Navigating Your UX Career in Challenging Times (Sarah Doody’s episode on the Insights Unlocked Podcast)

Sarah Doody [00:00:00]: I think if candidates can kind of get over maybe their own egos and not have it in their head that they must work at a big household name tech company, they’re going to realize that there are amazing opportunities at other companies that, let’s face it, might have better work life balance as well. It might not be subscribing to the household culture and all that that sometimes drives a lot of these teams. Hey there. I’m Sarah Doody, host of the Career Strategy podcast. Many professionals are seeking more impact, flexibility, growth and let’s face it, getting paid what they’re worth. But how do you unlock this in your career? It starts with strategy. I’m taking you behind the scenes of what’s working for my career coaching clients. You’ll hear strategies and actionable, yet sometimes against the grain advice for how you can be the CEO of your career and stop dreading Mondays.

Sarah Doody [00:01:00]: Ready to level up your career? Let’s get after it.

Andy McMillan [00:01:05]: Welcome to the show. I’m Nathan Isaacs, senior manager of content production here at User Testing. Our guest host today is Andy McMillan, User Testing CEO. Welcome, Andy. Hey everyone. And this episode’s guest is Sarah Doody. Sarah is a US Researcher, experienced designer and founder and CEO of Career Strategy Lab. We’re going to be talking to Sarah about navigating your UX career over the next one to two years.

Andy McMillan [00:01:33]: Sarah, welcome to the show.

Sarah Doody [00:01:34]: Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Andy McMillan [00:01:36]: To tee up our conversation today, we reached out to UX professionals within User Testing’s global contributor network to share their thoughts about their careers. Here’s what they said.

Sarah Doody [00:01:48]: Are you satisfied with your career trajectory?

Andy McMillan [00:01:51]: Why or why not?

Sarah Doody [00:01:52]: I am satisfied with my career trajectory. I think I’m going on the right path as a UX researcher. Those kind of jobs are always needed in these kind of big tech companies in order to kind of improve products and get good customer and user feedback. So I would say that in general, I’m starting off my career right now. I’m satisfied with where I’m kind of going in the trajectory and I think there’s a lot of growth for me from there. What is the biggest threat to your role in the next one or two years? So current economic climate, I think I survived two rounds of layoffs. So yes, it’s the.

Andy McMillan [00:02:34]: Macroeconomic climate which.

Sarah Doody [00:02:36]: Is is the biggest threat to my role in the next one or two years. Probably AI. And people will be using AI for research. You know, maybe they’ll be able to, you know, be able to kind of like submit prototypes into some sort of AI system and they can pinpoint certain areas that need improvements and things like that. So there may not, you know, there may be less opportunities for me and I’ll be competing against AI systems. What tips do you have to recession proof your job? Been doing a lot of self development with help from a company. So online training courses, using your personality to your advantage on top of your skills, because that’s the only way I feel like I have an edge to, you know, the eventual AI takeover of things. Okay.

Sarah Doody [00:03:27]: So I’d say always develop yourself, expand.

Andy McMillan [00:03:30]: Your skills, be up to date with.

Sarah Doody [00:03:34]: Your work, be consistent in your work.

Andy McMillan [00:03:36]: Be always work for the company and your family. All right, so Sarah, what are your impressions watching the video? I mean, I certainly you can feel both excitement and angst of sort of everything that’s going on. And so as somebody who’s quite close to this, I would, I’d love to hear your thoughts of, of how you felt watching the video.

Sarah Doody [00:03:53]: Yeah, first of all, I love that you guys went out and did research. Makes me so excited because I think there’s a lot of fear out there right now. And I think that fear is often driven by sometimes valid and sometimes not so valid fears. And so I hope that this episode can really help, kind of help people separate reality from maybe, maybe fiction. In those clips, you know, a couple of themes really came up. I’m sure we’re going to dive into them, but one of them was just like the reality of all these layoffs. Right. And how do we, how do we deal with that as candidates? And is this, is this a long term thing or is this a short term thing?

Andy McMillan [00:04:37]: Yeah, I think that’s right. I mean, you definitely feel that sort of angst. It is interesting though, how many folks talked about how much they enjoy their career and the impact they have. And so I still feel like in our industry, this is one of those things where I think we’re still early in our industry’s total adoption. I mean, how many products do you feel really go through a detailed research process or really feel like they’ve got that kind of user feedback? And so on one hand, I think you’re right. You sort of felt people’s optimism about the market opportunity overall, but then a kind of a, I don’t know, maybe like a near term pessimism of like, are people hiring for this? So is that what you hear when you speak to folks is sort of that near term pressure outweighing the long term optimism? Or what do you hear from people when you speak to Them?

