 Hey everyone, today we are going to talk with Chris, the US design lead, the mentors and consultant for broad development about what is the importance of US, especially with broad development, what is the key personalities that make the very successful US designer and Indian, I believe this very interesting topic that Chris may open with you about her interviews, what is the key ingredient that he may add for finding the right US designer in his team. Perfect, let's get started. Yeah, let's get started. Yeah, so I'm Chris, I've been a UX designer for the past eight years, I've worked at product companies and also consultancy where I met Swan, we worked together for about two and a half years and I spend most of my time now mentoring, training and hiring UX designers. So kind of getting a bit out of the craft of UX, but really a design leadership role. So yeah, today, as you mentioned, you're going to ask me some questions about UX and I'm going to try and help you guys answer some and hopefully clarify some miscommunication, misalignment, whatever the, I guess, how do I say it, whatever the vague thing about user experiences, because I think a lot of industries out there that don't quite know and students don't quite know. So let's dive into it. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks. Okay, so I think the very first question is like, people may hurt about UX, but they don't really understand what is the important of UX into the software development, especially with the product development. So I think let's start with that one. Okay, so the question is the importance of UX in product or software development? Yes. This is an easy one. No, yeah. So, of course, it's really important. I think typically, let's just say, 10 or even 15 years ago, it was sort of engineering led culture, right, software development because it's all about code. And we know now in the past, however many years that UX is so key, because basically why it's so key is because the customer touches it, right? It's what the customer sees and how they interact with this product. So yeah, it's a fundamental pillar of software development. So if I was to draw a Venn diagram, three concentric circles that overlap, which is it's product slash business, and then it's user experience, and then it's the tech or software engineering, right side. And in the middle is really what the customer wants and needs. And without those three circles and those three practices, I don't think you can really create a successful product, a well loved product. So it's just fundamental. And if you don't have UX in your product development cycle, if it's an afterthought, then the customer can always see it and they always know that this company hasn't spent enough time. So the reason why I start with that easy question is because from me, honestly, US is just come to my mind recently five years and before that, mostly when we start with most of these outsourcing projects, we know about UI design, mostly about some design for Photoshop or something like that. And what is the big difference between UI design and UX? What is the key mentor thing for making that change into the software development cycle? So okay, so let's break down that question into a few pieces. So the first one is like UX and then it's UI. What is the difference, right? The difference is that the UI you're focusing on what the customer interacts with. So if you think about it, it could be like any sort of interface, whether it's physical or whether it's digital. So you can think of like a light switch as a user interface, a table is used interface, right? So what the customer actually touches and interacts with. And then the UX part is like what are their needs? Why do we need to build a light switch? Because they want to switch on the light because they want to illuminate their room. Why do they need a table to put a drink on to put a mic on? So it's the fundamental need and discovering the problems and therefore you brainstorm some solutions and then the UI designer sort of takes those needs and then makes it the interface on how people interact with, right? And then the second part of your question was, remind me again, like for what is the gap from having the UI design and US design to the like product development? So the gap between like just UI designers and then like and UX designers, right? Okay. I think there's like, there's, there's, of course, there's like some knowledge around like how to do research, how to maybe test what is viable for the customers. And then there's like skill sets as well, right? Like if you need research, you need to know how to talk to people, need to write interview scripts, need to analyze data, not say that UIs designers don't do it, but they do it in a different way, right? And then, yeah, UIs designers focus on things like micro interactions, more like the branding part of it and really the look and feel, right? And basically what the customer touches, UX, the customer will never really see that, right? It's kind of like the back end development, right? It's much more easier. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can imagine like UIs, the front end development, and then UX is the back end development. So that is kind of how they interplay. And a lot of companies have the front end, but they don't have the back end of this UX field, right? They just have the front because they think that's all that you need. But actually, if you don't have a good infrastructure and system architecture, then your product is kind of shit, right? Like, yeah, yeah. So it's all broken. So that, that would be my analogy in the software development. Honestly, it's very interesting, like definitions, like back end front end, especially for our engineers, they may understand this a bit better when they understand like how you guys work, what is different between like, when there's a member like called US designer working in the team for this, what they are doing. And for UI design, what's the difference? And like for that part, like from the engineering perspective, I just want to understand it a bit better. Like for the people who want to try it for UX designer positions, what is the key personalities or attitudes that they may need? Yeah, I think one of the ones that everybody says, and I believe it to be true, is that don't fall in love with your solution. Because I think a lot of times when you design something, you spend lots of time on it, and you're like, Oh, this is really good. And then you put it in front of some people and they just can't work it out. Right? So it's, it's not falling love with your solution, because it