Name: Noah Whitney
Major: Experience Architecture
Hometown: Jackson, Michigan
What’s something you liked about your major?
Whitney: The major is great at being open and connecting you with other UX professionals. If you have any interest in UX or even just a specific facet of UX (such as accessibility), it’s very easy to get into the major and get a feel for it. It’s full of people that have done UX and related fields for a living in the past (or still do, currently) so the network you build furthers your knowledge of UX.
What’s something you disliked about your major?
I felt pretty unprepared for working on an actual, full-fledged project in my job after graduation. We created so many assets that were just wasted after creation and grading in my courses. I knew about the existence of certain tools and methods, but I didn’t know when to apply them in a project in any meaningful way. We would make some asset using some method, then get a grade on it with some basic feedback. After that it would be on to the next thing without us actually truly understanding how to use the thing we had just created. Sure, there were attempts at trying to give us a whole project to work on, but the guidance wasn’t the best so those projects usually ended up being poorly executed in most cases. The major really needs an overhaul that provides the deep dives into these tools that demonstrate their use cases and importance in the field and on projects.
What’s an extracurricular that you felt prepared you for something in your current position?
XA — Experience Architecture — club was pretty good. We had plenty of people come in and talk about their experience working in the field, giving us a general overview of what to expect (at least as someone working in their position). We also had a bunch of practice putting the methods we would learn about in courses into action. I wish the club would have done a bunch of deep dives into these tools. Apart from that, I gained a lot of knowledge that I use in my current job from the Student Innovation Team, which I think is an actual internship-like position in the Hub on campus. I learned about connecting the tools and methods we learned in class to real projects that clients came to us for assistance on. Many of the actions I take now are based on those experiences.
What is your current job?
I work as a UX Designer at RSI Logistics, which is a company that provides various services in the rail industry.
What’s something you like about your job?
I like that my job requirements are very open. I’m basically allowed to do whatever I want as long as it is demonstrating that progress is being made toward new features or changing features. I get to decide everything about the UX process and am very heavily involved in all of the creation process, which is something that was discussed quite a bit in different courses for my major.
What’s something you dislike about your job?
I partly dislike the fact that it is so open. Being as new to UX as I am, fresh out of college and all, not having even an ounce of guidance that I can get from more knowledgeable co-workers turns the openness of my job into a double-edged sword. I can do any processes that I feel are meaningful, but I don’t have the industry knowledge that a professional has. This means that feedback on my actual processes requires significantly more work to gain and make sense of. If I botch some aspect of, say, usability testing or something, I may not even know what I did wasn’t great, even after the fact. Optimally I would have found a job right off the bat that had at least one other person that has been doing UX for a bit, but I do not have that luxury. All my industry knowledge, therefore, has to come from just practicing, trying things out and of course conferences, gatherings and stuff like that. I’ve been meaning to do that for a bit but the whole pandemic thing put an end to many of my plans there.
What’s something that your time at MSU prepared you for your current job?
Pretty much all my general knowledge in UX came from my time at MSU. I had 3 internships before my current job, but none of them involved direct UX practices that one would expect to use in a UX Designer job. The closest one I had was an accessibility internship, but that is a single aspect of a very broad field, and I did practically no actual UX design work on that job. The same goes for the other two jobs, which were mostly internal process improvement. UX was certainly involved, but it wasn’t the full project creation like I’m doing now. The different classes I took and the extracurriculars I took part in taught me everything I knew going into my current job. Of course, I was testing things, noting UX practices down and learning UX on my own time, but the bulk of it was directly involved with MSU.
What’s something you felt underprepared for taking on this new position?
By far the biggest thing I felt underprepared for was planning and knowing when to use certain tools and methods. Sure, I can do a load of UX processes, but reality hit hard when I got on the job and realised I’ve never actually worked on the UX of a full project before, and had absolutely no idea where to start. At MSU, I was basically told exactly what to do during the course of a very specific project, but not a single one of the classes taught us the bigger picture and how everything fits together. Despite being on the job for about 10 months now, I still feel rather unprepared for many situations, and I know there are a lot of areas that I need to improve on, but lack the understanding on how to proceed. Being the only UX person in my entire company puts a lot of strain on my bandwidth, so I try to learn new things and try out new methods when I can. The XA program could have certainly helped a lot more with this, but there isn’t much I can do now except adapt and learn as I go. Luckily my company is very forgiving when it comes to stuff like this, and I’m allowed to practice as many new things as I want, as long as it’s productive and I’m learning something and improving our processes or application while I do it.
What would be your dream job if your current position isn’t your dream job?
My dream job would be working in a position similar to what I am doing now, but with a whole team of UX designers to work with, with a development team that can accomplish our vision for a user experience with as little change or compromise as possible. It’s a dream job for a reason, I don’t think I’m ever going to find a job that has only a few compromises when doing things. I’m not sure what my dream industry would be though. Working on something like the interface for an electric car or video game would be pretty fun, I think.
What’s some advice you’d give to people in your major?
Go out and commit to as many deep dives on the stuff you learn as possible. The major provided me with very little in how to apply the methods we learned in deep, meaningful ways. Figuring out the entire puzzle for yourself by talking with other UX Designers (outside of MSU, in different fields), joining extracurriculars and finding internships that provide a mentor that can teach you exactly what you want to learn is going to be very important. The last bit will be hard for most, so focus with what you have available to you while still searching for that best learning experience.