What could a UX'er do for you?

I have been the first UX hire for three-quarters of Australian organisations I've worked for in the past five years. Chances are you're either not looking to hire a UX designer and even if you are looking to bring your first designer on-board then chances are you're not quite sure what to do with them or what they can do for you.

If you're unhappy with the track record of your web and software projects and if clients have been underwhelmed by the results then a UX designer like myself could probably help.

There's no magic to what we do. It's just an oft-missing piece of the puzzle. Good designers are curious, exploratory but methodical, and uncover the real problems that businesses face and the opportunities they want to seize.

Wearing our hat as strategists we employ design thinking and strategy techniques to elicit high-level objectives and what would need to be demonstrated to satisfy those objectives whether it's building new online services or just increasing conversion rates and reducing customer drop-off.

Good designers work with and share data and insight, making design decisions and recommendations based on evidence and traceable back to user research interviews and observation, strategy documents and legislation, outcomes of facilitated workshops, government initiatives for cutting red tape and delivering better digital government services.

All designers are different in their experience, method and strengths. I have a stronger technical background than many designers as I started out as a developer. I have a lot of government experience given my location in Canberra and am more comfortable working with multi-million dollar digital transformation projects than I am with small budget commercial product e-commerce sites.

Some designers are highly competent visual user interface designers and even developers whereas some don't touch UI and just focus on strategy and research. It's confusing I know, and the industry is starting to distinguish those as separate roles; for example, the DTO/DTA doesn't even hire UX designers and instead defines three or four discrete roles.

I'm also an experienced Scrum practitioner and feel comfortable working on and even leading agile projects as a product manager/owner usually as a proxy for business or coaching the business product owner whereas some designers prefer the staged approach of waterfall.

If you're sick of your web and software projects not having clear success criteria or measurable KPIs to aim for or your business analysts are just missing something in their user requirements that you can't quite put your finger on or everything is too technology-focused and easy to implement but hard to use then you might need a UX designer. We can help you make sure you're throwing technology at the right problem in the right way, confident that it will most likely satisfy business and users through research and testing.

If you think it's time to hire a UX designer then you might consider me as I'm currently available in Canberra, to start straight away or after the new year break in January 2017.