Sarah Doody [00:05:18]: Yeah, I think there’s a few variables happening right now. Just waking up every day and logging into LinkedIn or reading the news and hearing about layoffs. But specifically I think we need to use the phrase tech layoffs, but then also combine that with this kind of AI that’s we’re looking at over our shoulder, you know, and wondering what’s the impact of AI on all of the, all of us as well. And so I think for the tech layoffs, like keyword, there is tech. I mean, sure, companies like Microsoft, Amazon, etc. Are laying off people, but I think what people need to realize is there are so many other companies and industries outside tech that are hiring, that have digital products, that need researchers, that need designers, and specifically I think about health care and education and government energy. You know, if I think of candidates can kind of get over maybe their own egos and not have it in their head that they must work at a big household name tech company, they’re going to realize that there are amazing opportunities at other companies that, let’s face it, might have better work life balance as well. It might not be subscribing to the household culture and all that.

Sarah Doody [00:06:45]: That sometimes drives a lot of these teams, let’s face it.

Andy McMillan [00:06:49]: Yeah, I think that’s right. And I also think, you know, you spoke about impact too. I mean, I’m sure there are more than a few people that might leave a giant tech company, go to something maybe a little bit less tech oriented overall, but have an absolutely huge impact on the digital products those companies are building. And those products have huge reach. I mean, you mentioned things like health care and government. I mean, think of places where we would all benefit with a better customer experience and you could literally touch, you know, millions and millions, tens of millions of people with the things that, that you could be working on. And so I think that’s well stated advice.

Sarah Doody [00:07:22]: Yeah, I mean like a lot of the tech companies, it’s exciting to work at those companies and have it on your resume. And the allure of startups, I’ve worked in startups before. But to your point about impact, like maybe the world doesn’t need another Fitbit for dogs or something, you know, so maybe, you know, could we all benefit from easier way to do our tax or get a driver’s license or check the status of our healthcare deductibles, like these basic things that we do every day. I think we’re missing an opportunity to have that, that impact. And maybe if, if we as a community kind of redefine what, what that means. It may not be, quote, you know, sexy, but it’s huge when people can achieve these tasks that have massive impact on their lives.

Andy McMillan [00:08:14]: Yeah, I think that’s right. And I think one of the things that is sometimes interesting, at least for me, for these industries that are maybe outside of core tech, especially as it relates to research, is I think a lot of companies that don’t have a technology heritage, one of their challenges is knowing what to do to build these better experiences. And so in a lot of ways, especially for folks in more of the research part of our field, the impact you can have if you can go into one of these organizations and go speak to their customers, their patients, their constituents, whoever that might be, get that feedback and be able to help that organization actually synthesize that into action, maybe that’s more impactful than just being at the latest and greatest tech company where everybody thinks they know what they need to go build. So it might even be a very fulfilling opportunity to go in and really have that core research be part of the company strategy, not just part of a product strategy.

Sarah Doody [00:09:05]: And this is a complete hypothesis on my part, but you made me think of this. You know, these companies that maybe don’t have a 25 person design team, maybe they value research more than other companies that can just put 100 designers at something. Like maybe these companies that have a design team of two realize, wait a second, we don’t have infinite design resources, therefore we need to do everything we can on the front end to make sure we’re building the right thing for the right people, you know, at the right time. And maybe maybe they have a more research first mindset. I don’t know, but that would be a guess if I was going to put one out there.

Andy McMillan [00:09:48]: I think it’s a good guess. I want to bring up the other topic you mentioned, which is a little bit of the, I don’t know if it’s the elephant in the room, it might be the robot in the room, but the, the AI aspect of what’s happening in our industry and so many others, which is sort of on one hand exciting and on another hand perhaps nerve wracking. Can you speak to a little bit of the concerns that you hear people speak about when they think about the potential impact of AI on research?

