Sheldon Maxwell

I couldn’t have said it better. Design and UX are often seen as nice-to-have resources, leading to their undervaluation and insufficient staffing on Product teams. As a result, we frequently find ourselves stretched thin, doing our best to keep up with demands. Instead of being recognized for our contributions, we’re often labeled as bottlenecks, with teams opting to go around us. Worse yet, we’re sometimes told to spend less time on solving problems and merely focus on making things "look pretty". To my fellow UXers: seek out organizations that genuinely value your work and the contributions you make. I understand that times are tough, and we’re all doing the best we can with limited budgets. However, if a company claims to prioritize user experience, they need to back that up with real investment.

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Unless you work at Figma, Figma is probably not your UX career. It’s a tool in your UX career at this moment. Since 1991 and over the course of my time as an Architect, I have used: Hand sketches Hand-drafting DataCAD Generic CADD Visual CADD AutoCAD SketchUp Revit MiniCAD Vectorworks To accomplish the same task of designing and documenting building design projects. It depended on the year, the company, and available technology and requirements for the task at hand. Had I dug in my heels and been unwilling to learn new software as it became available, I’d be long out of the business. My feed is abuzz with news from #FigmaConfig this week, much of which is interesting and exciting. But don’t confuse a UX product with a UX career. Someday, Figma will probably be replaced as an industry standard. How quickly did it replace Sketch and XD? Pretty darn quick! The fundamentals of a design career will remain essential as products come and go. Be sure to study and grow your fundamental design skills. It will make you more likely to remain relevant and remain teachable for whatever the next wave of innovation brings. #figma #config #uxdesign #lifelonglearning

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I've spent the majority of my career as the only designer on an isolated team—or the only designer at the entire company. This experience has been invaluable, allowing me to take ownership of countless projects and rapidly gain expertise in various aspects of design. But there’s a flip side. Without a team, there’s no clear career path, no organic mentorship, no healthy peer competition… It’s easy to feel like you’re in a bubble, unsure of how you stack up against the wider design world or what you need to improve to reach the next level. To be honest, I’ve felt lost at times. Recently, my manager gifted me a book that has been a game-changer: The Path to Senior Product Designer by Artiom Dashinsky. If you’ve ever felt lost in your career, want to advance, or simply feel like you’re not doing enough, I can’t recommend this book enough. It provides clear guidance on how the industry grades and evaluates designers at all levels, with practical exercises to help you map out your journey to the next stage. Read it, follow the exercises, and you’ll know where you stand and where you need to go.

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Craft is work done with intuitive expertise - learned deeply by conscious practice through mentorship. Craft is expensive. The mimicry and pattern replication of AI will upend digital craft much like the Industrial Revolution did for physical craftspeople (only faster). It will likely be CFOs who crush craft like origami as they optimize balance sheets. If you love your craft, find a complex niche whose business model is based on value creation not eyeball acquisition. Government especially needs you.

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Part of this is also to read the room. Do you consider your audience partners in the design or primarily stakeholders? But overall, this is a great point. What’s the key result and how does it relate to business goals? “Don’t tell them how the watch works, tell them what time it is.”

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🤦‍♂️ "Just hire more designers!" ...said every exec who's never managed a marketing team. Stop throwing bodies at the problem. I learned this $200,000 lesson the hard way. Adding 5 new designers to our team actually SLOWED us down for 6 months. Onboarding chaos, inconsistent outputs, and endless revision cycles. The real solution? We built a template system that 3X'd our output with the same team size. Quick breakdown: • Audited top design requests • Created flexible templates • Trained team on the system Now my designers focus on innovation instead of recreating the same buttons 50 times. Plot twist: We're delivering more projects than teams twice our size. Sometimes the best solution isn't hiring more people - it's working smarter. #DesignOps #B2BMarketing

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Totally agree with the great Jared Spool. It is mandatory to analyze how could you stand out from the crowd. And if you've working for some time, you can do it. If you're not, it's doable as well. If you want to migrate to this area...well, you gotta work harder, but also possible. Productize yourself for a moment to be aware of your hard skills and get back to your human condition to think about your soft skills. Merge them. Show them. Strategically.

