10 things I wish I knew before my first corporate UX design job

从事UX工作之前，应该要知道的10个原则

作者：Teisanu Tudor

Almost two years ago I sat down in front of a computer screen, in an open office space, waiting. I was nervous, eager to start and terrified. This is what I wish I had known before sitting down in that chair.

大约两年前，我坐在电脑屏幕前，在一个开放的办公空间里等着。 我很紧张，急于开始并且感到害怕。 我希望在自己坐到这里之前，应该知道接下来要谈的这些原则。

At that point, everybody looked like a small part in a complex machine. A foreign machine to my mind.

那时，每个人看起来都像是一台意想不到的复杂机器中的一小部分，这个机器出乎我的意料。

The first 5 could be applied to most jobs and, the next 5 are specific to UX Design. I started my first job in the corporate world without knowing too much about their plans, vision or past, and whether I could be a good fit. I was simply too excited about being hired right after graduation, (finally earning good money ) to take a step back.

前5个原则可以应用于大多数的工作，之后的5个是针对UX设计行业。 我在从事第一份工作的时候，没有意识去详细了解公司的规划，愿景和发展历程，以及自己是否真的适合这份工作。只是沉浸在自己毕业后能找到一份工作的激动之中（最后赚了不少钱），以至于不能静下来想一想该如何对待UX工作这件事。

The Job

对于工作

Be patient

要有耐心

In start-ups you might dive directly into the work. In less than a few hours you get the source files, a shared drive link, a few simple tasks and there you go — you will learn while working. Be ready to wait even for two or three weeks until you get to test, perform a study or move pixels. Policies, agreements, product presentations, process training and old fashioned power points are all part of it. It’s annoying to say the least. Use that time to know people, it will help further on and be patient, you will have a lot of time to prove yourself. It’s exactly like an RPG game, the boring text based quests must be done before fighting dragons. Believe me there will be plenty of dragons.

在初创公司，你会直接进入工作，在短时间里你会收到项目的源文件，文档链接和一些简单的任务，剩下的就是在工作中学习了。一般适应两到三周之后你就要进行一些简单的测试，调研或者页面细节调整。在这期间你会接触到很多的条款，协议，产品说明，流程培训和以往的PPT。这些东西确实让人觉得枯燥厌烦。但是不要着急，在此期间你要有耐心多与同事沟通，不要急于表现自己。往后的日子里你有的是时间证明自己是一个优秀的从业者。这就像是一场RPG（角色扮演）游戏一样，在打大龙之前，基础任务是必须要做的。相信我在工作中你会遇到许多大龙等你大显身手。

Your sphere of knowledge will increase, in time

你的知识领域，随着时间的推移会不断扩大。

Do not let money influence your decision. No matter the cost.

不要让金钱影响你的决定， 无论成本如何。

It is extremely tempting, imagining that things will suddenly be affordable, that you will start building your life. You must, however, always realize that you are giving away a large chunk of that life: 8 hours every single day for 5 days a week. Better make sure that most of that time is enjoyable. Otherwise, you will slowly start to hate every morning, everyone and everything around, until you either quit or become an arrogant, grumpy designer — that you swore never to become.

想象一下你终于可以实现经济独立，足以构建自己想要的生活了，这感觉是不是很棒。但是，你必须要意识到为此你付出了生命中的大部分时间：每周5天8小时。你要想办法让自己的工作状态保持愉悦。否则，不久后你会开始厌恶每一个早晨，每一个同事和与工作相关的所有事情，直到你开始自暴自弃或者变成一个傲慢，暴躁的设计师，那可是你曾经发誓无论如何都不会成为的样子。如果不是真心喜爱设计工作，只是为了一份可观的薪水而隐忍心中的负面情绪，那么我鼓励你去追求内心渴望的职业，并为此坚持、奋斗。

If you’re not sure, imagine yourself doing that job every single day

如果你不确定，想象你自己每天都做这项工作。

Make sure there are senior designers in the company

确保公司要有一位比你更高阶的设计师

Fortunately, design cannot be done by a single person with a white laptop, not in the corporate world at least. Good design needs honest feedback, collaboration and backing up. It’s good to fly in the realm of ideas as a beginner, it is equally important to know when and how to land back into reality. After working by yourself without a senior professional, even when backed by good user feedback, you might start thinking whether your decisions are the best, whether things could be improved.

在公司里，设计工作不是由一个人、一张白板来完成。好的设计工作需要用户的真实反馈，团队的真诚协作和频繁的更新迭代来支撑。作为菜鸟能够天马行空是很好的，但懂得回归现实也同等重要。在没有更厉害的前辈带你的时候，即使你能获得最真实的用户反馈，你也应该时常思考是否我的决策就是最好的，有没有可以再进行优化的地方。所以作为新人，如果公司里有很专业的同行，那么就谦虚地向他学习，没事了请他吃吃饭，讨教讨教。

从天马行空的想法到接底气的实现，你需要有人带带你。

Ask about their past, present and future

关心团队的过去，现状和未来

How is the team going to evolve in time? Are you planning to expand the research effort? How much are you investing in training? How much are you willing to invest in field studies? Does the UX team have a designated lab for testing? These require context obviously, but they might contour the effort and resources they are actually putting in the team, besides the boring corporate slogans, focusing on customer experience..blabla

