3. UX Careers: Growing in (and out of) Your Current Role (feat. Rachel Krause, UX Specialist at NN/g)
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This is the Nielsen Norman Group UX Podcast. I'm your host, Therese Fessenden, User Experience Specialist with NNG. On each episode, we'll bring together UX thought leaders and experts to discuss common industry questions, pressing UX topics, and of course, the power of having a truly great user experience. Today is no exception. Joining me is my colleague, Rachel Krause.

Rachel is a fellow UX specialist with NNG. Her expertise lies in agile design thinking, scaling design, UX leadership, and design operations, the practice of designing not only what we design, but how we design.

She is one of a few members of our team that has a visual design background, and she has been doing research the last few years about something near and dear to all of us, our careers. So on this podcast, we talk about her background and career, what a typical career path looks like in UX, and what entry-level UX pros and UX managers alike need to do in order to cultivate growth in their careers and in the careers of others.

It was a really eye-opening talk for both beginners and experts alike, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. So without further ado, it's my pleasure to welcome Rachel Krause. Rachel Krause

Thanks so much for joining us today, Rachel. I'm really excited to interview you, mainly because I know that you have visual design, graphic design background, but I don't really know what it was that brought you to UX. And I think learning that about you is something I'm really excited about. So tell me, what is your journey? How did you become a UX professional? Yeah, great question. So I'm a UX professional.

I went to school for graphic design. I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts in graphic design. And I started in print and production design. So I was working for advertising, marketing firms, and really just coming up with a lot of concepts that ultimately led nowhere. Like you create a billboard and then six months down the road, you're still iterating on the billboard and then the billboard gets canceled. So not really my cup of tea.

And then I went to a small like eight person company and we were doing just a ton of different stuff like, you know, print design, web design, customer support, answering phones. Like that's what you do when you work for a super tiny company. And there is when I did UI design for the first time. And I was like, oh, my God, I would love to do this more and more.

And so found out about UX, attended some local UX meetups, started to learn more, got my first job in UX, really just was under some amazing mentors, was given a lot of opportunities to just dive into projects, even as someone who was more junior in their skills for UX. And

I worked for several years on product teams, consulting with clients. And then I went to an organization after those several years, and they had this new and immature UX team. And they tasked me with kind of building out the UX services that we had, now that we had an extra person, and then building up the team as we went. And I'm sure you know, companies with immature UX teams just come with their own set of problems.

So I learned a ton about dealing with constraints, selling UX internally, educating others on the value of UX. And that's always just really been a passion of mine. So then I found the NNG job posting, got really excited about potentially taking my career to that level.

And I've been spending the last two years at NNG doing some research, breaking down complex concepts, and really just trying to expand our topics like storytelling in UX, scaling UX in organizations, and a big...

pet project of mine is UX career paths and careers in general. Yeah, I'm definitely really curious about that. And a lot of folks get into UX by way of design. But also, I know some of our own co workers have gotten in by way of

library science or by way of developing. So it's definitely interesting to see like the variety of paths. And I guess I'd like to know how typical would you say your path was compared to maybe some of these other different types of paths? Yeah, it's interesting that you say that too for NNG specifically, because there really are only a few of us that are disaster

designers at NNG that have that design background. And that was always really surprising to me because I think in the world you see in the UX field in general, you see a lot more designers than researchers, I think. And so it was cool for me to come to NNG and see that we had a lot of people with library sciences, psychology, like these very research heavy backgrounds, which was awesome. I would say my path is pretty typical of your average UX designer. They're coming from maybe this

art background or graphic design background. And they probably live in a similar world as I did, where my university didn't have UX degrees or human-commuter interaction disciplines that you could graduate with. So I found myself in design because that's where I was solving problems. But

I found as I was designing these UIs that it really made me think of the problems that users face. And I think that's a pretty logical conclusion that designers have. Whereas your researchers, they are typically coming from their social sciences background, psychology, sociology, other humanities kinds of majors. So I think the thing I love the most about UX is that there is no one common career path and we can all come from these different disciplines, which is

just like a melting pot of different perspectives, which I love. Yeah, definitely. And I'm one of those, if I think about my own career path, I came in through information science and social systems and human centered systems. So they didn't really call it UX. Uh, they called it human centered design. Um,

But even then, most of my work really focused on doing programming and wireframing some designs. And so I didn't really have as much of a research background. And so that's something when I got into UX, I was also really excited to try out this new facet or this new realm of UX.

