July 30, 2024 Smashing Newsletter: Issue #467
This newsletter issue was sent out to 198,532 subscribers on Tuesday, July 30, 2024.
Editorial
Over the years, UX has become incredibly complex and multifaceted. We have so many concepts, abbreviations, and methodologies that we often lose ourselves in all the fine details and differences between them. Many UX professionals find themselves working alone and usually face more projects impacting user experience than they can handle. It’s time to rethink the role of UX teams, wouldn’t you agree?
In this newsletter, we hope to bring some clarity around CVs, preparing better for interviews, UX career ladders, and a few UX job search strategies and templates.
If you’d like to dive a bit deeper into all kinds of UX things, we, of course, have a nice number of online workshops and live on-site conferences coming up in New York 🇺🇸 (Oct 7–10) and Antwerp 🇧🇪 (Oct 28–31). We’d be absolutely delighted to meet you online and in-person!
Always stay curious,
— Iris Lješnjanin
1. The Guide To Design
Have you ever wondered if a career in UX might be right for you? Then “The Guide to Design” is a great opportunity to get a realistic idea of what UX is all about. Designed as a self-guided class, it helps you take your first steps into digital product design before investing in more formal education and training.
The guide consists of nine chapters that cover everything from finding your place in the design industry to design methods and practices, the impact of design, and shaping your career. You won’t find any talk about magic formulas or UX unicorns, and there is no job waiting for you at the end of the course either. What you’ll get is a rock-solid introduction to what design is, why it matters, and how you can become a part of it all. And that knowledge is the perfect base to build upon. (cm)
2. Getting A Job In Design
Finding a new job can be a stressful, long process. But it doesn’t have to be. If you approach it like you would approach a design project, with clear steps and deliverables, the process will become a lot more manageable.
Caio Braga suggests to break the job hunt down into five steps: define your goal and find your market fit, create your CV and portfolio, look for jobs, prepare for the interview, and get ready for day one. To help you prepare for each step of the process, Caio compiled a checklist with links, resources, and tips. A treasure chest for anyone on the hunt for a new design job. (cm)
3. A Timeline Of Your Life Journey
Have you ever felt your resume or CV doesn’t convey who you really are? Then you might want to give JourneyFolio a try. Designed and created by Raquel Félix, the technique is perfect to share your projects, skills, and all the little details that make you you.
JourneyFolio doesn’t require fancy software or polished design skills; all you need is Google Slides. It starts with a timeline in a grid where you can draw different layers: personal highlights, education and learning, side projects, and professional path, for example. By clicking on the spheres and dashes on the timeline, viewers can unveil associated information. A wonderful idea to tell your story and make your resume more personal. (cm)
4. Job Search Strategies And Templates
Another great resource to accompany you on your job hunt comes from Gabriela De Luca. Gabriela has been working with Talent Acquisition and Remote Work for years. To share her expertise from discussing job search strategies with hundreds of people and executing successful processes, she created a Notion library with valuable resources for job seekers.
In the library, you’ll find all things related to job search. Articles with tips just like links to tools that will help you along the way. From kicking off your search to reviewing your resume, writing a cover letter, questions to ask during an interview, negotiating your salary, making a career transition, and building trust, Gabriela’s resources are nuggets of job search wisdom that sure will come in handy someday. (cm)
5. Upcoming Workshops and Conferences
That’s right! We run online workshops on frontend and design, be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought that, you know, you might want to join in as well.
As always, here’s a quick overview:
- Behavioral Design Workshop UX
with Susan and Guthrie Weinschenk. Aug 22 – Sept 5 - Creating and Maintaining Successful Design Systems workflow
with Brad Frost. Aug 27 – Sept 10 - Deep Dive On Accessibility Testing dev
with Manuel Matuzović. Sep 23 – Oct 7 - Inclusive Design Patterns For 2025 free
with Vitaly Friedman. Sep 24 - Accessible Typography for Web & UI Design Masterclass design
with Oliver Schöndorfer. Oct 10 – 18 - Cascading Style Systems: Resilient & Maintainable CSS dev
with Miriam Suzanne. Oct 14 – 18 - Interface Design Patterns UX Training (Autumn 2024) ux
with Vitaly Friedman. Nov 1 – Dec 2 - Jump to all workshops →
6. Switching Careers To UX
Whether it’s teaching, architecture, marketing, or event planning, many people in the UX industry have migrated to UX from another field. Taylor Palmer interviewed 20 designers who have made the switch to UX to learn more about the paths they traveled, the challenges faced, and how they finally succeeded.
Taylor synthesized his findings into five themes, ranking each theme starting with the options that require the least risk and life changes. From switching within your current company and learning to pitch your past experience to starting a side project and attending a bootcamp, Taylor shows different possibilities of breaking into the field. A must-read for anyone considering switching careers to UX or mentoring someone who does. (cm)
7. Things Experienced Designers Do
Mastership takes time and experience to achieve. So, what do experienced designers do differently than beginners? Nick Punt documented some of the things product designers learn as they grow.
Nick’s observations include things he had to learn himself, things he has heard other designers have gone through, and things he has observed in many people new to the field. Interesting insights into the way experienced designers think, make decisions, and set priorities. (cm)
8. Recently Published Books 📚
Promoting best practices and providing you with practical tips to master your daily coding and design challenges has always been at the core of everything we do at Smashing.
In the past few years, we were very lucky to have worked together with some talented, caring people from the web community to publish their wealth of experience as printed books. Have you checked them out already?
- Success at Scale by Addy Osmani
- Understanding Privacy by Heather Burns
- Touch Design for Mobile Interfaces by Steven Hoober
- Check out all books →
That’s All, Folks!
Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!
This newsletter issue was written and edited by Geoff Graham (gg), Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf), and Iris Lješnjanin (il).
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