Sarah Doody [00:10:12]: Yeah, I think every time I log in to LinkedIn recently I see some new screenshot of what ChatGPT has told someone. Right. And we see it for use cases around making interview questions or, or forget interviews, just make a Persona like hell. Now we can just Skip interviews because ChatGPT can tell us, you know, who the people are apparently. And I think ChatGPT is really interesting from like an idea refinement or kind of a diverging perspective, if you will. But I think that the idea that ChatGPT is going to somehow be able to take over research, like replace our ability to come up with a set of great interview questions or the script for a usability test, I don’t think it has the context that the person working internally at that company has, you know, there’s just so many inputs that are lacking, I think. So I think it’s a great tool for idea generation, learning. But the thought that it’s going to take over the job of a researcher or like here’s a, maybe a potential use case, let’s say you have a transcript of a bunch of interviews, roll those through CHAT GPT and have it maybe try and come up with some insights.

Sarah Doody [00:11:37]: That’s interesting, you know, but the actual conducting and planning, I don’t think we need to be concerned that it’s going to take over for us.

Andy McMillan [00:11:45]: I think that’s right, especially at the scale that I think research needs to get to, at the speed at which products are being developed. I think there’s a big role to be played for anyone with a background in this space in helping organizations adopt this much, much, much more broadly. Think of how many things today again get shipped, delivered, built and we all get them, we get them as consumers and you wonder like, did anyone use this before it was shipped? It certainly wasn’t research. Nobody asked any customers about this idea, right? So I think if we can as, as, as industry experts, as UX leaders, as people who understand what good research looks like and how to, you know, think about scaling that, I think AI becomes a tool to help us empower others. So maybe we’re creating some templates and some methodologies, maybe we’re empowering designers more often to get this kind of feedback maybe for themselves a little bit with our guidance. And maybe the AI much like us can be helping them a little bit. But I agree, I think we’re a long way from AI simply being able to know all the things that should be tested, know how to go, ask all the right things to be forward looking, right? That’s a big part of what researchers do so well, is not just ask about what happened in the past, but what are the future needs that people have and then synthesize and distribute that. I think that’s a lot to ask for that.

Andy McMillan [00:13:02]: But I do think it could be an accelerant and I think that’s, that’s great because I think the idea that there’s a impact on jobs right now, and I think you framed it very well in the tech company Ecosphere can make it feel like there’s less research need out there. And I don’t think that’s right at all. I think that’s a very near term balance sheet driven reaction. The demand and need for research is still growing exponentially. And so I think all these tools that can help folks, you know, service and meet that need is only going to grow the demand for more researchers.

Sarah Doody [00:13:31]: You know, this reminds me of I got to date myself but like when prototyping tools came out and like template sets for wireframes and things and I thought like, oh no, like what is this going to do to the future of design? And you know, you look at everyone’s enthusiasm for Figma, which is a great product, but Figma is only as good as the person’s knowledge who is using the actual tool. Right? Like you can use a Figma template and still have a design that doesn’t adhere to certain basic design principles. So I think it’s the same with this. Like, sure, anyone can type make a Persona for XYZ into ChatGPT, but then how do you refine that? Or the better question is why couldn’t you do the research in the first place?

Andy McMillan [00:14:23]: I think that’s right. I think that’s exactly right. Let me shift slightly away from the AI conversation and sort of to your third point. So you mentioned sort of near term angst on recessions, you know, the impact of AI, but then the third sort of being career trajectory. So what advice do you give to folks that are in our space that are thinking about, you know, building for the long term, like what are the things they can do to, you know, make themselves a little bit more recession proof, make them attractive to potential employers, whether that’s in tech or outside of tech, which I think is great guidance you’ve already provided. What can folks be doing to sort of put themselves in the best position to achieve, you know, success in their career in this space?

Sarah Doody [00:15:00]: I think one of the first things that people really need to do is create kind of a career roadmap for themselves. You know, we have product roadmaps, but I think a lot of people don’t ever think to create a career roadmap. And what I mean by that is a lot of people are so focused on maybe the job they want to get next that they don’t think, okay, if I’m a researcher right now and I want to be a research manager in three, four years, what skills and experience do I need to acquire between now and then? But I think people don’t think about that gap and they’re just so focused on the next job offer. Right? So that’s kind of one of the things that I think is really, really important. Other things to be thinking about are just ongoing professional development. And of course those hard skills are important, but I think we put a lot of emphasis on software and tools, which are great, but they might not always be around. And so I think really honing in the timeless skills of written and spoken communication, for example, critical thinking, like ability to, especially for researchers, look at information and quickly connect the dots and spot problems and things like that. I think those are the skills even, you know, use case of one here.

