What does a usability specialist do?

Most usability specialists use their skills in "user experience," "web application," and "user interface" to do their jobs. You can find more detail on essential usability specialist responsibilities here:

Speaking skills. One of the key soft skills for a usability specialist to have is speaking skills. You can see how this relates to what usability specialists do because "industrial engineers sometimes have to explain their instructions to production staff or technicians before they can make written instructions available." Additionally, a usability specialist resume shows how usability specialists use speaking skills: "analyzed and documented resultant data; formally presented results and user experience design recommendations to clients. "

Writing skills. Another essential skill to perform usability specialist duties is writing skills. Usability specialists responsibilities require that "industrial engineers must prepare documentation for other engineers or scientists, or for future reference." Usability specialists also use writing skills in their role according to a real resume snippet: "reviewed and provided feedback to copywriters based upon my broad experience in writing, editing, and managing web content. "

Listening skills. This is an important skill for usability specialists to perform their duties. For an example of how usability specialist responsibilities depend on this skill, consider that "these engineers often operate in teams, but they also must solicit feedback from customers, vendors, and production staff." This excerpt from a resume also shows how vital it is to everyday roles and responsibilities of a usability specialist: "communicated critical and time-sensitive information to support customer service functions via company intranet. ".

Math skills. For certain usability specialist responsibilities to be completed, the job requires competence in "math skills." The day-to-day duties of a usability specialist rely on this skill, as "industrial engineers use the principles of calculus, trigonometry, and other advanced topics in mathematics for analysis, design, and troubleshooting in their work." For example, this snippet was taken directly from a resume about how this skill applies to what usability specialists do: "analyzed quantitative and qualitative data from usability tests. "

Problem-solving skills. Another crucial skill for a usability specialist to carry out their responsibilities is "problem-solving skills." A big part of what usability specialists relies on this skill, since "in designing facilities for manufacturing and processes for providing services, these engineers deal with several issues at once, from workers’ safety to quality assurance." How this skill relates to usability specialist duties can be seen in an example from a usability specialist resume snippet: "provided user experience direction and translated conceptual ideas into appealing software solutions for monitoring gas and oil pipelines. "

Creativity. Another skill commonly found on usability specialist job descriptions is "creativity." It can come up quite often in usability specialist duties, since "industrial engineers use creativity and ingenuity to design new production processes in many kinds of settings in order to reduce the use of material resources, time, or labor while accomplishing the same goal." Here's an example from a resume of how this skill fits into day-to-day usability specialist responsibilities: "conducted content inventory of the corporate web site in conjunction with an information architecture redesign. "

All usability specialist skills