公司是如何及时做出调整？你是否要扩展自己的研究范围？该花多少钱去进行新的能力培训？在研究中将投入多少预算？UX团队是否有特定的测试实验室？这些问题与你的职业规划都是息息相关的，但是很多公司除了一些让人厌恶的口号，应该关注用户体验等等的废话之外，而不愿意披露他们真实地为团队投入了多少资源。

好的团队才能留住好的员工

Do not get caught in political games

不要搞办公室政治

You might get to work with people who have been there for 10, 20 or even more years. As a UX Designer used to observing behavior, you might notice groups, sides and affiliations — based on product teams, projects, product revenue, etc. As a designer you will always have a great deal of stakeholders, from various departments and fields that will sometimes beed to be brought in the same room to collaborate. Therefore, always try to stay out of people’s political agenda. Try to find someone with enough neutrality to offer some guidance.

在公司里你可能会遇到很多已经进入职10年，20年甚至更久的员工。作为善于观察行为的UX设计师，你会发现公司里有产品团队，项目部门，财务部门等不同的小团体，利益战线和派系。作为设计师经常会接触来自不同部门和各个领域的利益相关者，有时候你会和他们在同一个屋檐下进行项目合作。因此要尽力避免参与他们的明争暗斗。与中立人员多多走动，从他们那里获得更多的办公室生存指导。

做一个靠专业技能吃饭的人，不要去搞办公室政治。

Learn to say no

学会说不

Not everybody knows or cares what a UX Designer is supposed to do. For some, you will still be the one who makes things look good. In time, people will get to see that your designs are visually good, again, not caring about the entire iterative process in the back. Some of those people will ask you for help sooner or later: videos, posters, presentations, banners, pins, cards, etc.

1. Do not accept to help unless they know exactly what they need- working on the idea is more difficult than the thing itself. 2. Do not agree to help if you will need to stretch your time, focus on delivering valuable products first.

并非所有人都知道或关心UX设计师应该做什么。 对于一些人来说，你能做的是让产品看起来更好。 随着时间的推移，人们会看到你的设计有很好的视觉效果，但并不会关心背后的整个迭代过程。 其中一些人迟早会向您寻求帮助：视频，海报，演示文稿，横幅，便签，卡片等。

1.除非他们确切地知道他们需要什么，否则不要轻易答应帮助人家，因为这个看起来不难的事情往往要花费你很多时间去思考。

2.如果你需要压缩自己的时间，就不要同意提供帮助，把时间都用在让自己的产品更加有价值的事情上。

Pulled from every direction

脱离各种团体，专注于本职工作

The UX Job

UX岗位

An input field has six or seven states

一个输入区域有六到七个状态

If you did not take courses focused on interface design (as myself), you will realize that the part that was mostly ignored during university project and classes (because there was not time/the project was theoretical), does take as much thought and care as the rest of the process. 

You identified in your study that users need input fields in an interface. These can be: disabled, with a placeholder, with a label on top / or a floating label?, focused, hovered, clicked, with a shadow, without, with color on press, or without, large, wide, narrow, dense, with errors or hints. You can spend a full day if you decide to build these from scratch. That’s not even the end of it: these must be tied to real use cases, tested and then fit with the rest of the interface components. Do not forget or ignore the interface itself, expecting a UI designer to do the job. Make sure the effort you put in finding solutions for people is reflected in the product as well, not left in a post-it wall.

如果你没有专门学习过界面设计（比如我），你会发现在大学项目和练习中被忽略的这部分（因为没有时间或者项目根本就是虚拟出来的），其实在真实项目中的是最花费时间和精力的。

你需要定义用户界面的控件。这些可能包括：不可用状态、占位符、顶部标签、浮动标签、聚焦状态、经过状态、点击状态、有阴影、无阴影、按下后是否有颜色、大小、宽度、密度还有错误提示等。如果一切都从头做起，你会花费很多精力。而且这还没有结束，这些控件必须和真实用例相关，经过测试后与其他的控件保持一致。同时还不能忽略界面本身的美观程度，这需要UI设计师来完成。你需要确保自己花费精力完成的解决方案能通过产品体现出来，而不是永远停留在贴墙上。

看似简单的事情，你仍需要做出很多思考。

Own your tool and flows

拥有自己的工具和流程（方法论）

That’s exactly why you need to own the everyday design tools and the flows. Try to understand the context of your company before choosing a tool to design or prototype with (if there is a choice). Is there a need of sharing prototypes based on research? Then maybe focus on tools as Adobe XD, Figma or Sketch rather than Photoshop. Are developers supposed to get designs early on? Then learn how to use Zeplin or Avocode and practice a flow from paper sketch to code. Do they need to document their findings? Look into Atlassian tools as Confluence which allows teams to document pretty much everything they do. When you become an expert of your everyday tools and flows, you will have the upper hand, being aware of what can and cannot be done, based on deadlines and deliverables. Then you can focus on discussing real issues.

