只有少数UX设计师拥有的重要技能，我们应该如何学习它们

Recently,I have been asked over and over again by budding young designers which skills I look for in UX candidates but that I have a hard time finding when interviewing. This is an important topic. Our industry is living far below its potential in preparing young designers to become future leaders,and our educational system is doing an even poorer job preparing students to land their first job in an ever more competitive industry.

最近，我经常被年轻的设计师问到类似的问题：我在招募用户体验设计师时，看中哪些技能，并且这些技能是很多设计师都没有的。这是一个重要的话题，设计行业在培养年轻设计师成为未来领袖方面做的还远远不够，我们的教育系统在培养学生在竞争日益激烈的商业环境中找到第一份工作方面做得更差。

I have tried to answer the questions I receive on this topic in forums such as LinkedIn,Facebook,and Slack in an actionable way. Yet,the way those platforms are structured have made it difficult to do this topic justice. It is my goal in this article,therefore,to address this vital topic more completely and provide actionable insights on the surprisingly-rare skills I have found to be vital over my 20 year career as both a hands-on designer and design leader.

我尝试用一种可行的方式来回答我在诸如 LinkedIn、Facebook、和Slack 这些论坛上收到的关于这个话题的疑问。然而，这些平台本身的情况使得很难公正地讨论这个话题。

因此，在这篇文章中，我希望更全面地讨论这个至关重要的话题，并提供一些可行的见解，这些见解是我在20年的设计师工作和设计领导生涯中发现的至关重要，并且很多人都欠缺的技能。

1. Creative Maturity
成熟的看待创造力

It always amazes me how many designers fall in love with their first idea. When I interview potential candidates for UX positions I run through a series of creative exercises & tests to evaluate the candidate’s ability to think outside the box. The vast majority of them either clam up and can’t complete the exercises or stop with their first (and usually most obvious) idea. I have found that this correlates to day to day design work as well. Many designers get so excited with their first idea that they fail to explore others. This causes a few problems:

我对有那么多设计师会爱上自己的第一个想法感到很惊讶。 当我面试用户体验设计师的时候，我会通过一系列创造性的问题和测试来评估候选人跳出思考局限性的能力。他们中绝大多数人要么沉默不语，没能完成练习，要么停止在他们的第一个(通常是最明显的)想法上。

我发现这也与日常的设计工作有关， 许多设计师对他们的第一个想法非常兴奋，以至于他们没有去探索其他方向。这导致了一些问题:

Design critiques and feedback sessions with stakeholders turn into “yes or no” conversations instead of taking bits and pieces of various different ideas.

利益相关者的设计评论和反馈会议变成了“是或否”的交流，而不是各种各样不同想法的汇聚。

Products often fail to achieve their potential to improve customers’ lives.

产品往往没能实现其改善客户的生活的目的。

Executive interference increases. Executives feel the need to step in and deliver solutions to be implemented when they are concerned about the quality of the product. This is their way of trying to ensure success (which of course usually has the opposite effect).

行政干预增加。 高管们认为，当他们关注产品质量时，有必要介入并实行解决方案。，这是他们试图确保成功的方式（当然通常会产生相反的效果）。

When executive interference increases,the creativity of the team actually decreases along with morale and pretty soon the entire design team is looking to jump ship.

当管理层的干预增加时，团队的创造力实际上会随着士气一起下降，很快整个设计团队就会跳槽。

THE SOLUTION

解决方法

There are two things designers and leaders can do to increase creativity and solve the problems listed above.

设计师和领导者可以做两件事来增加创造力和解决上面列出的问题。

（1）Explore at least3 solutions to any problem.Creating a flow chart? Create 3 variations. WireFraming? 3 ideas. Context scenarios? 3 ideas. You get the point. What this does is forces you to open your mind and explore various possibilities. Early in my career I had a boss who would force me to create multiple variations and then completely delete those files and create 3 more. While this may be a bit excessive as an ongoing policy,he made his point. What I ended up with at the end was far better than the previous attempts.

针对任何问题的探索至少输出3种解决方案；对流程图和线框图尝试3种方案；对情境场景尝试3个创新解决方式。

当你明白了这点时，它会迫使你敞开心扉，探索各种可能性。 在我职业生涯的早期，我的一个老板会强迫我尝试多个变化，然后进行删减，并留下最好的3个。虽然作为一个正在进行的项目，这可能有点过分，但他作出了他的指导。而我最终得到的结果比之前的尝试要好得多。

（2）Fall in love with the problem,NOT any particular solution.Many designers get very attached to a particular design because they spend so much time with it. Involving everyone you can find in your process will help this (especially if you show everyone you get feedback from at least 3 ideas).

