A Marriage of Worlds: Speech Therapy to User Experience
Question: Why did I pivot careers?
Methods: Experience-based insights :)
Summary: In many ways, UX professionals are the speech therapists of the product world, with the added privilege of being able to impact meaningful technological progress.
Key Findings: See below for parallels between speech therapy and UX.
1. Patient-centered healthcare = User-centered research
2. Speech therapy assessments = In-depth interviews, A/B testing, card sorts, surveys, contextual inquiry
3. Speech therapy treatment = Moderating, usability & concept testing, diary studies, benchmarking
4. Patient & caregiver education = Stakeholder management, presenting findings
5. Insurance-billing = Report-writing, presentation decks
6. Collaboration with allied health professionals = Collaboration with cross-functional product teams
Detailed Story: See below!
As a former licensed and certified speech-language pathologist who worked in healthcare, I am often asked what got me interested in the field of user experience enough to change careers, shift lifestyles, and master an entirely different industry. Since technology professionals encompass incredibly varied backgrounds, lifestyles, and backstories, everyone's path is markedly unique and special. Here is my attempt at sharing my own complex and non-linear journey, in hopes that someone out there might glean some inspiration:
I did not always realize I was destined for an innovative career in technology. After graduating with degrees in clarinet performance and linguistics, a natural next step for me was to pursue a Master's in speech-language pathology. I thrived in academic settings, so graduate school was a no-brainer, and I wanted a career where I could improve people's lives while exercising my natural talents in (and passion for) communication. Furthermore, being a Midwest native, I knew next to nothing about technology careers (not a criticism of the Midwest - it just isn't the same as the Bay Area in that sense).
However, over about three years as a speech pathologist treating adults with speech, language, cognitive, voice, and swallowing disorders, I learned through many hard lessons that the field just wasn't for me. The profound lack of ethics I experienced daily as a healthcare worker and the constant exposure to absurdly inhumane insurance practices, combined with the general lack of appreciation society had for allied health professionals, really built up and took its toll on my soul. There may be sectors of the field where these issues are less pervasive...but that leads me to the most important epiphany I experienced, which struck me one day like a lightening bolt:
While my passion for helping people on the level of the individual was indisputably addressed, my longing to make creative, innovative waves on the level of humanity was unfulfilled.
When the pandemic hit in 2020 and my hours were drastically cut, I felt it was finally time to change my life. After much planning, I selected an online bootcamp in pursuit of a tangentially-related field that I had been fascinated by since moving to the Bay Area in 2017: UX design. At this point, I knew people who worked in the industry, many of whom were career-transitioners from healthcare fields, and I had identified many parallels that excited and motivated me:
1. Patient-centered healthcare = User-centered research
2. Speech therapy assessments = In-depth interviews, A/B testing, card sorts, surveys, contextual inquiry
3. Speech therapy treatment = Moderating, usability & concept testing, diary studies, benchmarking
4. Patient & caregiver education = Stakeholder management, presenting findings
5. Insurance-billing = Report-writing, presentation decks
6. Collaboration with allied health professionals = Collaboration with cross-functional product teams
I loved bootcamp and ended up with two well-praised UX/UI case studies that helped me land a very stimulating, full-time UX research job working on Google projects within two months of graduation. One of the case studies I made in bootcamp, a high-fidelity, interactive prototype of an app that I conceptualized and created using end-to-end interative UX design, was inspired by my speech pathology expertise (the only app concept intended to help treat voice disorders in a holistic way, by the way! See Voiceful project if you are interested in learning more). Creating this speech therapy app really drove home a fascinating discovery:
in the most important ways, UX professionals are basically the speech therapists of the product world!
As a UX researcher, I find I am still a therapist and communication-medium privileged with the task of delving deeply into the minds and hearts of humans, a task that requires extreme trust-building and the following very familiar components:
- Empathizing and establishing rapport
- Uncovering people's needs, motivators, behaviors, and blockers through evidence-based methodologies
- Telling stories of diverse human experiences to promote empathy and yield functional change
- Highlighting areas for improvement in direct response to human needs while supporting business outcomes
- Presenting my knowledge and viewing tangible, innovative, sometimes immediate change in response to my expertise
During my rewarding time as a UX researcher, I have also discovered (as an added bonus) that I am absolutely enticed by technological innovation in the artificial intelligence sector - in fact, I truly believe that artificial intelligence is the missing puzzle-piece to saving our world, with its countless applications across industries and unmatched potential for easing the hurdles of human existence. But, I digress a bit...
Most importantly, the field of UX research allows me an opportunity to fulfill that desire of contributing to the creative advancement of humanity while simultaneously making individuals' lives easier - a dream come true, a challenge and an inspiration, and a most wholesome marriage of my worlds.