Sarah Doody [00:16:28]: But looking at my career, I think the things that have helped me get to where I am are communication, connecting the dots, research. It’s not that I’m an expert in figma or whatever tool. It’s that I can leverage these skills regardless of like what kind of twists and turns my, my career has taken. And I think the third thing people really need to do very tangibly is make sure that all of your career materials are up to date and ready to go, meaning your resume, your LinkedIn, your portfolio. Because you never know when an opportunity might come your way. First of all, like, what if your dream job landed in your email or your friend told you their company’s hiring and it’s, you know, ideally what you’re looking for or if you’re, if you are, what’s the word? If you’re laid off, you know, you need to be ready in case that happens too. So making sure all that stuff is up to date and really prioritizing that. And I think a lot of people worry and think that’s going to take too long, but you need to think of it in it as investment.

Sarah Doody [00:17:40]: Just like research is an investment. Right. If you do this once, get all your career materials updated once, then it’s just a matter of like refreshing them slightly every year, twice a year. And it won’t be this herculean task that you have to take on every time you’re thrown into, you know, a job search that you initiated or that was initiated for you.

Andy McMillan [00:18:02]: I think that’s really good advice. I had someone one time, I was at a seminar and they mentioned building your resume before you need your resume is when you’re in a better headspace to do that work as well. So you’re a little more confident, you’re sort of, you know, you get to a place where you feel good about where you are and if something, you know, you hit a bump in the road along the way, one, you take the bump a little better and two, you know, you can sort of get right, focused on what you need to get focused on. So I think that’s, that’s good guidance.

Sarah Doody [00:18:25]: Yes. I mean, having just read through the 30 critiques that were submitted for everyone in my career coaching program this morning, I would say 80% of them are all just kind of swirling mindset stuff. It’s not really like, is this bullet point on my resume correct? It’s all this other doubt and self confidence stuff that comes when, like you said, you’re not in the right headspace to, to do it if you know you need a job yesterday.

Andy McMillan [00:18:53]: Yep, I think that’s right. So from your vantage point at Career Strategy Lab, what do you think are the opportunities and challenges for someone who works in the UX industry, whether they’re a designer or researcher? Like how do you frame up, you know, when you’re talking to somebody or talking to one of these groups, the opportunities that exist as they think longer term, but also, you know, what are the realities that are going to make those, those opportunities hard to achieve?

Sarah Doody [00:19:16]: Yeah, so I think we kind of already covered one of these opportunities and that’s the opportunity for research. If we play along with this hypothesis that these companies that are out of the tech industry, they might be more research first minded. And so I think in general the area of research, I think I don’t have data on this, but anecdotally when I log into LinkedIn and just poke around, you know, job boards and things, it seems like there’s a lot of research jobs out there. So I think that’s good news for your audience. The other thing that I think is an opportunity is for people to not just be pure researchers or pure designers, but look to develop those kind of business acumen skills, for lack of better word. So look to understand a little bit about business strategy and not just how beautiful of a thing you can make on the screen, but really practice and be mindful of understanding the products and services and companies you work with and the business behind it. Because if you treat that kind of like a muscle, then you are going to be acquiring kind of like portable equity throughout your career that will make you come across as more experienced and kind of mature in those skills. And I think employers don’t just want someone that can move stuff around on the screen and make a design or write the perfect survey.

Sarah Doody [00:20:55]: They want to know that that person can also collaborate and communicate with people in other departments and make sure that whatever their researcher designing is moving the business forward, you know, and they’re not just off in a UX silo. So those are things I think that, that people should keep in mind. Does anything else come to mind for you?

Andy McMillan [00:21:18]: I think that last point is just such a good one, especially when you mentioned kind of company strategy. We’ve been talking about these companies outside of tech. It’s always interesting. I grew up in the Midwest. A lot of the companies I grew up around sort of had tech disruption happen to them. I always remind folks, it’s not like they didn’t know this was happening. I mean, they see the disruption happening. The hard part is what to do and how do you leverage your kind of your existing investments.

Andy McMillan [00:21:43]: Think about what a lot of retailers went through with the push into E commerce. And everybody was like, well, what do I do with my stores? What do I do with all my associates? How do I. It’s really kind of a research question at its core. Really, really, really important research question. And so I think researchers that can put themselves in a position not just to design something beautiful, but to say, here’s a business model that, you know, I’ve went out and talked to folks and talked to customers and here’s what we could go do. I think that’s really an incredible skill set to have. And I see it in so many, so many researchers that don’t know that they can connect it to that sort of business strategy almost naturally. And I think if you can get explicit about doing that, it’s such a huge impact.