爱上问题，而不是任何固有的解决方案。许多设计师非常喜欢某个特定的设计，因为他们花了很多时间在上面。让每个人都参与进来提供建议会有更多的帮助（特别是如果你向每个人都展示你从至少3个想法中得到的那些反馈后）。

（3）Present in-progress work.There is nothing that can stifle a designer’s effectiveness and creativity as quickly as working in isolation. Showing in-progress work helps you to think outside the box and constantly see things with different perspectives. Showing in-progress work also allows you to get feedback when it’s early enough to actually iterate and make changes. If the first time a product manager or developer sees your work is during sprint kickoff,you have failed — and likely so will your product. This is also absolutely true with customers.

目前正在进行的工作，没有什么能像独立工作那样迅速扼杀设计师的效率和创造力。 展示正在进行的工作可以帮助你跳出固有的思维框架，不断地从不同的角度看待事物。 展示正在进行的工作还可以让您在足够早的时间实际迭代和进行更改时获得反馈。 如果产品经理或开发人员第一次看到你的作品是在 sprint 开始的时候，那么你已经失败了，你的产品很可能也是如此。 对于顾客来说，这也是绝对正确的。

（4）Practice creativity in a context outside your day-to-day work.Creativity is like any other skill — it must be practiced and trained if it is to be developed to its potential. Some examples of creative exercises you can do to practice:

在日常工作之外的环境中练习创造力。创造力就像其他技能一样，如果要发挥它的潜力，就必须进行实践和训练。

以下是一些你可以用来练习的创造性练习:

a. Creative Pitch Exercise — create a deck of cards with 2 categories of pictures. One half should have famous brands everyone would know (Google,Apple,Uber,etc) and the other half should have products that have nothing to do with the brands. Draw 1 card from each pile. Give yourself 1 minute to come up with a pitch and then 2 minutes to pitch to a teammate/manager why Google would make a hammer for example. This is best done as a team activity,but can also be practiced by yourself. (Credit goes to Stephen Gates for this fantastic idea).

a. 创造性的提案练习——制作一副有两类图片的卡片。一半应该拥有众所周知的知名品牌（谷歌、苹果、优步、 Facebook 等） ，另一半应该拥有与品牌无关的产品。 从每一堆抽一张牌。 比如：给自己1分钟时间想出一个提案，然后2分钟时间向队友 / 经理思考提案；例如：谷歌制作一个锤子会是什么样。这是最好的团队活动，但也可以自己练习。 (这个奇妙的想法要归功于斯蒂芬 · 盖茨)。

b. Whiteboard Design Exercise — give the team a problem to solve together that has nothing to do with your business (you will need 30-60 minutes). Choose someone to facilitate the discussion. It’s also important to frame the goal as a problem to solve not a solution to be implemented. For example,do NOT assign the problem “redesign the toothbrush”,but instead: “improve the teeth cleaning experience”. It’s good to be vague so that the team together can set the parameters and specific Jobs To Be Done they want to tackle. As you do this more often and rotate facilitators you will get to know and learn from each other’s approaches to solving problems and develop facilitation skills among young designers. This can also be achieved with a wide variety of brainstorming exercises.

b.白板设计练习——给团队一个需要共同解决的问题，这个问题与你的业务无关（你需要30-60分钟）。 选择一个人来促进讨论。 同样重要的是，将目标定义为一个问题，而不是一个要实现的解决方案。

例如：不要指定问题为“重新设计牙刷”，而是“提高牙齿清洁的体验”。问题有些模糊是没有问题的，这样团队可以一起设定参数和他们想要具体完成的工作。随着你经常这样做，并且轮换主持，你将了解和学习到彼此解决问题的方法，并在年轻设计师中培养主持技能，这也可以通过各种各样的头脑风暴练习来实现。

c. Experience great design together.I have also found it beneficial to take the time to seek & experience great design together. Whether this is searching the app store for an app and then evaluating it together,or going on field trips to experience creativity in industries completely different from your own (i.e. offset printing,tatooing,culinary arts,screen printing,interior design,etc). Then afterward have a quick discussion of what you learned and how those principles could apply to your work. If you don’t have a team of designers,this can also be done perfectly well with a cross-functional team or by yourself.

c.一起体验伟大的设计。我也发现花时间一起寻找和体验伟大的设计是有益的， 无论是在应用程序商店里搜索一个应用程序然后一起评估，还是在与你完全不同的行业（如：胶印、纹身、烹饪艺术、丝网印刷、室内设计等）进行实地考察，体验创造力。

然后快速讨论一下你学到了什么，以及这些原则如何应用到你的工作中。如果你没有一个设计团队，你也可以通过一个跨职能团队或者自己来完成这个任务。

2. Knowledge of Business
商业知识

it never ceases to amaze me how many designers I interview who don’t understand business. It is ESSENTIAL for UXers to understand business to get their ideas out the door and evangelize UX best practices. If you don’t understand and speak business,your career will be hard.

