TUT 46: Content Strategy from a UX Perspective, Black Friday Sale and UX is Booming in Dallas
In ‘Merica, Thanksgiving is around the corner.
Reading Pew Research’s collection of 100 responses to the question where do you find meaning in life? has been a gratitude blast.
For most Americans, the 4 areas of life that contributed most to life satisfaction are friends, career, romantic partner and health.
Now, my personal UX edition. The top 3 things I’m thankful for as a designer are…
- The Internet (which gives us our jobs and so much more)
- Stumbling into UX by accident and watching it mature into a recognized field
- Access to education. No time in history is it easier to learn a new topic from scratch and access valuable learning from anywhere.
On the theme of education, all UXBeginner courses are 50% off this week. Get UX Fundamentals, UX Portfolio Course, Master the UX Interview and UX School half off using code: UXBF2018.
Without further ado, here’s this week’s juicy UX reads:
CONTENT STRATEGY FROM A UX PERSPECTIVE
Content strategy has piggybacked off the rise of UX for the last years, and now it’s finally stepped into the limelight. As the two fields are inextricably linked, I wrote What is Content Strategy? A UX Perspective. This is my inaugural post on UX Planet, so if you dig it smoosh that clap button!
- Highlight: “Each piece of content constitutes the “what,” and content strategy is the “why” and “how” behind that content.”
UX IS BOOMIN’ IN DALLAS
As the saying goes, “everything is bigger in Texas.” In the recent years UX has seen massive growth in Dallas. I was surprised to learn that the Dallas-Fort Worth region employs more workers with UX skills than Silicon Valley, Austin, and metro Denver. If you’re mobile and looking for a UX job, check out the UX scene in Dallas.
- Highlight: “In general, Texas has been a good market for (job) growth,” says Courtney, founder of Aperio Insights. “There are lots of tech-savvy people, and they stayed here, even after the telecom (bubble bust). We have a large population of people who are good at dealing with things that are complex.”
A REAL UX WORKFLOW FOR AUGMENTED REALITY (AR)
AR/VR, I admit, has remained a mystery to me as a UX designer. So it’s illuminating to see the build process of an AR app using Sketch + a new tool called Torch AR. I thought this feature was extremely neat:
- Highlight: “One issue with 2D assets is that they have no depth, so they can completely disappear if oriented in the wrong direction. A great way to prevent this is to turn on the Face Camera behavior on your 2D assets. The Face Camera behavior makes it so your 2D files always face the user’s device, since that’s where the camera feed is coming from.”
AN INTENSELY PERSONAL CASE STUDY
Information architecture and grief is one of the most unique case studies I’ve read. Triceara (the author) talks about losing her mother to cancer, which fueled her desire to work through an IA redesign of a cancer treatment website. This reminded me of How Bad UX Killed Jenny — good design is so desperately needed in healthcare.
- Highlight: “So how did I make it through this project? First, I developed my problem statement: How might I move past my grief so that I can complete my project on time? Then, I iterated on my grief. I used UX principles to re-examine it and allow myself to revisit the internal narrative I had composed regarding my mother’s battle with cancer. It was truly a cathartic process..”
🏁UX CAREER COACHING CORNER
Don’t want to be blindsided by a design challenge? DesignChallenge.xyz has several example prompts that’ll help you prepare for the big day. Design challenges are also covered in Master the UX Interview Course, which encompasses the entire interview preparation process.
Keep learning,
Oz, founder @ UXBeginner
P.S. Use the 50% off code UXBF2018 before it expires next Monday 11/26. You can apply it to all UX career courses: UX Fundamentals, UX Portfolio Course, Master the UX Interview and UX School.
Originally published at UX Beginner.
