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Judith
Judith

Posted on

I'm a UX UI developer, ask me anything!

I program interfaces customizing user flow for specific environments. This could be

  • product specific
  • user specific (ie accessibility, etc)
  • market specific

Ask me anything!

Top comments (41)

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liana profile image
Liana Felt (she/her)

How did you get into UX?

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jrohatiner profile image
Judith

I started as a web admin and worked my way into frontend development. I have a daughter with developmental learning issues and I was looking for ways to give her a better experience online. That lead to finding out about accessibility. It made me realize that no user is exactly like another and how we navigate a site is based on various perceptions for each individual. As a user we all bring our own set of ideas when we search, navigate, browse, etc. I am fascinated by those concepts.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Great story

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jrohatiner profile image
Judith

Namaste!

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shrvnk profile image
Shravan Acharya

Can you tell a little about the earlier job you had? Web admin as you mentioned.

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jrohatiner profile image
Judith

Hi Shravan,
As a web admin I maintained the website front and back end. The website was built with Joomla (similar to WordPress) so it was fairly easy. PHP, html and CSS were the top skills necessary. Hope that helps!

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shrvnk profile image
Shravan Acharya

Thankyou for replying:)

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jrohatiner profile image
Judith

If you're not in a technical field you need coding skills in javascript, html and css. If you have no design experience you'll need to be able to use products like sketch, Adobe XD, UXPin, Ionic Creator, photoshop, Animate, Muse, etc. A great learning environment like Frontend Masters, Free code Camp, Lynda.com, Sitepoint Premium. Study a little history on web design and development as well. It will give you perspective on how page and site design has evolved over time. One fun thing to do is look at the wayback machine, archive.org/web/.

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aaronsapa1 profile image
AarΓ³n Ch. SΓ‘nchez

How do you help the DevTeam implementing your ideas? From UX/UI perspective. Do you give them code or just templates? How do you integrate design-thinking into a SCRUM organization :)

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jrohatiner profile image
Judith

My process is different each time. I have my own set of starters that I keep on hand that I can modify: grid layouts, flex starters, media queries, js, node projects. I also have github repos I use over and over for things like Angular, Ember, React, Material Design, and Bootstrap projects. I write my own code or add on to a frontend framework like MD or Bootstrap. And I have tons of tools! I'm the "cheat-sheet" queen! lol

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aaronsapa1 profile image
AarΓ³n Ch. SΓ‘nchez

Thank you!

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jrohatiner profile image
Judith

Namaste!

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jrohatiner profile image
Judith

I forgot to answer the SCRUM part: I do what the rest of the team does to comply with SCRUM and CI.

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jrohatiner profile image
Judith

I am a big fan of tutorials. I regularly use:

Front End Masters (bless you Mark Grabanski!) frontendmasters.com/
Site Point Premium sitepoint.com/
Oreilly oreilly.com/
Scotch scotch.io/ (also fun to drink)

Read newsletters like the ones Adam Roberts produces for sitepoint: twitter.com/Adam__Roberts
versioning.substack.com/
or
Louis Lazarus webtoolsweekly.com/
or
uxmatters.com/

Join a slack or mighty networks UX channel

And finally, don't be afraid to trust your gut or draw from knowledge you have based on REAL LIFE. As a software engineer I sometimes find myself consumed by the coding process; forgetting that what I'm doing is supposed to produce enhancements for the real world. Get up and get out into the world and meet the user. That will create intrinsic knowledge that you can apply when you sit back down to code.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern • Edited

How do you continually improve user experience? I find in UX we are trying to come at an end and then maybe we move on to something else. How would you go about refining a high-traffic experience over time?

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jrohatiner profile image
Judith

That is a great question.