I feel like this is a field where people tend to move horizontally. Like basically you spend a little bit of time on this part of the design process and a little more time on this part of the design process, um,

Maybe that as opposed to vertically, but maybe that's just my own experience. I'm really curious, what have you seen in your research? Is there a top to a UX career ladder or is it just perpetually moving sideways? Yeah, no, that's a really good point because I think for some people moving horizontally and not vertically up the ladder can be very frustrating. It can feel...

Like I want to be moving forward and instead I'm moving just, you know, laterally, which, you know, can be frustrating for people. But I think we're starting to see this more with specialized job titles. So while you may be moving horizontally on the ladder, you're really just more specializing in a certain type of work. So, for example, if you're, you know, more general UX designer, you're

and you take a new job, maybe as an interaction designer, then you're focusing more on the interactions, but not necessarily visual design or other aspects that could come with a UX designer role. So while that is a horizontal move, it's interesting because you're really doing different work. So it's not like we're moving laterally and taking the same job over and over again. And I'm sure you know, as well, every time I switch jobs, I feel like

That job is specialized in a slightly different thing, whether it's an industry or it's the type of work I'm doing. And so I think that we move horizontally, but we still get these rich experiences from the different jobs that we take. And the top of that UX career ladder is really going to be different depending on what interests you have or what specialty you decide to go forth in.

Okay. Yeah, that's interesting. I guess I never really thought about it from that perspective of like specialties in which there are career ladders. Am I understanding that right? Yeah. I mean, you could see it a couple different ways. So some people love to be a generalist for their entire career. That's amazing. I personally love to be a generalist because I like to kind of flex and –

you know, try things out at different points in my career. I love that. Other people would really just prefer to only focus on interaction design for their entire career and just keep getting more specialized and better at interaction design. So I think you can see, you know, when we talk about career ladders, you can see a career ladder for each type of specialty. So UX design, research, content, each one of those might have their own ladder. And then you might see,

a different ladder for management, for example. So right now I've been doing some research into career ladders at different organizations, whether that's in UX or adjacent fields like product or development. And I see those ladders typically split into these two different directions. So you've got your individual contributors versus your management. And to me, that makes total sense because they're really different skill sets, right?

Being a manager isn't just being an amazing UX designer. It's having people skills. It's wanting to grow others. And that really is so different from your day-to-day in the craft as an individual contributor. So I'm seeing when I'm looking at all these career ladders, you've got your individual contributors, which are you kind of go in your typical junior, mid, senior, or your level one, level two, level three, however that's represented at your company.

And then you move into kind of these higher roles as a lead director or like creative director or principal. And those are your individual career, individual contributor career paths.

Versus your management is, you know, maybe your first two levels are as an individual contributor. Then you get manager, senior manager, director, senior director, VP, C-suite. So your levels are really similar between both tracks, but you start to see your specialization change.

differ. So you might be your content designer that goes up the all the levels in the individual contributor path. Or you might be, you know, more on that management and working your way up on those levels. But they're, they're pretty parallel to each other. So they may have similar pay bands or similar responsibilities, but just a different type of skill that you're using.

So question, when you say individual contributor, what exactly do you mean by that? Yeah, individual contributor is a word, a phrase that I'm not a super huge fan of. But really what that means is you're focused on your craft. So your day to day is focused directly on the responsibilities of your particular role. So I'm an interaction designer, for example. I'm focused on interaction design. And as I move up that ladder, my skills in interaction design

either get better, they get wider. I may be mentoring those below me, but I don't have management responsibilities. I'm not in charge of someone else's career path necessarily. I'm more focused on my day-to-day responsibilities in interaction design.

