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Hi, professional UX person here. A lot of UX candidates are going to self-select out from this description, because you're bringing them in too late in the pro

Hi, professional UX person here. A lot of UX candidates are going to self-select out from this description, because you're bringing them in too late in the process. You're assuming that the requirements that someone (who?) has come up with are remotely correct, and an experienced UX person knows that's nearly never the case. (Perhaps you have a well-validated stack of customer and market research completed! But I'm going to assume that, like most product teams, you don't.) Industry studies have found that features and product ideas developed in isolation are wrong, 1/3 to 1/2 or more of the time, where "wrong" is defined as "doesn't move the needle in the way it was expected to." An experienced UX person is going to want to come in before requirements, to help collect the requirements through understanding users and use cases, and to do the "variety of design concepts" at that stage, often even with active participation from dev, PM, and other stakeholders. (You'll see this called "design studio" or other types of participatory, facilitated design.) Metrics and measurements are also best developed at that stage, and actively tested to make sure the concepts will affect them in the way everyone expects. You may be having trouble because "taking" requirements is often something only done by production designers: people who make the final graphics for implementation. You might have the best success by visiting your local design meetups and looking for a freelancer or consultant with at least several years of experience doing design research, user research, and facilitation, the more experience the better. Hire them to vet and interview candidates; they'll want to understand how your team works and what your expectations for the role are. Listen to them if they suggest your expectations are misaligned with regards to an effective design process.

rahimnathwani 9y ago
Thanks. This is very helpful. I didn't articulate well enough how I see UX as part of the overall design process. I agree with your comment that 'An experienced UX person is going to want to come in before requirements'. This is especially true for pure software products. For some things, though, the software is only a gateway into a wider thing. So for requirements, I wasn't thinking of a list of features, but more like requirements for the outcomes: 'When a customer visits the AirBnB site, they should be able to find and book somewhere to stay within 5 minutes'. Do you think it's OK to bring in UX even when some of those requirements have been drafted (though not set in stone)? Or do you think that would put off someone great, who wants to start from the problem definition rather than partial solution? EDIT: When I described my problem to friend, he suggested that what I actually wanted is someone who might describe themselves as a 'product designer'. What are the job title(s) that would resonate best with people who do the type of work you described in your comment?
- vitovito 9y ago
  > So for requirements, I wasn't thinking of a list of features, but more like requirements for the outcomes: 'When a customer visits the AirBnB site, they should be able to find and book somewhere to stay within 5 minutes'. Any requirements are going to be constraints, and may not be reflective of reality, good practices, market needs, user expectations, etc. In your example, discovery and purchase are often not performed in the same transaction/visit/mental process. Different modalities will result in different realistic time constraints. A UX person brought in to come up with "a variety of design concepts" is going to pitch discovery (vacation planning, pinterest-style aspirational ideation, reading travel stories, etc.) as independent from purchase (booking last minute, booking for the future, booking for a specific destination, booking for a specific cost, etc.). If time (efficiency, shorter is better) is a metric they're going to pitch time (time to bounce, longer is better) instead. Any constraints are going to limit your possibilities, and might result in a local maximum. If you're okay with that, fine, just say it up front, so everyone is on the same page. UX job titles are pretty varied, because UX roles tend to fill the space left by whatever expertise the product team is missing, whether research, or user contact, or interaction design, or visual design, etc. Again, I think you'd be better served by looking for types of experience. Designer, UX designer, product designer, UX strategist, all might work as titles. Someone with research experience is probably necessary, but someone that is a dedicated researcher probably won't also be able to do the design work, and someone that specializes in visual design probably won't be able to do the research. Does that help?
  - rahimnathwani 9y ago
    Thanks again. Some constraints are inevitable in most businesses that are making money with a particular business model. So a UX designer brought in to a razor blade company that sells online may have to work with that and help sales of blades through the online channel, even if the research and intuition support some other better way to serve those customers (a chain of local barbershops), or that some other need (hair styling creams) will be more profitable. What I'm understanding from your posts is that deciding what, if any, constraints there are up front, and communicating those to potential candidates, will help people self-select.

rahimnathwani 9y ago

Thanks. This is very helpful. I didn't articulate well enough how I see UX as part of the overall design process. I agree with your comment that 'An experienced UX person is going to want to come in before requirements'. This is especially true for pure software products. For some things, though, the software is only a gateway into a wider thing. So for requirements, I wasn't thinking of a list of features, but more like requirements for the outcomes: 'When a customer visits the AirBnB site, they should be able to find and book somewhere to stay within 5 minutes'. Do you think it's OK to bring in UX even when some of those requirements have been drafted (though not set in stone)? Or do you think that would put off someone great, who wants to start from the problem definition rather than partial solution? EDIT: When I described my problem to friend, he suggested that what I actually wanted is someone who might describe themselves as a 'product designer'. What are the job title(s) that would resonate best with people who do the type of work you described in your comment?

vitovito 9y ago
> So for requirements, I wasn't thinking of a list of features, but more like requirements for the outcomes: 'When a customer visits the AirBnB site, they should be able to find and book somewhere to stay within 5 minutes'. Any requirements are going to be constraints, and may not be reflective of reality, good practices, market needs, user expectations, etc. In your example, discovery and purchase are often not performed in the same transaction/visit/mental process. Different modalities will result in different realistic time constraints. A UX person brought in to come up with "a variety of design concepts" is going to pitch discovery (vacation planning, pinterest-style aspirational ideation, reading travel stories, etc.) as independent from purchase (booking last minute, booking for the future, booking for a specific destination, booking for a specific cost, etc.). If time (efficiency, shorter is better) is a metric they're going to pitch time (time to bounce, longer is better) instead. Any constraints are going to limit your possibilities, and might result in a local maximum. If you're okay with that, fine, just say it up front, so everyone is on the same page. UX job titles are pretty varied, because UX roles tend to fill the space left by whatever expertise the product team is missing, whether research, or user contact, or interaction design, or visual design, etc. Again, I think you'd be better served by looking for types of experience. Designer, UX designer, product designer, UX strategist, all might work as titles. Someone with research experience is probably necessary, but someone that is a dedicated researcher probably won't also be able to do the design work, and someone that specializes in visual design probably won't be able to do the research. Does that help?
- rahimnathwani 9y ago
  Thanks again. Some constraints are inevitable in most businesses that are making money with a particular business model. So a UX designer brought in to a razor blade company that sells online may have to work with that and help sales of blades through the online channel, even if the research and intuition support some other better way to serve those customers (a chain of local barbershops), or that some other need (hair styling creams) will be more profitable. What I'm understanding from your posts is that deciding what, if any, constraints there are up front, and communicating those to potential candidates, will help people self-select.