There are too many UX roles in London right now to have enough qualified people to fill them all. I’m not the first to say it, but if you’re wondering if the grass is greener elsewhere, then now is the time to get out there.

Agency vs. Client

Don’t be too hasty to pick a side.

Agencies are in a massive state of flux. Those who have been genuinely practising a good design methodology and have been led well by a solid executive team continue to flourish. They are easy to spot. They have the luxury of cherry-picking their projects. They might have some ‘famous’ employees: well known in design and development circles. They might not pay the best salaries, but will offer fame and experience over fortune: a platform for you to build your personal brand while actually having the portfolio to back it all up.

If that’s your thing.

And then there are the rest. Those who have shoehorned ‘digital’ into a tired offering. The service design-hawkers. The tired agile manifesto documentation-bashers. The craft-obsessed former industrial designers. Those with no project managers. Those who like to ‘just go straight into PhotoShop’. Those that never get to go to conferences because their utilisation rate is their only genuine KPI. Harder to spot, but easy to discover if you ask the right questions.

Client-side there are interesting problems to solve too, and also better growth opportunities for the more senior among you who don’t really fancy going freelance. Companies large and small are skilling up in-house: largely due to the fortunes they’ve been paying for agency user experience work of vastly differing quality. This is a market-wide opportunity not to be sniffed at.

Go big

Your value and experience will be judged immediately on what basic salary you’re after. Don’t be tempted by utilisation bonuses, signing-on bonuses, profit sharing schemes or any of that nonsense. Ask big, and ask it confidently.

UX salaries have increased hugely in the last two years, especially among the shady ‘Senior’ or ‘Lead’ UX levels. Remember that very few agencies have the need or scale to implement an intricate pay hierarchy. State what you think you’re worth and add another ten grand.

If you haven’t had an annual pay-rise from your current employer, then start looking. Right this minute.

Once you’ve made the decision to start looking, then these are the guiding principles I used recently. Yours might not be the same, but it’s worthwhile thinking about them before you start interviewing.

Don’t stop learning

We all have areas of our field we’re not particularly good at, that go against our natural skills and experience. Find a job that stretches that. Skill up. Work in a business you know nothing about but don’t lose focus on what you can offer that business. And try to keep a vaguely standardised recognisable job title.

Find interesting problems to solve

When interviewing at an agency, don’t be distracted by how nice the meeting room is, or which model of iPad your interviewers have, or how many Bromptons there are neatly lined up by reception. The only thing worth focusing on is who the clients are, and what the specific projects are too. If you don’t fancy the sound of them, then don’t be beguiled by the surroundings. Focus on the work. The more detailed you are around what daily activities you’d like to be doing straightaway as well as where you’d like to be in twelve months or so will only help both parties in the long run.

Don’t judge clients by their face value though. There are interesting design challenges in even the most boring of companies. It’s what they need agencies for, after all. There seems to be a huge increase of ‘marketing communications UX work’, if there is such a thing. Make sure you know what that entails before signing up.

Don’t be the best

Being the best UXer in the room, unless you’re a contractor, is not always beneficial. Sometimes it’s not an option though. Many are bemoaning the lack of genuine seniority in our craft, especially among those who have talked their way into seniority without the chops to back up the chat. There’s a ton to be learned from business analysts, commercial folk, product managers and all sorts of non-UX people you’ll come in to contact with.

Profitability wins

There are some highly profitable digital businesses, doing great work and rewarding their staff as a result. There are also plenty of others struggling to make ends meet, some of whom will be hiring UX people as a human bandage to legacy design decisions. There is no emotional justification for joining an unprofitable business, or one that is shrouded in uncertainty and confusing share structures. Stick with the simple company that makes money from doing good work.
Therefore do a bit of background homework on potential employers. With agencies, check the obvious such as current client lists and be forceful about asking for contract values. Do they fight tooth and nail for five figure projects, or are they firmly in the six figure, long engagement leagues? With in-house roles, a quick glance at Companies House never harmed anyone.

And do a Google News search on them.