Have a plan where you break each known issue into smaller parts. Maintain a source that gives accurate user data with analytics info. Utilize collaboration skills for crossover issues (is it a backend solution?) Understand who the user is (are they international? ages 18-24? mostly female? mostly male?). Be prepared to mockup your solutions/suggestions with an interactive tool like UXPin or Ionic Creator to get accurate feedback from collaborators. Know and understand the most common problems, and know what to expect if they are outside the scope of your work. Create initiatives that insure user information can be communicated through soft skills by those team members who have hands on contact. With some projects you may have to take the proverbial "Bull by the Horns" yourself and implement changes to improve the way user issues get communicated.

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rajivmehtaflex profile image
Rajiv Mehta • Edited

What are best strategy in case javascript is switch off on target browser and we have to run application(I've face this question in one of interview and i gave i answer to use noscript tag as fallback, but they don't like my answer.so i'm curious for exact answer).

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jrohatiner profile image
Judith

I need a little more info to answer your question. For instance: If your trying to run an app and you don't want to loose your user, what did you give as your fallback? The

tag supports HTML global attributes so you have options. Can you fill me in please?
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rajivmehtaflex profile image
Rajiv Mehta

I mean any server side rendering is suppose to help in this situation?

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jrohatiner profile image
Judith

Hi AnKush
It's a great topic and I think you should post it. Maybe a title like "What are your questions about single page apps." Start it off with your questions and other people will join in :)

Good Luck
Judith

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dwd profile image
Dave Cridland

So, as a PROGRAMMER WHO HAS SPENT YEARS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE STACK,
I would like to GET FIVE TOP TIPS ON HOW TO ENGAGE WITH UX EXPERTISE,
So that I can MAKE THINGS PEOPLE WANT TO USE.

Seriously - I've spent years on the server-side of client-server apps, and I'm moving to do more front-end - what should I be thinking about?

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jrohatiner profile image
Judith

That is a really awesome question. I ask it to myself almost every time I start a project! Here are my top five:

  1. Learn to interpret the research you get from UAT. If you want to fast-track your comfort level with this you can buy reports from sites like Baymard baymard.com/research but it will cost you.
  2. Study design systems like Atomic (blog post) bradfrost.com/blog/post/atomic-web..., Google Material Design material.io/, Polaris polaris.shopify.com/, IBM ibm.com/design/language/, Airbnb airbnb.design/building-a-visual-la...
  3. Refine your ideas about users. Find out what the most common user groups are (men, women, 18-24, etc) and study edge cases (sub groups like elderly, visually challenged, language/hearing impaired)
  4. Get the docs for HTML5, CSS, SASS, js and deep dive. If you think you know them - you don't.
  5. Practice writing site maps and page structure based on UX for specific groups.

There are a lot more steps you can do but if you start with those more will be revealed as you go along your journey :) Thanks for the great question and good luck! Namaste!

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megazear7 profile image
megazear7

How do you distinguish the rolls of developers? I have often see "front end developer" vs "back end developer" but I see that as being an artificial distinction. I kind of like "application developer" vs "UX developer" understanding that some people make have a foot in both. However I am still thinking through how to categorize developer rolls and areas of expertise. I see issues with a lot of the "classic" ways of doing that categorization and have been looking for better alternatives.

Background note: In some context's this is not a huge deal. However in a company with hundreds of developers and dozen's of projects it becomes very important.

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jrohatiner profile image
Judith

You nailed it when you said "I see that as being an artificial distinction". They are all just names given to the general role we play. If you ask me, we should probably give up these artificial naming conventions in lieu of "developer - expert in "whatever" or software engineer "generalist" or "developer - with "design training", etc.

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lmuzquiz profile image
lmuzquiz

Hello. You said earlier: "...For prototyping I prefer Sketch -> Zeplin -> UXPin.."

Do you use them in that order?

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jrohatiner profile image
Judith

Sketch => Zeplin (with html and css plugins)

Sketch => UXPin - if it is an interactive prototype.

There are many different ways to use Sketch, Zeplin and UXPin. This is just how I do it :)

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lmuzquiz profile image
lmuzquiz • Edited

Thanks, do you prefer UXPin over Axure for prototyping? If so, why? Thanks again.