我所采访的许多设计师对商业一窍不通，他们总是让我感到惊奇。对于UXers来说，理解商业是至关重要的，这样才能把自己的想法传播出去，也才能将用户体验的进行最好的落地。如果你不懂商业知识，你的职业生涯会走的比较艰难。

There are a couple aspects of this that are important. First off,you need to understand what the business is trying to accomplish so you can help.Understand what strategic initiatives the business is trying to accomplish,then show what user Jobs To Be Done or pain points can be solved to help those strategic initiatives.

这其中有几个方面很重要。首先，你要了解企业想要达到的目标，这样你才能提供帮助。理解企业想要完成的战略计划，然后向用户展示需要完成的工作或者需要解决的问题，以帮助实现这些战略计划。

For example,if your company is looking to become more sticky in client organizations as a way to increase sales and improve retention,find and propose Jobs To Be Done that Marketing,Sales,or Operations employees at your clients have that currently aren’t being solved well. Use videos or audio clips from your research. Use quantitative data to reinforce the qualitative findings. If you have that understanding you are able to push back when someone assigns you a solution to implement and show them 4 other solutions that would solve the problem better.

例如：如果你的公司希望在客户群体中变得更具粘性，以此来增加销售额和提高客户留存率，那么找出你客户的营销、销售或运营人员们目前没有解决好的工作。使用视频或音频输出你研究的内容，用定量数据来巩固定性研究的结果。

如果你理解了这些内容，那么当别人给你规定一个解决方案来实现的时候，你就有能力向他们展示其他4个可以更好地解决问题方案，你也就能做的更好了。

Stephen Gates uses the example all the time of a T-shirt. If an executive asks you to design a t-shirt,find out why. Is it for a conference? Is it for employees? Why did that solution come to their mind? Is there a better way to accomplish that same goal? If you understand the problem,you can become a partner with them to solve their problem.This only happens if you understand and can communicate in the language of business.

斯蒂芬 · 盖茨一直用这个例子来说明 t 恤衫。如果一位高管让你设计一件 t 恤，找出原因。是为了开会吗？是给员工的吗？为什么他们会想到这个解决方案？有没有更好的方法来实现同样的目标？

如果你理解了问题，你就可以用他们的合作伙伴的角度来解决问题。只有当你理解并能用商业语言交流时，才能获得这种主导权。

If you understand business,and particularly your company’s business,your ability to get your innovative ideas out the door will be dramatically increased. Which means you will be able to better improve users’ lives. Sounds good,right?

如果你了解商业，特别是你公司的商业，你的创新能力将大大提高。这意味着你将能够更好地改善用户的生活，听起来不错吧。

Case in point：there was recently a shift in the organizational structure at my current company. That meant that the main Product leader who I had been working with and who understood UX very well had moved on and the new leader was less familiar with UX best practices. Because I had already taken the time to understand the strategic initiatives of the company,I was able to explain how delivering problems to solve instead of solutions to implement was so vital and ended up resulting in higher morale and a better product. I also was able to show how an Outcome-focused mentality actually helps us get to the desired results quicker than the output-driven mentality most companies have. As a result,the entire company is seriously considering moving to OKRs. Something that will help us deliver even better products for our customers in the future and will for sure result in a more fun,innovative culture.

一个恰当的例子是：最近我所在公司的组织结构管理部门发生了变化，这意味着与我一起工作并且非常了解用户体验的主要产品领导者要离开了，而新领导者对用户体验最佳实践不太熟悉。

因为在之前我花了很多时间去了解公司的战略计划，这让我能够解释为什么交付需要解决的问题而不是需要只考虑实施的解决方案是如此重要，这最终提高了士气，也打造了更好的产品。

我还展示了为什么我们以结果为中心，会比大多数其他以产出为中心的公司更快地达到预期结果的原因。因此，整个公司都在认真考虑搬到 OKRs。有些东西将帮助我们在未来给客户提供更好的产品，并肯定会孕育出一个更有趣的、创新的文化。

THE SOLUTION解决方案

Some advice to get started

对于开始的一些建议

Interview the CEO and other key leaders at your company. Ask them what the strategic initiatives of the company are. As them why they love their job. Ask them what keeps them up at night. Ask them what the greatest threat to the company’s success is.

采访你公司的首席执行官和其他主要领导人，问问他们公司的战略计划是什么。比如：他们为什么热爱自己的工作，问问他们是什么让他们夜不能寐，了解阻碍公司成功的最大威胁是什么。

Read business books

阅读商业书籍

Take a business class.

去学习一些商务课程。

Ask to be involved in vision or strategy meetings as a fly on the wall.

要求作为旁听者参与愿景或战略讨论会议。

Prepare a presentation on a UX topic to an audience of business leaders. See how well it is received. Rinse,repeat.

