I’ve been consulting with a usability testing startup to help them hire and train their UX experts.

These guys will almost start from scratch and will have to get to the point of being able to watch user testing sessions, analyze them and provide recommendations.

I’m quite familiar with the process as I did that for 2 years.

But as with most things, once you’re in it, it’s hard to get back into a beginner mindset.

So I sat down and thought about what a potential training plan for those guys might look like.

The biggest takeaway was that – for any career – if you can entertain and apply multiple perspectives at the same time, you can’t fail.

Stepping into other people’s shoes makes you more helpful and valuable. And also more persuasive

For these UX guys, the two perspectives are:

• The Conversion Rate Optimization side: they have to think in terms of what benefits their customers = helping them increase conversions on their websites.
• The user experience and usability side: they have to think in terms of their customers’ prospects and of what benefits them.

Reason why I recommended a couple of resources for both of these areas.

It’s the same in multiple fields and industries.

Back at my software engineering job, where I was traveling the world and installing/testing software for industrial assembly machines, I actually had 3 perspectives to keep in mind: my company’s, my company’s clients and their operators who were going to use those machines daily.

3 different perspectives, entirely different sets of needs.

Came in handy when I had to make sure the thousands of sensors and alarms worked to prevent operators from getting their hands cut off.

Nowadays too: I think about my clients and their businesses, about their customers and about my business.

What I found is the more you can think in terms of perspectives that are not your own, the further in life and work you get.

Anyway, just a thought that popped up.

If you want to learn a bit more about my perspective, you can read some of my older daily posts on Medium or follow me on Twitter.