What makes you different from other niches within UX? How do you associate yourself within a UX niche? Ex. UX design vs research…
What are tools that UX designers should know? What tools mentioned by a UX candidate would trigger a warning? What tools do you consider outdated in the UX community?
How do you describe what you do to:
UX designers
UX practitioners
Someone in a different department at your workplace
A family member
What goal(s) are driving your career decisions? By pursuing this role as a UX designer, how will it help you achieve your goal? Is UX knowledge being collected for a greater purpose than UX design itself?
How does the design community within your organization differ from the the UX community across organizations?
What kind of relationships have you made outside of the organization (ex. supplier users), and how has that impacted how you work? (Maybe fore a specific project?)
How do you keep in touch with user / client needs? How do you get their feedback? Is it a formal process?
How are users talking about the UX of your products? Ex. in blogs, product reviews, conferences, etc… And how do you use that feedback?
Has your organization gone through mergers, joint ventures, alliances? What was the process like? How have you changed the way you work?
Initial knowledge development activity to innovate, learn a skill, or solve a problem
The knowledge resource generated by this activity (ex. new insights, methods, relationships)
How this resource was applied to create value
What would’ve happened without the community?
What kind of issues / challenges do you think the organization / UX design team would face without you? What kind of skill gap do you fill? What kind of challenges have you solved in the way your UX team operates?
TD: What kind of UX information do leaders in the organization value? What are their ideas on how UX information should be shared in the organization?
BU: What kind of UX information do the designers value? What are their ideals on how it should be shared?
How does your organization support your “knowledge system management” (will have to reword) (ex. hosting lunch ‘n learn, database, blogs, mentorship programs, etc.)
How does your organization recognize (UX) your achievements and contributions? — this signals what the organization values
What motivates UX designers to share knowledge? Is it for personal reputation, is it to support their team members (altruism)?
How does your UX team culture shape the culture of the organization? Are they similar? Different?
What kind of UX teams do you think you will not get along with? Ex. “dev-bros”
What do you think you have to accomplish to be recognized as a leader in UX? (Ex. school, work experience, title, publications, social media following, speaking, recruiting, etc.)
How do you describe what you do to others? What do you have to consider about who you are speaking to before describing what you do as a UX designer?
What is it like to talk about UX design requirements to a team member who is not a UX designer?
Why is it important for UX designers to experience working in multiple companies?
Why is it common to see UX designers move around different organizations early in their career?
How do you learn about the way other organizations do UX design?
When proposing a new project, how does your team describe your UX capabilities and services?
When you are given a task, can you picture what the end result would be? What are some examples of when this occurred? How were you able to imagine that result?
At what point of the project’s development are you able to flesh out the look and feel of the final product?
What kind of impact / influence do you bring into your UX team?
How do you know if you’re becoming a better UX designer?
What information would you prefer looking up online over finding the right person to ask?
Do you find yourself as an information seeker or giver? Do you find yourself asking a lot of questions to your design team or providing a lot of answers?
What groups in your organization outside of UX design have the easiest time understanding what you do and following your instructions?
Which team / department in your organization do you think has no idea what your role is? Do you feel the pressure to have to prove what you do to them?
How are you sharing your design experiences and knowledge today? Is it mostly done in the workplace? Does it get published / shared internally and/or externally? Do you talk about it with friends that have similar occupations? Do you share your experiences and lessons learned in social media, personal portfolio, CVs? How else would you like to share what you know?
Challenges of distributed CoPs (April 23, 2020)
Size: do you find information from a large group of people you don’t know personally? Or do you go to a small group of people you know personally?
Organizational Affiliation: What kind of knowledge would you not share with others outside of the organization? Inside the organization? Do you think you’re valued for the knowledge you have over others? Do you feel a sense of responsibility to share knowledge with everyone?
Culture: What would make you distrust UX information?
How is knowledge shared F2F different than online? What kind of information would you prefer getting F2F instead of online?
How is information broadcasted? Ex. newsfeed, subscriptions, newsletters
How did the information help you solve problems? Did you use it right away? Did you use it later?
Describe a time when you found the right information to solve a problem in a project / task
To UX designers, I wonder if they turn to the same CoPs as they change workplaces, because UX designers are known to “hop around” organizations
How do you see yourself compared to UX designers in Canada? NA? World? How do you know that? What have you come across that gives you this impression?
Early stages of developing CoPs (April 23, 2020)
Do you gain knowledge from people you know? Do you personally know people in organizations where you get the latest trends in UX?
Is there a single influential designer you follow? How do you follow?
What do you consider as knowledge important to UX design? (ex. specific software skills, trend reports, etc.)
What kind of UX design knowledge catches your attention? What kind of UX knowledge would you subscribe to?
What kind of information do you look for? Best practices, specific answers to problems, methods, innovation, day-to-day trends, seasonal reports, etc.
“Thought leaders” – Do you have any thought-leaders? Who do you consider as a thought-leader in UX and why? Do you know them personally? How did you find them?
How did leaders get to be? Who are the leaders and why?
How do you find and follow leaders in UX design?
How would you describe the structure of the organization where you access the latest information on UX? Is there a clear hierarchy? Is it informal? Can you identify the contributors? Is it corporate? Open access? Grassroots? Local? Secret?
Have you ever tried to start an information repository within your organization? What helped move it forward? What caused it to fail?
How do you document important information that you come across as useful?
Mature stages of developing CoPs (April 23, 2020)
How do you know when there is a UX knowledge gap? What triggers your need to access more information? Ex. Client problems, competition, etc.
What would a UX librarian look like?
How do followers form? Do leaders in UX change? What makes the leadership change?
How do you think you role models gained their level of leadership and influence? (Experience, publishing, etc.)
I wonder which organizations outside of UX influence UX designers; do you follow organizations outside of UX for inspiration?
How have you seen the source of UX impact change over time? What do you think caused this change?
General intro to CoPs
How do you stay up to date?
How do you know which software to use or learn?
What helps you make decisions?
Who’s your tribe? (Describe your UX team)
What do you have to know in order to join the team?
When you close a project, how do you collect what you learned? How does that get shared?
How would you describe a well-informed UX designer?
What kind of information are you not willing to share (because it’s what gives you competitive edge)?
What kind of information is most difficult to share (because it is implicit)?
What domains of fundamental design knowledge before joining the organization vs. domain of design knowledge specific to the organization is expected within the community of practice?
How are best practices captured and integrated / passed-on for future use? How do designers determine which best practices to apply?
How would you describe the common characteristics of your most knowledgeable / most skilled designers? What makes your design leaders different from the rest of the group?
Do your designers have a CoP within the organization, or is it primarily a Community of Interest for a professional association?
How do UX best practices impact across the whole organization?
What is the value of having UX designers bond well as a group within the organization? How does their bond affect their work and/or the organization’s perception of them?
