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Experience can’t be designed: free yourself from UX

Forget your title, this is about how to work cross-functionally and make an impact. “UX design” was a necessary variation, but now it boxes us in. You can practice the same skills but reformat your communications.

Michael Burnett
UX Collective
6 min readMar 5, 2023

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In grad school, I learned from a great marketing teacher, Steve Diller. He had learned from Louis Cheskin (if you’re in design or research, you should read up on Cheskin). This was old school marketing (ahem, actual marketing) that more closely resembles today’s scope of design. I had once labeled myself a UX Designer so I was a bit annoyed when Diller said, “you can’t design experience.”

two images: a man uses a phone on a busy street; a woman uses a computer in a quiet living room.
Street photo by Arthur Edelmans on Unsplash. (user / context). Couch photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash.

Since the inception of “UX Design” as a profession, there have been arguments that you can’t design an experience. “UX is the consequences of these attributes [of a design].” The acknowledgement is that there is user and context variability that we can’t control. Steve and I had a few good-natured arguments on the topic:

“Experience is subjective, it’s in the eyes of the beholder. You can only attempt to influence it.”

“But that’s what UX design is, we design to influence a user’s experience with the product.”

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Published in UX Collective

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Written by Michael Burnett

Author, founder, and angel investor. I believe your greatest life is the life you make for yourself. Connect with me on LinkedIn.com/in/dtls.

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