Inspiration and words of wisdom from UX idols

New York's School of Visual Arts recently asked a bunch of UX luminaries to pass on their advice to aspiring designers. The result is a bunch of 30 second videos each with a tiny, golden nugget of advice.

It's a really inspirational collection, some of my favourites are:

• “You have to be empathetic to your users, toward your clients, to the people you’re working with on your team” - Jennifer Bove from Kicker Studio.

• “Fully understand the problem before you attempt to solve it” - Whitney Hess.

• “Having a camera, taking it everywhere, and taking pictures” - Michael Mandiberg from Eyebeam.

• “Seek and out embrace different perspectives from your own and to solve for those perspectives” - Steve Portigal from Portigal Consulting.

• “Find the middle ground between clever and stupid” - Jared Spool from User Interface Engineering.

And more from the comments section of the blog post:

• "Don’t forget a designer can do anything. Your skill is solving problems, and there are trillions of them in thousands of industries" - Jeff Ferzoco.

• "Be weird and have a good sense of humor about it" - Kevin M. Scarbrough.

• "Learn how to tell a great story" - Wade Burch.

• "Don’t use the word user, or client. You are designing for people" - Michael

• "Eat it, Do it, And Love It As Part Of Your Life!" - Edward.

Mine would be:

• "Try to avoid thinking about the solution for as long as possible. Learn as much about the problem from as many different angles as you can" - Suze Ingram.

What would you words of advice be?

You can see all the Video Notes from the Field blog post.

About Suze Ingram I'm a User Experience consultant from Sydney, Australia. I'm passionate about designing better user experiences that engage customers, empower employees and bring real benefits for businesses. If you'd like to know more, drop me a line at suze.ingram@gmail.com.

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