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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!

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!

The UX Athlete – A New Series on Johnny Holland

Published on April 25, 2012

Recently, Johnny Holland Magazine graciously offered me the opportunity to share my thoughts on UX with their audience. Together we decided to create a series entitled The UX Athlete in which I use many of the lessons that I’ve learned while playing sports to highlight how we can all be better designers. The first post, UX Success Starts with a Good Strategy, just recently launched and I have been receiving some great feedback on it. Be sure to check it out along with the others that will be going up in the near future. And, as always, I’d love to hear any thoughts or feedback that you have on any of the posts, or the series in general. Enjoy, and thanks again to Johnny Holland for allowing me to participate.

The Myth of Interaction Design

Published on March 14, 2012

One day, as I was drifting off into one of my frequent reveries, it came to me. How, I said to myself, can we really call ourselves Interaction Designers, when the majority of us aren’t really designing any new interactions? I know what you are going to say. “But Lis, surely you agree that we design interactive sites, apps and other digital products all the time!”. But we need to ask ourselves, are we really creating new interactions based on human capabilities or just reusing old digital interactions in new ways. Chance would have it that this amazing article crossed my path, A Brief Rant On the Future of Interaction Design, and it greatly helped to clarify my thoughts. In this article, the author talks about how many of the videos and hypotheses that we see of “future” interactions are really just riffs off of technology that we already have. He uses the example of touchscreens heavily throughout the article, and points out something very key; that these so called “future” touch interactions are not really based off of the gap between human capabilities (how humans are capable of interacting) and current human interaction (what people are already doing today). Instead they are based off of the fact that we have touchscreen technology and thus feel the need to figure out more interactions that people can do with it. The author’s plea is for us to “be inspired by the untapped potential of human capabilities.”, and to me, the people that do that… are the real interaction designers.

So what if my whacky theories are true? What is the big deal? Well, I’ll tell you what the big deal is. The problem with us believing that we are interaction designers without really taking into consideration human capabilities is that we are stunting the ability to design new and meaningful interactions for our users. We stunt creative and innovative design growth because we plateau and refuse to push ourselves further. “We’re already interaction designers”, we say. “We’re the creative ones, the ones that can see into the future of digital interaction, so we must be right.”. Wrong. We are a big part of the gap that users have between interactions today and their physical capability to act further. Thus, what we end up really designing for are technical advancements as opposed to human capability, and our tools are not really for use by real people, but are just pushing the limits of technology to see how far we can take it. That is not design, it is selfishness and greed.

But, I promise you this, we can solve this problem, we can make ourselves part of the solution. The first step in doing so is to take a minute, stop and think. We need to, at a minimum, take the time to understand human capabilities. That is really what user research is all about. Bret Victor, the article author above, mentions that user research is all about understanding how people are already using interactions and tools, noting user goals and needs and then noting gaps and hiccups in the interactions the user is having. We need to go back to the roots of the user, the human, in order to design for them, and not for our own technological progress.

By understanding human capabilities and the gaps in interaction between those capabilities and the user’s potential for the interaction, we become interaction designers. Real interaction designers. We can create more meaningful digital interactions (and physical if that is the space you are in) and we then come even closer to meeting and exceeding our users’ goals. Being an interaction designer means that you have taken an oath, an oath to make the world a near effortless place to interact with. So, take that first step and understand your users capabilities so that you can begin to design for them as opposed to designing for the technology. By doing that you are making this complex interactive world an easier place to interact.