On Thursday, 19 July I attended the UK UPA event 'Profiling the Perfect UX Practitioner'. Sitting on the panel were Aline Baeck, Andy Budd, Stavros Garzonis and Jason Mesut. The evening began with each speaker sharing their views on what makes a perfect UX practitioner and ended with a Q&A session that sparked further discussion about portfolios, mentorship and design education.
So, what is a perfect UX practitioner? Well, in short, there isn't one. We UX folk come from many different backgrounds and have different qualities and different experiences. Job roles and responsibilities vary between companies and the environment and culture that we work in affects what we do and how we do it. This makes it hard to define the skillset that every UX practitioner should have. But that's OK.
During the evening there was a lot of talk about soft skills outweighing the hard skills and this pleased me. The ability to empathise, build relationships and communicate with colleagues, clients and users is a must. Being able to think conceptually and having listening and reasoning skills is also extremely valuable. And there were plenty more skills mentioned. I was pleased to hear so much value placed on these soft skills as I myself do not have any formal qualifications in UX (I have a degree in Graphic Design) but I do believe that I have something worthwhile to contribute and I am the first person to admit that I have a lot to learn.
Rather than finding that one 'perfect UX practitioner' it makes a lot of sense to build up a team so that a variety of skills are available to help tackle design problems from all sides. This also provides opportunities for mentorship and for people to learn from each other and to develop.
So, to conclude (for now), we are all making stuff that people use and being able to do that well comes from experience. Do we need formal qualifications in order to 'do UX'? No, not really. Would formal qualifications make it easier to identify a good practitioner from a bad one? No, not necessarily.
Above all, have a passion for what you do and show it. Build up your experience and your confidence will follow. Don't be afraid to try different approaches and use whichever tools are suitable for the task in hand. Instinct is important and mistakes are inevitable. Learn from them and move forward.