为商业领袖的听众准备一个关于用户体验主题的演讲。 看看它的接受程度如何。然后优化，再来一次。

Start trying to “talk” like a business leader.

开始试着像一个商业领袖那样”说话”。

Try to quantify the user experience your users are having.

尝试量化用户的体验。

The more you do it,the easier it will get. If this topic resonates with you and you want more details on how to get started,check out my article:Business for Designers: how to eliminate executive interference & get your innovative ideas out the door where I go over a couple case studies and dive into this topic in more detail.

你做的越多，事情就越容易。如果这个话题与你产生共鸣，你想知道更多关于如何开始的细节，请查看我的文章：设计师的商业: 《如何消除管理层的干扰，让你的创新想法走出门外》，在那篇文章里面，我回顾了几个案例研究，并深入探讨这个话题的更多细节。

3. Facilitation Skills
促成技巧

Good designers can do stellar design work themselves. Excellent designers bring other people with them and facilitate great design among a group. Yet far too few designers (even a senior level) are skilled facilitators.

优秀的设计师可以自己完成一流的设计工作，非常棒的设计师带着其他人一起成长，并促进一个群体做出伟大的设计。然而，很少有设计师(甚至是高级设计师)是熟练的促成者。

Facilitation is the art of helping to guide stakeholders and cross-functional team members through the design process. It is vital to be able to move fast and be most effective in your design work for everyone to have a shared-understanding of what it is that you’re building and why. You also will arrive at the “multiple idea exploration” requirement above much quicker. Diversity of not only culture but also functional background adds so much to the completeness and innovation of any design.

促成是一门艺术，它帮助你促成利益相关者和跨职能团队成员更好的完成设计过程。在你的设计工作中，对于每个人来说，对于你正在构建的是什么，以及为什么要这样做能保持一个共同的理解，这在设计过程中是非常重要的，你也会更快地达到“寻求更多想法探索”的要求。文化和职位背景的多样性不仅增加了设计考虑维度的完整性，还能提供更多额创新性。

Facilitation doesn’t require a higher position or a condescending tone to be effective. Quite the opposite. The main key to being an effective facilitator is an overriding passion for bringing people with you in your design process. It’s basically user research for coworkers. In the same way you don’t want to “lead the witness” in a usability test or interview and want to explore ideas fully,when facilitating you want to set the stage and help guide the team through solving problems you have been assigned.

促成并不需要一个更高的头衔或居高临下的语调才能有效。恰恰相反，成为一个有效的促成者的关键是在你的设计过程中带领人们的保持着超过一切的激情，这可以说是对同事做的用户研究。同样，在可用性测试或访谈中，你也不希望“引导被研究者”，也希望更充分的探索各种想法。同样，在对项目进行排期时，你也希望通过解决了解到的核心问题来促进团队走向正确的方向。

THE SOLUTION

解决方法

If you find yourself lacking in this area,just start by changing your mentality from doer to facilitator. Recognize that you aren’t responsible for every great idea. You are just responsible for the environment where great ideas can flourish. There is nothing that can prepare you for leadership opportunities in the future like facilitating.

如果你发现自己在这方面有所欠缺，那就从把你的心态从实操者转变为服务者开始。认识到你不是每一个好想法的负责人， 你只是负责营造一个可以产生好想法的环境。如果你想为未来的领导机会做好准备，那没有什么比促成好想法更合适的了。

Start small. Facilitate a brainstorming session with cross-functional participants. Use non-verbal decision making exercises like Affinity Mapping to normalize the loud and silent personality types. There are many ways to do it,just start. If you can get good at facilitation,though,you will be viewed as a strategic partner and influencer in your company and finding that dream UX job will get much easier.

从小事做起，促进与跨职能部门同事的头脑风暴会议。使用像亲和力地图这样的非口头决策练习，来使爱发言和内向的人格类型都参与进来。有很多方法可以做到这一点，但一定要坚持落地。如果你擅长于推动，你将被视为公司的战略合作伙伴和影响者，并且找到理想的用户体验工作会变得容易得多。

4. Ability to Balance Innovation with Practicality
平衡创新与实践的能力

If there is any 1 thing that you can do today to start having better success in job searching,it is to realize — genuinely internalize — that UX in the real world is not the utopian dreamworld many designers live in where they have infinite time and resources to do research and build the ideal product that they reveal in some glorious marketing campaign that causes users to jump up and down with excitement because of how AMAZING you made their lives.

