How is co-working space helping me as a UXer?
Guest Contribution
Am writing this on a Sunday morning, sipping from a glass that contains delicious Caffe frappe in the lush ambiance of Hug A Mug, Calicut. While this is a cafe, I’ve been spending my weekdays in a co-working space for last 6 months, and what do I gain from it? is it tedious to work if you are surrounded by lots of people who aren’t even in your company? or Is it hard to tolerate every single comment passed by people even though they aren’t in your company?
Lots of people ask me similar questions. But what we need to keep in mind that, when you are surrounded by lots of people from the different background you are the one who is actually benefitted. We, the user experience designers are advocates for the users. hence we often need to step out of our rooms and get to meet different people and to collect their likes and dislikes.
We can do this by different methodologies, but if you are in a co-working space, all you need is ask to your fellow coworkers, regardless of the company they are from (Be respectful to their schedule though.).
If you are in a co-working space, chances that you are surrounded by following set of people.
- CEOs
- Network Engineers
- Developers
- Designers (User Interface)
- Designers (UX)
- Students (Who comes for internships)
- and Nontechnical people.
Recently I came across a project that had 7 personas from a different background, and I needed to conduct an open card sorting technique in crafting the informational architecture. As the project i was working on would interact with user at least twice a day, i had to assure that it delivers the best experience for the user.
Hence i thought of conducting 15 Card sorting for each persona. Which means i would conduct 10 card sorting under one persona and like that I will do for the rest 6. which means I have to talk to at least 10 x 7 = 70 people to conduct my exercise and to record them as well.
Reaching out to 70 people just for a single task is hard when you handle every aspect of the design and all you have is a time of two weeks. But the above task was quite easy as I got 40 people within my coworking space and all I had to ask them was to come to me when they are free for few minutes, and it worked quite well.
Not to mention the advantages when you have developers and other designers in your proximity so that they can enlighten you with certain technologies, different methods or even you can indulge in a debate over the methodologies or the tools you use.
If you are fortunate enough, you might be reached by some of the companies in your co-working space to get an advice on their product or maybe with a problem. When you have free time and if you are looking for consistent improvement in your knowledge and experience this is quite a blessing, as you will get to know a problem which you never heard of and an opportunity to find a solution for the same which would make you better.
To all my fellow “UXers”, embrace the people around you as they are your key to perfection, get to know them, study them, use them without harming them, and most importantly, respect them.
signing off,
Ruwaiz Razak
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