Got it. That makes total sense. So you can have these two different career ladders, or at least split in that career ladder between contributing to user experience, basically it's development, it's design. And then you can also be a manager that manages people. And therefore there's a lot more people skills involved and maybe a little bit less time spent like in the domain of doing the actual work.

production of a design or a product or a service. That's a great point because when you go into management, I think sometimes there are people who go into management who miss doing the hands-on day-to-day work. And when you do go up that management ladder, that is what you start to see. You're less involved in the day-to-day craft.

You know, let's say you spend your entire day in Figma now and you want to go up to a manager level. Your entire day is not going to be spent in Figma anymore. And so I think it's important for people who want to get into that management career path to kind of know what to expect, because to be a good manager, to be that leader within your organization, you have to be dedicated to others and growing those other people. And so I think it's a fair expectation to know the difference between the two ladders that you might take.

This raises a lot of questions about this career split type of ladder where can you be a UX leader as an individual contributor or as an entry level employee? Or is this something where maybe you reach the top? Like what does being a UX leader mean in your eyes?

Yeah, for sure. Leadership first and foremost, and most importantly, does not equal management. And leadership does not equal being at the top of the ladder in either ladder that you choose. So whether you're taking that individual contributor path or your management path, or you're a junior UX person, you have opportunities for leadership in whatever role you're in. So you don't really need that title to be a leader in your organization. And

Personally, I am a huge...

advocate of, you know, just job titles are terrible. I hate job titles. I think they're very misleading. So any way that you can talk more about the roles that you play in your organization. So what is it that you do? But being a leader in UX is really evangelizing UX as a role, talking about the value of UX to others, educating others in your organization. It's not

throwing things over the wall, but it's about truly collaborating with others and just really breaking down these barriers and these frustrations between roles. And that's, you know, when I teach this class, I get a lot of people who are like, you know, the developers, we don't get along or me and the product owner, you know, hate each other or whatever that is. And it's really, it's, it's about the,

being the person who's going to say, you know what, I want to break down these barriers and I want to come together and truly collaborate. And sometimes that is, you know, coming through and talking about the value, educating those people on your teams who may not have been exposed to UX or maybe had a bad experience with UX before working with you. And, you know, really trying to

come together and work better together because we're advocates for users, but we have to bring other people along for that ride. It can't just lie on us to do that. That's some really good advice and definitely advice that I can even take sometimes. So I'm curious on the topic of advice, what advice could you give those looking to enter or transition into the field of UX?

These are people that I love to talk to, by the way. I live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I consistently come across people who are looking to transition into the field. Being in the Midwest of the States, we get a lot of people who are

maybe hearing about UX roles for the first time or not realizing it was a great job to have. But I think the biggest pieces of advice that I usually give people when I meet with them is that UX and tech, these are fields that are full of continuous learning. You're always learning. You're never going to be the best at everything. So there's really no room for ego. So we see a lot of

ego in roles about being the best and knowing everything. And number one, there really is no room for ego because we are working with others for others. So that's, I think, an important thing. We have to leave that at the door. And

What's great about UX is that there are so many paths and opportunities. You've likely encountered just really terrible experiences with products and services every single day. So anytime someone's like, hey, we have too many people in the field, the field is saturated, I point out at least five things that I've encountered today that were terrible experiences. So

I think there's definitely room. There's a path you can really cultivate for yourself when trying to get into the field. Use those skills that you have from whatever career you've been in previously and really apply those to this field because there's a reason we see so many different types of people working in UX because we all have these different backgrounds. And I love that. And

The last piece of advice I give, especially with career transitioners, because they've likely been in a field for several years. And when they go over to UX, they start to get really nervous. Like, oh, I'm, you know, I have 15 years experience in this field. Now I'm coming to UX as a brand new person. I have to start at the very bottom.

And so that really opens up the door for imposter syndrome. So thinking that people are going to find out that I don't know what I'm doing and we really can't let imposter syndrome get in the way. It's okay to try things and to not be so great at them the first time you're doing them.

But it really is all about getting the experience, doing things, doing them wrong to figure out what I need to do right and learning from others. So that's always my big one too is don't let that imposter syndrome take over your career and what you want it to be.

