ux design

Customer Intentions vs Jobs To Be Done

Published on September 20, 2018

“The plan of this world is infinite similarity and yet infinite variety.” ~ Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

In this series we introduced Designing for Customer Intentions and talked about how to Define Customer Intentions. We discussed the importance of putting your Unique Business Values First and described the practice of Putting Customer Intentions to Use. Throughout, Customer Intentions remains a subject we’ve been excited to experiment with and develop further.

It was with this excitement that a few months ago I found myself explaining the theory to a close colleague. Instead of responding with the same excitement, she countered with, “Oh I get it. That’s like Jobs to Be Done, right?”

“Jobs to be what?” I answered.

This interaction led me to question:

Is Designing for Customer Intentions really just a replica of the Jobs to Be Done method?

I swallowed my embarrassment, opened Google, and attempted an answer.

For those of you like me who haven’t yet run into Jobs to Be Done (JTBD), it’s a method which became famous through the 1997 Clayton Christensen book, The Innovator’s Solution. I haven’t yet read the text, but through my research I found a few summaries helpful in explaining JTBD further.

To elaborate, the Jobs To Be Done theory basically says that any company which describes itself as “technology X for demographic segment Y” is eventually doomed. If you tie yourself too closely to a technology, you’ll get blindsided by the next big thing. Similarly, if you define your customers by their demographic attributes, you learn very little about how you can help them better. On the other hand, if you get under the lid of the jobs they are trying to do, and understand their Psychology – i.e. their needs, goals and mental models around these jobs – then you’ve defined the problem in a way that brings the solution into focus, and it isn’t tied to a particular technology or approach. ~ User Experience and Jobs To Be Done, Harry Brignull

It’s a straightforward principle: people “hire” products and services to get a job done. For instance, you might hire a new suit to make you look good at a job interview. Or, you hire Facebook to stay in touch with friends on a daily basis. You could also hire a chocolate bar to relieve stress. These are all jobs to be done. ~ A Practical Model for Jobs To Be Done (JTBD), Jim Kalbach

These sources and a few others began to illuminate the JTBD world for me. They also helped relate the concept back to Information Architecture and User Experience Design. I highly recommend reading these works further if you’re interested in applying them to your own business and/or practice.

After my research, I could see how the idea of a product or service being “hired” to do a job for a customer sounds similar to:

“Focusing on customer intentions starts with considering what customers intend to accomplish when interacting with a website.”

I could clearly visualize how one could consider the website a service the customer hires to get one to many jobs done.

Still, I fought giving in to the idea that the methods are the same. I read article after article to prove my intended narratives; i.e. “Customer Intentions is based more on the actual customer, whereas JTBD only focuses on products”, “Customer Intentions has a deeper emotional angle than JTBD”, and “JTBD can only be used for simple feature and task definition whereas customer intentions can be used for larger strategic initiatives”. Unfortunately for me all of my resistance was for not once I landed on this piece.

Reading it, I saw my battle was lost.

Designing for Customer Intentions and Jobs to Be Done are in fact almost one in the same. I’d say they are the same, but the Intentions theory isn’t nearly as robust as JTBD so I won’t pretend they are equivalent.

However, I won’t stop using the Intentions language anytime soon either. Nor will I stop utilizing and developing the theory further.

Why?

I hypothesize using the Customer Intentions language may be better in some scenarios, while Jobs to Be Done may be more effective in others. For example, some business partners may respond better to JTBD language especially if they are familiar with, and have already bought into, the method. Others may be more favorable of the Customer Intentions language due to it’s direct tie to customers.

I have further theories on when these cases may apply and a few data points to back up said theories, but I’m afraid these aren’t yet ready for center stage. Though, I do plan on sharing them as we gather more evidence.

As to why I don’t plan on ceasing my exploration of the theory, I believe that in seeing the theory through just a bit a further, the potential of new insights may arise. I’ll be sure to keep you updated in this regard as well.

For now, I aim to continue my research as well as focusing the language I use for the method based on both the Customers I’m working with and the Context in which we are working. An idea which I’m sure rings a bell with you other Information Architects out there.

After-all if the language we use can serve our customers better, why not make it more specific and tailored to their needs? We could even look at the language as a product or service that does a job for the customer.

Too soon?

Maybe. Either way, I’m grateful for my colleague pointing out these similarities when she did. Without her insight, I’d still be in the dark on a theory that holds much promise and exploration in the weeks and months ahead. Stay tuned!