In summary, the best advice I can give right now is:

1. Make sure your portfolio is exemplary; you should be able to score an interview almost anywhere if it is. Check out Jason’s Better UX Portfolios site for more help on this.
2. Despite you, the candidate, having more bargaining power than ever before, don’t be a dick about it.
3. Take your time and interview generously. Don’t take the first offer that comes your way. Try not to be in a rush to find a new permanent role.
4. Be sensitive to little details that will make your future working life better. Environment and gear in particular are things that bother me if they’re not right.
5. Make sure your new creative leader / boss / line manager is brilliant and inspirational. Much of this will come over in how they choose to interview you. Some will be happy enough with a coffee and a chat, others will insist on the four hour half-day bootcamp approach. Therefore, pick your battles and value your own time. Turn down half-day interviews if you want. Large organisations don’t need you there for that long to make a decision if they have a great person looking after recruitment.
6. Try to get a good feel for the size and strength of the visual design and development teams. With the latter, I’ve become quite opinionated about which technologies afford me, the designer, the greatest flexibility. I’ll know whether we’ll get along based on those answers.
7. Strategic offers are brilliant. If the biggest, baddest agency in town wants to hire you, pursue that offer, even if you have no intention of working there. It’s good collateral.
8. Be wary of recruiters. Ask for recommendations from recently hired peers. Choose one agency if you must. No more.

Good luck out there.

So many great things have happened since my first post on the Meatwagon early last year.

I’ve visited countless times, and even ran into Yianni at the Verdugo Bar in LA last summer.

I was on holiday. Yianni was doing research.

He’s a guy that has taken a detailed, systematic and yet unendingly passionate approach to this project, and after visiting the #MEATEASY twice, I’m starting to wonder what state his empire will be in this time next year.

Of course the ‘wagon was stolen, which we all know. But out of the darkness comes the light.

At Meateasy there are door guys, and burgerettes, and a full menu and a roof and an amazing bar and decor and one of London’s most mid-Atlantic atmospheres (this place feels like it’s in New York, not New Cross).

There are a few questions to answer and points to make. So without further ado, for those of you considering a visit:

1. The food is still brilliant

Quality hasn’t dropped. Whatsoever. The Chilli burger is still as good now as it was a year ago. They’re not standing still either: the fries and macaroni cheese have improved significantly over the last week.

2. It’s a brilliant space

Music, ambiance, quality of booze. All fantastic.

3. It’s not a restaurant!

You cannot turn up at 8pm and expect to eat in a timely fashion. If at all. The same rules apply now as they did with the ‘wagon itself – turn up on time, or early. For the Meateasy, that means 6pm. Check your expectations with your watch.

With the practicalities out of the way, there are a few thoughts I want to throw out there. I had a brief exchange on Twitter with Daniel (he of BurgerMonday and other FoodWeekdays fame) after he said:

“Still I hope Yianni will inspire others, not intimidate ‘em”

To which I said:

“If this was LA there would be 14 meatwagons by now. Probably more.”

I think this is something that needs further discussion.

As mentioned earlier, it’s now been a full year since Yianni showed up on the food blogger radar. Since then, he has properly crossed over into the mainstream with traditional media coverage, almost universal online admiration and among certain circles, has become a bonafide household name. This isn’t going to stop.

But what of the others? Where are the other street food entrepreneurs? The other guerilla dining obsessives?

Visiting LA last summer, there were dozens of foodtrucks catering to every cuisine and culinary whim you could think of. And they’re still multiplying like rabbits. It’s the same in San Francisco and the East coast is rapidly catching up. They’re all a pretty amiable bunch too, since cultivating an online following is key to foodtruck success. For example, I felt genuinely proud to be Slidin’ Thru’s first customer from the UK.

They even posed for a picture:

(They’re in Vegas, but they illustrate the point I’m trying to make.)

At the time they were nearly all startups. They’d been open for two to three months, maybe. Tops. And there were dozens of them, with an enormous crowd of cash-ready, media-savvy customers following them around the city, wanting a new favourite dish.

Even the old hands, such as Kogi BBQ (five trucks, three locations per day each, five days a week), have turned into full-on empires without relinquishing their values and food quality.

It’s an enviably simple model – find something you can do really well, build a following, then expand.

Yianni has clearly done his stateside homework and is building his empire. Not just with food, but with PR, marketing and customer experience. He’s not even behind the grill anymore. He’s front of house at the Meateasy. He’s doing interviews with the Evening Standard and quality checking.

So having established all of that, it saddens me a bit that there aren’t any other grassroots street food startups generating the same buzz with amazing food. Somebody should be giving Yianni a run for his money, the same way that all the LA foodtrucks compete with each other (and their brick ‘n mortar-based, venture-backed buddies) to earn the crown of being the best. They’ve already had a reality show doing just that.

I will always love what he does and what he has done for bringing proper American food to London after all this time. It underlines our completely British approach to competition when there’s nobody else doing anything remotely similar in the same space.

Where do we go from here?