will have to evolve and change based on the need. Right? So I think, yeah, that's that's a key thing to really like strive for perfection, but knowing that your design will never be perfect. So that's a mentality that's really hard for a lot of people. How can you keep it balanced? Like strive for the perfect but like understand that it never be perfect. Yeah, because like most designers, you know, whatever designer you are, you're like a craftsman, right? You like build this really nice table and you spend so much time on it. But in the digital world, you can build it a lot faster. And it has to adapt with the evolving needs. And like if you build a table, the table is finished. And that's it, right? If the customer want to change it, it's really, really hard. But we're software development is super easy. So and also, you're kind of guessing what the customer wants based on your research. So if so when you release that product, it's kind of like, Oh, well, if it doesn't work, then you have to change it, right? But but like the perfection is like, try to try to really nail what the customer wants or try to nail what the problem is with the platform and how it better aligns like business goals, for example. So it's like, you want to strive for perfection because you want to like really iron out everything that's wrong. But the first but knowing that perfection takes a long time, and you might never get it right, but you're always trying to do that. Another thing is kind of learning a lot of things like just learning and growth in general, because with this fast moving industry, I think like software development as well, it's like always like new tools, new languages, new things to learn, right? New industries like NFT and crypto. So it's like for UX designer, they really have to soak in like all the industry trends and figure out how they sort of navigate their knowledge of like designing, let's say, a NFT marketplace because it's so new, right? So it's just all about learning. And then maybe the last one is experimentation. Yeah, like I said, there's so many new things. It's all I think it's, I think, yeah, you need to like try new techniques if like one thing doesn't work, do it again, or try a different way. And this is that whole striving for perfection as well. How do you strive for it? You do it through experimentation, like just trial and error, trial and error. And then also that, of course, overlaps with learning. Yeah. So just my curiosity, so I know like what is that day to day fly from the engineering science, but how it looks like from the US design on that you share, you share, that how can you manage the time for experiment things like focusing on your products, do the like the change and like do your research, how you balance all these things. Yeah. So like, I think like any other software development project or project in general, there's different phases, right? So day to day could be very different based on what phase. So you could be one day speaking to five customers and writing notes and recording the session. Another day you could spend in your design tool, like just in Figma or Sketch and just kind of like messing about. The other day could be analyzing the results that people have used your product like Google Analytics or any of these other platforms where you get your results. So it could be varied. Of course, like meetings, like it's just really depends on which cycle you are in the product development phase and how far you are to the end product, the closer you are to the end product, then you'll probably be in, you know, the design tool itself tweaking it and then analyzing the results versus if you're at the beginning, then you're actually like preparing scripts interviews and like running around trying to like do your research basically. It's matching with the agile process right? Yeah. Yeah. Nice. So when you're working with the software development teams, especially with the peers who are US designer in Vietnam, so what is your opinion about like the maturities of UX in general and US career in Vietnam? Yeah. So let's go for the maturity question first of UX design in Vietnam. I think overall the market is fairly immature. I think there's definitely a percentage of people that kind of know the craft and been doing it for years and but it's still quite rare and it's not the same ratio as in US or Singapore or any other these more developed markets. So it's quite immature, but there's the good thing is that there's a lot of people in the community that kind of spread these best practices like design ops or research best practices. But typically you don't get the same roles in Vietnam that you would get elsewhere in let's say let's say in a Google in the US. They're much more specialized. They're much more deep with their craft. So like let's just say micro interactions would be from sorry micro interactions would be from a you know motion graphic person that also has UX chops but here that just doesn't exist. That's just like the whole UI designer role right. So yeah I think it's more generalized here. It's usually UX UI so they want you to do everything. They want you to be a generalist but as Vietnam matures you'll have to get more specialized companies get bigger. You'll have people going deep into the craft. And the other part of the question was like for a US career in Vietnam. So yeah what is the chance for people like let's say if they want to try with the US career. So what is your comments or your opinion about how it goes in Vietnam like along with the software development and also a lot of startup companies and product like appears a lot in Vietnam. What is my advice to UX designers who want to start or no. Can be let's say because you said that the US market in Vietnam is prime matures but the specialist is quite rare. So let's say if one wants to start their career as the US career and what should they start. Should start designing products. Yeah that's what they should do. Yeah they should soak in as much information as possible and basically either get internships or do work for free or work for very very cheap. I think that's always the best one. So either you could so yeah I did a video on this like ages ago but like there's a few ways that you could like become a UX designer. One is like go to school and pay lots of money for it and either it's physical school or online and those things are quite expensive. There's lots of free resources online so go there. The other is internship which you get very little money anyway and then the fourth one is do personal projects or work for free. And those mixture of all those things I never went