Comment by rahimnathwani | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rahimnathwani | Hacker News Reader

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Thanks. This is very helpful. I didn't articulate well enough how I see UX as part of the overall design process.

I agree with your comment that 'An experienced UX person is going to want to come in before requirements'. This is especially true for pure software products.

For some things, though, the software is only a gateway into a wider thing. So for requirements, I wasn't thinking of a list of features, but more like requirements for the outcomes: 'When a customer visits the AirBnB site, they should be able to find and book somewhere to stay within 5 minutes'.

Do you think it's OK to bring in UX even when some of those requirements have been drafted (though not set in stone)? Or do you think that would put off someone great, who wants to start from the problem definition rather than partial solution?

EDIT: When I described my problem to friend, he suggested that what I actually wanted is someone who might describe themselves as a 'product designer'. What are the job title(s) that would resonate best with people who do the type of work you described in your comment?

> So for requirements, I wasn't thinking of a list of features, but more like requirements for the outcomes: 'When a customer visits the AirBnB site, they should be able to find and book somewhere to stay within 5 minutes'.

Any requirements are going to be constraints, and may not be reflective of reality, good practices, market needs, user expectations, etc. In your example, discovery and purchase are often not performed in the same transaction/visit/mental process. Different modalities will result in different realistic time constraints. A UX person brought in to come up with "a variety of design concepts" is going to pitch discovery (vacation planning, pinterest-style aspirational ideation, reading travel stories, etc.) as independent from purchase (booking last minute, booking for the future, booking for a specific destination, booking for a specific cost, etc.). If time (efficiency, shorter is better) is a metric they're going to pitch time (time to bounce, longer is better) instead.

Any constraints are going to limit your possibilities, and might result in a local maximum. If you're okay with that, fine, just say it up front, so everyone is on the same page.

UX job titles are pretty varied, because UX roles tend to fill the space left by whatever expertise the product team is missing, whether research, or user contact, or interaction design, or visual design, etc. Again, I think you'd be better served by looking for types of experience.

Designer, UX designer, product designer, UX strategist, all might work as titles. Someone with research experience is probably necessary, but someone that is a dedicated researcher probably won't also be able to do the design work, and someone that specializes in visual design probably won't be able to do the research.

Does that help?

Thanks again.

Some constraints are inevitable in most businesses that are making money with a particular business model. So a UX designer brought in to a razor blade company that sells online may have to work with that and help sales of blades through the online channel, even if the research and intuition support some other better way to serve those customers (a chain of local barbershops), or that some other need (hair styling creams) will be more profitable.

What I'm understanding from your posts is that deciding what, if any, constraints there are up front, and communicating those to potential candidates, will help people self-select.

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