UX Design Portfolio - Greg Alexander
Can a psychologist paint better than an artist?
No. Generally not.
BUT a psychologist could assess the audience, construct personas to help understand who they are, interview a representative sample, uncover latent needs alongside known wants, and take that further.
Needing a psychologist or an artist would depend on your needs.
Do you want a UX Research+Designer, or a UI+Graphic Designer?
If what you really want is a fairly traditional design that has a beautifully crafted look, I’m really not what you’re after. If you want to approach the problem differently, understand the user better (and the business) and want to provide something that resonates in a new way, let’s talk.
Of course a good team with a variety of complementary skills is ideal!
A UXer’s skillset loosely falls on a spectrum that ranges from User/UX Research — UX Design — UI Design — Graphic Design
& Coding skills or Business Analyst skills add separate dimensions.
I’m a UXer, not a Graphic designer (apart from video experience). I add value by discovering user needs and creating new ways to meet them.
Portfolios showcase visual designs. High fidelity prototypes win.
I’ve consulted and supported users for years, but it was my team facilitator and counselling experience that really developed my soft skills. Watching how people do what they do, and questioning subtle cognitive distortions revealed through their choice of words. So how do I photograph building rapport, or empathy, or motivational interviewing?
Are you aware that you will trigger a variety of deeper thoughts in your users by embedding an open question in a closed question?
Presenting everything that goes into the research, explaining the methods we used to understand users, is also integral. Validity is important, stakeholder buy-in needs needs face validity too.
A couple of UX projects follow:
How can we make TV ads useful?
I chose this project a couple of years back. I have a deep personal interest in TV and entertainment and how it will evolve over the coming decades.
Like everyone I asked, I don’t like ads. I chose this question as it intrigued me that everyone said they hated ads but when I scratched the surface they would start telling me what they like about ads.
I wanted to understand that contradiction, and see what FTA could be doing better, for themselves and viewers.
Surveys confirmed the contradiction, revealed its scope, and gave insight into how what people like might be leveraged by FTA.
And so I designed my interview questions to learn more and fill the gaps my survey hadn’t anticipated.
The underlying belief was “Ads are irrelevant”.
This was a generalisation they were certain of, and yet it wasn’t all ads. FTA ads specifically were irrelevant, but many users used Facebook ads differently, and valued shopping catalogues.
What makes an ad relevant? How can we make it relevant?
I evaluated current methods of TV interaction and ad interaction, and how candidates used these and other ads.
In my low-fi prototype, I tested channel keys and arrow keys as a means of rating an ads relevance.
I trialled several concepts — this one made the viewer watch 5 seconds, rate it, and rewarded them by skipping.
Viewers found it very easy to use. They like the gamifying, and also liked earning skip stars to use later.
It astounds me that many designers talk about gamifying but want to give badge and star rewards that do nothing. If you want to reward a FTA viewer, let them skip an ad! (or earn stars that let them skip future ads!)
For more, please read the case study, with more of the concepts tested here.
Adding a new test into a job applicant’s journey — Saville Select Asia
I’m not a psychologist, but I’ve got many years of experience with Psychological testing products - from tech support to designing UIs, Expert Systems, and presenting them at trade shows.
I was brought in to assist integrating a new online personality test into an existing paper-based testing process. I met and interviewed business stakeholders in Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia & Singapore to determine their needs and learn the current testing processes. Understanding the business and the User Journey was critical, because there were incredible opportunities for integrating this test that just weren’t understood even after the first couple of management passes at it, until it was laid out.
There was also a high chance that personality results would be misinterpreted, so I worked with the psychologists to prototype a report and process that would both avoid common misconceptions, and lead the HR report users to seek out our team to learn more (and unlock more information).
I started the design of the scoring system, and wrote preliminary training documentation in the sales and usage process, and developed a candidate interview script for further research. Our work was taken by our global distributor to launch their product.
Innovations Accelerated website design
These guys were already experts in UX, which made creating their website a real challenge.
What they needed from us (and their site) wasn’t clear, but the value we provided was facilitating their thinking in an almost workshop fashion, because sometimes you need someone who is a few steps removed to clarify your thoughts. We discussed the company strengths with them but more so their values and where they wanted to be as a company. We interviewed their customers, tested the old design, learned what their customers saw as their strengths, and concept tested potential users on our new designs.
There was also a consistent underlying theme of training, a latent need that wasn’t well recognised, and I had to push the team to make sure it was added to the design and test scripts.
We each wireframed, prototyped (Adobe XD), then we usability tested, iterated, and tested some more.
Although we provided our designs, our real value was in the deck and discovery walkthrough. Our value was pushing them to see themselves from the outside.
I have a strength in speaking with clients, and with recognising unconscious (latent) needs — and I was pleased to see their new site has training front and centre.
I hope this provides a small taste of my strengths and weaknesses, and how my research & psychological skills might fit with your team.
Please see my resume on my LinkedIn profile, and give me a call.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-alexander-ux/
