At my workplace, Springboard, we’re pioneering a unique approach to learning UX design online. In our UX workshops, learners work their way through a comprehensive curriculum, with mentorship from an industry expert who guides them as they go from being a beginner to launching a portfolio. We believe that interacting with a practitioner is one of the most effective ways to gain knowledge.
Our alums who now work as UX Designers tell us that access to industry experts’ perspectives continues to be invaluable even after they graduate and start working in the field. This makes sense since learning UX design is a lifelong endeavor, and the industry is constantly evolving.
We believe in listening to our UX “elders” and learning from their experiences. We want to make perspectives of great UX designers available not just to our own community, but to the world at large. In that spirit, here’s an interview with one extraordinary designer and mentor, Tim McCoy, senior director of design at Pivotal Software.
Tim’s Story
Most valuable advice
Get out and talk to your peers. Get out and do things in the community (like meetups). Hackathons and startup weekends are immensely valuable for people starting out.
Quick Facts
- Name: Tim McCoy
- Location: San Francisco, CA
- Title: Director of Design
- Company: Pivotal – industry-leading agile, cloud and data platform company
- College Major: English and Communication
- Years in the Industry: 20 Years as a UX Designer and front-end developer
1. What led you to the field of UX?
I’ve been in the industry for almost 20 years. I started out as a front-end developer in 1995. I was lucky enough to work with an early web shop that really understood and put a value on user experience — back when websites were advertising or brochure / marketing based.
Our team strove to build strong customer relationships. I was interested in these UX-related business challenges and started talking to interaction designers on some of our projects. I dug deeper and deeper and have been ‘learning by doing’ ever since.
2. What inspires you about the field of UX?
There’s a real person on the other side of the screen, who I’m aiming to reach with my work. What I’m doing is materially affecting others, and there is heightened pressure for me to do a great job.
3. In your opinion, what is the biggest way that the field of UX is evolving?
I like the direction the field is going in terms of being an inclusive discipline. The field isn’t just for design specialists — it’s for everyone involved in the creation of a product.
UX isn’t about creating experts who are the luminaries in their fields. It’s cross-disciplinary. People can jump in from a variety of backgrounds, and these varied perspectives are essential for yielding great results.
4. What are the most important personality traits that a UX designer can bring to the table, regardless of experience? What traits do you seek out in a potential hire to your team?
Humility is an important trait. UX designers are constantly looking for ways to validate and invalidate their assumptions – which sometimes means being wrong. You can’t have an ego in this field.
Being collaborative is huge. When you’re not in your office creating designs, you’re working with business, technology and user stakeholders to map out your project’s direction.
5. Why do people leave the field? What don’t people enjoy?
People leave the field because they are frustrated or they feel like the road isn’t as smooth as they would hope. UX is not just about producing great design. It’s just as important to be able to demonstrate and advocate for your values.
6. What’s the workload like as a UX designer?
The best UX designers really care about the products that they’re designing – if you love what you do, you’ll inevitably take that home with you. You internalize your work as something that you really have an investment in. If you don’t have passion for it, you’re not going to be successful.
At Pivotal Labs, we have a sustainable pace culture — we’re lucky. You do spend time doing things like talking to users at odd hours and going on trips to go to interview users and customers and stakeholders. But you’re also one step removed from the “line of fire.”
7. How about the career path?
When you progress past an individual contributor role, you can get involved in the more strategic side of UX, which is matching user goals to business goals and product direction.
Whether you’re working in-house or for an agency, there’s always a management layer related to any initiative. You’re consulting into and across projects and working more closely with stakeholders to provide direct mentorship to teams. From there, the next steps turn into running a team — an office of designers in-house. There’s a strong growth trajectory as well because UX design and product management have a lot of overlap. Many people with UX backgrounds become product VPs.
8. Can you share details about salaries?
UX designers can afford great lifestyles. Salaries are comparable to engineers.
9. What advice do you have for a UX designer who is just starting out?
Get out and talk to your peers. Get out and do things in the community (like meetups). Hackathons and startup weekends are immensely valuable for people starting out.
These opportunities will give you a crash course in collaboration and working within constraints. You’ll be able to develop a portfolio of work. This is a field where you can get a great formal education, but you can also — absolutely — learn by doing. So much of this stuff, you can really learn on the job. No matter your college major, the field will be welcoming to you.
What can we learn from this interview?
- Get out there and talk to your peers! As a UX professional, you should look to constantly learn both by yourself and with the UX community at large. You should be seeking hackathons and meetups.
- Build cool projects!
- At the beginning, you’ll be an individual contributor but as your career evolves, you’ll become involved on the strategic side of UX and manage teams of designers. You may just find that your UX path could lead you to become a VP Product of the next hottest company.
- UX design isn’t about being a luminary in one field, it’s about combining insights from many into an interdisciplinary synthesis.
- You can become a UX designer without a formal UX degree and gradually transition to being a UX designer.
- You have to be empathetic and have a high degree of humility to make it in the field.
- You have to stick up for your values, and put passion into your work, to the point where you internalize your work. Anything less, and you won’t become the very best in UX.
We hope you enjoyed these insights from Tim. If you’re looking for more advice, especially around UX careers, please check out our free guide to UX careers!
Want to learn more?
Want to get an industry-recognized Course Certificate in UX Design, Design Thinking, UI Design, or another related design topic? Online UX courses from the Interaction Design Foundation can provide you with industry-relevant skills to advance your UX career. For example, Design Thinking, Become a UX Designer from Scratch, Conducting Usability Testing or User Research – Methods and Best Practices are some of the most popular courses. Good luck on your learning journey!