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Putting Customer Intentions to Use

Published on April 8, 2018

Our journey through understanding designing for customer intentions, defining said intentions, and communicating unique business values has hopefully been informative. However, despite whatever knowledge you may have gleaned I’m sure one question still remains:

Once you have customer intentions defined, how do you put those intentions to use?

There are a myriad of ways one could and should use intentions when designing their website. In what follows I’ll share a few of the ways we apply intentions in our work. I do so simply for inspiration’s sake, as I encourage you to use intentions however and wherever you can. After-all, you’re in business to make your customers lives better. One surefire way to do so is to ease their path to success by designing a website that’s aimed at helping them satisfy their intentions.

More on that another time. For now, let’s talk answers.

For these answers let’s bring back the example Customer Intentions list defined earlier in the series:

When a customer goes to the website they intend to…

Buy an item
Stay up to date
Understand what (our business) makes
Understand what (our business) does
Find a retailer
Investigate / research a better solution
Return a product
Get questions answered

Allow me to walk you through some example exercises and outputs we’d create using this list. I’ll start with the most abstract/strategic exercises, then work down to the concrete/detailed.

1. Concept Modeling

One of the exercises we do at the start of any website project is to create a concept model. We use this model to define the overall groups of information which need to exist on the site to communicate the unique business value while satisfying customer intentions. Here is a concept model based off our list:

If you compare the list to the model you can see where intentions overlap with groups of website information. I’ve mapped this out below:

When a customer goes to the website they intend to…

Buy an item – Products
Stay up to date – Company
Understand what (our business) makes – Products, System
Understand what (our business) does – Company, System
Find a retailer – Company
Investigate / research a better solution – Stories, Products, System
Return a product – Company, Products
Get questions answered – Company

In this example, we know when coming to the site one intention the customer has is to understand what the company makes. Using intentions here means we ensure our concept model includes one to many groups (i.e. “Products”) that will contain the information necessary (i.e. a list of products) to satisfy this intention. The important point here is to be sure each intention can be mapped to a group, and all the groups map to at least one intention.

2. Content Modeling and Mapping

Another way we use intentions is when we define the details of the concept model groups. These details include the pages and content/features that will need to exist on the site. There are many detailed steps we take during this time, and below are just a few examples which show intentions usage:

To get to the above content map we’ve asked ourselves questions such as “If a customer intends to ‘understand what the business does and what it makes’, what type of information or features do we need to have in our groups to meet these intentions?”. The answers become a long list of content and/or features. We take this list and organize into pages to create the content map.

At the same time, we organize our long list of features and content into a content architecture spreadsheet. Example:

We map each page (Levels 1, 2, and 3) directly to one / many customer intentions ensuring all website content and features related to at least one intention and vice versa.

Full Disclosure: Be sure to brace yourself during this exercise as for most teams it is the moment of truth.

During this time each page of the site and each feature or piece of content that exists on a page needs tie back to satisfying one to many customer intentions. If an intention isn’t represented in a page, in the content, or in the feature list we know something needs to be added. Easy enough.

Here’s where it gets difficult. If a page, piece of content, or feature exists without a matching intention it probably isn’t needed and should be discarded. This is usually very hard for business to accept. Yet, this is the most critical piece in creating a site geared towards meeting intentions. Miss this and your business is back to throwing too much information at your customers which means your site and your unique business value re-enter the realm of confusion. This is the exact situation designing for intentions is meant to avoid.

I encourage you to stay strong and have faith in your business value and your customers’ intentions. They won’t fail you.

3. User Flows

A third way we bake intentions in is when modeling how the customer could move through the site to satisfy an intention.

Understanding that customers are humans who don’t move linearly through sites, we’ve been inspired to update our model. This model aims to capture the many dimensions of navigating a website. The center hexagon represents the page a user is currently viewing. Surrounding that spoke are the potential pages the user can click to based off of the content or features are available. We model out as much as needed to visualize and validate users can indeed satisfy their intentions using the pages and content we’ve defined.

4. Interaction and Interface Design

With this foundation we move forward into interaction and interface design. For us this means looking at our content map to see which pages needed to be created, looking at our content architecture to figure out what goes on each page, looking at our user flows to understand the interplay between pages, and then constructing an interaction model which serves as the template for our interface design.

