The UX Drinking Game

February 21, 2014

Post Author

Patrick Neeman

Patrick Neeman is the director of product design at Apptio, an IT spend management platform. Prior to that he was director of user experience at Jobvite, a social recruiting and applicant tracking platform. Previous experience includes working as a social media and user experience consultant for Microsoft, building a 25-person user experience team at a consultancy, working on the prelaunch team at Orbitz, and the successful launch of several startup sites. And yes, he has also been a product manager. He runs the UX Drinking Game at www.uxdrinkinggame.com and has a blog at www.usabilitycounts.com. He can be reached at pat@usabilitycounts.com.

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Being a user-experience designer can get frustrating—enough to drive a person to drink.

In 2011, I decided to share some of my frustrations with the role by creating a website, www.uxdrinkinggame.com. People soon began submitting their own frustrations, and the site currently has a list of more than 1,000 of them–most of which are funny, but also sadly true.

Having worked in both product management and UX design myself, I found it interesting that so many pertain to the struggles of the two roles working together. This article is devoted to five of those reasons, and how we can work together more effectively and stay sober.

If someone says the project is so important that we aren’t following process, drink. Understanding the user experience is a process that should be practiced when any product is built. Whether it is practiced well is another issue. When I explain the process to people, I call it “see ball, hit ball, run.”We follow a number of defined steps that allow us to succeed.

Patrick Neeman

Patrick Neeman is the director of product design at Apptio, an IT spend management platform. Prior to that he was director of user experience at Jobvite, a social recruiting and applicant tracking platform. Previous experience includes working as a social media and user experience consultant for Microsoft, building a 25-person user experience team at a consultancy, working on the prelaunch team at Orbitz, and the successful launch of several startup sites. And yes, he has also been a product manager. He runs the UX Drinking Game at www.uxdrinkinggame.com and has a blog at www.usabilitycounts.com. He can be reached at pat@usabilitycounts.com.

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Author:

Patrick Neeman

Patrick Neeman is the director of product design at Apptio, an IT spend management platform. Prior to that he was director of user experience at Jobvite, a social recruiting and applicant tracking platform. Previous experience includes working as a social media and user experience consultant for Microsoft, building a 25-person user experience team at a consultancy, working on the prelaunch team at Orbitz, and the successful launch of several startup sites. And yes, he has also been a product manager. He runs the UX Drinking Game at www.uxdrinkinggame.com and has a blog at www.usabilitycounts.com. He can be reached at pat@usabilitycounts.com.

Tags: Agile

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