The other question mark with the Meateasy will be what happens when it shuts down in March. Between now and then, a back-of-fag-packet calculation suggests the MeatEmpire will have served way, way more covers than it ever has done before. With that comes the next difficult sequel.

How do you go from having created such a special place, with a full menu, table service, a bigger kitchen, electronic ordering systems and all the other elements that add up to their slickest project yet, to then shutting it down and going back to a little van again?

And what of the pubs? Surely, Yianni is in the completely unique position of being able to say to any pub in London, from zone 1 to 6, that he can show up with his team and guarantee a horde of big eating, big drinking punters. Most of whom will post about it online. And then bring in even more punters. That surely has to factor in to his long term strategy.

I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but I sincerely hope his amazing burgers will be around for a long time to come. And maybe it’s time for somebody else to be just as obsessive and give him a run for his money. But for now, it’s still very much the best burger joint in Britain. And the odds are it will stay that way for a long time yet.

NB. This post is not addressing all the lovely people that do a sterling job running London’s supperclubs. This is a food truck rant only. Thanks for understanding!

I stumbled into the Mayfair Goodman with the good lady completely by accident a few months ago. We had in fact been making our way across the West End to Byron, to try out the celebrated nuclear cheese version of their burgers, as requested by me and dozens of others.

Goodman was just right there. And had burgers. And we’d just purchased an enormous skillet from John Lewis and I was trying to not kneecap passing tourists with it.

It was a welcome, tobacco-coloured stop, where we had a very serviceable burger (not as drippy as I’d been led to believe) and a really quite jaw dropping beef carpaccio.

Fast forward to August and the new cunningly-placed Bank branch is running a three day soft launch. It’s an address that will ensure generations of long boozy banker lunches and the wine list has been knowingly selected to match the expenses drubbing it will no doubt be fuelling. It was a simple visit, especially when we had to pass on the full steak experience previously.

I’m a huge fan of the upmarket steakhouse. It’s an American export that is wholly welcome in London, where our steak has been bland and tasteless for too long. And it really helps showcase some of the stunning meat available in the capital. Hawksmoor’s Ginger Pig partnership springs to mind. We’re in a new era of local rock star butchery, and this new breed of steakhouse is the venue

The key elements that make Goodman really good fun are all in the detail. The servers wear chef’s whites. It gives the unconscious illusion that they might be the one actually grilling the cut you choose from the selection tray. The tray itself is a masterstroke. I don’t think I’d ever order fillet steak normally, but the fact we could see just how marbled the fillet actually was is a huge selling point. It also gives you a visual guide as to what you can expect. I still struggle to think of beef metrically.

Everything is branded. The entire room and everything in it has been given a great deal of thought. The knives. The tap water bottle. The plates. The waiting staff. It’s not subtle, but it’s pretty and it’s tasteful.

They don’t skimp on portions. Sure, you pay for it, but just the fact you can order a 900g USDA porterhouse is immensely satisfying. The meat is impeccably cooked, provided you give enough detail when ordering (medium rare, but the rarer side of medium, not blue please). It’s well seasoned. The bearnaise has enough bite to it and doesn’t congeal too quickly. The stilton sauce is a richly reduced gravy, a country mile away from the gelatinous cheese sauce you’d expect otherwise. It all goes together brilliantly.

The accompaniments are, like the meat, flawless. The truffle chips are crisp and fluffy, the mushrooms are doused in just enough garlic butter and the tomato salad actually has some really quality tomatoes in it. And a good tomato can be very hard to find.
The only thing to really bring up is money. I’ve had a fair few discussions with beef fans who declare, with good reason, that they could just as easily go to O’Shea’s or the Ginger Pig or Allen’s of Mayfair and buy their own T-bone, rib eye or Porterhouse, take it home and grill it there. It’s a very good point. Steak isn’t hard to cook properly.

Even with 50% off food it was still nudging £45 a head for a single course, some shared sides, a cocktail and a glass of Malbec (our desserts were comped due to a spot of inadvertent menu proof reading). It would have been £70 on a normal day. What makes it sting less is how good the experience is, but it’s priced for special occasion, and do you just want a steak when you’re paying that much money?

Therefore I think Goodman falls squarely into the ‘awesome if on somebody else’s expenses‘ bracket. Or just keep going back for the burger. At £12 it’s the star buy.

Full set of photos available on flickr

There’s a movement gaining ground in London at the moment. As Byron Hamburger spreads across the capital with breakneck speed (and eventually capsizing aging Hamburger Unions and weary GBKs in its wake), the joy of finding a decent hamburger in the capital is becoming less of a rarity. I’m a big fan of Byron. They’re mainstreaming and quality-controlling the expansion of a decent burger experience. This is something London is not used to.

