UX design is a multidisciplinary practice. You'll be collaborating with a lot of other people, including experts in the field, as well as the users for whom you're designing. Two of the people you may interact with are product managers and developers. Having a basic understanding of how they work and their industry lingo will help foster collaboration and make you better prepared for future jobs.
UX in practice
In this course, you'll meet Patrick who teaches the Product manager path (watch his first class on Understanding the role of the product manager if you want to learn more about that role), and Olga who teaches the iOS developer class (making apps for iPhones!). Clicking through their path pages can give you a better understanding of their roles and programming languages to see the relationship between UX and related fields.
Tech terms you may hear in UX:
Product – the thing you are building (could be an app or a website or a new feature)
"Ship it" – the launch of a product or version
"Roll out" – the gradual introduction of new product features (also gives the development team more time to respond if there are any issues that need to be fixed)
Dev – the shortened term for "development," which can also be referred to as engineering or programming
Stand up – a meeting where participants stand to help keep it short and on topic; it is a way to give updates or address issues with team members
Deliverables – everything needed so the developer can build the product (may include image assets, fonts, color schemes, style guide, wireframes, etc.)
Documentation – annotated record of updates and changes
Wiki – A "go to" place where anyone in a company can find information around a project or task
MVP – the minimum viable product, which is the core product necessary to launch (more features can be rolled out later)
"Mobile first"– when mobile devices are prioritized over websites as the focus of design and development
Agile – a project management style of working to keep things moving fast
Roadmap – the overall plan for researching, building and shipping a product
KPI – Key Performance Indicators
CTO - Chief Technology Officer
Stakeholder – anyone connected to the project and who needs to be involved in decision making
Learn from others in the industry
Here are a few questions you may want to ask to learn from others in the industry. Be sure to come up with some of your own:
How did you get into UX design?
What do you wish you had known when starting out?
How is your time used? What do you work on?
Which software, apps, and tools do you use most?
What are your favorite resources for staying up-to-date with industry news?
Reminder: Curiosity and eagerness to learn new things will take you far!
