Most of my UX growth came from looking outside the field
This year marks a decade spent in UX, which means I’ve been reflecting a little on what I’ve learned.
This was a strange year as a UX Designer, where I received more lessons from outside the realm than within it. From helping my stakeholders understand me better to understand the impact AI has on design, these are the three most important lessons I’ve learned in 2022 to help me grow as a designer.
It’s easier to persuade team members by learning a little about them
This is something that I’ve felt for a while, but it was someone’s LinkedIn post that I fundamentally disagreed with that got me to voice my thoughts.
“If you’re working with UX and hiring them, you should have some idea of what UX actually does.”- Frustrated UXer on LinkedIn
I’ve worked with people who had little to no idea what UX was for most of my career. I’ve spent a decade working in Healthcare and Federal UX, whose organizations tend to be low on the UX maturity scale.
In many of these cases, I’ve been someone’s pet project. They see the value of UX, perhaps attending courses, and are willing to hire and mentor you. But that understanding of UX is piecemeal: the rest of the team often doesn’t know who you are or what you do.
If you don’t explain UX or offer specific help, UX might become a checkbox on your project. This is where the team waits for UX to do ‘something’ (that could be magic for all they know). Then, once you’re done, the rest of the team does things the way they’ve always done them.
As tedious as it might be to explain how UX can help, it’s better than the alternative, where developers build a website loosely based on your design (and ignore all of the UX improvements you’ve made). But getting people to understand UX can be a challenge at times.
I’ve scheduled meetings to explain UX or discuss user research findings, only for no one to show up (because they ‘know’ UX). I’ve tried to bring up user quotes and needs in conversations, only to get the ‘checkbox’ nod (i.e., wait for UX to stop talking, then keep talking about what they originally were).
But few things work better than learning a little about your team’s viewpoints and knowledge to bridge the gap.
Learn the basics of KPIs/metrics, and you can discuss how your user research affects a specific KPI. Learn a little about UX writing, and replace lorem ipsum with text on which your team will comment or have opinions.
I’ll admit it’s tough not getting frustrated by other team members not understanding UX or why it’s essential. But one of the most important things I’ve learned is that just because they’re ignorant about UX doesn’t mean they’ll always oppose your ideas.
People need time to see the value of what you do, and often the harshest critics become your most avid supporter. A product manager who actively questioned why UX needed to do all the steps on one project because our greatest advocate on another when she saw how effective designs were.
What I’ve learned:
- Learn about your team members with one-on-one chats. This was the original use I had for Tag-Along meetings (link). I’d talk with specific people about the project, follow them back to their cubicles, and sometimes learn about things I hadn’t before. Specifically, I’d ask about their workflow and what they’d like from me to understand what I might need to prepare.
- Figure out how you can help them. In addition to chatting with them, do a little research into their job descriptions or responsibilities to see how you might help them. For example, if you’re working with people who don’t know what UX does, you may spot a UX problem that you can help with that they’re unaware of.
- Remove your ego by treating this as field research. I’ve learned that you might have 20 years of experience in UX, but the ‘newbie’ is still the ‘newbie.’ So if you’re having a difficult time losing the ego, view it as field research. You’re observing people in the field as a passive observer: you don’t want people distracted by your presence or who you are.
But this sort of learning is a two-way street. I also learned that you could design good things, even if you know little about the subject.
You don’t need to know everything to design well: instead, ask the right questions.
I have a habit of wanting to learn as much as possible about the topic I’m designing for, but I had to kick that habit this year.
I went from designing a process to document Social Security Misuse claims to B2B-focused communities of Clinical Pathways to large-scale Data Visualizations of Network Monitoring Systems. There’s no way I could learn everything about these different fields. But honestly, I didn’t need to.
While it’s nice to be knowledgeable about a project, it’s essential to ask the right questions to understand the process. To do that, you need to do something a little hard for me: zone out on the details and instead listen in for specific phrases that suggest workflows, use cases, and usability issues.
I spent a lot of my meetings with only a basic understanding of the details, but I could still design things that the users and businesses were looking for.
Why? Because I always took the time to ask questions that might seem essential to the rest of the team. I dug through documentation and did user research, but often the simplest way to understand what you need to design is to ask a subject matter expert (SME) directly.
What I’ve learned:
Listen for explanations about workflow, steps users have to take, or use cases. This could be a whole article itself, as there are many things to watch out for. However, the key to this process is something you might practice in user testing: don’t be so lost in taking notes that you miss specific phrases or explanations you want to learn more about.
Act like a brave/new person. There are specific questions that the team might need clarity about, but they’re afraid to ask them for fear of seeming dumb. For example, a technical person might want to avoid asking about certain things because they might be expected to know the answer.
In these cases, you can take on this role and ask basic or otherwise general questions to understand the overall process. You should understand the basic process if you’re looking for something other than technical details.
Don’t sweat the (design) details. Previously, I’d want to know the details of a project so that my prototypes would reflect actual data that the person might encounter. However, I’ve learned that getting the general framework right is more important, especially if you’re coming into this as a newbie.
You can chat with someone later or do some research later to fill in the details: ensure you’re about to understand the basic workflow with pointed questions right away.
Treat design as a craft to future-proof your work.
This year, I didn’t expect AI to challenge my design and writing skills. But between ChatGPT and MidJourney AI (along with others), we’ve been forced to face a big fear that many creatives have: can AI replace us?
But after doing a deep dive into the subject, I would say no. Paul Fitts created a diagram showing what man and machine were the best at six decades ago, which has stayed the same.
Between decades of research and several successful business models that use AI, we know that AI won’t replace humans. Instead, working alongside AI has proven to be the best and most successful approach.
Right now, AI generates high-fidelity sketches and first drafts. These look great to the outside observer, but looking at them with a critical eye for a second shows many usability issues.
This means that ideation and divergent thinking have gotten more accessible than ever, but deciding what design elements to choose and making design decisions is where we need to focus our craft.
AI tools are some of the best ways to brainstorm, do quick sketches, and help start the iteration process. Some examples of this include:
- Generating a color palette (and what design elements should use what color)
- Replacing Lorem Ipsum with UX writing
- Generating text for buttons, menu items, and more
- Testing out how different designs look with different grid patterns
- Checking how different Call-to-Action placements like look
- etc.
But AI will not replace things at the heart of UX: problem-solving, making judgments about the best solutions, and persuading others of your design decisions.
In the face of all these changes, we must remember what’s at the heart of UX: our users.
Users are at the heart of what UX does
This year has been a tumultuous one for UX and the world as a whole. But it’s also been one where I’ve gone back to my roots. Learning outside the field and technologies that may be useful has helped me focus on what UX’s goal should be: to advocate for the user perspective and design things that help users.
That should always be the goal, even if you look outside UX for inspiration (or communication). So even as new technologies, tools, and ideas change my UX design process, I’m still pursuing the same goal.
But that outside knowledge has helped me grow in ways I could never have expected.
Kai Wong is a Senior UX Designer, Design Writer, and author of the Data and Design newsletter. His new book, Data-informed UX Design, explains small changes you can make regarding data to improve your UX Design process.
