Being a UX Designer
A presentation for Master of User Experience Design students at Victoria University
What is UX? As practitioners of UX design, this is a question we are asked over and over again. However, when we are deep in a project, it might be a good question to ask ourselves one more time, to check we haven’t missed something - to keep us on track and ensure our designs aren’t only based on assumptions and personal bias.
UX is User Experience, and users are people. People who, once they interact with a product or a system, become users. Their experience is the amalgam of their sentiments, beliefs, actions and emotions before, during and after that interaction.
It sounds so simple, but designing for best user experience can be convoluted and taxing.
It’s almost like trying to wrangle time and a user’s place in it. An endless process of folding in the preexisting elements of the past and how somebody got to where they are now, what they can and will do while they are here in the present, in your design, and how they will move forward and away from you.
Was the experience successful for them?
Was it an improvement on the last time?
Will they come again?
Isn’t UX Design about helping to deliver better outcomes for as many people as possible? If a service is being provided, or a system is in place that could enhance someone’s life - no matter who they are or where they are from - shouldn’t good design ensure the least possible impediment to their access, benefit and enjoyment of it?
Perhaps a great user experience is one that nobody even notices.
Sometimes, when a project seems overwhelming, I just try to keep in mind that if I can at least make one thing happen a little better for at least one user, that will be something.
In a learning environment, application of UX practices are often performed in isolation, perhaps for assignment work, which seems out of step with the collaborative nature of UX.
Group projects or ones which require collaboration with interdisciplinary teams go much further to replicating how UX design might work in an industry environment.
Beginning on a new project as a UX practitioner can bring up a lot of uncertainty.
Who are the users - both internal and external? What problems do they face? What will success look like? Am I ready for the challenge?
A UX Designer is often expected to work across a diverse range of products, initiatives and research elements. Deliverables might range from user research and journey maps, to visual design elements, productivity tool development and website visitor statistical analysis.
It’s a lot to get your head around.
At times you need to work flat out.
The ability to foster good relationships and to encourage and facilitate members from different teams to participate across an organisation are important skills for a UX Designer.
Communication is key and can be one of the most rewarding aspects of our work. Everybody talks about and expects Agile practice in their design teams now, making it sometimes appear that Agile methodology is only about results. Yet the central principal in an Agile team is communication.
Good communication in a healthy Agile squad means individual members have a clear understanding of each other’s work - what challenges they are facing, what progress is being made and what successes they have had.
Healthy communication enables better convergence of work practices over large projects. A real sense of empathy for others when we understand the challenges each of us is facing and what it means to achieve our goals make all the difference.
Additionally, it is often important to advocate UX practice across an organisation as a whole. Sometimes we loose sight of the fact that others in the same workplace might be unfamiliar with UX and can even see it as a threat to their own role. A large part of our way forward is to grow UX from within.
Maintenance and sharing of documentation is a wonderful way to involve others in our process and to keep them updated. Bringing others across into our teams for a short secondment or simply for a daily stand up are great ways to share knowledge and break down “work silos”.
Documentation. Secondments. Stand Ups. Agile Teams. Post It notes.
It’s all communication.
If we begin our processes in the hope of gathering the best information in order to understand our users, their needs, their frustrations and their ‘delighters’, we need to communicate. Good user research relies on a rich exchange of information via good communication.
Communication. It’s what we do.
To understand what collaborators need to know and how they work, we need to be able to communicate with them. When it comes time to deliver back to our users, we need to be able to communicate our offerings. In essence, being human is to communicate, and if UX is a part of human centred design, then good communication is our fundamental requirement.
As UXers, we have a multitude of methods to enable this communication, from the visual, to research - talking, interviews, listening, observing and reflecting. It’s the ability to utilise and capitalise on this combination of so many aspects of our ‘humanness’ that sets UX design apart from other design disciplines.
Don’t be afraid to be yourself.
By maintaining your integrity and referring to your own values as you work as a UX Designer, you bring something unique and special to your designs. Not being afraid to be yourself can help your practice.
A little humour, along with empathy and respect, can help to break down some of the barriers present when interacting with others. This in turn helps to illicit better responses and richer information from people. And it makes you feel good along the way. A win win situation.
Going forward.
Interaction with people is what led me to study UX and it is what will sustain me in my future practice.
Listening to people’s views, insights and beliefs and feeding that into my design work is the most interesting aspect of UX and certainly the most rewarding for me.
My hope is that my work embodies empathy, inclusion and respect for the people for whom I design and that my users are able to connect and share more easily with one another.