We’ll then use the customer intentions list to fact check the resulting outputs. This ensures the design and development deliverables line up with the strategy we’ve defined.

5. Content

Lastly, we’re sure to keep intentions in mind when reviewing the content of the site. This means we work to check that the messaging, tone, and voice all communicate what the customer need in order to understand the unique business value, formulate their intentions, and use the website to satisfy those intentions.

In Conclusion

By now you’ve gotten a few ideas of how you can utilize the customer intentions you’ve defined to help your customers more easily meet their goals. As we’ve said time and again, working through this practice is key to increasing customer loyalty and your business’s bottom line.

Something we haven’t yet discussed is how designing for customer intentions is also key to aligning your site with how the web has shifted, and will continue to shift, the ways we humans take in information.

More on this point in our discussions to come.

Values First

Published on February 26, 2018

Rope coil — Photo by Matt Haggerty on Unsplash

Before I talk any more about defining and designing for customer intentions, you must know none of this talk matters if you’re not ready for your business’s website to clearly communicate your unique business values with every word, image, interaction, and feature it contains. This may seem obvious, but I assure you it is not common practice.

In fact, the behavior I more often see is businesses replicating parts of other businesses’ websites. They try to mimic other websites’ structures, interactions, and features, assuming that by doing so they will see similar business success. What they don’t see is by replicating these items, they choose to use their website to communicate the values of other businesses, as opposed to their own.

Why do businesses choose this path? I tend to go with the evolution angle to validate the reasoning. One of the scariest things in the world for us humans is to find ourselves alone. Being alone makes us vulnerable and being vulnerable opens us up to defeat. This is why we tend to band together with others, or why we follow the lead of other more successful people. Doing so seems a better assurance of our own survival and of making sure we stay alive long enough to prosper.

The same can be said for businesses. After-all, they are made up of humans. I think this fear of vulnerability and being exposed is probably why many tend to mirror certain facets of other more successful or well-known businesses. They believe by doing so, they are more likely to find their own business success, and nowhere does this seem more easy that on the web.

There are countless examples of a business taking endless hours to prepare their offline brand, product, or service offerings to be unique and provide competitive advantage, but when it comes time to put their offerings online, competitive advantage goes out the window. Instead of trying to design their website specifically for their offerings and their values, they say things like “I want the homepage to be like .”

Many times, these statements can be helpful in directing the tone of the site. However, when businesses simply copy the features of other websites thinking this will equate to their own online success, they are missing the point.

Your website is not just a place where people can find information about your business or where they can buy your products and services. Your website is the online version of your business. Therefore, it needs to reflect your unique business values in every way possible. This includes words and pictures, yes, but it also includes the way your menus work or the way you organize all the information. Each and every decision you make needs to be a reflection of your unique business values and needs, and sometimes this means making decisions which go against what all the other other more successful or businesses are doing online.

Making these decisions is where the fear comes in.

Due to the large number of business websites out there who are copying each other, it can be pretty intimidating to choose to go against the grain. We’re humans, right? We believe there is strength in numbers. We believe more numbers ensure our survival.

The fact is there is only one business like yours, and your business values alone are why people do, and keep doing, business with you. Defining customer intentions is for not, if people don’t know who you are, and there is no way for them to know who you are, if you are defining your online presence by copying other businesses.

The mantra of “A lot of other companies designed their website this way, so it must be the best way” won’t stand, especially not in this brave new world. Why? Because the companies whose websites are successful, the ones that all the other businesses are copying, aren’t being anyone else online but themselves. They don’t care how anyone else is doing it. They do it their way.

By you treating your business website as a reflection of your business’s unique values, and displaying those values in all that your website does and says, your customers can know your business and what it stands for within seconds of visiting.

It’s only after they know this, that they’ll be able to set intentions that you can design to exceed.

UX Designer Just Doesn’t Make Sense… Or Does It?

Published on May 22, 2014

As I pour through my spreadsheet of blog ideas, I keep happening upon (probably not by accident) ideas that I have had over the years around the term UX Designer and, more specifically, whether or not the term makes sense (I.e. means something). Now, I realize that the title UX Designer DOES in fact “mean something” to many people. I think what has sparked this flow of ideas for me, however, is that the title means so many different things to so many different people. This space between the meanings is where I’m finding both internal and external conflict around the title’s purpose. Today, I want to dive into this even further, and, hopefully, get your thoughts and feedback as well (Yes, I’m adding another log to this fire. So, all you old school UXers can stop rolling your eyes now.).