如果有任何一件事让你在找工作方面取得更多成功的机会，那就是认识到真正的现实——现实世界中的用户体验并不是许多设计师所梦想的乌托邦式世界，在乌托邦世界中大家有无限的时间和资源来做研究和创造理想的产品，可以在一些辉煌的营销活动中展示这些产品，并且这些活动会让用户兴奋地跳上跳下，因为你让他们的生活变得更加美好。

No company is perfect. No project has enough time. No user research initiative is going to feel like enough. No product you work on will ever have the ideal user experience. No product manager or developer will ever understand user experience fully…and that’s ok!

没有一个公司是完美的，没有一个项目有足够的时间，没有一个用户研究计划会让你感觉足够了。你从事的任何产品都不会有理想的用户体验。 没有一个产品经理或者开发人员能够完全理解用户体验的本质.. …但是这没关系。

There is a healthy tension that exists between UX,PM,and Dev that helps us all get better products out the door. I can’t tell you how often when I was a young designer that I usability tested a design that I thought needed TONS more improvement,and every single user easily completed all the tasks we gave them. Even more,they had a great time doing it. At those times,I was forced to swallow my pride and realize the product was good enough. We had accomplished our goal. The sooner you realize that “sometimes the most perfect anything needs to be is…done” (Joe Natoli) the easier your life as a designer will be.

在用户体验、产品经理和开发人员之间存在着一种健康的紧张关系，这种紧张关系可以帮助我们获得更好的产品。 我无法告诉你当我还是一个年轻的设计师的时候，有多少次我测试了一个我认为需要更多改进的设计，每个用户都很容易地完成了我们交给他们的所有任务。

更重要的是，他们玩得很开心。在那些时候，我被迫放下自尊，意识到这个产品已经足够好了，我们已经完成了我们的目标。你越早意识到”有时候最完美的事情需要被… 完成（乔 · 纳托利） ，你作为一个设计师的生活就会越轻松。

Not every project is trying to win a spot on the Apple Keynote stage. Sometimes we do things because it’s a checkbox the business needs us to check before we can move on to something more innovative. That too is ok. Where I’ve found the problem to be is when everyone on the team/company is not on the same page when those situations arise.

并不是每个项目都在战略地位上占有一席之地。有时我们做一些事情是因为商业上需要我们进行重复的功能组，然后我们才能转向更具创新性的东西。这也是没关系的， 我发现问题在于当这些情况出现时，团队 / 公司中的每个人都是从独立的角度来看问题的。

THE SOLUTION

解决方案

Something that has helped me is to clearly identify certain key characteristics of a project at the beginning and get everyone to sign off on them. (There’s that term “shared understanding” again). Some of those characteristics are:

帮助我在一开始就明晰项目的某些关键特征，并让每个人都签字同意这些特征是非常有用的。 (又是”共同的理解”这个词)。

其中一些特点是：

Vision statement.共同的愿景

Priorities (where are we on the “check the checkbox” vs “pure innovation” continuum.优先级（我们在“复制”和“创新”上的偏向）

Business objectives.业务目标

User needs (Jobs To Be Done).用户需求（待完成的工作）

Constraints.约束条件

Target users.目标用户

Success criteria.成功标准

If you get clear on all of those with the entire team,projects tend to go far smoother. Yet I seem to constantly meet designers who can’t seem to balance priorities on projects. Who can’t accept the fact that we can’t do onsite user research visits or usability testing on this project when there is a perfectly viable business reason. In their mind,the full X step process has to ALWAYS be followed.

如果你清楚整个团队的这些内容，项目就会进行得更顺利。 然而，我似乎经常遇到一些似乎无法平衡项目优先级的设计师。当有一个完全可行的商业理由时，谁都能接受这样的事实：我们暂时没有条件对用户进行现场研究访问，或者对这个项目进行可用性测试研究。但在一些设计的头脑中，完整的步骤过程成了必须始终遵循原则，而不是灵活的运用。

To use a cooking metaphor,the best chefs aren’t those who can follow a recipe to a T every single time. The best practitioners are those who can cook up something amazing with the ingredients,goals,and constraints they are given time after time no matter what they are.

用一个烹饪的比喻来说，最好的厨师不是那些每次都能按照菜谱做到最标准的人。最好的实践者是那些能够用那些一次又一次被给予的原料、目标和约束而做出惊人的东西的人，不管他们是什么角色。

5. Empathy for Stakeholders
与利益相关者的同理心

Most UXers are passionate about developing empathy for users. Yet most complain about “politics”. Business and other stakeholders are our users too. Great designers view it as their job to understand what is important to their stakeholders and then help them achieve THEIR goals as well. At their base level,“politics” are nothing more than empathy. Yet precious few designers are good at them.

大多数Uxer都热衷于培养对用户的同理心，其实商业客户和其他利益相关者也是我们的用户，而多数设计却抱怨对他们太“政治”。伟大的设计师认为他们的工作就是理解什么对他们的利益相关者是重要的，然后帮助他们实现他们的目标。在对他们了解的基础上,”政治”只不过是同理心的一部分。 然而，很少有设计师擅长这些。

The first thing an excellent designer will do at a new job or on a new project is get to know the stakeholders and business leaders in the organization. Find allies. Understand constraints. Understand what each stakeholder is trying to accomplish.

