Category Archives: Articles

Quality Assurance (QA) is a critical part of any web or application development project.  QA helps to verify that a project has met the project’s requirements and technical specifications without bugs or other defects.  The aim is to identify issues prior to product launch.  Most QA initiatives focus on following predefined test cases, which meticulously outline required functionality by stating an input and expected response.  In order for QA to be successful, requirements must be clearly articulated and changes must be communicated effectively.

As User Experience professionals, we often rely on our QA teams to help verify that a design works as intended during development.  However, it should not be assumed that traditional QA can validate that your product is facilitating the desired user experience.  QA is very effective at identifying technical implementation issues (e.g. system errors, incorrect calculations, etc.) and often issues with front-end design implementation (e.g. CSS misalignment, cross browser differences, etc.). However, most QA processes do not focus on the quality of the user experience in regards to usability, affordances, findability, content clarity, or appropriate placements of items within the experience.  Nor should they.  The quality of the User Experience needs to be evaluated separately from technical quality assurance.

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There are many resources available for beginner UX designers to learn about the field on their own. In particular, Whitney Hess’ blog post series “So you wanna be a User Experience Designer” (part 1) (part 2) outlines a fantastic list of books, blogs, events, organizations, lists, workshops, conferences, and education references that can help those new to the field learn the ropes.

While being a self-starter and educating yourself is a huge step in the right direction, beginner UX Designers need support from their organizations in order to be most successful.  There are several steps organizations can take to guide and encourage those new to the field.

A common misconception that many organizations have about User Experience Designers is that our value comes solely in the form of our design artifacts or research deliverables.  Many see UX as a step in the process where we create wireframes, conduct usability testing, build prototypes, or make site maps.  Often we do this after being handed business requirements, and then we hand off our solutions to a visual designer or developer to complete the process. While all of these activities and artifacts are certainly a large part of our work, we need to challenge our organizations to think of us as more than the sum of our deliverables.

This article explores the way in which UX Designers can provide an increased level of thought leadership within organizations.

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