Q&A: How do I get into user experience?

Let's turn away from Office and Mac matters for a bit, and answer a question that I got via email about how to get into user experience.

I recently found out about usability engineering. It seems to be a spur off the human factors psych field. It looks like a great field. My question would be then, how does one get into a user experience field.

First, I'll say that I don't have a psychology background, although I have many peers who do. My background is computer science.

There's a few things that you can do to start learning more about usability and user experience. I recently saw a blog post from a UX designer, Whitney Hess, titled "so you wanna be a UX designer". It lists many resources for getting into the field. It's a great list. Definitely start with the first two books -- if you like those, then continue with the next three, all of which are absolutely excellent.

Career-wise, without either experience or training in the field, it's going to be difficult (especially in this economy!) to move into a position that gets you where you want to go. Here at Microsoft, we rarely hire UX people who don't have an advanced degree. Whitney's post also lists a couple of the top UX programs in the US; there are others (Georgia Tech, U-Wash, etc), but that will give you a starting point.

I can't speak a lot for other companies, but one position at Microsoft is the Program Manager. This isn't a technical position, per se -- we don't expect people to have CS or engineering degrees. It's the role of the PM to help design features, write specifications, and do the necessary cat-herding to get those features into the product and get the product out the door. Some PMs focus more on back-end stuff, some are more on the front end -- so there's plenty of room there for you to learn more about UX there and have a hand in what that looks like, while working with UX researchers and designers to make it all come together. One of my colleagues here in MacBU wrote a blog post about what it means to be a PM.. His post is from the viewpoint of an MBA, not a hardcore geek degree.

If this looks interesting to you, Microsoft does hire PMs with BS/BA degrees. For information about our current job openings and other perspectives on options here, check out our career website.