一个优秀的设计师要做的第一件事就是，在一个新工作或者一个新项目中去了解利益相关者和商业领导者，寻找盟友、理解约束， 理解每个利益相关者试图完成的目标。

Case in point. I once worked for a company where we were having major problems getting time and resources for any kind of user research. The PM wasn’t wanting to allow time in the sprint for it. Our client advisors (who controlled the relationship with customers) didn’t want to let us anywhere near their customers. It was a mess.

这里有一个很好的例子，我曾经在一家公司工作，我们为用户研究争取时间和资源时因为类型太多而遇到了很大的问题。产品经理不想在冲刺阶段留出这些时间。我们的客户顾问（他们控制着与客户的关系）不想让我们接近他们的客户，那时真的是一团乱麻。

So I started having one on one conversations with some of them. I found out that many of them had bad experience with designers showing brand new designs and promising the new features by a specific date. This caused major problems for the Client Advisor team (understandably). Also,there were some major retention issues going on with some of the customers I wanted to speak with.

所以我开始和他们中的一些人进行一对一的交谈，我发现他们中的很多人在设计师展示全新的设计，并承诺在一定时间内提供新功能的情况下都有过糟糕的经历，这给客户顾问团队带来了很大的问题（所以这是可以理解的）。此外，我想与之交谈的一些客户也存在一些重大的遗留问题。

I explained what we were trying to accomplish with the user research and how it could also help them solve some of their retention problems. I asked if they would be willing to help us plan and conduct the research so we could be sure to not say anything that would hurt the relationship.

我解释了我们试图通过用户研究来完成的目标，以及它是如何帮助解决一些遗留问题的。我问他们是否愿意帮助我们计划和进行这项研究，这样就可以确保很多交流都不会伤害这段合作关系。

Not only did I get access to users,but I had an ally in helping to schedule more user research visits in the future and someone who knew these users well to help me plan what to learn and how to do it. As a completely unanticipated side bonus,pretty soon these same client advisors (and the sales people as well) were using the fact that we involved our customers in our design process as a mechanism/key differentiator in saving many customers and generating loyalty.

我不仅可以接触到用户，而且我还有一个盟友帮助我安排未来更多的用户研究访问，还有一个非常了解这些用户的人帮助我计划学习什么以及如何学习。作为一个出乎意料的奖励，很快这些同类型的客户顾问（以及销售人员）就利用我们让客户参与到设计过程中这一方法，作为一种机制 / 关键的差异化因素，以挽救许多客户并产生忠诚度。

None of that would have happened if I had not taken the time to get to know the stakeholders.如果我没有花时间去了解利益相关者，这些都不会发生。

THE SOLUTION

解决方法

Get to know your stakeholders. Interview them. Imagine they were target users of the next product you were designing.

了解你的利益相关者。去拜访他们，假设他们是你正在设计的下一个产品的目标用户。

Propose an idea of how something in your background could help them in their job.

提出你想做任何事的原由，以及如何能够帮助他们工作。

The next time you’re frustrated with someone in your company,make an effort to see them as a person with needs/desires instead of an object preventing you from getting what you want.

下次你对公司里的某个人感到沮丧的时候，试着把他们看成是一个有需求 / 欲望的人，而不是一个阻止你得到你想要的东西的东西。

6. Curiosity and Drive to Constantly Learn
好奇心和不断学习的动力

万字长文解析 | UX设计师要拥有的重要技能

An insatiable curiosity and drive to always be learning and never be comfortable is the main secret of any success I might have had so far in my career. I’m mostly self taught and I’ve never worked for any world renowned companies,but I have an intense drive to learn and grow and progress. Two of the principles in my creative ethos that I emphasize constantly with my team are related: “yearn to learn” and “comfort is the enemy of greatness”.

永不满足的好奇心和不断学习的动力，永远不要一直待在舒适区，这是我在职业生涯中取得成功的主要秘诀。我大部分时间是自学成才，虽然从未为任何世界知名的公司工作过，但我有强烈的学习、成长和进步的动力。在我的创造精神中，我一直强调与我的团队的两个原则是相关的：“向往学习”和“舒适是最大的敌人”。

I’ve discovered that having an “insatiable curiosity” is rarer than many people might think. To anyone who is struggling with Imposter Syndrome at the moment: your reading this article shows that you are already on the right track. Keep it up! Develop an “insatiable curiosity” and you will progress much faster than you thought possible.

