Job Title: Usability Engineer - For "karriere", Andreas Beu gives away insider information
There are only about 500 of them, most of whom are people who want to change careers, since there is no specific education or course of study for it - yet. However, they are not threatened by extinction. On the contrary: More and more companies rely on their expertise. We are talking about usability experts. One of them is Andreas Beu, Manager Industry Solutions with User Interface Design GmbH (UID).
He was interviewed by the career and business magazine "karriere" to give an insight to the world of a usability engineer. In the April issue, he describes the fields of work of a usability engineer by means of concrete examples from practice, such as the tradtional cell phone that is supposed to be silenced at the push of a button, or a special software for pharmacies that supports the pharmacist when consulting a customer. "The pharmacist has to talk to the customer", explains Andreas Beu in the interview, "and the customer should not notice that the pharmacist is reading some information from the screen under the counter."
In order to develop such a software, you do not need to have studied medicine. Andreas Beu explains that a usability engineer needs other skills. Putting yourself in the user's position – this is one of the special talents a uability experte needs to have, as not only cell phones, but also welding machines should be easy to use. Intuition and communicative competences are just as important. And usability experts are real multi-taskers, since "you have to familiarize yourself with new fields very quickly", says Andreas Beu.
"karriere" concludes the interview with the most important information on the job description of a usability engineer. If you want to learn more about the training opportunities, qualifications and future prospects, have a look into the April issue of the magazine "karriere".