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🍿 Who doesn't love a good debate on hypotheticals? I don't think there is a magic ratio of designers and developers that can apply to every company, like 1:5 or 5:1, and I don't suppose Jared does either (literally) but I appreciate the sentiment that he'd rather have more researchers than designers if he had to pick one extreme or the other. However, I can say that hiring *and empowering* SOME designers and SOME researchers are much better than trying to build, release and maintain products or services with product and engineering alone, for example. I understand budgets are tighter, but true expertise in UX research and product design is not something to skimp on, one way or the other, if you want happy _________ (users, customers, employees, partners, etc) and long term viability.

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"We have designers who have innovative hypotheses as they conceptualize projects. What I do as a researcher is study those concepts, collect and analyze data, and verify hypotheses that support our work." Learn more about Mahshid Jalalian—who was recently recognized as a Healthcare Design Rising Star—and her work as a Design Researcher. In this Quick Take, we explore the concepts and projects fueling her passion for design innovation ⬇ https://lnkd.in/enKQzgu3

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Life never ceases to surprise us in unexpected ways. Sometimes we quickly find the silver linings, while other times we struggle to understand why we're facing certain challenges. However, we often learn to push our boundaries and uncover the hidden potentials within ourselves in these moments of uncertainty. I love this framing of self-renewal. At times, we're thrown into situations that force us to find a new direction, while other times, we have to rely on our instincts to guide us forward. For anyone feeling lost or uncertain about the future, use this as a chance to discover your untapped potential. Read books, engage with people, and step out of your comfort zone without fearing the outcome. The answers will eventually come.

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It was a privilege to share our best tips for creating accessible representations of data, and the importance of building accessible charts, graphs and visualizations in products. It was an honor to be a part of such an amazing lineup of speakers at the World Usability Congress this morning. #dataaccessibility, #datavisualization #a11y

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I want to highlight a problematic practice that's all too common in the design hiring process: - Initial call with a high-level executive like a CTO or CPO. - Assignment of a take-home project based on their product. - The internal team reviews the submission. - Occasionally, they provide feedback. - Additional 2-3 rounds of interviews. While I don't inherently oppose design tasks, there's a crucial issue here: Companies exploit designers by leveraging their skills for free on real products. In a competitive job market, this can lead to multiple candidates providing free labour for a single role. This practice disproportionately affects those with demanding personal lives, such as single parents or caregivers, who simply don't have the luxury of extra time. Design tasks should adhere to these principles: - Focus on hypothetical or unrelated products/services. - Be strictly timeboxed to respect candidates' time. - Acknowledge the limitations designers face, like the lack of access to real customer feedback. Let's advocate for a fairer, more respectful hiring process.

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Hot Take: There is a pervading concept in UX that designers have intentionally avoided responsibility to the business and/or the product team for our design work. I think that's a myth, out and out. I've never seen designers actively try to put their product outcomes on others except in the following 2 cases: 1) Design is so junior as to not be capable of driving conversations about product strategy (skills and experience lacking) or 2) There was an epic battle over strategy and the designer was threatened/bullied/harassed by leadership into being quiet. I've been in both positions many times. Once I learned strategic product skills, I stopped being a victim to the former. After that, I was exclusively a victim of the latter, in nearly every design gig I held. If you don't want change or strong opinions, don't get design involved. If you want to blame design, don't do it around me unless you want an earful.

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Are you a UX Designer #opentowork? More specifically, in the San Francisco Bay Area or California. I get a TON of emails for these roles, and this isn't what I do. I have certification. I understand it. I may dabble in it, or apply the principles in my graphic design, but I have no desire to make it my focus. I thought I had more UX in my connections. If you want to be added to the list of alternate candidates I provide to these recruiters, please comment or send me a connect with a message. Alternatively, if we're already connected and you don't have a green banner or explicitly have "UX" in your headline, let me know. #uxdesigners #uxui #referrals #networking #sanfranciscotech #sanfranciscobayarea #sanfrancisco #california

