I’m moving into a new job tomorrow, and I’m being asked (understandably) what exactly I’ll be doing. Since I haven’t actually started the job yet, it’s tough for me to give concrete examples of what I’ll be doing, but let’s see if I can’t shed a little light on my super-secret mystery.
My official title will be “Systems Analyst / User Interface Designer”. Now that’s a mouthful. However it is also nice and descriptive. As you may or may not know, when it comes to computers, I’m deeply interested in usability and the user experience. I’m able to do programming when I want or need to, but in the end I’m not terribly passionate about the inner workings of programs. I’m more interested in how people interact with them.
So what does a Systems Analyst do? In a nutshell I’ll be looking at customer requests for improvements and new features in our software and I’ll be trying to figure out the best way to fix our software up. The best way may or may not be what the customer asks for exactly, but requirements elicitation should be part of the process so their initial needs may end up changing as our discussions continue.
It’s still a little abstract, I know. However I came across this great example of systems analysis (in the guise of the term “Information Architecture”) to a batch of today’s emerging music players. For anyone interested in IA or SA, it’s a neat, simple read. Anyone not familiar with the things we do, it’s a simple introduction because we all understand digital music players to some extent.
As for the title “User Interface Designer”, that’s where my heart lies. Designing the interface and workflow that users are confronted with when using software is my real area of interest. I enjoy the designing phase of things so much because I find it to be so creative – implementing mock-ups of the interfaces and running user trials to see how they work in real situations is just plain fun for me.
So this position is my first step away from supporting technology and users (Systems Administrator, that kind of thing) towards my real area of interest – usability. I’ve been dipping my toes into whatever Usability waters I can find, such as recently joining a project at Open Usability and participating in several discussions on the Gnome Usability Mailing List. And now I am finally moving into this fascinating area professionally.
Huzzah! Wish me luck!