我发现，拥有“永不满足的好奇心”的人比想象的要少得多。对于那些正在假装与懒惰做斗争的人来说：你阅读这篇文章表明你已经走上了正确的道路。 继续努力！ 培养一种“永不满足的好奇心”，你的进步会比你想象的要快得多。

Research how other people have handled things. Listen to podcasts on your way to work. Organize book clubs on your team or design community. Experiment with new methodologies. See what works and what doesn’t. Never be satisfied with the way you are working today.

研究其他人是如何处理事情的，在上班的路上听听播客，在你的团队或设计社区组织读书俱乐部。不断的尝试新的方法，看看什么是有用的、什么是没用的。永远不要满足于你今天的工作方式。

I once had a boss who when I presented a design to him for feedback would always ask me: “is this the best you can do?”. At first it was off-putting,but soon I learned the wisdom in what he was teaching me. He wasn’t criticizing me,he was challenging me to reach a little deeper to see if I could do better. That boss changed my whole outlook as a designer.

我曾经有一个老板，当我向他展示一个设计方案时，他总是问我：“这是你能做到的最好的吗？”。一开始我觉得很不舒服，但是很快我就从他教我的东西中学到了智慧。他不是在批评我，他是在挑战我，让我更深入一些，看看我是否能做得更好。 那个老板改变了我作为一个设计师的整个观念。

If you ARE that passionate about learning,let it come through in your resume,portfolio,and interviews. Let it come through in hallway conversations. Let it come through on LinkedIn. If hiring managers can sense it,they often will take a chance on you if any doubts about your ability to do the job arise.

如果你对学习充满热情，那就让它在你的简历、作品集和面试中体现出来，让它通过剪短的交流也能传达出来，让它在 LinkedIn 上体现出来。 如果招聘经理能感觉到这一点，可能他们对你的工作能力会有些疑虑，但通常也会给你一个机会。

I know I would.

至少我会

THE SOLUTION解决方案

Challenge yourself to learn a new software tool

挑战自己，学习一个新的软件工具

Next time you need to brainstorm or conduct user research,use a method you’ve never used before.

下次需要进行头脑风暴或进行用户研究时，使用一种你从未用过的方法。

Read UX books

阅读 UX 书籍

Listen to podcasts

听播客

Participate in meetups

参加聚会

7. Mature User ResearchSkills
成熟的用户研究技巧

I am constantly amazed when interviewing Senior UX Designers at how few of them have more than elementary knowledge of and skills required in the area of User Research. They all have enough user research passion to fill every football stadium in America,but very few have experience with more than interviewing and usability testing,and even fewer can tell me what a usability test plan is or what it should contain.

在采访高级用户体验设计师时，我经常惊讶于他们中很少有人在用户研究领域拥有超过基本知识和技能的。他们对用户研究热情可以填满美国的每一个足球场，但是很少有人的对可用性测试的经验比面试更多，更少有人能告诉我什么是可用性测试计划或者它应该包含什么。

In one sense,it is not their fault. Precious few schools actually teach user research. Even fewer teach more than a couple methods and typically it is only a single unit in an Interaction Design course.

从某种意义上说，这不是他们的错，真正教授用户研究的学校寥寥无几。在交互设计课程中，教授多个方法的学生更少，而且通常只有一个单独的章节。

There IS information out there,however,if you are willing to seek for it. How a designer can get to the 5–7 years professional experience and STILL not have more than basic experience in user research is sad to me. The good news for YOU though is that if you’re willing to seek and practice user research skills,it will DRASTICALLY set you apart from the pack.

然而，如果你愿意去寻找的话，外面还是有挺多信息可以学习的。一个5-7年的设计师能有很专业的经验，但在用户研究方面仍然没有达到基本的水准，这让我感到悲哀。不过对你来说，好消息是，如果你愿意寻求和实践用户研究技能，它将彻底使你脱颖而出。

There are two main types of user research: Generative and Evaluative. Generative research is all about discovery and ensuring we’re solving the right problem(both from a user and business perspective).Evaluative research is focused on validating if we’ve made progress towards the solution to the problem we agreed to solve.

用户研究主要有两种类型：生成型和评价型。

生成型研究是关于发现和确保我们正在解决的问题是正确的问题（从用户和商业的角度）。

评价型研究的重点是验证我们是否在解决我们都想解决的问题方面取得了进展。

Within each type of user research there are many different user research methods. If you can become familiar with and gain experience with the most used in each category,you will be in the top 5% of candidates for any UX job at virtually any company big or small. If you can get to the point where you understand when to use each one,that will put you even higher.

在每种类型的用户研究中都有许多不同的用户研究方法，如果你能熟悉并获得每个类别中使用最多技巧的经验，你将成为任何大公司或小公司中用户体验工作者前5% 的候选人。如果你能够明白什么时候该使用哪个技巧，那么这会让你的成绩更高。

Here are some of the most common user research methods broken out by type.

