Dear (Name Withheld): How to Get Started

I have a colleague who wants to work in the usability field, but doesn't know how to get started.  He has a well-paying job, but it isn't fulfilling, and for years he's taken classes at night towards a degree in user experience. Yet, despite growing dissatisfaction with his current job, nothing much has changed. His dithering is frustrating to me because like most career moves, there's every reason not to wait. Here's my advice to Name Withheld: Usability is a practice. The way to get better and more qualified is to start doing it.

There's plenty of information online about how to conduct usability studies. Find a website you like, or one you don't like, or one someone you know needs help with. Ask people to try using it, observe, take notes, ask questions. Once you've run a few people through the same kinds of tasks, summarize their experiences and draw conclusions.

Caveats: There's much more than one paragraph's worth of tips to doing reliable, diagnostic usability testing. Not to mention, there's much more to usability than running tests. But by the same token, it's not complicated like that wacky graphic you see here. Just try it! Learn by doing in a context where your livelihood doesn't depend on it.

Next, network and find a mentor. This is a magical time online to make quick and easy connections. Social networking, Twitter, Facebook, and other applications allow you to reach out to almost any usability guru or author you've heard of. But *don't* start your mentor search by firing off emails to Jakob Nielsen or some other famous guru. Start small and local by attending UPA meetings and going to conferences. Not only are people you meet locally more likely to help you, you're more likely to be able to help them with something -- and that's the essence of networking. 

For greater professional credibility, volunteer to help a nonprofit, school, church, or other group with their online presence. It is very easy to find websites in need, and very easy to improve them too. Most sites like these suffer mainly because people can only spend a fraction of their time working on them. So improving them only requires your time and attention.

Leverage your current position. If at all possible, try to apply usability to your current job or company. Identify business problemsna and advocate to bring in UX consultants. Find your designers, marketers, or user experience people, buy them lunch, and pick their brains about their jobs. 

Confession time: the real reason Name Withheld's dithering frustrates me is it reminds me of myself. I made a similar transition myself, from product manager generalist to user experience manager, and I'm much happier and better at my job as a result. My only regret is not doing it sooner, and more decisively!