Tina Fey rolling her eyes — I know many of you are doing this right now.

This topic is nothing new. Most of the known digital technology industry walks around having a firm belief in the validity of the term UX Designer. Many people think things like “User Experience is, of course, the most important part of the product AND you need to have a UX Designer to have a ‘good UX’”. Or, other people think things like “UX Designers. Those are the people that make sure the product’s UX (but really they mean interface) is great!”. Or, they may think “UX Designers. Those are the people that are glorified visual designers.”. Whatever anyone thinks, it’s obvious that the title UX Designer is something that exists in a myriad of ways. In the digital design community, many times it’s a lauded profession; one that you acquire after knowing everything there is to know about “the UX” including interaction design, information architecture, visual design, and more. For this last point I can admit that I have also thought that UX Designer was a lauded profession. I bought into this concept… hell, I built a business around this concept! But today, I wonder, is the title UX Designer really all I, and many others (those that think it’s the *ish title), have made it out to be?

Why Lis, Why?

Why am I even pondering beating this dead horse? Well, as I was pouring through said blog idea spreadsheet, I found an idea I had back in early 2013. Seems I was scouring the web (read wasting time) and I found this quote, and I realized I needed to get this thought out of my head.

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it. — Today’s Thought ~ Simply Stated March, 2013

Although this quote was not targeted at the field of UX Design, it still stopped me in my tracks and caused me to reflect on the profession. Why? Because it brought to the surface, again (at least for me), the question of whether or not an experience can be designed. Of course, this quote that I found is not based on scientific or academic research (although if you have some to share I’d love to see it!), but the meaning of it felt true to me. So I’m going to move forward in this post assuming it is true (this, dear reader, is what is called fair warning).

The Debate

The debate on whether or not an experience can be designed has been raging on since, what feels like, the beginning of the field. The following are just a few of the many pieces out there on the topic:

Can Experience Be Designed – IA.net
Yes, Experience Can Be Designed – UXmag.com
“Can experience be designed?” Yes. No. Wait, yes. But. – adaptivepath.com

The way that I see it, is that each side is looking at the User’s Experience as one of two things. Those that agree with the idea that an experience can be designed often conceive the user experience as an input into a product or service. It is something that happens before the product or service is created and a user uses it, i.e. something they “do” to make a product or service better – “I do UX!”. On the other hand, those that say that experience can’t be designed, but can be designed for, see that the user experience as an output of the product and service, i.e. something that happens because of using a product or service – “How can you do something that happens later?”.

The Realization

I’ve somehow found myself a part of this debate, and, have recently realized that I firmly agree with the latter, UX is an output NOT an input. Meaning I believe that the user’s experience exists when a user uses a product or service; i.e when they undergo it. I don’t think it can be argued that, to an extent, we can predict when a user will have a better experience if everything and everyone shown here has been accounted for in the creation of that product or service the user is using. However, I no longer believe that User Experience is something we inject into the creation of said product or service.

Given this new realization, I asked myself: If UX is an output and not an input… can the title UX Designer make sense? Can there be someone whose job it is to design the user’s experience IF the user’s experience it not something that goes into the product or service, but something that comes out of it.

I would argue that No, this title does not make sense (I.e. mean something) given this point. And, to be honest with you, I don’t have much more to say on what my new viewpoint means (so I suppose my good friend Donna Lichaw might say that this piece is a cliffhanger).

And Now It’s Your Turn

Either way, I’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions in the battle that never ends. Do you think the UX is an input or an output? Given your opinion does the title UX Designer still make sense to you and why?

Whew ok folks there you have it. Another piece of wood added to this fire. Let the flames rage on!

What to hear more about this topic? Check out my Why I’m Sick of Calling Myself a UX Designer talk this June at Future Insights Live! in Las Vegas. Get 15% off with promo code: FILSPEAK15. Hope to see you there!

Goals for 2014

Published on January 15, 2014

Now that the new year is upon us, I decided I to take the time to think about what it is I want to accomplish in 2014. Yeah, I realize I’m a few days over due for the New Year, but better late than never. With that said, here are a few mantras that I’m going to attempt to stick to in 2014 in order to guide my intended accomplishments.