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10 alternative careers for Service, Product or UX designers. 1. Escape Room Designer You’re already great at guiding people through experiences and solving complex puzzles, so why not get paid to trap them in one? Bonus: Watching people yell at their friends while you sip coffee in the control room. 2. Customer Complaint Whisperer You know exactly what went wrong before the customer even finishes their first sentence. As a professional whisperer, you'll turn frowns upside down with ninja-level empathy and systems-thinking skills. Bonus: Zen-like calm during all customer meltdowns. Inner peace: unlocked. 3. “Human-Centered” Detective You’re already skilled at gathering user insights and spotting hidden pain points. Channel your inner Sherlock Holmes and start solving actual mysteries. Bonus: Every time you crack a case, whisper, "It was a journey map all along." 4. App Review Influencer You’re an expert in what makes a good interface, so why not make a living critiquing every app on the market? Bonus: A "1-star review" can become your battle cry, and you’ll forever change the app world (one angry emoji at a time). 5. Virtual Reality Tour Guide You’re already designing immersive experiences—why not jump into the metaverse and guide avatars on journeys they'll never forget? Bonus: Zero dress code. Show up in your pajamas, nobody will know. 6. “Everything Needs a User Flow” Consultant Turning messy workflows into seamless systems is your jam. Now apply that magic to everything—whether it's improving someone's morning coffee ritual or redesigning the DMV's entire process. Bonus: PowerPoint presentations with more arrows than you ever thought possible. 7. Professional “Unboxer” Great at figuring out how people feel as they interact with products? Become a YouTube star by reviewing and unboxing every gadget you can get your hands on. Bonus: Free stuff. Just make sure you don't get too attached to that robot vacuum. 8. Journey Map Tattoo Artist People love visual journeys, so why not make them permanent? Take your service blueprint skills and put them on skin—because every customer interaction is a story worth telling, right? Bonus: Your “UX of Life” sleeve collection will be the talk of every design conference. 9. Microcopy Mastermind You know the perfect words to guide users through any interface, so why not write the perfect one-liners for cereal boxes, elevator buttons, or even bathroom signs? Bonus: Finally, an excuse to put “Pithy Wordsmith” on your LinkedIn profile. 10. Design Thinking Yoga Instructor You’re already good at getting teams to breathe through complex problems. Now, combine the mindfulness of UX with actual breathing exercises. "Stretch your personas and your hamstrings!" Bonus: Co-creation workshops meet hot yoga—get ready for some seriously sweaty prototyping. #servicedesign #UserExperience #outsideir35 #available

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If you want to be really, really good at UX... Focus on what really matters and avoid making dumb mistakes. What matters: -Stakeholder buy in and commitment -Good user research -Iterative design + testing with users -Detailed specifications and robust component libraries -Extensive QA testing to flush out the bugs before shipping Dumb mistakes: -Berating design suggestions from non-UX team members -Behaving like design prima donnas, thinking that designers can do no wrong -Whining about not having a seat at the table when you have neither earned it nor demonstrated the capacity to sit there -Criticizing engineers and PMs for behaving like engineers and PMs Note: both lists are incomplete, but hopefully they give the gist #ux  #userexperience  #userresearch #design

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When I talk to companies about bringing on a UX writer/content designer, I get one of two responses: ” We don’t need one” or “I wish, but our VP/executives don’t see the value.” 🤦‍♀️ As they say this to me and I browse their product, I see spelling mistakes, inconsistent casing, CTAs with dark patterns, unclear or absent instructional text and confusing naming conventions that lead to incomplete actions. They don’t realize that a bad user experience negatively impacts your product. Poorly written text can lead to: - Users relying on support/account managers every time they don’t understand something that’s not explained inside the product - Modals that confuse users with conflicting CTAs/actions and lead to mistakes - Confusing terminologies or product names because they have the same naming conventions or they also have another context and meaning - Low product retention and high abandonment rates - Support ticket backlogs with usability issues - Low adoption rates for new features because they lack instructions, onboarding or market research Does this post hit a nerve? Talk to me to improve your user experience and increase retention rates to deliver a simple and clear message to the user. #UX #UserExperience #ContentDesign #UxWriting #productmanagment

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Dear anyone who posts about a UX or Product job: In addition to posting the job description, PLEASE include these 2 details in your post: 1) Whether or not the role is remote (and details) 2) What countries / regions people should live Often this information is either not in the job description and/or not clear because of bad UX on the actual job description page. By including these details, you'll reduce the number of comments and DMs that ask "is this remote" or "can I apply if I live in (country)". Share this to help spread this message so we can make hiring posts on LinkedIn more useful! PS: Bonus if you add an accurate salary range 😉 #uxdesign #uxresearch #productdesign #ux

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