Willamina O’Keefe graduated from the MSTC program in 2020 and currently works as a Senior UX Designer at Lockheed Martin. Willamina completed her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science before starting work at an attorney’s office. She eventually started a new job working on a case management system where she became the subject matter expert for her team. She began advocating for her team’s needs in the case management system, sitting with people who used it and helping them improve their skills using the system.
Once she recognized that what she was doing had a name, User Experience, she found a UX class being held in Durham. After one class, she had an epiphany that User Experience was what she wanted to do. She began going to more meetings and events, reading UX books and found a mentor who gave her both advice and the confidence to find jobs in UX.
She soon began her first User Experience position at Lenovo where she gained access to designers and researchers doing the jobs she aspired to do. She later began another job, working with chatbots where she realized that she wanted to focus her career around chatbots.
Willamina was initially drawn to the MSTC program while facilitating a book club for the Triangle User Experience Progressions Association where she met Dr. Walls (MSTC Professor). She always wanted to continue her education, and when she realized that she had similar interests as professors, current students, and former students in the program, the MSTC program at NC State was an easy decision.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity by Sarah Barnes, the 2021-22 Social Media Coordinator.
Q: What was your favorite MSTC class or elective?
A: I have three. In order of when I took them, let’s start with Rhetoric of Science and Technology. I feel like I had a pretty limited understanding of what technical communication was, and then going into that class took my worldview and blew it apart in the best way possible. I always thought we would eventually get to the point where we start putting things back together and it’ll all start to make sense. But it never did go back together, it just kept expanding. And I believe this way of thinking and critiquing things has been really useful when evaluating information or looking at data analytics. That class changed my way of approaching information.
And then I also took a bilingualism class as an elective, which was very fascinating and I still use the linguistic analysis that I learned today. I changed to be more interested when I hear people talking. That class was really difficult for me because it was so far outside anything I knew about because I had never taken a linguistics course. I was nervous being in a class with linguistics masters and doctoral students, but looking back, I know that discomfort was really healthy for me as a student.
Then I took a class that I think was called Feminist Rhetoric in Composition and that class was so great. I loved all the readings and that is when I really started to take more of a feminist approach to everything I did.
Q: Can you explain your current employment context so like the company you’re at the sort of size, scope what they do and how you’re positioned fits into that.
A: Yes, I work at Lockheed Martin, which is an aerospace and defense company. It’s a really large company with a lot of different things going on. I specifically work on data analytics in user experience, research and design. I work with folks who are doing data products. So I’m applying my UX work to that context.
Q: What does a typical workday look like for you?
A: I don’t really have a typical day, but the type of work that I’m doing user experience and my main focus is to make it so that I can do more things and I were just like I only do user experience. So I write my own communications when I need to communicate out to the users. It’s really easy for me to do that because I know the things that are going to resonate with my audience. I also do a lot of writing, especially back when I was like working on chatbot stuff because there was so much tech writing in a chat platform.
Back in the MSTC program, I still think about the way that we would write to make things concise and concrete, and all of those lessons that we learned are still so helpful to me. I get a lot of compliments on my writing skills and I know it’s because of the courses I took that taught me how to write well.
I do a lot of UX stuff and the usability testing. I still use the principles and things learned in classes on usability testing and information architecture. I use them literally every day.
The MSTC program helped me learn principles I could use in my day to day work, and be able to cite who wrote the principle, share their findings, and be more credible when I’m trying to convince people that I am right about things. Being able to justify my reasonings with proof from tests and in depth studies has been a very valuable skill I pull from at my job.
Q: What technology/software have you used in your professional experience?
A: Email and Slack to communicate, Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Powerpoint), JIRA, Sketch, Balsamic, Adobe products (Photoshop, Illustrator, Premier, XD))
Q: What is your most rewarding or favorite aspect of what you do as a tech comm professional?
A: I’m so excited to make things that people want, that work for them, that makes sense and also meet a business need. It feels like I’m doing a cool puzzle that starts out really messy, then it’s so rewarding when you finally get it mostly complete. In user experience, you never really finish the puzzle because you want to keep improving and refining it, but eventually it gets to a place where people are using it and seeing the value of your work – like seeing the beauty in a puzzle.
Q: What do you think are the biggest challenges that technical communicators currently face?
A: I think the biggest challenge in tech comm, and user experience in particular, is people not know what they are. With the fields not being widely known, I always have to advocate for myself and the work that I do. It is difficult to explain the benefits of user experience when people have never heard of it before. On top of that, there are a lot of terms unique to UX that technical communication professionals use daily that I need to figure out ways of explaining in layman’s terms when talking to someone outside of tech comm. A lot of times, the people I’m working with care most about the impact of the project, so I prioritize explaining the value rather than the nitty gritty technical information.
Q: What knowledge, skills, or abilities do you value most in as a tech comm professional?
A: I think in my experience working in UX, I’ve never been just a UX person. I have always done other things that use the skills I have gained in my past experiences. I think, in general, it is important to be well-rounded in your interests. Especially in UX, you might be interacting with a variety of people with a variety of skills. If you are communicating with software engineers in your job, it is so helpful to know a bit of programming so you can speak their language. That ability to communicate with them will make you more empathetic to their process.
Q: What is your biggest piece of advice for MSTC students preparing to enter the tech comm industry?
A: Definitely start doing things like go to some local events, if you’re planning to stay local, so you can start to build your network. Reach out to people whose careers are interesting to you. Ask them if you can talk to them and find out how they got into what they’re doing. It is valuable to get advice from as many different perspectives as you can – many different paths can lead you to the same place. If you want to go into user experience, start reaching out to people who do UX in different places. You may have friends who can introduce you, or you can just reach out to them on LinkedIn. Then, start talking to people and start building your portfolio in ways that demonstrate the things you’ve done in a real world context.
Q: Is there anything else that you would want to add?
A: Yeah, MSTC is a life changing experience. I know for me, it was definitely what I needed. It changed how I think and I’m so happy for all of you who get to experience the program. You have awesome professors and learn fantastic things. I think there’s a lot of opportunity out there for people who want to do user experience right now and if those people want to talk to someone about UX, contact me.