to school for it I just did it. But you can do like now there's so much education around this field you can easily find that but the best way to learn UX is to do it because the education part of it teaches you like a process but with UX design there's no one process fits all. So it's like if you don't do it over and over again and figure this out then it's very hard to sort of like just remember like the good practices in your head. I really like the idea of like do it for free or try to dump yourself. Yeah because for me South Slider takes the scholarship from the market like you have the scholarship from the company or any product or startup companies for giving you the chance for trying this acting the role and after you learn from that and these are practical lessons. It's completely different with the theoretical one. You learn from school and in the end you still need to differentiate what is the ways that you can apply it in your day-to-day job right. Exactly yeah it's like learning CS right computer science it's highly theoretical and then when you're in the market and you're trying to build a web app you're just like oh well I know like the concepts but I don't know any of these languages. I wanted to take actually a human computer interaction course for masters and masters is a little bit different it's more practical and you get to work with like these organizations so then I actually decided not to and just like if I spend two years in a masters why don't I just spend two years working and actually learning and earning money I think that's the best thing also a tip nobody cares if you like go to school for UX basically nobody cares like me being a hiring manager don't care I mean it's okay it's cool but like really is about the work you've done the experience in the field what you've worked on who you've worked with so it's really about the experience it's still a very how do I say it um vocational job it's like it's a it's a doing thing it's it's like carpentry it's like it's like a being a mechanic yeah interesting point that you mentioned about like if you are hiring managers so I think it would be a very interesting part for the audience to understand like if you are the hiring managers let's say if I'm the candidate today's what is the interview process looks like for having you the right candidate for a u.s designer in your team okay in my team specifically yes okay um well typically it's uh online portfolios so if you if you apply you should have an online portfolio nobody wants a pdf right don't send me if you don't let me download anything I just want to access it so typically the recruiter goes through the portfolio or we do and then in this market you have to basically call people to validate if the English is good enough right and that's also from the portfolio and then if you get through those two rounds it's usually a test so just to test your chops you shouldn't spend more than you know a couple of days on it and we don't really require you to after that we'll mark and grade the test we won't let give you the results if it's good enough then um we will invite you for an onsite and then with the onsite we kind of dig out like questions and stuff like around the solution why did you choose this why why didn't you do that have you thought about this just to see how they present their designs and can they back their solutions up and also do they always think they're right because they don't know they're right but if they pretend they're right it it's kind of like well okay this is not really what UX designers do because taking feedback is such a huge part of our work and during the onsite so it's like okay we grade that sort of or we ask you questions based on your design solution that you presented but then we also test how quickly you are on your feet how quick can you think so we typically give you like a whiteboard challenge right like design the solution in less than 15 minutes and then we sort of collaborate with you see how we can work together are you quick do you consider lots of things it's really to put a little bit of pressure there's also a bit of fun you know whiteboard activities are typically fun then after that we extend the offer so um I know other companies do a little bit different but that's typically the process that I go through okay so honestly I want to go a bit deeper into that like process because uh like I'm also somehow acting at the hiring reservoirs for engineering so uh to identify what is the levels of the candidate like the popular ways junior mid-level and seniors so the strategies from the engineering side we may apply that know what know how know why or ASK some things some strategies like that so what is the strategy from UX guys for having that definition of level from the candidate yeah um actually it could get quite complicated really depends on how your company or team uh validates what's important right so we built up this matrix of like lots of different areas to to ensure that people get promoted holistically versus if you're just really good at like prototyping right but maybe the communication or spreading the good word of the company is also okay so there's a there's a whole matrix but specifically on hiring it's really about first their technical skills so like how good they are UI how good they are at presenting their designs um have they shown that they have research capabilities so like all the sort of like nitty gritty parts of it um and then also high level if you're more senior then you might think about more of the macro view they're more strategic like you know um what uh you can propose like what this product can do or or understand sort of the industry as a whole uh if you're more of a junior then you're probably worried more about the execution and like the flows or something like that right so we'll try and tease that out with uh with questions it's very hard to do on the test right uh but you can then say have you thought about this uh how do you think that Airbnb would design the same thing given that they have millions of users with lots of different languages uh so yeah it's it's all about first grading the the technical solution and how they come to it and then following up with like which level do you think they are based on what they show okay that's great you know like sounds much more complicated yeah yeah so uh how about like your day-to-day interaction with like engineers because uh I think it's also the important part to like convert the ideas into the real digital product right yeah and one of the questions from me and also from some members that I used to manage that there's a desk