下面是一些最常见的用户研究方法，按类型分类。

（1）GENERATIVE

生成型调研

Clickstream analysis

Confidence level calculations

Contextual inquiry

Customer feedback

Data mining/analysis

Diary/camera studies

Email surveys

Ethnographic studies

Focus groups

Intercept studies

Open card sorting

Participatory design

Stakeholder interviews

True intent studies

User interviews

Visual analytics

置信度计算

关联性调查

客户反馈

数据挖掘 / 分析

日记 / 相机研究

电子邮件调查

人种学研究

焦点小组

截获式研究

开放式卡片分类

参与式设计

利益相关者的访谈

真实意图研究

用户访谈

视觉分析

（2）EVALUATIVE

评价型调研

5-second tests

A/B testing

Closed card sorting

Confidence level calculations

Eye tracking studies

Paper prototype tests

Usability Benchmarking

Usability testing (in lab)

Usability testing (moderated remote)

Usability testing (unmoderated remote)

5秒钟的测试

A / b 测试

封闭式卡片分类

置信度计算

眼球追踪研究

纸张原型测试

可用性基准测试

可用性测试(实验室)

可用性测试(主导型测试)

可用性测试(非主导型的远程)

One other area within user research that I often find lacking in many interviewees is experience actually planning user research initiatives ahead of time. This has a few benefits:

我发现许多受访者缺乏的另一个用户研究领域是规划用户研究计划的经验，提前规划有一些好处:

It helps you clearly focus on the most important things you want to learn.

它可以帮助你专注于你想学习的最重要的事情。

It improves the effectiveness and actionability of insights you gain

它提高了你获得洞察力的有效性和可行性。

It puts the investment required on the company’s part into clear terms a business leader can understand (which helps both get budget approval and with tracking ROI after research completion)

它将公司的投资转化为商业领导人可以理解的清晰内容(这有助于获得预算批准，并在研究完成后跟踪 ROI)

It allows all employees to be on the same page going in (which can drastically help with note taking and data aggregation afterwards)

它帮助所有员工都在同一个节奏上进行(这对随后的笔记整理和数据聚合都有很大帮助)

THE SOLUTION

解决方案

If you’ve never set out to write a formal usability test plan before,it can seem daunting. It really is quite easy,though. You just have to think through what you want to accomplish,how you plan to accomplish it,and who will be a part of the research (pro tip: it is much easier and much more effective to take a cross-functional group). My process (D.E.C.I.S.I.O.N.) is outlined below。

如果你以前从未着手编写过一份正式的可用性测试计划，那么它可能会让你望而却步。不过，这真的很简单。你只需要想清楚你想要完成什么，你计划如何完成它，以及谁将成为这项研究的一部分（支持建议：组建一个跨职能团队要容易得多，也会更有效一些。）

我的过程（D.E.C.I.S.I.O.N.）概述如下：

Decide on the main goal or objective of the research确定研究的主要目标或目的

Explore questions & assumptions (what is it you want to find out)探索问题和进行假设(你想找出什么)

Choose a method (see above)选择一个方法(见上文)

Identify participants (employees and clients)确定参与者(员工和客户)

Script or tasks设定脚本或任务

Identify schedule & budget (time,recruiting,& equipment)确定进度和预算(时间、招聘哪些人员和需要的设备)

Outline responsibilities概述责任

Nail the schedule down把时间表定下来

If you would like a little help,you can download this editable pdf of my research plan template. It is meant to be a 1-page overview of a research plan that can then be sent to internal stakeholders,finance (for budget approval),and anyone else who needs to get an idea what you’re doing and why.

如果你想要一些帮助，你可以下载我的研究计划模板，这是个可直接填写的 图片。这将帮你做一个1页的研究计划概述，然后可以发送给内部利益相关者，财务（为了预算批准） ，以及任何其他人谁需要知道你在做什么和为什么这么做的原因。

万字长文解析 | UX设计师要拥有的重要技能

Conclusion
总结

The UX industry is becoming ever more competitive,yet there are still far too few designers that have creative maturity,knowledge of business,facilitation skills,can balance innovation with practicality,have an insatiable curiosity and desire to learn,and have mature user research skills. Hiring managers are constantly on the lookout for these skills. If you can develop and demonstrate these skills on your resume,and in interviews you will be much more likely to land the UX job you’ve always dreamed of.

用户体验行业正变得越来越有竞争力，然而仍然只有很少的设计师具有成熟创造性、商业知识、促进技能、能够平衡创新和实用性的能力、无限的好奇心和学习的愿望，并有成熟的用户研究技能。招聘经理一直在寻找拥有这些技能的人。如果你能在你的简历、作品集和面试中阐述和展示这些技能，你就更有可能得到梦寐以求的用户体验工作。