My opinions on working in UX and Frontend — Part I
In my career path, still short, I had the opportunity to work as a Frontend Developer and as a UX Designer.
In both my experiences, I was part of the minority. When I was a Frontend Developer I worked in an artist workplace, with big a focus on design, and when I was a UX Designer I was in a big tech company, where the designers were an endangered species.
Overall I enjoy working in both fields and there are things that I enjoy more in one field than the other.
They are clearly different fields, but since they can be done in similar workplaces and can be found inside the same team, maybe they aren’t so different. At least, that’s what I thought at first.
But here are some striking differences between the two that, maybe, will make prefer one over the other.
When I was writing this article I didn’t realize how long it would be, so I ended up dividing it into two parts. In this first part, I will be talking mostly about topics about my day to day work and characteristics that differentiate both. In the second part, I will talk about broader topics about each experience overall.
So, here are some of the points I will be talking about working on each field:
- My daily routine
- Who do I present my progress
- How do I present my progress
1. My daily routine
Just to give some contest on both my experiences so far.
When I worked as a frontend developer, I worked in a standard agile team, so my day would start with a daily stand up, where the team would discuss what was done the day before and what we should do next.
I enjoy the aspect of having a team, a group of people that you can continuously exchange ideas and knowledge. I believe that ends up creating a more interactive work environment.
As a UX designer, since there were few designers in the company, most of the time each designer worked on several projects with different methodologies. This way, I didn’t have a defined team to review my progress every morning.
It could be isolating at times, but over time I ended up incorporating myself with other designers. Even though we weren’t working on the same projects, this way, we could share our work, ask for quick feedback, that in my opinion is vital for any design-related work.
Usually, I was assigned to big tasks that would take me at least a few weeks and I could ask for any clarifications, to complete my work.
That was my day.
2. Who do I present my progress
As you could tell previously, as a frontend developer I worked in a team, so my progress was presented to my teammates and as a UX designer, my progress was given to a single person, my superior, that could give me most of the feedback that I needed.
Just here you have a striking difference. It’s the difference between having the feedback be given by a group of people and just one person. In my opinion, both have advantages and disadvantages.
I find having feedback from a group of people to be more diverse when it comes to ideas to solve your problem.
For me, it’s very encouraging to have a group of people thinking differently than you, that is always pushing you to work better, evolve more, and think differently. Most of these interactions end up being positive, but I also think that can lead to some waste of time when the team overthinks too much a problem.
Even though, as a UX designer, I built my mockups to a development team, I was not involved in the team routine so, my work was not regularly seen by the people who were going to develop it.
Receiving feedback from just one person, I think the output of the conversation ends up being a lot more focused and constructed, which I appreciate. On the other hand, fewer heads, fewer ideas, and more space for errors.
Another setback is that you end up losing that work environment that you have in a team, that encourages problem-solving and knowledge sharing.
I can’t say that “reporting” my work progress to a superior is bad. In my case specifically, the superior knew the business, the basics of design, and had contact with the client. So, in our meetings, we could get very important and constructive feedback.
On the other hand, I think both contacts, with the developers and superior, are essential to building good and innovative design. In my ideal work environment, both interactions would exist.
3. How do I present my progress
Working on both fields, I found two distinct work environments, one I was incorporated into a team that was involved in my everyday work, and a “lone wolf” work environment, where I would, occasionally, get feedback on my work, according to deadlines.
Being in an agile team with daily meetings, it was easy to keep all the team in sync in what I was doing, and what was the best approach for the work to come. At the same time, I would get the same view, on my teammate’s work.
This process ends up being very easy to follow, without wasting much time with each member and everyone leaves the meeting with a clear view of the work progress of the project in general and members individually.
Working solo as a UX designer, I worked for a few weeks in big tasks and in the end, I had to present them to my superior and eventually work on the feedback given.
In the beginning, as I was getting used to a “lone wolf” work environment, in contrast of an Agile team, I found it very hard to condense the amount of work and thought I put into my tasks, in a 30 min meeting, while keeping it structured and talking everything I wanted to talk about.
Over time, I found something that helped me. When the meeting was near, I had to take a few hours to organize everything, think of the flow I wanted the conversation to have, and take notes of my thoughts on each step and decision I made.
So in this case, I guess is tougher to give updates on UX, but at the same time, I think that taking the time to organize my thoughts, my design decisions and present it to someone, is a good exercise that will come handy in the future.
Having talked about the details of my daily routine working on each field, on the next part I will touch on more broad topics of my experiences, like the influence I have on the final product and how I see myself growing inside each field.
Thank you for reading.
