3 musts for a successful career in eXperience Engineering

By Sailesh Raghavan, Vice President Technology, Experience Engineering, Publicis Sapient

In today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape, it’s essential to not only understand the tools we use but also to grasp the underlying principles that drive them. While the tools and frameworks of the digital world might change with time, the fundamentals and the “Why” behind their existence remain pivotal.

This is where the art of Experience Engineering takes center stage.

Amidst the array of advanced tools, the heart of this domain rests in mastering the basics and understanding the building blocks of the interaction end points of our users, no matter how fancy the tools get. Let’s understand why nailing these fundamentals is quintessential in our ever-evolving tech landscape.

The ‘Why’ Factor
It’s always important to know the “Why” before the “How”. The best and strongest way to grow in this domain is to focus on the core basics. Building your career on the basis of specific frameworks and libraries like Angular, Vue, React alone has a very short shelf-life. We consider this domain to be the last mile that connects the brand with the consumer, acting as a bridge between the design and the technology community and keeping Experience at the centre is what differentiates us.

Irrespective of the library or framework one uses – the browser at the end of the day – still renders HTML, CSS and JavaScript. GenAI has made programming easy – so one doesn’t really have to remember syntax – with compete code snippets being written in a jiffy by the openAI platforms. This makes it all the more important to have a solid base – to know what code to use and what to further optimize. Looking at all aspects of development & programming while focusing on performance, highlighting the importance of rendering, usability, interactivity & accessibility along with the end user experience at the base of it all, is what helps elevate one as a complete Experience Engineer.

The JavaScript with HTML & CSS Edge
JavaScript has seen exponential growth in its adoption and usage in the recent past and has become the primary medium connecting all facets of development. From conventional client – server development to data visualisation – to mobile apps – to desktop apps – to tvOS – to now powering hardware – JS as a programming language has truly evolved.

With the advent of JavaScript runtimes like Node – the lines between conventional front-end technologists and back end technologists have blurred more than ever before – opening career options for all technologists to become true FULL-cycle engineers.

The key to note is – JavaScript is at the core – hence its critical to understand and master core JavaScript, to be framework and library agnostic. HTML & CSS play a equally important role even today. It’s ironic engineers today – struggle writing semantic markup and don’t understand the concepts of a CSSOM. The WHY even here is as important – knowing the differences between the rendering options of CSR, SSR, ISR and ESRs – helps one take key strategic decisions. There’s no denying that the future of technology is Now and Experience Experience are right in the middle of it. What is instrumental is still keeping it simple and doing the basics right.

Combine Technology With Creativity
The relationship between creativity and technology is quite interesting – since it’s difficult to imagine the sustenance of one without the other. There are different ways to solve a problem and technology is an enabler for these solutions. If you look at the list of innovations from a touch screen phone to a self-driving car, nothing would have been possible without the creative and effective use of technology. It’s said that all the technology has already been invented – what we are doing now is exploring new means and mediums of using them which is what defines creativity – questioning the supremacy debate of left brain vs right brain.

To summarize, Experience Engineers hold a crucial role in the tech world and to thrive in this ever-changing field it requires a focus on keeping things simple, prioritizing the basics, and merging technology with creativity.

It’s never about working on the latest piece of abstraction or boilerplates or accelerators – but knowing what happens under the hood – and what makes the eventual solution, fast, performant and robust. Knowing and understanding your end consumer – helps build solutions that are simple for them to contextualize and intuitively navigate. Finding the balance between simplicity and usability with a focus on fundamentals goes a long way to create a robust app.

The fact that Experience Engineers are the layer that connects the brand with the consumers – the responsibility of Experience Engineers extends beyond the technical realm. They are the bridge between the practical and the imaginative, infusing innovation into user experiences. This blend of technology and creativity drives progress.

The impact of Experience Engineers transcends mere participation; it’s about transforming the tech world for the better.