Sarah Doody [00:22:23]: Yeah, I mean, you know, it’s funny, I just experienced this this morning. We were brainstorming some. Not problems, but just things that we’ve started to notice in our own business of career strategy lab that are impacting scalability and other things. And there were a few kind of suggestions put out there and in the previous weeks also. And I said to them, good idea doesn’t scale. And I’m still trying to figure out how to communicate like the, the idea of scalability sometimes because a lot of these ideas are not scalable. But that’s a great example of where like learning how to look at problems not just through your lens of whatever your job title is, but through the context of everything else that you know about the company. I think it’s such a vital skill because as a manager and business owner, if someone would email me a solution tomorrow that like, you know, covered all of the business strategy and solved the problem, it would be my dream.

Sarah Doody [00:23:30]: But I think it’s something that’s hard to, hard to teach, like in a, you know, course. Let’s say it’s more of something that you like a muscle and you practice it and get better at it over the course of your, your career. But you have to kind of keep that top of mind in every meeting you’re in. Like, what am I learning about the sales or the marketing team or the finance team today? You know?

Andy McMillan [00:23:55]: Yeah, yeah, that’s right. And how to communicate that up. I think that’s a good point you made. I mean, it’s, it’s not sending detailed research, in the words of research, to a senior executive, but it might be, hey, I went out and talked. I’ve talked to tons of our customers over the last few months and here’s what I’ve heard and here’s what we could go do. It is sort of that storytelling aspect. So I think that’s right. So if those are the opportunities, what are the challenges that you see facing folks in the kind of UX research and design space?

Sarah Doody [00:24:22]: So I see this all the time because in this career strategy lab we have a ton of people who come to our office hours and stuff. And some of the challenges that I’ve seen people face are really around knowing what skills to focus on in their career and when. Because I think there’s a lot of pressure and conversation out there about like, oh, designers need to learn to code. So let me take a coding course or insert whatever, you know, trendy software is out there. And now you need to become an expert at Figma or, you know, whatever the thing Tomorrow is, or ChatGPT. And I think regardless of what you do within the world of user experience, you need to create a filter to help eliminate or reduce this distraction. Because if you try and do all those things, you’re not going to be good at anything. Right? And okay, you become an expert at Figma.

Sarah Doody [00:25:24]: Great. What happens if two weeks from now they don’t exist? Obviously that’s not going to happen, but like, you don’t need to know every feature. I remember I used to use Photoshop back in the day and I kind of realized I don’t need to know all these things in Photoshop, I just need to know the 10% of Photoshop that lets me do my job. Right. So it’s fun sometimes to learn the detailed features of software, but is that at the cost of going and updating your resume? So it’s ready to go now and you don’t have to scramble three months from now, you know, and it kind of gets the idea of thinking of your career like a, like a product manager. And what’s the ROI of the time? How you spend your time and chasing trends is one, I think a great example of that.

Andy McMillan [00:26:12]: I think that’s a really good point. I think, you know, another one I see along that line is sometimes instead of going deeper into research, trying to have that research get visibility higher up also helps with that career stability. Right. Having people further up, seeing the work that’s being done. I think that ROI example is a really good, good way to think about it. All right, so, Sarah, if someone wants to learn more about Career Strategy Lab, where should they go?

Sarah Doody [00:26:36]: Well, luckily, we own the domain career careerstrategylab.com that’s the best place to go. And then you can find all our social links and podcasts and all of that good stuff.

Andy McMillan [00:26:46]: Excellent. Well, and I know you recently launched the Career Strategy podcast, so I’m looking forward to subscribing to that and I would recommend our listeners do the same. So, Sarah, thank you for joining us today. Really enjoyed the conversation. I’m sure our listeners will take a lot away and really appreciate the thoughts and guidance that you provided.

Sarah Doody [00:27:02]: Thanks for having me. This was great. Thanks for listening to the Career Strategy podcast. Make sure to follow me, Sarah Doody on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube or LinkedIn. If anything in today’s episode resonated with you, I’d love to hear about it. Tag me on social media or send me a dm. And lastly, if you found this episode helpful, I’d really appreciate it if you could share it with a friend or give us a quick rating on Spotify or review on Apple Podcasts. Catch you later.