Do What You Love

I have written about this before, the idea that there is a lack of passion in my work. That’s not to say I don’t love what I do, I do. I enjoy working in UX and consulting a great deal. However, I very often find myself doing things (attending certain events/conferences, writing a certain piece, attending a meeting, working with a certain client, etc) because I feel that I “should” do them. This year, I’m going to have a sharp focus on doing things because I love to do them. Of course, love of stuff doesn’t always pay the bills, but ask yourself this: why can’t it? Or, at least, why can’t it help to? Thus, by following this mantra I hope to do some, or all, of the following in 2014:

• Speak at more non-UX focused conferences and events
• Write for non-UX focused sites and publications
• Start or contribute to some sort of podcast or audio/video blog
• Write more for creative purposes, and more creative pieces
• Collaborate more with trusted and new friends/colleagues on projects, ideas, and more

Find What You Love

Doing what you love to do means that first you have to figure what it is you love to do. Thus, this mantra is about me being aware and in the moment enough to realize when I’m falling in love with something I’m doing. It also means not being afraid to love to do something that others hate, and to not be afraid to get to know myself better. By following this mantra I hope to do more of the following this year:

• Attend and be present at different types of events, classes, etc.
• Meet even more liked minded individuals that I can learn and gain inspiration from
• Continue to fight through any hesitation

Be What You Love

Lastly, I think there is something to be said about embodiment. I’m talking about not just going through the motions of goals and goal setting, but to understand why you are are setting goals for yourself, and then to embody that reasoning both internally and externally. This mantra is about staying true to yourself and your beliefs, working with and for people that remind you of who and why you are, and all the while asking yourself “why am I doing this?” and believing and aligning with the answer.

There you have it folks, my goals for 2014. This list may seem Non-UXy, or too general, but I’m standing behind it 100%, because I believe that by better all aspects of yourself, you will easily better your work.

What are YOU trying to accomplish this year?

UX and Its Problem with Should

Published on March 20, 2013

I, like you, am passionate about this industry we’re in, the industry of creating products and services that are meaningful to others. I am so passionate that, like you, I read, watch, listen, write, speak and practice this profession (along with eat, sleep and breath it as well!). But as I was reading another amazing post of lecture notes from one of the best in the business, I started to think. I thought long and hard about how we talk about our work, write about work, aspire to practice our work. And who else is with me when I say… we have a big problem with Should, and an even bigger problem with Is?

Currently, the majority of how we write and speak about our work is in ideals… myself included. I find myself saying “Ideally you would have already done personas” or “Ideally we’d be involved in every step of this process” or “Ideally we’d be taking all channels into consideration, but due to the scope of this project…”,

The thing is rarely, very rarely, (if at all!) do these ideals line up in real life. For instance, I have tons of great resources telling me how I should, in an ideal world, conduct a discovery and strategy project. These resources have provided me a great outline for doing my work (to be fair, many tell us that they are only outlines), but rarely ever do they provide me a real world scenario that is seeped in reality OR they do provide me a real world scenario of their’s, unfortunately, however, my real world is not as awesome. Don’t get me wrong here, we need the ideals, but along with them I’d like to start seeing some reals… and here’s why…

When knowledge we take in regarding this profession relates to only awesome projects or lofty ideals, several problems occur.

First, no one else really thinks they DO the work. Because they weren’t able to follow the ideal process step by step or because they didn’t have the ideal scenario in place, it didn’t seem like “real” work to them. Therefore, many practitioners aren’t embodying the work they do. It becomes a mystery to them of what “the real” thing is because they just can’t match these damn ideals.

Second, because these practitioners don’t embody the work, we have a HUGE lack of mentorship in our community. Everyone thinks that they are the ones that should be mentees, because mentors, afterall, should have done the “real” work step by step, and since many people think that they haven’t done “real” work, the assume they aren’t fit enough to teach others. You see the “ideals only” approach puts us in a place where we are an industry of self doubters, not of empowered practitioners, therefore it is hard for a newbie to think they can write a blog, mentor someone else, or speak at a conference.

Third, because no one really thinks they “do” the work, less people actually share the work they do! This sets the whole profession back because it means the new ideas and ideals only come from a select few (not their fault). This perpetuates the cycle of practitioners only hearing from the select, awesome few, about their select, awesome work, and realizing that their own actual work isn’t as awesome, and therefore they must be frauds… BAH!

But not to dismay, the world is yours! And, there are ways that we can defeat these problems.