That, yeah, that really, that last piece of advice really speaks to me. And I wouldn't necessarily say I'm the newest to UX, but it really does speak to me. Especially when you're coming in from a totally different industry, it really can be a bit intimidating and a bit overwhelming to face all of the stuff that you realize you need to learn. So I 100% agree with that. And I guess...

a good segue into why I think that's also good advice for folks who've been in the industry, um, for a while and still think they might be imposters in some way. Oh yeah, for sure. I think with, with people who have several years under their belt, they're more seasoned, maybe they're a senior level UX professional. I mean, we still deal with imposter syndrome, imposter syndrome at many aspects of our career and, and

You know, maybe that imposter syndrome is a little bit smaller, but it's still there and you're managing it throughout. I think that's okay. I think that's something we should definitely embrace and just learn when we notice it and how we can direct it in a positive way.

And as far as advice for more senior level folks, really in my eyes to be a true senior level UXer, mentoring and coaching others is crucial. It's absolutely required. It's not just about doing the work and calling it a day and saying, I did my job. I'm a senior person. And I hear all the time that

about people who complain about low skill maturity of new UXers. And I'd rather have people discuss what they're doing about that. So in order to grow this profession, to get others to understand what we do, we have to start within UX. It's not just educating product owners and developers. It's talking to the junior level UXers, the career transitioners, the people who are wanting to get into this field. So we have to lend our expertise

We have to talk about our successes and our failures equally. And we have to just avoid gatekeeping the field. This is the biggest thing for me. I hate the gatekeeping. It's, you know, not everyone can do this. Only certain people can do this. I think we need to be more open with people who want to be a part of this field because they want to do well.

work that's going to help users. We should celebrate that. And we should talk about that more and help them come up into that. And so I think there's a lot of gatekeeping competition in the field. And I'd rather hear, you know, these people and myself included, talk about what we want to do to upskill those individuals. So that that's my big call to action to the senior level folks versus the people who are brand new. Yeah.

I think that's a really inspiring and motivating note to end on. I guess I've got one more question for you. And this is really about you. What lies ahead for Rachel Krause? Any cool projects that you're working on or that you might soon do? Yeah, that's...

I always have a very long to-do list of the things that I want to do. It's endless. And then it's just a matter of prioritizing what is going to be the thing that comes next. So right now I'm doing more research on career ladders. So I'm looking to define a few models for different scenarios, talk about like pros and cons of each. So super excited about that, gathering case studies, talking to people.

I'm gathering some other case studies for design ops, which is a class I teach as well as our storytelling topic, which is something that I've started on NNG is just talking more about storytelling, making it a full day course and just expanding the topic on our website on storytelling, because I think it is one of those skills that is so important to have that

It's not always talked about because it's hard to quantify storytelling. And then long term, I'm hoping to create a new course for our conferences. I haven't decided on a topic yet. There's probably a couple I'm playing around with, but I'm hoping that, you know, through some of this research, maybe it'll inspire me to do a new course. So yeah.

Yeah, just a long list always, Therese. You know that. Yes. Well, I know this is an audio podcast, so nobody saw it, but I did a little happy dance when Rachel said she's preparing a new course. It's always really exciting to hear about these new courses and to learn even now in our roles. So yeah.

All right. Well, Rachel, if there are folks who want to follow you or connect with you, what resources can you point them to? Yeah, I am mostly you can find me on LinkedIn, Rachel Krause. You can find me on Twitter at Rachel Krause. There's another there's like several other Rachel Krause's apparently. So at Rachel Krause is me. And yeah, sharing articles and videos and all of the fun things. Oh, and also cats. I love cats. So.

Sorry, lots of content. No need to apologize for that. All right. Well, thank you, Rachel. It has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for sharing your insights and for joining us today. Thanks, Teri.

Thanks for tuning in today. If you like what you hear and want more UX content, make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Also, check out our website for thousands of free articles and videos and for updates on upcoming learning events, both in person and virtual at www.nngroup.com. That's N-N-G-R-O-U-P dot com.

That's it for today's episode of the NNG UX podcast. Remember, keep it simple.