people in, I'm looking for people that have subject matter expertise already. And that if they have subject matter expertise already, then I can bring them into a class and ask them to teach something or speak about something. And the more of those you get, ghe better exposure it is to say, Oh, now will you take this class? Does that makes sense? 

Ayan: [00:22:08] Yeah, totally. So Angela, thank you so much for your time. It has been super informative. I know that I learned a lot. How about you, Evan? 

Evan: [00:22:15] I thought I knew a lot and I actually learned a lot more. So thank you, Angela. This was really great. 

Ayan: [00:22:19] Education. It's never ending, right ?

Always learning! 

So Angela, is there anything that you'd like to bring up before we finish? 

Angela: [00:22:26] Actually, there is, I get a question, a lot about unpaid internships and whether people who are looking to break into UX should accept unpaid or poverty wages paid UX internships.

And my answer is no. I see a lot of job postings from employers that are basically asking for interns with like five years of experience that are asking for exhaustive list of qualifications for. What turns out to be an unpaid internship or a poverty wage paid an internship. And I really think this is super unethical.

It's, it's a grave disservice to the employee or the contractor. Usually it's always a contractor, but it's also a great disservice to the company. Cause what it says to me, when I see those is that the company isn't sure how to hire a UX. And so what they're going to do is they're going to get an intern, a low level intern that dip their toe into yeah.

UX. That's like exact opposite of what you want to do. You don't want an intern who doesn't know what they're doing, or doesn't have as much experience. Teaching you about UX. You need somebody more senior. Yeah. But then also there's tremendous amount of institutional knowledge from companies that UX designers learn.

Like I, as a UX professional, I'm learning all about the corporate strategy. I'm learning a lot of secrets about company secrets, about how things are done and strengths and weaknesses of products you don't want to be given that. To an intern. And then from the interns perspective, it's like free design work.

The more that you accept these positions, the more that they will continue. And so I think. Definitely the unpaid ones. There should be no unpaid internships work is work. Um, and a lot of times UX people who are trying to get into UX, neat paid work like proof of paid work in order to be able to get their next job.

So it does not benefit the UX professional to do an unpaid internship. The whole system around unpaid work needs to stop. Now, one of the things that perpetuates this problem is, again, my, the lack of universally accepted UX cert certification, because that's why companies do this. And what they do is they promise like, Oh, if you do a good job as an intern, then maybe there's a possibility to coming on full time, but that doesn't always happen.

And there's some companies that. Won't keep a contractor for more than a year without having like another nine months of spacing before the person comes back. And so unpaid UX internships are unethical. They're unproductive. They just, they need to stop and UX people. I would strongly encourage not to accept these offers because you're just being set up for failure.

Nine times out of 10, the company does not know what it wants and any failure is going to be placed on the UX intern, shoulders as the scapegoat that well, you just, weren't very good UX person and there's, there's just a no win situation. 

Evan: [00:25:44] Yeah, you're making a terrible personal sacrifice to take something and it may not actually pay the dividends. I mean, that actually give you the experiences, the outcomes that you want, you're onboarding most of the risk. 

Angela: [00:25:56] Well, yeah, you are bearing as a UX professional. You are bearing the vast majority of the risk. And usually the companies that offer these do not know what they're want. And so this is their solution is well, we'll offer an unpaid internship or a low paid internship and kind of dip our toe into the water and see how it works out without really considering like how it's going to work out for the UX person or how it goes that negatively on the company.

So the unpaid job, I think you would be better served by looking at your interest and developing a passion project around something that you can put into your portfolio and maybe earn too a little bit of money that. And not providing necessarily providing you up services, but find a passion project.

Say you're really passionate about running or, Oh, here's a better one. Say you're really passionate about baseball and you want to do analysis about baseball and have a website about baseball. Like that is more like with quantitative data on it. That is not likely to get you a job than an unpaid internship.

So that's one pathway. Another pathway is you can volunteer at conferences to be a helper. I had a student who volunteered at a, a conference to help and did a really great job and got a recommendation from the famous conference organizer. And that helped her get her first UX job. So that's another option.

And then there's also just doing paid. Paid at a competitive rate, get a competitive rate, paid UX consulting work for small businesses is another option. 

Evan: [00:27:41] Yeah. How about your aunt or uncle who may have a business, like  look within your kind of social network, your family network, and look for opportunities of demonstrating your skills and helping out someone closer in your orbit. Someone you know, and you can then get a great case study from that. Now, it's going to be some work, but it's probably a better relationship, better thing to do than like taking some random company, trying to exploit you for free labor. Look for people you can help that, you know, and love and may have a business opportunity where you can kind of say, Hey, I  can apply some of my skills and my knowledge and get that great case study. That will help me get that next opportunity. 

Angela: [00:28:20] Absolutely. Totally agree. 

Ayan: [00:28:21] And I think probably a passion project or a project like that can also allow more flexibility to learn. Cause if you're going to an unpaid work where the company has, we know what UX is, how they'll use a really sorry. How will the person really learn what design is?

Angela: [00:28:34] What I love about passion projects, that is, it's something that's very interesting to you. And so you're willing to invest a lot of learning. You're willing to invest a lot of time and that's like the flow of learning, right? That's what we want. That's why, you know, honestly, when you're looking at programs to join, what you want to do is look for project based learning programs, where you can really get into something and get into the flow and have that higher order learning.