在选择设计和原型制作工具前，你需要了解一下公司的设计流程。是否在原型阶段就需要进行讨论评审？团队使用的是XD、Figma还是sketch而不是PS。开发人员是否应该尽早获得设计？学习如何使用Zeplin或Avocode并熟悉从纸质草图到代码的工作流程。是否需要收集大家的想法？是否把Atlassian当作集中处理的平台，记录团队成员的所有操作。一旦你成为常用工具和流程的专家，你将会变得更有话语权。根据项目节点和交付要求，你要明白什么能做，什么不能做。专注于去解决实际的问题。

尽快地建立自己解决问题的方法论。

Compromise and trust , do not impose

妥协和信任，不要强求

You will need to learn when to let go and when to push for perfection. In time, especially towards the release of a product, developers will start focusing on “details”, being the interface itself. You have to remember that not everyone cares about UX, some people just want to get the job done as quickly as possible. You need to learn how to speak to different types of people: encourage their initiatives when working on UI styling, push for perfection if the person seems eager to learn and learn when to compromise a few pixels, for the sake of focusing on valuable interactions. Remember: similar to electricity, humans are looking for the shortest path out — take time in explaining how your work adds long term value to users and the company.

你需要学会何时有力地推动项目，尤其是快要发布产品的时候。开发人员只专注于页面细节的实现。你一定要记住不是所有的人关心UX，一些人只想着尽快完成手头的工作。你需要学会和不同岗位的人沟通：在调整UI样式的时候要积极鼓励多做尝试；如果有人想要对设计细节妥协，你要学会督促他们追求完美，以期创造更有意义的交互操作。记住：就像电流一样，人类一直追寻解决问题的最短路径——投入精力在如何使你的工作为用户和公司产生长远的价值。

Never, ever burn bridges. You need people

永远不要过河拆桥，你需要别人助力自己的梦想。

Get rid of the button example

摆脱按钮模版

This one may be quite specific to my experience. People had the tendency to exemplify everything with buttons. “What if we use this button for all the products — than we only need one CSS class” — everybody thought it was a great idea that should be scaled (scaling is really popular in corporations) for all UI components. Little did they know about the complexity behind components related to specific product use cases, in which case scaling failed badly. Try to move beyond basic examples that will always prove a point, take the most challenging idea you encountered and present that to people first, to make sure you avoid pointless work.

这也许和我个人经历有关。人们倾向于用按钮表现一切。“如果我们对所有产品都使用这个按钮，那么我们只需要一个CSS样式就可以控制。”大家都觉得对于所有的UI组件来说，这都是一个很好的想法（公司里普遍应用CSS调整控件缩放适配大小）。他们很少认识到组件与具体产品的使用场景包括设备尺寸之间，存在着很多复杂的问题，只是通过缩放控件来适配，视觉效果往往不好。

细节之处还是需要努力完善以期达到最好

Keep buzzwords in a locked drawer

不要过多使用术语

I am exaggerating, probably. You might have read this before, there is a danger in people adopting and using words they are not familiar with. In my case, every development team started talking about the need of having a pattern library — every team seemed to understand something different and it all started from a UX presentation, unfortunately. The point is that you should define and ask what people mean when they mention for example: “running a workshop” (most of the time it’s more of a discussion around a table)”, “can we use Design thinking?” don’t we do that already? , “are we sure this is a seamless experience for our users” let’s define what we each understand as seamless. Once you and the people you talk to understand each other’s terms, it will get much easier. Do not be afraid to argue for your position.

你以前可能也读到过这个观点：使用人们不熟悉的术语是件危险的事情。每个开发团队都希望有一套既定的沟通协作模式库，不幸的是，从交互文档开始，大家就对项目的认知总是容易出现偏差。关键在于应该知道大家在说什么意思。举个例子：“开个短会”（大多时候指的是小桌会议讨论简单但必要的问题），“我们能使用设计思维吗？”（难道我们没有这么做吗？）“确定对于用户来说这是个无缝的体验吗？”首先应该确认每个人是如何理解“无缝”这个概念。一旦大家能够统一这些概念，沟通就变的容易的多。这就需要多多交流，不要害怕说出自己的看法。

Never nod and think that you’ll ask later. Ask immediately to clarify

如果有疑问请立即问清楚

Bounce

跳脱自我

You need to learn to listen to your intuition and gut feeling. If something feels wrong, if you have the slightest feeling that you and the team are not doing everything you can to deliver valuable products, then stop and think honestly for a second. Did you do everything in your power to create a high quality product, service or exact interface? There is no shame in admitting that you are wrong and it’s always better to stop early on.

I do always tell myself: If I am afraid to act, I am not good enough.

你要学会倾听你的直觉并敢于面对它。假如你觉得有什么问题，隐约觉得你与团队所做的一切不利于提供更有价值的产品，你应该立即停下来，诚实地思考一切。你是否竭尽全力在创造高品质的产品、服务或者精致的页面？承认自己错了并不是一件丢人的事情，尽早调整。

我总是提醒自己：如果我害怕行动，证明我还是不够好。

发布于 2019-01-26

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