At the opposite end of the scale, away from the building sites and the neatly printed menus and expensive agency branding, you’ll find The Meatwagon. Behind a large van in a very typical Zone 2 industrial estate a few minutes walk from Peckham Rye station, sits an unbranded, unassuming little food van. This is the celebrated Meatwagon. I first came across the ‘wagon from a similarly burger-afflicted friend who pointed me in the direction of their Twitter account. It said they weren’t going to be around for a few weeks. Harrumph.

And then, on a Wednesday afternoon, an update. It’s back. Thursday and Friday. From 12pm ‘until we run out’. Ominous. Tempting. Only nine minutes on the train from London Bridge.

A flurry of instant messages between me and another burger critic, and we’re set for Friday.

After stumbling through some leafy Peckham side streets, getting a bit lost, and a quick ‘that can’t be it’ double-take, we’re standing before a beaming Yianni, who gleefully tells us he can do a cheeseburger, bacon cheeseburger or chilli burger. With chips. Triple-cooked. Obvs.

I think the pictures do these justice, but there’s a few points to make here. Yianni uses 100% chuck which he pulls out of a little fridge in big fistfuls and bashes them into patties in front of you. Salt and pepper. The bacon is interesting. He boils up a side of bacon, shreds some off and bashes that into a patty too. It’s thick and chewy, like American crispy bacon without the fat, chemicals and over-saltiness. As for the chilli, it’s half a green chilli fried in butter with a touch of stock. Genius. Both are thrown on top of the patty on the grilling plate before the piece de resistance goes on last. The cheese.

Two slices of it come out of the fridge. It looks like Kraft. We ask if it is Kraft, like a pair of over-excited children. Yianni smiles and says “No, it’s real cheese. It’s taken me ages to source this and it’s my secret. I’ll happily tell you about the rest of the process, but the cheese is my secret weapon”. We don’t push.

The buns are locally sourced white sourdough. Soft. Unseeded. Exceptional. Yianni carefully lattices mustard and ketchup on each side so they have a perfect covering.

And when we get to eating it, the fact we’re standing next to a bin in a glorified car park in Peckham just melts away. The meat is juicy, flawlessly pink and perfectly seasoned. The cheese which has since melted into the patty renders us speechless and  is as close as you’ll ever get to a west coast In’n'Out-alike. The meat-to-bun-to-condiment ratio is perfect. We are ecstatic.

If you’ve got anything more than a passing interest in quality burgers, then follow the Meatwagon. Yianni said he’ll be back in a few weeks time. The Meatwagon is his part-time dalliance when he’s not doing proper catering jobs. Get down there. It’s an adventure and it’s London’s best burger. It’s a damn sight better, and 100% more Guerilla, than that other place.

Follow the Meatwagon on Twitter and Facebook.

It’s been a short but delightful relationship so far. Having only heard of supper clubs whispered discreetly among those more in-the-know than I, it was October’s visit to Fernandez & Leluu that started it all off.

Tucked away on a secret Hackney side-street was their makeshift dining room. It was full of tables, plates, cutlery and character. We, being the first to arrive, scampered into the garden for some wine. As others turned up, exchanged knowing glances, we settled into a six hour gastronomic experience that was far superior to many of the more official eateries in recent memory. Since then we’ve attended F&L two more times and witnessed the founding of the excellent Trail of Our Bread (also in Hackney).

So after not really knowing what to expect, here’s a few tips if you’ve been thinking about signing up to the supper club experience:

1. It’s not a restaurant.

So don’t treat it like one. It’s someone’s house. Try not to break things, don’t expect fresh cutlery for each course, don’t expect each course to arrive with rapid fire precision. It’s highly unlikely anyone’s actually worked in a proper restaurant.

2. It’s really not a restaurant.

You’re not paying for a service from a business. You’re donating time and money to be part of a fun experiment. You’re the subject of someone’s passion. A supper club attendee has been chosen. Pre-selected. Almost vetted, really. So the social implications of just being there and meeting other diners creates a bonhomie that no typical restaurant experience can match.

3. Pay fair.

We’re British. Therefore we’re useless at dealing with, and asking for, money. On the off-chance you didn’t like the food, and even if you’re the sort of person who refuses to pay for things in restaurants, don’t dick the club out of its donation. Pay at least 10-20% over the suggested donation. Take plenty of cash with you, because if it’s really exceptional, then it’s still going to have cost you less than going to a restaurant.