And that you can do an independent project and, and get feedback from your program. So in my world, like I love seeing students have a passion project because you can do with their education also can help get them a job. And we all have things that we're passionate about.

Evan: [00:29:20] Awesome. Angela, thank you so much today that all this great information, this has been super helpful and really appreciate it!

Angela: [00:29:27] Thank you. Well, thank you for having me. I had fun.

Evan: [00:29:43] It's time to answer some audience questions. If you have a question about design or user experience you'd like to ask us, please send them to ascend ux@pros.com. So I am looking back on your own education and career, but what topics do you think you wish you had studied more and why? 

Ayan: [00:29:59] I think we covered it with the discussion with Angela and I really resonated to me when she talked about the topic of business. I really wish, or me perhaps it's never too late, but I think that's definitely something that could. It's something I'm interested in today, or I should have learned before, because as designers, we don't work within just a vacuum. We work in with multiple teams from different backgrounds and by learning that language and also by learning what they do and maybe the challenges that they have, it actually also helps us do our work and perhaps also build better links.

Working with our teams. So I think, um, business would be something that I might've been more interested in learning in my studies. If my program offered that, or I'd be interested in taking that step next, either through a mentorship or even if I did decide to go back to school. 

Evan: [00:30:45] Yeah, I think there's a lot of advice out there about, you know, not getting to the discussion of this should designers learn how to code, but at least getting coding knowledge, that's like a key one.

That's when it gets a lot of discussion, like, yeah. If you're working on a software product, get some of that perspective of how it's made and understand how coding works and how coding practices are applied. But I think that business angle of like, but understand. Just the general principles, that high level of running a business and what you had to be mindful of.

I think that's a key thing and something that's sometimes overlooked and it's kind of a longer tail type skill to develop and learn. Cause so many people focus on, can I do the craft? Do I understand the people around me that do their own craft? But I think the business side is one that's definitely kind of not discussed often enough, you, when you're learning like, Hey, you know, get some perspective from, from how business is conducted and run.

Ayan: [00:31:42] Absolutely, as we work in an interdisciplinary field, it's really interesting and important to kind of know all the different hats that we might have to put on. So we might be recreating a product, but if you don't understand the, our client's needs for that product redesign, then we're not fully doing our job.

So I think it's really important to have a better understanding of the business interests and my personal opinion, I think. Okay. Yes. As designers, we are defending our users, but we're also an intermediary for our business clients as well. So it's finding that happy medium in between. What would you, what do you think that you could learn more of? Or what did you wish that you had more learning of when you were a student? 

Evan: [00:32:25] So thinking back on my experiences, I had a lot of heavy dose of development and I think in terms of skills that I've used since then, and again, it's more like enterprise B2B oriented software. I had not an inkling, not an idea of how to do qualitative research. And so all your anthropologists out there, people do social science work, doing mixed methods, doing the quantitative statistical stuff, but also the interviewing and listening and observing and gathering up that data through interviews. Computer science programs? They're not focusing on that.

Like that's just not in their wheelhouse. And so I had a huge deficit with that. I did a bit of stats. I wasn't great at it, but I had some statistical, I had a class or two on that, but I had nothing in the realm of qualitative research. And I find that that is a skill that is greatly used in our line of work where it's, so it's so rich, you learn so much by visiting people and learning and how they're working and asking questions and being observant of their workflows and their problems and issues that I had to do. A lot of homework. I had to really brush up on that through books and training and online resources to do that effectively. And so for me, I think that is definitely one that I wish I had gotten more perspective on that my, that my particular paths didn't afford.

I think the other one, so I did have a class on presentation design. I remember very little of it, but I probably didn't pay enough attention to what I was learning in that class, given how frequently I use those skills today. And so I, for me also, I think it's. Socializing and communicating ideas effectively is critically important.

So, hey, if you got that presentation class, maybe you have if you're pursuing a degree and you're like, man, whatever, that's just, just gotta get through this. You may be using that a lot if you're pursuing a UX job because a lot of it is sharing insights and influencing and communicating with other people from all different types of backgrounds.

So doing that really well is super important. And so take that class seriously, try to remember a thing or two of it, because you may be finding you use that skill a lot more as you progress through your career. 

Ayan: [00:34:44] Yeah, I totally agree with you. I think communication's a huge skill set in our role as designers either advocating our ideas or just presenting our projects to either our fellow team members or to our clients.

Evan: [00:34:56] Yeah. All right. I, and that's going to do it for this episode of the ascend UX podcast. We love your feedback. Please send it to ascendux@pros.com. Also rate, follow, subscribe or leave comments on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whichever service you're using to listen to us. We definitely appreciate it.

Ayan this was really great. I hope this is useful information for you all out there about a really difficult topic. If it seems confusing, if it seems like a struggle, you're not alone, it is a challenging topic. And I hope this gives you a little more perspective and how to pursue this going forward. So Ayan thank you so much and I'll see you next time.

Ayan: [00:35:39] Yeah, until next time.

Evan: [00:36:01] Thanks for listening to the ascend UX podcast, a show made by the user experience team of pros, a software company in Houston, Texas that develops AI powered solutions for businesses. Learn more at pros.com/ux. Our main theme music is by Ultravice. You can listen to more of his work at soundcloud.com/ultravice.

Also, thanks to LakeyInspired for his music as well. You can listen to more of his work at soundcloud.com/lakeyinspired. And special thanks to our editor and producer, Brandon Robinson. Stay gritty friends!