The first solultion starts with the content creators. I think that more of us should write and talk more about the actuals. There is always a time for ideals, we need to understand them to have a direction, but I’m going to make it a goal of mine to write and speak more about my actual work, on a non-awesome project… because I sure haven’t ever followed an ideal process, but I believe and know I do this work (and you do too!).

The second solution is, if you aren’t writing and talking about anything, go out and start doing so and make some if it about your actuals! There is always room for more ideas on how to do something, or why to do something. So what if there are a millions posts about feature prioritization… we want to know how YOU do it.

Once we all have a more realistic view point of what “actual” UX work is, we see several outcomes. First an overall confidence and assurance increase throughout our profession. And, this is key because if WE are more sure about what our work “really” is then our clients and customers will have more faith in us as well.

Second, more of us will be writing and sharing our ideas which will perpetuate a growth in knowledge and ideas overall. Thus, we’ll have more options to use or craft in our actual day to day world, and thus more good work will be done overall!

You see there is nothing wrong with Should except that it is not Is. It simply is not… it just should be. And, if we look to Should as the actual, then we miss the point. The point of Should is to give us a compass, a direction, a focus, but not to blind us to reality. Once we realize that Should is “can be” instead of “is”, then we’ll be in a much better place to better ourselves, our profession, and of course our businesses and users. It’s a win-win… win!

Service Design or User Experience Design…What’s the diff?

Published on October 3, 2012

Earlier this year I wrote a blog post about how a lack of service design got under my skin. In the article, I talked about a trip I had to a popular beauty brand’s store. A couple of months later, I found this article which details how Sephora updated their website experience to better accommodate online shoppers. But I couldn’t help but wonder, ‘what are they doing to help their in store experience?’. Enter service design.

As I mentioned in my previous article, I’m still on the fence regarding whether service design should be separate from user experience design. I think the main issue with it being this way is that user experience design gets construed as ‘designing for the mobile or web interface only’ by both UX practitioners and those that hire us. Thus, UXers begin to leave out the service part of their solution, either because they are oblivious that it is their responsibility or because their boss tells them that the service part of the solution is for the service designer to figure out. Because of this a gap in the product forms between the web and any other channel experiences. In the case of Sephora, this could be ringing true.

I would say that the solution to this problem is to stop separating service design from user experience design, but that opportunity has already passed. The title user experience designer has fallen flat, and has been misconstrued so many times that many people don’t even want it anymore. Service design provides an out in this way, and allows people to work on different types of projects besides just the interface ones. However, I do think that one solution to this problem is for all of us in this profession who design for a user’s experience with a product or service to go back to basics and really understand the pillars that this profession stands on. To me, these are the pillars of Information Architecture: users, content, context. Understanding that we design for the intersection of these three things covers most any situation one can imagine, and brings us back to our discipline’s center.

The outcome of us going back to these pillars, is that we, as service providers, become aware of what our job really is. It is to facilitate, as best as possible, a user’s experience with a product or service. No matter what we call ourselves, that will never change. And, the sooner we all become aware of this, the sooner we can stop creating and arguing about new disciplines, and just sit down and get to work.

The Awakening of UX Design

Published on May 2, 2012

Today I want to invite you on a journey in which we UX designers take a step outside of ourselves and look closely at our world. In doing so, we can see that our kind is a splice of two different personalities. We are a cross of those that want to lead the world in designing a better place for everyone, and those that want to be directed as to which problems to solve and when to solve them. Being natural perceivers we operate on our own wavelength and thus find it annoying when people screw with our genius. On the flip side, we are generally not always great at staying grounded because our creativity takes us to new heights and allows us to go places with our ideas that others could only dream! The impressive amount of imagination, creativity, and innovative thinking that we posses contributes to the fact that we expect people to recognize the power of our work and the immense value we bring. At the same time, we are unable to reign in our own genius to the biggest design constraint of all, that of our reality.

Of course, in order to put our untapped creativity and genius to use, we have to look outside of reality. I mean, that is the whole point of what makes UX Design so powerful, is the ability to look beyond the now to the how it should be. However, there is a time and a place for everything, and I would argue that there is a time and place for us to come to the realization of the world in which we work. The problems that we see due to our natural personality types coming into combat with our economical way of producing success are many, however, there is a specific problem that I think we should discuss today, and one that was brought up in Cameron Koczon’s post on A List Apart, An Important Time for Design. The simple fact is that design thinking, although it is the latest word on every company’s lips, is still only seen as important for executing the idea, and is not seen as integral to coming up with the ideas in the first place. Cameron does an amazing job of illustrating this through his narrative on how startups view design. He also points out to us that another group was in our same position not so long ago. Who was that group? Developers (seriously, read the article before you continue this post. Here it is again.)