4. Don’t be picky. Or flaky.

Well, to be more specific, if you’re the picky type, then supper clubs aren’t for you. We’ve had everything from frog’s legs to sashimi. Things that might make you go bleurgh. I’m one of those people that’ll try anything once, and my favourite menus are those that are just presented to me. I don’t know what’s best, I’ve not cooked it. If you can’t handle that as a concept, then you won’t enjoy yourself. But if you love the surprise of each dish arriving, you’ll have a brilliant time.

And for goodness sake, don’t cancel. Cancelling a reservation at a supper club is the baddest of bad form. Only cancel if you’ve lost a limb, or died. It hurts everyone else involved with the endeavour. Seating plans and portion sizes are the main victims, and they’re very carefully planned. If you’re taking a large group to a supper club then make sure none of your flaky mates are invited. It will reflect badly on you otherwise, and you’ll struggle to get another table.

5. Be nice.

Nicer than default restaurant mode. You can make friends at supper clubs. As previously mentioned, most of these folks haven’t had professional training. So compliment loudly and often. More than you’re used to doing. Ask for recipes, be specific about what you liked. Be honest about what could have been better.

But even more importantly than all that, remember that the geographic locations of these clubs is a secret. I’m no expert, but the legality of these clubs is dubious. So don’t add them to FourSquare.

6. Take plenty of booze.

It’s a long night. Don’t plan on having anywhere else to be. If you get out of there before midnight, you’re doing it wrong.

And pace yourself.

Those responsible for the larks of the Twestival Twitter meetup are at it once more. The first batch of tickets for Twestival London were released this afternoon.

There are more coming later this week apparently. There was one major usability problem – so I grabbed the Flip to film Kai booking his ticket.

But hey, 350 twitterers have managed it thus far so maybe I’m just being picky.

Here’s the result. Kai says sorry for swearing:

Buying a Twestival ticket – usability fail from Simon Doggett on Vimeo.

See you at the party folks

Me and most of the London tech collective attended the Future of Web Apps conference in a cold and desolate part of docklands this week. I’m going to post a series of thoughts on it over the next week or so.

On the way from crappy hotel to Excel on Friday morning, I shared a bacon sandwich with a guy from Microsoft. They had a booth in the corner of the expo floor with some 360s, a Microsoft Surface table (underwhelming, over-expensive) and some marketing guff about Expression Web, Visual Studio and other bits and bobs. Not a peep about asp.net anywhere to be seen.

He told me that Microsoft came to these events now because they want to be more associated with the web2.0 crowd that attends these shindigs. Working for a Microsoft-driven house, I thought this was interesting, so as we shared the ketchup I picked his brains on a few bits and pieces.

Firstly we talked about Apple evangelism, a bit about the upcoming fall dashboard release for the XBox 360, and we ended up having a long chat about .net and it’s perceived shortcomings in relation to rails, php and other ‘groovier’ frameworks that are evangelised among big tech communities.

I said that MSDN is all well and good for achieving its goals, but compared to php and rails in particular, there is no decent community around asp.net. He readily agreed with me, and I told him that really since they’re the only true commercial framework, it’s their responsibility to nurture a grassroots community of .net evangelists and to help properly showcase some of the good work that’s being done with web apps using MS technology, beyond their shitty PR-heavy press releases.

He totally agreed with me. Hiring .net developers is a great deal trickier than finding a php fanboy. Comparatively, they’re concealed behind a wall of underinformed recruitment consultants and don’t contribute to the same kind of projects as their open source brethren.

They need to sort that out. Let’s hope they do.

More FOWA posts on the way.

Future of Web Apps starts next week. Exciting.

Probably my favourite event of the year, and in 2007 it was partly responsible for helping our team really push forward. Just like a really great conference should.

So here’s my (unashamedly honest) FOWA todo list.

Talk to Kevin Rose without coming across as a babbling fanboy

Steal a Microsoft bean bag

Get at least another ten Twitter followers

Learn amazing stuff from Matt Biddulph

Try not to lock myself out of my hotel room

Find some brilliant UI developers who don’t shrink at the mention of ASP.

Find a really, really talented freelance Facebook developer (or agency)

Don’t lose all my expenses receipts. Again.

Stay awake during the Zuckerberg keynote

Drink lots of Adobe beer. Party.

Are you going? What’s your FOWA strategy? I need more ideas!

Disclaimer: I am totally trying to win this competition.