7 pitfalls that hold back UX designers
Learn what the common mistakes are so you can avoid them
Here’s some common pitfalls that I’ve come across which hopefully help you along your designer journey:
Pitfall 1: Creating artificial barriers
As a new designer, you likely feel pressure to try to please everyone. Rather than attempting to do the impossible, I would advise to focus on the 80% scenarios (meaning the key use cases for the product) and on decision makers*. There’s usually someone who has the final say on whether some part of the process goes through.
*There may be a “hidden” decision maker who has the final say, not just the most senior ranking person.
Pitfall 2: Taking assumptions as fact
One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions.
— Grace Hopper
Assumption can feel an awful lot like facts in our heads but part of being a UX designer is getting outside of the comfort of your own experience (and even the experience of your larger team) and creating/looking to the unspoken needs of your customers.
The longer you stay in a problem space, the more likely you’ll develop “expert” blinders that insulate your from your customers as experiences feel more familiar and easy.
This problem is exacerbated when there’s a time crunch, you start getting thoughts like:
- “There’s no time to test this” (without realizing the engineering/UX debt down the road)
- “My gut can’t be wrong” (without considering that you are not your user)
- “We need to add features, fast!” (without considering user problems/needs/priorities)
It can even happen during critique or a study, where you rush into your work without providing any context while making assumptions about what your audience knows.
Pitfall 3: Forgetting about time to impact
There’s a window of time when UX has the most impact. However, letting this window of time pass will only make it more difficult to convince a stakeholder to change course.
Pitfall 4: Distractions, distractions
Automate, effectuate, regulate, and debate.
— Neil Pasricha
We live in a world that fights for our attention. Whether its your constant itch to check email (and reach inbox zero), buzzing phone, chatter from the office, endless IM pings, aimless meetings or other small distractions, these time traps can drain us of energy and much needed focus time.
At the start of a day, determine your daily agenda.
Ask yourself: What things must be done? What are the top 3 things I can contribute?
Set aside focus time for the main things and have a process for the small stuff to avoid decision fatigue.
Pitfall 5: Starting with a shaky foundation
So that’s your job too, to clarify and simplify for everybody on your team. The more you simplify the better people will perform.
— Keith Rabois
When I started a new project, I recall the instinct to quickly deliver something to show that I could contribute and drive impact. Often this was the wrong instinct — starting anything is a collaborative effort, and having the same set of information shared among team members is crucial to help get everyone on the same page.
Having a shared understanding of who your customer is, and what the high level metrics are for a given time period helps your team move toward the same end goal.
While you may not be an expert in wherever you land, you are trained in your area (whether it’s design, research, usability, etc.) and your opinion is valuable. Ask for the background information and data you need and find ways to gather it quickly/cheaply if necessary.
Pitfall 6: Forgetting team dynamics
It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.
— Patrick Lencioni
Sometimes there’s just not enough people to do the work. Or there’s too many people and the amount of communication/overhead is excessive. There’s people and companies solely dedicating their time to study organizational culture because it can be the root cause of many other problems.
Realizing the systemic issues underlying the design process can help you determine the next course of action when a process if not working.
Pitfall 7: Thinking the lab = the real world
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
— Richard Feynman
While UX takes care to stimulate as much of the customer perspective as possible in a lab, at the end of the day, it’s still a lab. The environment is unnatural, the conditions are created and the outcome needs to be taken with caution.
This is not speaking against the positive and respectable impact of UX research in steering the product direction, but to caution against taking what has been tested with 100% confidence. There’s always a margin of error and a gap between what is tested vs. what is delivered and used in the real world.
The world is more diverse than your team — the range of behaviors, abilities and perspectives is beyond what can be anticipated. That said, I will only further emphasize that hearing the experiences of customers directly is invaluable. Some data is much better than no data. Interjecting customer feedback into your process helps you avoid polishing a turd.
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Feel free to check out my design work or my handbook on UX design, upgrading your portfolio and understanding design thinking.