As you just read, there are several solutions to the problem of UX Design being seen as useful only during execution of an idea, however the big one is that we need to see the forest through the trees. We absolutely need to admit to ourselves that we work within the world of business, and thus we need to recognize that world as the biggest constraint in which we do our work (for more thoughts see UX… It’s Time to Start Keeping It Real). This means that we need to stop playing by our own rules without considering the rules of business. We need to stop designing solely for design’s sake or only for the user’s benefit, and start realizing the environment in which our solutions are developed. We need to stop waiting for the day when someone else realizes the genius of what IA and UX really is, and figure out how to sell that genius to others. In short… UX it’s time we wake up, rise up, and take our place next to our development and business partners instead of hiding behind our processes and methodologies… instead of hiding behind our users. This means that we take responsibility for our fate, and we aim to change that fate by coming out of our community’s shell and integrate UX into the world of business. How do we do that?

First and foremost, we need to take responsibility for the cultivation of the UX industry. We need to push ourselves to stop talking only about how to do UX, and start talking about how the constraints around the UX world (i.e. business, startups, etc), work. We then need to figure out how we can fit UX into those constraints. Lastly, we need to admit that we do this work, not only because we love it, but because we love doing something we love in order to provide for ourselves and our families. We need then, to start keeping it real and bring that fantasy part of our personalities out of the clouds for a moment or two, and start realizing that we aren’t in our own little bubble anymore, in fact that we never were in that bubble in the first place.

By taking responsibility for improving UX over and by admitting that we work within businesses and that is our biggest constraint, we begin to create a profession of people that can work within the business structures around us. This doesn’t mean that we sell out and become a part of the machine, but that we study and learn the machine so that we can change it from the inside out. Right now we are only on the perifery… only there to execute… not there to think. But in order to be the thinkers we need to know more than just UX, so that we can navigate UX through anything that comes at us. Cameron was right in his article… it is an important time for design. My only question for us is will we answer to our call of duty or hide behind what we know to stay safe. The choice, is up to you.

Motivation: Whatever doesn’t kill us

Published on March 7, 2012

(This post is the fourth in a series devoted to looking at how sports and design are aligned. For more in this series see How being a jock makes me a better UX Designer, UX and Sports? Ya Damn Right!, and How to find the best UX mentor. I also presented some of this material at Interaction 12. Be sure to check out the slides from that talk as well!)

I remember the summer well. It was the summer right before my freshman year in high school. Somehow, I had been asked to play with the Varsity soccer team, and therefore I was attending the twice a day practices (practices that were brutal, to say the least). There was one hill nicknamed “The Rambo Hill” that was part of our everyday routine. In short, this was a steep, rocky (no pun intended) hill that we would run up and down. It was painful (especially falling down the hill after your cleat comes untied… but that is another story). Being one of three freshman on the team I was younger than everyone else, and because of that had very little, if any, clout. I decided to try an experiment, both for my own mental stamina, as well as to test the relationship with my team. But more on that later.

I’m telling you this story today because I think that we, as designers, are lacking the same sort of clout within our teams and organizations. Although UX is the newest buzz term, and everyone thinks they need us, they still have not granted us enough respect to really understand what we do. If you think that being “needed” on a team in order to draw the picture in omnigraffle is respect, then I challenge you to a duel. Luckily, times are changing. But, we aren’t quite where we need to be to be truly respected. And, therefore, perhaps we should try a similar experiment to the one that I conducted back during that summer.

First, I think it’s important to acknowledge the problems with not having enough respect (insert Rodney Dangerfield voiceover) or clout. First off, it is just plain demoralizing to be the only one in the room that respects your work and really knows what you do. As I said, respect isn’t just about being invited to the party, it’s about being invited to the party for the right reasons. And, unfortunately with us, that is not always the case. The second problem is that it is extremely hard to bring the correct solution or any solution forth for discussion when your position within the team is misunderstood or under respected. The third issue is that it is even harder to expect to get a representative at any higher level in an organization if your role is misunderstood and lacks clout.

