You are Responsible for Your Development

Recognise your Opportunities

When I realised that we had an issue at work regarding application user interfaces, I saw an opportunity. The company was keen on me learning about UX and how we could adapt to create solutions geared towards the customer, they didn't, however, want any time devoted to this during working hours.

This is not necessarily a stalemate; I want the skills, and the company wants to have these skills in-house, but they are not in a position to help me acquire these skills. The answer, go get the skills!! These new skills will open up opportunities for you to work on a wider range of projects, and as a bonus you'll get that lovely post learning bliss once your course or home project has been completed.

It Always Works

There are two scenarios that can come from this, and believe it or not, they are both positive.

1. You help your company excel through your excellence - Everyone's happy.
2. The company decide that it isn't interested in the new skills that you have acquired - It's possible that either you missread the signs, and they don't actually want those skills in house, or that the company is a bit self centred.

If it's the later, it doesn't matter, you haven't wasted your time. You have a new skill. By understanding the relationship that you have with your company, you can focus on what is right for you to be the best that you can be. Ultimately it is up to you to make this happen.

Our day-to-day job will throw up these opportunities all the time, all we need to do is pick one, gauge interest from our employer (they may wish to invest time or resource), learn something and produce something. I would always suggest that reading a book or attending a course is fine, but you should produce something to prove to your self that you have made tangible progress.

Coursera is Great

Last year I decided to consolidate some of the work that I had done with user experience. 

A colleague of mine had been raving about Coursera, and when I found a course by Scott Klemmer from Stanford University on Human Computer Interaction, I happily said good bye to evenings and weekends and hello to a 12 week online course.

The content in the course was fantastic, this included weekly assignments and written tests, which were designed to compliment and consolidate learning from the course videos.

The practical work was peer assessed. You marked 5 other peoples work as well as your own, after the marking period was over, you received the average grades from your peers and some feedback. This feedback loop gives you the opportunity to understand how your work is being perceived by others, and whether you are communicating as clearly as you think. 

Despite the long hours involved in taking this course, in addition to working full time, I found it to be thoroughly enjoyable and I would recommend this course to anyone with an interest in UX (or even just an interest in learning).

In case you were wondering; I got a Distinction with an overall grade of 92.4% but more than that, I came away with a host of validated strategies and practical techniques that I am confident in using.