Episode 25: What can developers learn from UX – with Edward Stull

Edward’s Bio:
Edward Stull works as a user experience (UX) designer and researcher in Columbus, Ohio. He has held positions in large traditional agencies, mid-size system integration firms, small design studios, as well as a one-person consulting practice. He has worn many hats during his career. Thus, his background grants an uncommon perspective into how various teams understand, practice, and sell UX. When Edward is not working, he is usually hiking.

Episode Highlights and Show Notes:
Arsalan: today I have the pleasure of interest introducing you to a user experience guru. He has written a book and is in the process of writing a book in an audio format as well about user experience. Usually I asked my guess about themselves first, but I think I’m going to change it up a little and ask him about user experience first. What is this user experience, Ed?
Ed: That’s a great question and the challenges all of us to try to make an adequate explanation of it. User experience as a whole is just the result of using any product or service. Second to that is user experience design. That’s the professional application of trying to create effective user experiences. That often becomes a combination of taking what a user wants to do and what a business wants to do and trying to find ways of reconciling that so that you have a good user experience resulting from that.
Arsalan: Now that we have that out of the way, let me introduce you. Your name is Edward Stull and you are a consultant and you do user experience design. How do you describe yourself?
Ed: Well, you know, I think you just did a great job with it. When I introduce myself, I usually tell people that I am a user experience designer and researcher. About half of my work is the actual design, where I’m trying to generate sometimes documents, but often it is brainstorming and trying to help teams solve software and sometimes digital marketing issues. The other half is a combination of primary and secondary research. It’s not as robust as a traditional academic role, but a lot of times I do a combination of usability research, accessibility research, and third-party research.
Ed: I spend a lot of time going through research reports, as well as secondary and tertiary research sources to be able to be able to support any types of decisions were doing concerning software with evidence.
Arsalan: So, are you doing this research as part of a billable work project for a client or just to keep up to date?
Ed: I would say that at least the way I was defining it the first time is that it tends to be a paid engagement. Not all projects require research and there’s not always the case where you have to do a large research study. Sometimes it’s a matter of just doing the due diligence and realizing what audience you are speaking to or, say, a client’s business and the sector they operate in. That could just end up being research. There is also a lot of research just to keep yourself marketable. It’s just the state of the nation in terms of what’s going on from a UX and information architecture perspective.
Arsalan: Besides user design and experience you’ve also dabbled in programming. Can you tell us a little bit about your experiences in programming, what you’ve done so far, and how you got started with that?
Ed: I think I would completely under pressure audience with my knowledge of programming. But, it makes me a better user experience designer. My knowledge is primarily based on scripting languages and things like HTML and client side work. My work with iPhone apps has helped me a lot. It has really helped me understand that type of structure thinking has really helped me to understand system based design, being a lot more cognizant of the fact of any type of user experience, design or deliverables that I’m doing. It has really helped me to be more cognizant of the people who I’m working with and has helped me ...

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