So, what is the experiment that I ran with my soccer team that summer? I decided, on my own free will, to become a motivator. Doing so meant that I was the person cheering on the team no matter how much pain or exhaustion I felt. When we were running up the hill, around the field, over the river and through the woods I would yell out “Come on girls! We can do this! Whatever doesn’t kill us, makes us all stronger!”.

Bringing this over to design… this means our solution to the problems I mentioned above lies in becoming motivators. That’s right, you should motivate your teammates. Tell them, aloud, when they are doing a good job. When was the last time you saw a developer on a tight deadline all stressed out and said to them “Hey, you know what? You got this. You’re doing a great job and I know you can do this.”. Pretty powerful statement right? Imagine how they will feel when you say that? Also, you want to keep things on the project positive and push your team to excel both with your words and your actions.

You’ll be surprised what being a motivator can do. That summer, my cheering became my tagline. It was probably, after awhile, pretty freakin annoying, but it didn’t matter. This type of cheering, as well as keeping a positive attitude and complimenting and motivating individual teammates as well as everyone on the whole, shifted something. People began to trust in me as a teammate. They looked at me as someone who understood how they felt, even if I was less experienced. They wanted me around more. And by coupling this with my will to work hard and learn I gained a whole lot of respect and clout.

I think that running this same experiment will work within design. By keeping a positive attitude, recognizing effort and pushing your teammates (especially your non-design teammates) to excel you will earn a great deal of trust and not long after a high level of respect. You are no longer the creative who sits in the corner and does the fun work… you are a part of the team! You are showing that you understand how everyone else feels and thus you can be trusted. And once you earn this clout and respect the sky is the limit for how far you can take your role and the role of this profession. By letting down your guard, and pushing your team to be better, you become the one they want around more, and not just for your wireframing skills either.

Reason #5 Why UX Designers Are Like Therapists

Published on November 30, 2011

You may have seen that Johnny Holland has a great new series of posts out entitled “What I bring to UX from…”. I love these posts because they help us to think across talents and professions to gleam lessons from other fields. One article in this series, What I bring to UX from… working with delinquents & young offenders, caught my eye. I started to recall a blog series that I started last year and never took the time to finish, Reasons why UX Designers Are Like Therapists. This article inspired the #5 reason that we are like therapists. That is, to be successful, we both need to practice diplomacy. (Here are links to Reason #1, Reason #2, Reason #3, Reason #4.)

In the Johnny Holland article, the author points out the skill of diplomacy. In short, ti is the ability to lead someone to see the errors of their own ways without pointing out their errors directly to them. If you have ever been in therapy, you probably know that this is the goal of your therapist. Not so much to “tell you” what is bothering you, but to use his/her skills to get you to see it for yourself. By doing this the therapist is empowering you to be self sufficient as well as to change your point of view in order to make you more successful at seeing better results in your therapy.

One could argue that as a UX Designer, you need the same skill. First, you need diplomacy within your project teams and client relationships in order to advocate for your designs and help people to better understand, for themselves, why your role exists and the value that you bring. Further, you need to use diplomacy to help persistent, opinionated team members and clients to see where and why their genius design solution ideas may or may not work as well. For example, you have a client that insists that his/her site needs to utilize breadcrumbs to help people navigate through the site more easily. You know the type of clients that I’m talking about, right? The opinionated ones (put nicely). After doing some analysis and informal research you realize that the client’s idea of using breadcrumbs is not the correct solution. How do you decide to solve the problem? You can push your ideas on them, OR you can utilize the skill of diplomacy to help paint a picture of why one idea is better than the other.

Painter painting a house cartoon — Help paint a clear picture.

Second, you need the skill of diplomacy to help guide your users through the different products and services you are designing. You cannot just shove a site or a design at a user without first thinking of how that site or design helps to paint a clear point of view of how to complete the task or get the content the user needs. Thus design 101 is really a type of visual diplomacy (in a very high level sense).

By utilizing diaplomacy, the outcomes are similar to those of a therpist. You are allowing your project teams, clients and users to be more self sufficient as well as helping them to shape their own point of view. This is one of the artistic parts of UX design, getting people from both sides of the product (back end facing and front end facing) to see the narrative that you are creating for mutual product success. Teams and clients become better at understanding your role and your expertise, and users become better at being successful while using your products and services. It’s a win-win.