they want to know like from the engineering side do they need to understand or learn or try to have the knowledge or the views from the us so that first is can have the collaborations from two different sides and after that they can understand it what you share with them regarding to the features the product a bit better what do you think yeah I think um best practices is involve engineers early people who are actually building what it needs to be sometimes we might design solutions that are overly complicated or yeah just impossible right yep yeah yeah especially when product development is so like time sensitive if we need to ship in this quarter you can't like go crazy right you can't do like an ar thing everything yeah yeah like it's just like it's impossible so yeah involve like interact like the best practices of interaction is involve engineers early and each step of the way and make sure someone is senior enough to tell you that is it possible or not because maybe the juniors will try it but they don't really know the business aspect or the time that it will take maybe they're just interested in it right so get a senior engineer on your side run them through you know what you're trying to do and really kind of handhold them through the process because I think one of the jobs of the UX designer is to basically collect every everybody's view and put it together and then translate that into like a tangible solution so that's how you do it and then for the other side of engineering's how much UX do they know I think it would only benefit their career I think especially for like front-end engineers yes because they are actually working on things that customers touch if they don't know anything about best practices of UX or interactions it's very hard for them because they'll have to they basically have to look at like static things and figure out how it should work whereas like the UX and them should collaborate on how should work because front-end engineers will know the best practices of like the web for example right and things like that or like material design and so it should be really close collaboration so yet again at different phases of the project you'll have to be closer to the engineers at the beginning you probably don't have to be too close involve them just a little bit at the beginning sort of just get their blessing on what you're working on and then towards the end of this or the middle to the end it's like you're really delivering the product so and then you and the back end and the front-end engineer should really be sitting in you know the same table and like keep on going back and forth and of course we've got bug fixes as well right like designers are more detail-oriented I would say than sometimes front-end developers so they're then like you know front-end will need UX help and it's really it's really like overlapping right yeah yeah so I think it's also important like from my perspective as the manager is like if the engineers they understand the perspective from the UX so they can have their own shift on what they're doing did not need to come to you or the manager or the leaders for asking what should I do with these more things so it's bring more complicated and also a standard time for equipment and also it does not bring your own signatures on the products right yeah that's true I think yeah front-end developers deserve ownership of the product they're building right like if the customers are touching it they should be the ones to be like I think this should be better this way or like why not right like it's never really too late to propose changes for the good of the product so yeah that's why you have to involve them when you're building a solution otherwise nobody just wants to execute right yeah interesting so you also remind me about a very light strain and like unforgettable experience when we do the US workshops together in one slide so you want to share some things about that like what is the common practice for facilitating that workshop and what's the impact of having the US workshop and not having the workshop in the product like starting initial part yeah yeah UX workshops is something that I also discovered in wise line but and then it was very successful and it helped us basically convert a lot of clients into real customers but also help the whole product development cycle so without a UX workshop a UX designer would basically like speak to people like different teams kind of what's the word sorry let me just take a drink yeah so the UX designers basically speaks to a lot of different parties and trying to put all that information together so I guess it's siloed now people aren't speaking to it like product and engineering aren't speaking to each other customers and marketing you know have their view but nobody else knows what they talk about right so yeah and then basically that UX designer will then say okay based on everything someone needs to approve these decisions and then I can then move forward right usually someone approves the product manager or the CEO whoever is the decision maker that's bad because nobody knows what you're doing yeah right nobody knows who said what and why uh with UX workshops it's like everybody gets in the same room uh you can spend a few hours or even you know like a week together right which we did and you basically hash out everything that's uh that you're thinking about that's wrong and and a UX designer's job to to facilitate is to come up with activities that tackle a specific set of problems where it's like understanding the user right building solutions like what are the best ideas um voting on you know different themes or even creating um themes based on what everybody said in the room so there's a lot of these like tactics or activities that you run and really depends on what the group needs so that's a that's another UX thing it's like okay well what does this product need and what sort of information or inputs do we need in order to get the best output and based on that understanding and that workshop everybody has agreed to move forward in a certain way and if they object too bad right now everybody has agreed of course it's not a democracy uh there's still a decision-making in the room but to have that decision-making in the room say this is what I want to do based on everybody's knowledge and everybody's expertise so it's really really good um it would basically save you a lot of time and a lot of effort to then go back and yeah and change stuff so it's just a fundamental practice that um everybody should use yeah I think that I really engage in that workshop because I remember actually like after that one so everybody on the same page and we made the decisions as a team yeah and it never had happened the situation is like we go back to discuss about the things that we agree before and it had the teams for going forward much faster yeah yeah exactly exactly for the one I think like also the facilitation skill is like quite a really hard one to adapt with your situation right yeah so how how do you like gain the skill how you like yeah uh so yeah so facilitation basically um before wise line I never like presented yeah so like I didn't I was just pretty bad at it and then wise line just made you present because it was a product consultancy right so you always have to speak about what you're doing with the clients and these are like major clients like the first one I went to um first workshop that we did uh and it was the second workshop ever in wise line was to 21st century fox in LA speaking to all these media executives and I was super scared because I've never done it before and Wendy was just like oh you should do it and I'm like why don't make me and I did it uh me yeah I can't imagine that you said that you never tried it before but never wow yeah so and then we did it and it went successful and after workshops being a facilitator you feel really good that that feeling of like oh you did it and you you know you help people and like um yeah you did your job really well so we started doing that more and then I basically got more and more comfortable like speaking about you know my area of expertise and also guiding a group of people to a common goal right that's really the goal of the facilitator so I think there's uh a lot of best practices that you should do but the number one is preparation yeah yeah so like planning activities well and uh know what you're going to say and uh you know look at the timing because a lot of a lot of things but it's all about timing and um yeah preparation and structure and then the other thing is be prepared to throw everything out the window so it's completely contradictory right yeah you've got to plan it well so you know it really well and then uh most of the time in all of the workshops I've been something goes wrong right so if you know the activity really well then you can switch to something else or you can kind of like guide go straight into the activity or think on your feet a little bit and change the activity based on what the people are saying in the workshop and um this another example is like Wendy was like okay let's do this activity that we've never done before during a workshop and we basically went for lunch in Australia and we just looked at it uh and then just read about it and then within like the next you know half an hour we started running this activity right and it was like oh my god this is crazy but then we did it and it was actually most one of the most beneficial activities we did so it's really like nailing what the problem is and what the desired outcome in and then filling the gaps in the middle um yeah so uh and then the last advice is just keep doing it like it's all about practice you've got to practice speaking to people practice trying to get everybody to this decision and you know it's just really fun and uh yeah just learn to enjoy it and practice yeah okay so can I consolidate it like like you prepare to be unprepared so that you can collect all the problems that can happen and in the end the target is for just for having the the best solution as we can for the clan or the growth users that we are going to discuss with that like purpose what we need to do is during the workshop we just fill in the gap yeah that's it yeah that's it like we're not there to say oh you should build this no you tell us what you build based on everybody's opinion yeah yeah very nice one yeah yeah it's fun okay so uh I think like it's coming for like some personal like questions so let's see what is your plan for on the upcoming years the years of tiger oh yeah of the water tiger um continue to build products um I'm working on a few things at the moment and I want to do some more community events we can do it together yeah we can do it together yeah exactly yeah because I came back to being on um like last year and it was like lockdown wanting to do more community events we did some in Thailand and uh when I was previously here we did a lot of events right at once like we did so many so I just kind of keep on wanting to do that and um see where that leads uh I'm trying to as a UX designer I am trying to be more business orientated so I'm learning a lot about investments and and crypto just to be more holistic because I believe that web3 could be something that's ubiquitous eventually so how do you as a designer learn about that stuff so you don't get left behind I think um yeah and to be a I think a better design leader you need business acumen so you can talk to like CEOs or product people and they'll give you basically the same respect that they give cto's or whoever's you know chief marketing person so so yeah that's what I'm focusing on now just things so I wish you all the nice success and love for that upcoming plan for this year so uh any suggestions for the audience for the years of tiger especially with ones who want to try with us like courier um suggestions is just to do it is just to really figure out uh what you want to do either it's helping a friend um build a website or design an app just for the sake of it like if you don't like tiktok or instagram what's wrong with it uh what do people say out there and just figure out a solution it's really just having fun with it I think designers love their tools and get into the tools but you know if you want to be a better UX designer not UI designer then you have to do the other hard things like figure out what people want and what people need and do that research interesting so I believe that's very benefit for the audience and I think like it's coming to like the end of the the videos so thank you Chris for joining me today for the videos and if you have any questions or any comments please feel free to leave it in the comment below and you can send this email to me or Chris so I can have to deliver it to Chris for sure I cannot give any answer for you so uh I hope that the video today is bringing you um much more information and insight about UX and you may have a clearer understanding on that position and how it goes and you want you can try with it the years of tiger you can try with like everything everything so I wish you all have the great years coming and like all the success all the luck and all happiness awesome thank you thanks guys bye bye